George Brand Movies

Friday (Jack Webb) and Smith (Ben Alexander) must forsake their Christmas vacation when the body of a murdered woman is found in a church courtyard. The woman is subsequently identified as Maria Carselle, whom several witnesses had seen drinking heavily in the company of a variety of companions just before her murder. A newly-shined boot and a discarded key are the clues that lead the detectives to the most likely suspect--who turns out to be too drug to put up any resistance. This episode is based on the Dragnet radio broadcast of May 25, 1950. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Friday (Jack Webb) and Smith (Ben Alexander) are on the lookout for a hit-and-run driver. Their detective work includes a thorough inspection of the fenders of the suspects' cars. In the end, however, the case is solved with a small print--not a fingerprint, but a lip print! Like most Dragnet episodes of this era, "The Big Lip" proves to be a good workout for several members of the Jack Webb Stock Company, including Vic Perrin and Olan Soule. Also on hand is former "Dead End Kid"Bobby Jordan, here billed more formally as "Robert." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A criminal mastermind named Spectre (Peter Brocco) uses special coins to render himself and his henchmen invisible while committing crimes. Hoping to trap the crooks, Clark Kent (George Reeves) pretends that he'd like to join their gang. When Clark's true motives are discovered, he is thrown out of a plane in flight--which of course has no ill effect on him, inasmuch as he is really Superman and is quite accustomed to sailing through the air. The climax of the episode finds the extremely visible bad guys dukeing it out with a temporarily invisible Superman! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this film noir, five college students laughingly devise a perfect plan for robbing a casino in Reno. At first they do it just to pass the time, but one of them is deeply in debt and becoming increasingly distraught about it. He successfully cajoles his peers into carrying through with their plans. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Not long after starring in Las Vegas Shakedown, Dennis O'Keefe headed eastward to appear in Chicago Syndicate. This time, O'Keefe is cast as honest accountant Barry Amsterdam, determined to get the goods on Windy City gangster boss Arnie Valent (Paul Stewart). Insinuating himself into Valent's confidence, Amsterdam quietly begins gathering evidence. For a while it looks as though Amsterdam will go the way of his predecessor in Valent's operation, who ended up sleeping with the fishes, but in films of this nature justice usually prevails. Allison Hayes, who later played the title role in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, is quite effective in the normal-sized part of the daughter of a slain accountant, while Abbe Lane plays the obligatory mob mistress (Lane's then-husband , bandleader Xavier Cugat, is also in the cast). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Henry Koster and writer Daniel Taradash speculate mightily in this historical tableau charting the rise and fall of Napoleon (Marlon Brando), all due to his unrequited love for noblewoman Desiree (Jean Simmons). The film takes a chronological view of Napoleon's reign and posits Napoleon's love of a woman he wanted to marry as a young general but abandoned for the sake of his career. Both Napoleon and Desiree go their separate ways -- he to become Emperor of France and loveless husband to Josephine (Merle Oberon) and she to become Sweden's disinterested Queen. Napoleon and Desiree meet up again in a whimsical confrontation in which Desiree urges the Little Corporal to surrender and go to St. Helena. The film is based on a novel by Annemarie Selinko that, like the film, takes wild liberties with the truth. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

A good man tries to warn his daughter away from a bad man who has stolen her heart in this melodrama. Steve Latimer (William Powell) is a successful defense attorney who has gone out of his way to give his daughter Jean (Elizabeth Taylor) every advantage in life. However, Steve's generosity and open minded attitude begin to backfire on him when Jean decides to throw off her boyfriend, the solid and sensible Vance Court (Gig Young), in favor of Victor Ramondi (Fernando Lamas), a handsome but dangerous man with criminal connections whom Steve is representing. Steve tries to warn Jean away from Victor, but she remains undeterred, and accepts his proposal of marriage, even as the authorities tighten their grip on Victor and his crime syndicate. The Girl Who Had Everything was a remake of the 1931 Norma Shearer vehicle A Free Soul. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Blonde good-time girl Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling), who lives in a cheap rooming house in a working-class section of Boston, run by the inquisitive and neurotic Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester), goes out one night after a phone conversation with her boyfriend, proclaiming that she's got big plans and might even move to a nicer place. After putting in her shift as a waitress at a cheap dive called The Grass Skirt, she latches onto Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson), an innocently drunk patron, who's trying to wash away his sadness over his wife's stillborn child. She uses Henry's car with him in tow to drive out to Cape Cod, then strands him on foot and meets her boyfriend -- but when she arrives, he puts a bullet into her, then strips the body, throws it into the sea, and drops the clothes and the car into a lake. Six months later, an ornithologist from the cape spots the skeleton of a human foot sticking up through the sand.

Enter Lt. Peter Morales (Ricardo Montalban) of the Boston PD; he and his partner on this case, Det. Sharkey (Wally Maher), bring the bones to Dr. McAdoo (Bruce Bennett), of Harvard University's forensic medical laboratory. Over the next few days, McAdoo and his staff are able to determine the gender, age, and general appearance of the person to whom the bones belonged, and that this is a case of murder -- and that the victim was pregnant. Morales and Sharkey, combing through what they know about the victim and the missing persons records of six nearby states, eventually tie the skeleton up with Vivian Heldon, who disappeared on just about the same day the victim was killed, and also to Shanway's car, which he reported stolen that day. The poor slob, who is merely trying to cover up a drunken lapse from his wife (Sally Forrest), acts guilty enough and lies about just enough so that Morales is certain that he's the murderer. His investigation isn't helped by the interference of Mrs. Smerrling, who sold Vivian's belongings when she didn't return to her room, and now seems fixated, even obsessed with the details of the case and its connection to her rooming house. While the police tighten the screws on Shanway, she backtracks Vivian's phone calls and makes contact with the woman's boyfriend, James Joshua Harkley (Edmon Ryan), member of a wealthy Boston family, and a married man; she also manages to steal a vital piece of evidence. But instead of turning it over to the police, she uses it to blackmail Harkley.

Meanwhile, the district attorney sets an early trial date for Shanway, but with the opening arguments only a week away, Morales begins to develop doubts about Shanway's guilt, in addition to harboring his own sympathy for Grace Shanway, whose life is being gradually destroyed by the prosecution on her husband -- not that Morales thinks he's innocent, but there's enough that's not right about the case, including the missing murder weapon, that he's not 100-percent sure. And that's when Vivian's friend and neighbor, Jackie Elcott (Betsy Blair) reports how strangely Mrs. Smerrling is acting, and the fact that she's got a gun. But before they can question her, Harkley kills Mrs. Smerrling -- now it's a race between Morales and Harkley to see who can get to the murder weapon first. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide