Alan Foster Movies

Ronald Reagan delivers one of his best screen performances as baseball great Grover Cleveland Alexander in The Winning Team. The title refers to the mutually supportive relationship between Alexander and his loving wife Aimee (top-billed Doris Day); with this in mind, is it any surprise that the real Aimee Alexander served as the film's technical advisor. While the basic milestones of Alexander's career are adhered to, the film is a typical Hollywood blend of fact and fancy-plenty of fancy. While playing in the minors, Alexander is is hit on the heat by a batted ball, resulting in the dizziness and double vision that would ever after plague him. After toting up a record of 28 wins with the Philadelphia Phillies, Alex is traded to the Cubs, but World War 1 intervenes. On the battlefield, Alex suffers a recurrence of his double vision; and when he plays his first postwar game with the Cubs, he collapses on the field. Warned that his seizures will persist if he doesn't retire, Alex swears the doctor to secrecy. When the dizzy spells continue, Alex turns to drink. Branded an "alky", he descends to the depths of a House of David-style team, thence to the humiliation of carnival side shows. With the help and support of both Aimee and his old pal Rogers Hornsby (Frank Lovejoy), Alex stages a spectacular comeback, striking out Yankee Tony Lazzeri during the 1926 World Series and leading his team to victory. The script rearranges the chronology of Alexander's life, suggests incorrectly that the Lazzeri strikeout was the last play in the deciding Series game, and-most amusingly-depicts the unloveable Rogers Hornsby as a 100 % sweetheart. Otherwise, The Winning Team provides an excellent showcase for Ronald Reagan-though in later years he expressed some reservations about the script, noting that, by adhering to Warner Bros' insistence that the word "epilepsy" never be spoken, the picture confused audiences as to the true nature of Alexander's affliction. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Humphrey Bogart plays Martin Ferguson, a prosecutor about to put Albert Mendoza (Everett Sloane), the head of a murder-for-hire ring, on trial. But the night before the trial, his key witness, Joe Rico (Ted de Corsia), dies in a fall out of the window of the room in which he's been guarded, part of an abortive escape attempt to keep from testifying. His case in shambles, Ferguson and detective Captain Nelson (Roy Roberts) try to piece the entire four-year investigation back together from square one, trying to find something that might give them another way to prosecute Mendoza. The main body of the movie is told in flashback, starting when a small-time hood named Duke Malloy (Michael Tolan, then billed as Lawrence Tolan) walks into a police station to turn himself in for killing his girlfriend -- and says that someone made him kill her. He babbles to the bewildered detectives about "hits" and "contracts" and men nicknamed Philadelphia, Big Babe, and Smiley. The body isn't found, but they arrest Malloy, who hangs himself in his cell. That dead end leads, almost by accident, to Philadelphia Tom Zaca (Jack Lambert), an asylum inmate who has to be put under sedation at the mention of Malloy's name. They find another suspect's body burning in his building's incinerator, and then Big Babe Lazick (Zero Mostel), a two-bit hood, hiding in a church in mortal fear of his life. He begins weaving a tale of a murder-by-contract ring and its head operator, Joe Rico, of a murder contract that Duke Malloy never filled on a girl who had to change her name, of mistaken identity and the murder of the girl's cab-driver father, and the connection between that and a murder that they both witnessed eight years earlier. In the midst of all of those interlocking stories (spread across ten years), there's something Ferguson missed -- when he had Rico to testify -- that he has to sort out from the reams of testimony and evidence, and he has to figure it out before Mendoza does, or lose the last witness he has. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

East Indian actor Sabu heads the cast of the location-filmed Man-Eater of Kumaon. While the film's romantic plotline is carried by native couple Naraian (Sabu) and Lali (Joanne Page), the main story concentrates on the regeneration of American society doctor John Collins (Wendell Corey). Despite his distaste for all things Indian, Collins agrees to participate in a tiger hunt. Upon meeting the residents of a Himalayan village which is being decimated by the titular man-eating tiger, the doctor gains a new perspective on his fellow man, dropping many of his inbuilt prejudices along the way. Based on the best-selling novel by Jim Corbett, Man-Eater of Kumaon is at once a rousing adventure tale and an easy-to-take sociological tract. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The title tells all in the Monogram "expose" Black Market Babies. Alcoholic physician Dr. Jordan (Ralph Morgan) joins forces with gangster Eddie Condon (Kane Richmond) and shyster lawyer Anthony Marco (George Meeker) in a crooked adoption racket. Coercing unwed mothers to give up their babies for adoption, the unholy trio operates a supposedly philanthropic baby farm which caters to childless couples who have been frustrated by the legal adoption system. The villains rake in oodles and oodles of cash before the authorities close in. But once the jig is up, the crooks fall out, resulting in murder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An above-average entry in the Jimmy Wakely singing cowboy series, this movie features a suspenseful murder mystery set on a dude ranch. Wakely and cohorts John James and Lee "Lasses" White are hired to investigate the mysterious murder of a U.S. marshal. There are plenty of suspects, of course, including a couple of jewel thieves (Claire James and Alan Foster) and the late ranch owner's unscrupulous partner (Jack Ingram). A lovesick ranch guest (Kay Deslys of Laurel & Hardy fame) and sundry Country & Western performers liven things up considerably while Wakely and Co. track down the killer. Filmed at the Circle J. Ranch in the San Fernando Valley, Saddle Serenade included such songs as "My Saddle Serenade", by Johnny Bond, Chiquita, by producer-director Oliver Drake and Sam H. Stept, and Saddle Pals, by Wakely. The western marked the first of three Wakely appearances by John James, a handsome second lead who should not be confused with the later Dynasty star of the same name. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide