Florence Dudley Movies

Leo McCarey was supposed to both produce and direct My Favorite Wife, but an illness forced him to relinquish the director's chair to Garson Kanin, who did a splendid job. This hilarious retread of the old "Enoch Arden" legend stars Irene Dunne as Ellen, who returns home to her husband Nick (Cary Grant) and children Tim (Ann Shoemaker) and Chinch (Mary Lou Harrington) after being marooned on a desert island for seven years. Thing of it is, Ellen has been declared legally dead, and Nick has taken unto himself a second wife, the bitchy Bianca (Gail Patrick). Upon discovering that Ellen is still alive, Nick is on the verge of a tender reunion-until it discovers that she spent those seven lost years in the company of handsome Mr. Barkett (Randolph Scott). The superb supporting cast includes Granville Bates as a flummoxed judge, Chester Clute as a meek shoe salesman whom Ellen tries to pass off as Barkett, and Donald MacBride as a beetle-browed honeymoon-hotel clerk. My Favorite Wife was remade in 1963 as Move Over Darling, in which Irene Dunne and Cary Grant were replaced by Doris Day and James Garner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dorothy Lamour had been playing "sarong girls" long enough to parody her screen character in 1939's Best of the Blues. Tired of portraying jungle princesses, a temperamental Broadway star (Lamour) runs out on her manager (Jerome Cowan) and joins a Mississippi showboat under a phony name. Incredibly, none of the showboat audiences recognize this supposedly world-famous star, and she becomes the toast of the South--as well as the object of boat owner Lloyd Nolan's affections. When the truth comes out, Nolan spurns Lamour, but they're back together for the musical finale. Best of the Blues is the television title for St. Louis Blues; the change was made to avoid confusion with the 1958 biopic of W.C. Handy, also titled St. Louis Blues. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Financier J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) -- known in the press as "the Bull of Broad Street" -- may be one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the country, but he also knows the value of a dollar. And when his wife (Mary Nash) spends 50,000 of them on a sable coat, he is driven into such a fury in the ensuing argument on the roof of their Fifth Avenue townhouse, that he throws the coat into the street -- where it promptly lands on the head of Mary Smith (Jean Arthur), a clerk-typist on her way to work, riding on the upper deck of a double-decker bus, ruining her hat in the process. She jumps off the bus to try to return the coat, but Ball insists that she keep it. What she really needs, however, is not a 50,000-dollar sable coat so much as a ride to work -- as she doesn't even have a dime for bus fare -- and perhaps a new hat. Ball obliges, taking her to one of the top clothing stores in New York, buying her an expensive fur hat to go with the coat, and then dropping her at work in his limo. Her superiors, seeing her decked out in a sable coat and a new hat, and getting out of the chauffeured car, conclude that Mary is a kept woman, and, therefore, unfit to work for the boys magazine where she is employed, and they fire her. Now out of work and virtually broke, she seems to have become a victim of random fate, but suddenly the scales start to tip the other way from the very same misunderstanding that got her fired. Having been seen in the company of J.B. Ball -- whose name she didn't even get -- she is rumored to be his mistress; the prissy clothing store proprietor (Franklin Pangborn) spreads this story, and that turns Mary into the object of attention for Mr. Louis Louis (Luis Alberni), the owner of a failed luxury hotel on which Ball's bank holds the mortgage, and is about to foreclose. For reasons that she can't begin to understand, since there is nothing going on between her and J.B. Ball (whose name she doesn't even know), or between her and anyone, Louis moves her into the most luxurious suite in his hotel for a dollar a day, asking her only to inform "that certain someone" of how she loves living there. Mary has no idea of who "that certain someone" is, or what Louis is talking about, but she needs a place to live, and Louis is insistent. She still needs to eat, and, while trying to get a meal at the automat, she crosses paths with a handsome, well-meaning, but inept waiter (Ray Milland), who gets fired for helping her. She takes him into her suite so he has a place to stay, and the two fall in love in the course of finding out about each other. She knows that he is John Ball Jr., but doesn't realize that he is the son of J.B. Ball, trying to make it on his own, nor does she yet realize who J.B. Ball is, in terms of being the man who gave her the coat and the new hat, or one of the wealthiest men in the country. But after the elder Ball spends an innocent night at the Hotel Louis, a gossip columnist named "Wallace Whistling" (William Demarest) prints that he is keeping a woman at the hotel, and suddenly the Hotel Louis, perceived as a fashionable playground for the upper-crust, is filled with guests. This multiple case of mistaken identity plunges through two or three new layers, eventually bringing about an impending stock market crash to rival 1929, before Mary discovers who her would-be benefactor and her would-be fiancé are. She bails them out of the jam that they're in, also restoring the Ball's marriage, her own reputation, and her romance with Ball's son in the process. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In G Men, Warner Bros. "bad boy" James Cagney plays James "Brick" Davis, a young lawyer whose education has been financed by soft-hearted racketeer McKay (William Harrigan). When Cagney's best pal, detective Eddie Buchanan (Regis Toomey), is killed in a gangland shooting, James decides to become a G-Man. Though scrupulously honest, Davis is looked upon with suspicion by his fellow agents because of his association with the crooked McKay. He proves he's a "good guy" when his former girlfriend, Jean Ann Dvorak, now the wife of mobster Brad Collins (Barton MacLane), tips him off to a "Little Bohemia"-style gangster hideaway. Jean later sacrifices her own life to help James rescue his new girl, nurse Kay McCord (Margaret Lindsay), from the vengeful Collins. Based on Gregory Miller's book Public Enemy No. 1, G-Men was reissued in 1949, with an added prologue featuring David Brian as an FBI trainer who advises his students not to laugh at the old-fashioned costumes and slang in the 1935 film; seen today, it is Brian's superfluous opening comments that seem hopelessly dated, while the film itself is as exciting and entertaining as ever. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, two carneys, a card-sharp, and a peep-show performer, find themselves booted out of the show and decide to team up--platonically. They immediately get adjoining rooms in a hotel. Though the huckster constantly tries to romance the girl, she demurely rejects him. He comes to respect that; and she eventually comes to respect him, despite his tough-guy posturing. Together they try to eke out a living, but eventually, both are arrested: he for purse-snatching, and she for a past offense. In court the card-player staunchly defends the girl. The judge is so moved, that he drops all charges and marries the two. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

I Have Lived takes place in a New York penthouse, a Broadway theater, and a seedy speakeasy, though not necessarily in that order. Alan Dinehart essays one of his rare leading roles as Thomas Langley, a brilliant playwright whose career has taken off like a skyrocket. Experiencing an attack of hubris, Langley decides to cast an unknown in his next play. His selection is the gorgeous Jean St. Clair (Anita Page), a woman with a tawdry past. Wanna bet that the opening-night audience will give the young actress a standing ovation despite her checkered history? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. made his talkie debut in the low-budget but imaginative "exploitationer" Party Girl. Fairbanks plays carefree young bachelor Jay Roundtree, the son of a wealthy industrialist. Though Jay is in love with his dad's secretary, his class consciousness compels him to keep his distance from her. One night, he joins his fraternity pals for a wild penthouse bash, where a group of "party girls" (a 1930 code word for prostitutes) encourage the guests (mostly "dirty old men" in tuxedoes) to wash their inhibitions away with bootleg liquor. Imagine Jay's surprise when, in the course of the evening, he discovers that his office sweetheart was once a party girl herself -- though that's nothing compared to what he discovers about his own father! Though economically produced, Party Girl contains some astounding visual effects, including a hydraulic "car lift" which transports the revellers to their secret rendezvous and a remarkably convincing suicidal plunge from a skyscraper. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This early musical features several song-and-dance numbers in the midst of a story about underworld criminals. Nick (Paul Porcasi), who runs the Paradise Night Club, is murdered by Steve (Robert Ellis), a bootlegger. Billie Moore (Merna Kennedy), a hoofer at the club, witnesses the killing but stays mum about the dirty business until she finds out Steve's next target is Roy (Glenn Tryon), her dancing partner. Billie is determined to tell her story to the police before Roy winds up dead, but Steve isn't about to let that happen and kidnaps her. No synopsis of this film is complete without a mention of the then-remarkable camera crane, which director Paul Fejos had designed specifically for use on Broadway, allowing unusually fluid movement and access to nearly every conceivable angle. It could travel at 600 feet per minute and enlivened the visual style of any number of other films on the 20th Century Fox lot over the next several years. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide