Harold Entwistle Movies

William Wyler's Wuthering Heights is one of the earliest screen adaptations of the classic Emily Brontë novel. A traveler named Lockwood (Miles Mander) is caught in the snow and stays at the estate of Wuthering Heights, where the housekeeper, Ellen Dean (Flora Robson), sits down to tell him the story in flashback. In the early 19th century, the original owner of Wuthering Heights, Mr. Earnshaw (Leo G. Carroll), brings home an orphan from Liverpool named Heathcliff (Rex Downing). Though son Hindley Earnshaw despises the boy, daughter Catherine develops a close kinship with Heathcliff that blossoms into love. When Mr. Earnshaw dies, Cathy and Heathcliff grow up together on the Moors and seem destined for happiness, even though Hindley forces Heathcliff to work as a stable boy. When Cathy (Merle Oberon) meets wealthy neighbor Edgar Linton (David Niven), Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier) gets jealous and leaves. Cathy marries Edgar, and Heathcliff returns with his own wealth and sophistication. He buys Wuthering Heights from the alcoholic Hindley (Hugh Williams) and marries Edgar's sister, Isabella Linton (Geraldine Fitzgerald), out of spite. Still obsessively in love with each other, Cathy gets deathly ill while Heathcliff grows into a bitter old man. Ellen continues telling Lockwood the story as Dr. Kenneth (Donald Crisp) enters and reveals the fateful ending. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

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, Rovi

The third of MGM's profitable Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy songfests, Maytime opens in the early 20th century, with a young girl arguing with her boyfriend over her wishes to become an opera singer. The girl's neighbor, a lonely old woman whom we gradually recognize as a convincingly "aged" Jeanette MacDonald, tells the girl of her own career in opera. The old lady was once the radiant young diva Marcia Mornay. In 1868 she was the toast of Europe, thanks to the tutelage of her voice instructor Nikolai Nazarov (John Barrymore). He proposes marriage, and Marcia accepts, more out of gratitude than love. In a euphoric pre-nuptial state, Marcia finds herself on Paris' Left Bank, where she meets handsome café crooner Paul Allison (Nelson Eddy). They meet again at a lavish Maytime festival, falling in love (to the accompaniment of Sigmund Romberg's most dazzling duets) in the process. Sadly, Marcia returns to Nazarov, while Paul goes off to America to lick his wounds. Seven years later, Marcia, making her New York debut in a fictional opera based on the works of Tchaikovsky, finds that the leading baritone is none other than Paul. Unable to envision life without her new love, Marcia begs Nazarov for a divorce. He smiles slyly and promises to give her her freedom-whereupon he heads to Paul's apartment and kills the poor fellow. The flashback done, Marcia advises her pretty young neighbor that one can never have both love and a career. Out of tragedy grows the happy ending, in which the spirit of the now-deceased Marcia is reunited with Paul in a blossom-filled Hereafter. On paper, Maytime may seem to be the ultimate in Hoke, but even in recent revival showings the film never fails to cast its spell over an audience. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The 1932 publication of Charles Nordhoff and James Norton Hall's Mutiny on the Bounty sparked a revival of interest in the titular 1789 ship mutiny, and this 1935 MGM movie version won the Oscar for Best Picture. Clark Gable stars as Fletcher Christian, first mate of the infamous HMS Bounty, skippered by Captain William Bligh (Charles Laughton), the cruelest taskmaster on the Seven Seas. Bligh's villainy knows no bounds: he is even willing to flog a dead man if it will strengthen his hold over the crew. Christian despises Bligh and is sailing on the Bounty under protest. During the journey back to England, Bligh's cruelties become more than Christian can bear; and after the captain indirectly causes the death of the ship's doctor, the crew stages a mutiny, with Christian in charge. Bligh and a handful of officers loyal to him are set adrift in an open boat. Through sheer force of will, he guides the tiny vessel on a 49-day, 4000-mile journey to the Dutch East Indies without losing a man. Historians differ on whether Captain Bligh was truly such a monster or Christian such a paragon of virtue (some believe that the mutiny was largely inspired by Christian's lust for the Tahitian girls). The movie struck gold at the box office, and, in addition to the Best Picture Oscar, Gable, Laughton, and Franchot Tone as one of the Bounty's crew were all nominated for Best Actor (they all lost to Victor McLaglan in The Informer). The film was remade in 1962 and adapted into the "revisionist" 1984 feature The Bounty with Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This big-budget 1936 RKO Studios picture lost money, perhaps due to a cool box-office reception to the idea of leading lady Katharine Hepburn in drag, and a rare-for-its-day screen kiss between two women. Edmund Gwenn plays the title character's father Henry, who is obsessed with gambling. His daughter Sylvia (Hepburn) has stolen some expensive lace which they hope to smuggle from France to England. To elude police, she cuts her hair short and disguises herself as a man. She and her father board a ship, and a drunken Henry confesses their scheme to Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant), a jewel smuggler. To divert attention away from him, Jimmy snitches on Henry to the customs officials, and Henry has to pay up or be arrested. Later, Sylvia confronts Jimmy on a train and punches him. Jimmy apologizes and cuts them in on a scheme to steal jewels from a wealthy family, using his friend Maudie (Dennie Moore), a maid in the house. But Sylvia, still disguised as a man, talks Maudie out of it, and she responds with a kiss. Maudie and Sylvia's father fall in love and Maudie, an aspiring actress, invests money in a show to open in a seaside resort. There they are invited to the mansion of a wealthy artist, Michael Fane (Brian Aherne), who is unsettled by Sylvia's obvious affections before finally discovering that she's a woman. Jimmy is attracted to Michael's roommate, the Russian-born Lily (Natalie Paley) -- and from there, the romantic entaglements between the aformentioned parties proceed like a Shakespearean comedy. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

One of the first releases of newly-formed Republic Pictures, Two Sinners was adapted from The Black Sheep, a serialized magazine story by Warwick Deeping. Otto Kruger stars as Henry Vane, who uncomplainingly serves a lengthy prison term for shooting the cad who compromised Vane's wife. Hoping to leave his past behind him, Vane falls in love with Elsie Summerstone (Martha Sleeper), the governess for bratty Sally Pym (Cora Sue Collins). Thanks to the infidelities of Sally's mother (Minna Gombell), Vane is unable to stay out of trouble for long. In true "Shirley Temple" fashion, it is up to little Sally to straighten out the storyline. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This fifth film version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island boasts an all-star MGM cast, headed by Wallace Beery as Long John Silver and Jackie Cooper as Jim Hawkins. The screenplay, by John Lee Mahin, John Howard Lawson and Leonard Praskins, remains faithful to the Stevenson original...up to a point. The story begins when drunken old sea dog Billy Bones (Lionel Barrymore) drags himself into the seaside pub managed by Jim and his mother (Dorothy Peterson). After Billy is killed by the scurrilous Blind Pew (William V. Mong) and his henchmen, Jim discovers that the deceased ex-pirate carries a treasure map on his person. Together with Dr. Livesey (Otto Kruger) and Squire Trelawny (Nigel Bruce), Jim books passage on a ship captained by Alexander Smollett (Lewis Stone); their destination is the "treasure island" depicted on the map. Smollett doesn't like the voyage nor the crew, and not without reason: ship's cook Long John Silver has rounded up the crew from the dregs of the earth, fully intending to mutiny and claim the treasure for himself. A further plot complications awaits both treasure-seekers and pirates in the person of half-mad island hermit Ben Gunn (Chic Sale) who's already found the treasure and has stashed it away for himself. Towards the end, the plot strays from the Stevenson version in detailing the ultimate fate of ruthless-but-lovable Long John Silver. While consummately produced, Treasure Island suffers from overlength and a mannered performance by Jackie Cooper. Disney's 1950 remake with Robert Newton and Bobby Driscoll is far more satisfying. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Constance Bennett suffers nobly in this outdated but fairly engrossing melodrama in which a seemingly hardened debutante takes the blame for the mistakes of her siblings. When her sister Corinne (Helen Vinson) gets in trouble with a married man (Gavin Gordon), Ardell Hamilton (Bennett) accepts culpability in her stead. She performs the same service for ne'er-do-well brother Bob (Allen Vincent) when he is accused of murdering the philanderer, and who should be the prosecuting attorney in the case but honest, hardworking David Norton (Neil Hamilton), with whom Ardell has fallen in love. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Shirley Bryson (Frances Nelson) lives in poverty with her sister Emma (Mary Mersh) and their mother (Caroline Harris). Mrs. Bryson becomes seriously ill and will die if she is not sent away to be cared for. Shirley's job as a manicurist certainly can't pay for this, but one day Wilfred Templeton (Harold Entwhistle) walks into the shop and makes her an offer: If she comes to live with him as his mistress, he will pay for her mother's nursing. Shirley reluctantly agrees but is humiliated by the condescending attitude of Templeton's servants. Then when Emma comes to visit and notices that Shirley isn't wearing a wedding ring, Shirley is overcome with shame. Templeton dumps her and she goes to work at a cabaret. There she meets Harold (Niles Welch), a sad young man who is burying his loneliness in drink. When he defends her from an insulting cad, a romance begins. Shirley reforms Harold and they marry, but when his father comes by to congratulate them -- it turns out to be Wilfred Templeton. He tells Harold all about Shirley's past, which gives Harold pause, but in the end he forgives her completely. This film suffered from two major problems -- a tired story and some unlikely plot twists (how could Shirley not know who Harold's father was?). ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi