Alice Keating Movies

Charmless films like The Bride Wore Boots helped to kill the postwar revival of the "screwball comedy" genre almost before it began. Here's the deal: Breeding-farm owner Sally (Barbara Stanwyck) loves horses. Novelist Jeff (Robert Cummings) hates horses, but loves Sally. Jeff and Sally marry, only to break up over their equestrian differences. They spend the rest of the film trying to get back together again, despite such hurdles as flirtatious Southern belle Mary Lou Medford (Diana Lynn) and charming "other man" Lance Gale (Patric Knowles). Is it any surprise that the film ends with a Big Race, and that horse-hating Jeff is astride the winning steed? ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Each of Bob Hope's "My Favorite" films (My Favorite Blonde, My Favorite Brunette, My Favorite Spy) was, by accident or design, a parody of a dead-serious movie genre. 1942's My Favorite Blonde, for example, was a takeoff of Alfred Hitchcock in general and Hitchcock's 39 Steps in particular. Two-bit vaudeville entertainer Hope gets mixed up with gorgeous blonde British-spy Madeline Carroll. The "maguffin" (Hitchcock's nickname for "gimmick") which ties the two stars together is a ring which contains the microfilmed plans for a revolutionary new bomber. Hope and Carroll are forced to take it on the lam when Hope is framed for murder by Nazi-agents Gale Sondergaard, George Zucco et. al. Highlights include Hope eluding capture by impersonating a famed psychologist (watch for Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer as Hope's most contentious "patient"). Madeline Carroll also got several opportunities to shine comedically, especially when she lapsed into cloying baby talk while posing as Hope's wife. Bob Hope was hesitant to work with My Favorite Blonde director Sidney Lanfield, having heard of Lanfield's reputation as an on-set dictator. However, the two got along so swimmingly that they would collaborate on such future top-notch Hope farces as Let's Face It (1943) and The Lemon Drop Kid (1951). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this romantic comedy, a blue-blooded girl falls in love with a wealthy rake who wants to settle down and marry her. Unfortunately, the young woman's guardian and personal stockbroker refuses to sanction the match. This enrages the girl who decides to prove that she doesn't need a guardian by getting a job on Wall Street. Time passes and mayhem ensues until the lass realizes that she has fallen in love with her guardian. Her playboy lover, with great charm, defers to the new lover and leaves them to their happiness. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Robert Taylor toughened up his image considerably with this gangster movie, which was unusual both in its plot and origins, having come from MGM, which was generally not known for its crime movies. Taylor plays a parolee who is pretending to follow the straight-and-narrow as a hardworking cabbie, but is really the mastermind behind a dog-racing track being built with mob money. Eager works every angle, has a gang that's generally in line, and also has a loyal right-hand man in Jeff Hartnett (Van Heflin, who won an Oscar), his educated assistant, who drinks too much and waxes poetic when he isn't looking after Johnny's interests (and sometimes when he is, too). Eager has only one problem, special prosecutor John Benson Farrell (Edward Arnold) -- who was also the attorney instrumental in sending Eager up -- who has gotten an injunction against the track's opening. But the hood sees an opening when he accidentally crosses paths with a young sociology student, Lisbeth Bard (Lana Turner), who is drawn to him romantically, and then finds out that she's Farrell's step-daughter. After romancing her for a few months, he sets her up in a scam, making her believe that she killed one of Eager's men (Paul Stewart). He "generously" gets her away from the scene and then informs Farrell of what has happened, pointing out that he holds the evidence against Lisbeth. Farrell has no choice but to withdraw the injunction, and the track opens, but problems ensue when rival mobsters decide to try and cut in on Eager and his racket, and he finds out that Lisbeth is so guilt-ridden over her "crime," that she's destroying herself mentally. Eager can't figure out why she feels the way she does or what to do about it, or even if he should do anything to help her, but with Jeff's help, he discovers a nobler side to his nature. Realizing that she really does love him, and knowing it's not possible for the two of them to be together, he goes out in a blaze of glory -- laced with a special irony built into the plot -- solving Lisbeth's problem and also curing her of her love for him, and settling a score or two in the process. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

The old David Belasco theatrical warhorse Zaza, which starred Mrs. Leslie Carter way back in 1899, had already been filmed by Pauline Frederick in 1915 and by Gloria Swanson in 1923 when this Claudette Colbert version hit the screens in early 1939. Doing her own singing and dancing, Colbert plays the title character, a saucy fin de siecle Parisian cabaret performer who falls in love with wealthy rogue Dufresne (Herbert Marshall). Quitting show biz to be with Dufresne for all time, Zaza is taken aback to discover that he's already married. Sorrowfully she returns to the stage, singing a farewell to Dufresne before an audience that seems to include everyone in Paris. Bert Lahr steals the show as Zaza's zany but golden-hearted music-hall partner; in fact he's a lot livelier than the near-comatose Herbert Marshall, who seems preoccupied with more important matters throughout the film. Screenwriter Zoe Akins did her best to make the "naughty" Belasco original conform to the stringent censorship standards of 1939. Still, the Hays Office found plenty with which to nitpick: Commenting on Zaza's angry exclamation "Pig! Pig! Pig! Pig! Pig!", the Hays folks demanded "Delete two 'Pigs'." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Kay Francis stars as Stella Parish, a London stage favorite who suddenly disappears without a trace. British news correspondent Keith Lockridge (Ian Hunter) girdles the globe in search of Stella, who has left her beloved daughter Gloria (Sybil Jason) in the care of an aunt (Jessie Ralph). Finally locating his quarry, Lockridge learns that Stella dropped from view to hide the fact that she once served a jail sentence as an accessory to murder. He promises to kill the story for Gloria's sake, but his dispatch is inadvertently published away, forcing Stella into a tawdry career as a "freak" stage attraction (not unlike Evelyn Nesbit Shaw). After hitting rock-bottom in a burlesque show, Stella is rescued by her old director Stephan Norman (Paul Lukas), who invites her to revive the show she was starring in at the time of her disappearance. Little does she know that this comeback has been arranged by Lockridge, who hopes to atone for betraying her trust. All roads lead to a tear-stained reunion between Stella and her daughter, a denouement as inevitable as death and taxes. For years, it was believed that Errol Flynn played an unbilled bit in I Found Stella Parish, but a researcher in the late 1960s discovered that the Flynn look-alike was actually Francis X. Bushman Jr. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi