Jack Hatfield Movies

Paramount followed up its successful Bob Hope/Paulette Goddard co-starrer The Cat and the Canary (1939) by warming up another venerable "old dark house" stage play, Paul Dickey and Charles Goddard's The Ghost Breaker, pluralizing the title to accommodate both stars. This time Hope plays radio personality Lawrence L. Lawrence (the middle initial stands for Lawrence: "My folks had no imagination") who has to flee New York to avoid being mistakenly arrested for murder. He and his manservant Alex (Willie Best) book passage on a Cuba-bound liner, where they meet lovely heiress Mary Carter (Paulette Goddard). She is heading to Cuba to take charge of her ancestral mansion, despite warnings from several sinister characters that to enter this "haunted" house will mean certain death. Appointing himself Mary's protector, Lawrence investigates the mansion on his own, thereby crossing the path of a zombie (Noble Johnson) and an apparently genuine ghost. He also meets the twin brother of the man he's accused of killing (Anthony Quinn), who seems the most likely suspect when Mary nearly comes to harm. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this domestic comedy, a social climbing wife inadvertently creates trouble when she insists that her husband invite a renowned financier, who is new in town, to their house for dinner. Her husband doesn't know the man, and is too intimidated to ask him; instead, he hires an actor to play him. At dinner, the husband soon discovers that the "actor" is in reality the man who robbed the bank that very day. The cops are called and the crook is hauled away. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The 1936 comedy-mystery The Princess Comes Across might well have been inspired by a real-life incident during the silent-movie era, in which a crafty San Francisco stenographer hoodwinked the Hollywood elite into believing that she was a Spanish princess. Carole Lombard stars as an alluring Swedish beauty who travels under the name of Princess Olga. Everyone whom she meets en route to America on the steamship Mammoth bows and scrapes to the Princess, while Hollywood anxiously awaits her arrival to star her in a big-budget film. Only the ship's bandleader, King Mantell (Fred MacMurray), refuses to defer to Olga, sensing that she may not be all she claims. Mantell's instincts are right on target: the "Princess" is a brass-nickel phony, a Brooklyn girl named Wanda Nash who has cooked up her royal guise with drama coach Gertrude (Alison Skipworth) as a publicity stunt to crash into movies. Unfortunately, a weaselly blackmailer Darcy (Porter Hall) gloms onto Wanda's true identity and offers to keep quiet in exchange for a huge cash settlment. At the same time, Darcy is attempting to shake down several other passengers on the Mammoth, including King Mantell. Inevitably, Darcy is found murdered in the "Princess"'s stateroom, and Wanda finds herself one of several likely suspects, among them Mantell. A quintet of international detectives, travelling to a convention in America, sets out to solve the mystery, which becomes even more mysterious when one of the detectives also turns up dead. Taking matters in his own hands, Mantell vows to clear Wanda's name, and in the course of things he realizes that he's madly in love with her--but will Wanda give up her hoax, and her future showbiz career, for Mantell's sake? Among the many highlights in this engagingly daffy film is Fred MacMurray's rendition of the enchantingly forgettable song "My Concertina." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After six years' worth of tragic and noble roles, Irene Dunne began a new phase in her career as a top comedienne in Theodora Goes Wild. She plays a prim small-town schoolteacher, raised in an oppressive environment by two maiden aunts. Seeking surreptitious adventure, Dunne writes a steamy romance novel in her spare time--which becomes a scandalous best-seller. Heading to the big city to meet her publisher, Irene has a fling with the artist (Melvyn Douglas) who has designed the dust jacket for her book. Though on surface a Manhattan sophisticate, Douglas is just as trapped as Dunne had been in her small town; he's saddled with a nasty wife and insufferable parents. Both Douglas and Dunne free themselves of those who'd hold them down, and find happiness together. To round out the happy ending, Dunne's small town, which had ostracized her for writing her "hot" novel, welcomes her back with a brass band when the book puts the town on the map. If Theodora Goes Wild doesn't seem quite as funny now as it did in 1936, it is only because most of its satirical targets (notably the shocked spinster aunts) have ceased to exist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This espionage thriller with romantic comedy touches was loosely based on the book American Black Chamber by the real-life head of the U.S. Secret Service during World War I, Herbert O. Yardley. Bill Gordon (William Powell) is a newspaper puzzle editor who becomes a lieutenant in 1917 when he enlists to fight in the First World War. Before shipping out, Bill meets and becomes attracted to Joel Carter (Rosalind Russell), the niece of John Carter (Samuel Hinds), the Assistant Secretary of War. When Joel learns about Bill's former occupation, she arranges for his transfer to the War Department, where he is put to work code breaking for Major Brennan (Lionel Atwill). When Brennan is murdered as the result of a German-Russian spy ring's machinations, Bill investigates the spies and a comely secret agent (Bonnie Barnes), which jeopardizes his newfound romance with Joel. Russell received the role because MGM's first choice, Myrna Loy, was refusing to work for the studio at the time. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide