George Riley Movies
- 1963
Those ever-sneaky Martians are at it again in this sci-fi horror outing that closely resembles Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This time, the crafty invaders are in the process of making exact doubles of an entire town and then killing the original models. The terrifying facts are discovered by a scientist working at Cape Canaveral who is trying to figure out why a recent Martian probe simply exploded after landing on the Red Planet. The fellow has been in Florida working on the project for so long that his wife in California is about to divorce him. Wanting to save his marriage and see his family, he goes home and suddenly ends up fighting for not only his own life, but for all Humanity. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1962
In this mystery, a divorced man begins looking for his ex-wife who married his former business partner. Hal Weston's search leads him to LA where he enlists the aid of Li Sheng and the sneaky Osgood. He is told that his partner died. Investigating further, he discovers that he did not die. Actually he murdered the ex-wife and then had Li Sheng's father, a surgeon, fake his death certificate. He then buries the woman in his coffin and proceeds to use his mistress to collect on his life insurance policy by having her pose as the widow. Osgood then learns that the crook had the doctor change his appearance so he looked just like Osgood. He figures that he is next on the business partner's hit list and so kills him first. In the end, Weston kills Osgood. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1952
Despite its ebullient title and the presence of lightweight dancing star Dan Dailey, Meet Me at the Fair has a lot more meat on its bones than most musicals of the early 1950s. Dailey plays an early-1900s medicine show huckster who finds himself the reluctant guardian of orphanage escapee Chet Allen. As he grows fond of the boy, Dailey becomes determined to thwart the corrupt system that allows substandard orphan asylums to operate while political hacks get rich on government funding. Dailey wins the confidence (and love) of orphan committee member Diana Lynn, who helps to foil the machinations of crooked district attorney Hugh O'Brien. The darker aspects of Meet Me at the Fair are lightened by director Douglas Sirk's marvelous recreations of backstage life at the turn of the century. The film is also a special treat for fans of Scatman Crothers, who is never less than terrific as Dan Dailey's sidekick. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dan Dailey, Diana Lynn, (more)
- 1947
In this drama, a soldier's widow, whose husband died a hero in WW II, begins a quest to find the five men whose lives were saved when her husband sacrificed his own life by taking the brunt of a hand grenade blast. Her search begins two years after the war's end, and is an attempt to see if the men were worthy of her husband's death. En route she is slightly hurt in a minor accident and becomes hysterically paralyzed and unable to walk. One of the soldiers she was looking for tries to help her overcome her hysteria by using hypnosis. While she sleeps, he allows her to "talk" to all the soldiers involved in the incident. In this way, she is able to accept her husband's death. Seeing that the hypnotist is himself filled with guilt about the death, she in turn hypnotizes him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rosalind Russell, Melvyn Douglas, (more)
Faced with the challenge of writing a screenplay based on the life of fabulously wealthy, fabulously successful composer Cole Porter, one Hollywood wag came up with a potential story angle: "How does the S.O.B. make his second million dollars?" By the time the Porter biopic Night and Day was released, the three-person scriptwriting team still hadn't come up with a compelling storyline, though the film had the decided advantages of star Cary Grant and all that great Porter music. Roughly covering the years 1912 to 1946, the story begins during Porter's undergraduate days at Yale University, where he participated in amateur theatricals under the tutelage of waspish professor Monty Woolley (who plays himself). Though Porter's inherited wealth could have kept him out of WWI, he insists upon signing up as an ambulance driver. While serving in France, he meets nurse Linda Lee (Alexis Smith), who will later become his wife. Focusing his attentions on Broadway and the London stage in the postwar years, Porter pens an unbroken string of hit songs, including "Just One of Those Things," "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Begin the Beguine," and the title number. The composition of this last-named song is one of the film's giddy highlights, as Porter, inspired by the "drip drip drip" of an outsized rainstorm, runs to the piano and cries "I think I've got it!" The film's dramatic conflict arises when Porter is crippled for life in a polo accident. Refusing to have his legs amputated, he makes an inspiring comeback, even prompting a WWI amputee to remark upon his courage! Corny and unreliable as biography, Night and Day is redeemed by the guest appearances of musical luminaries Mary Martin (doing a spirited if disappointingly demure version of her striptease number "My Heart Belongs to Daddy") and Ginny Simms, the latter cast as an ersatz Ethel Merman named Carole Hill. Jane Wyman, seen as Porter's pre-nuptial sweetheart Gracie Harris, also gets to sing and dance, and quite well indeed. Beset with production problems, not least of which was the ongoing animosity between star Grant and director Michael Curtiz, Night and Day managed to finish filming on schedule, and proved to be an audience favorite -- except for those "in the know" Broadwayites who were bemused over the fact that Cole Porter's well-known homosexuality was necessarily weaned from the screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cary Grant, John Alvin, (more)
- 1945
There's slightly more fancy than fact in this lavish film biography of legendary American composer George Gershwin, but oh! That music! Director Irving Rapper had wanted Tyrone Power to play Gershwin, but Power was still serving in the Marines, so Rapper had to settle for Robert Alda--who isn't bad at all, just a trifle over-enthusiastic. The film traces Gershwin's rise from a "song plugger" for a Manhattan music publishing company to the heights of international fame and fortune. Gershwin's first big hit is "Swanee," introduced on Broadway by Al Jolson (who plays himself, making his first film appearance in six years). In collaboration with his lyricist brother Ira (well played by Herbert Rudley), George pens hit after hit in show after show. Impresario Charles Coburn is happy with this, but George's kindly old music teacher Albert Basserman wants his prize pupil to aspire to something more artistic. Gershwin responds with "Rhapsody in Blue", which debuts at Aeolian Hall in 1924 under the baton of bandleader Paul Whiteman (also playing himself). As his fame and workload grows, George finds he has no time at all for romance; the two (fictional) ladies in his life, both of whom eventually realize that they'll always have to play second fiddle to Gershwin's muse, are musical comedy star Joan Leslie and socialite Alexis Smith. Gershwin continues to compose such masterpieces as "An American in Paris", "Cuban Overture", "Concerto in F" and the 1935 folk opera Porgy and Bess. He will not allow himself to rest on his laurels, ruthlessly pushing himself to top all his previous accomplishments. Finally, the strain proves too great: George Gershwin dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1937, at the age of 39. Featured in the cast as themselves (in addition to those already mentioned) are Gershwin's lifelong friend Oscar Levant, producer George White, and Broadway performers Tom Patricola and Hazel Scott. Morris Carnovsky and Rosemary DeCamp play George's parents, while Julie Bishop is cast as Ira's wife Lee, who is saddled with the film's silliest line: "Ira, promise me that you'll never become a genius." Alternately hokey and inspired, Rhapsody in Blue has weathered the years as one of Hollywood's most solid biopics. And, as a bonus, we are treated to a virtually complete performance (running a full reel) of the title composition. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Alda, Joan Leslie, (more)
- 1943
Olivia De Havilland hadn't wanted to star in RKO's Government Girl, but was forced to do so by her home studio Warner Bros. Perhaps in retaliation, De Havilland delivers a strident, overbaked performance, which serves only to make this so-so wartime comedy something of an endurance test for modern viewers. The actress plays "Smokey", the Washington DC-based secretary of Detroit automobile expert Browne (Sonny Tufts, who's actually pretty good in this one!) Aware that Browne is a babe in the woods so far as Washington lobbying, politicking and backstabbing are concerned, Smokey takes the poor boy by the hand and shows him the ropes. Despite the derivative nature of Adela Rogers St. John's screenplay-the film seems like a hybrid of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The More the Merrier--Government Girl was an enormous hit, posting a profit of $700,000. The film represents the film directorial debut of producer-screenwriter Dudley Nichols. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Olivia de Havilland, Sonny Tufts, (more)
- 1942
If MGM's Red Skelton could make the mystery/comedy Whistling in the Dark, 20th Century-Fox's Milton Berle could show up in the mystery/comedy Over My Dead Body (Berle's reputation for lifting gags from other comics now extended to lifting plot material). Berle plays a mystery writer who forever writes himself into corners and is never able to finish a story. While visiting his wife (Mary Beth Hughes) at the office where she works, Berle overhears several men discussing the suicide of a coworker. Struck with a brilliant notion, Berle decides to confess to the murder of the dead man, certain that he'll be able to wriggle out of the situation and thereby have plenty of material for a story. Alas, it turns out that the deceased gentleman was murdered, and Berle is nearly sent to the chair. In emulation of the Bob Hope/Willie Best combination in The Ghost Breakers Milton Berle is teamed with a "scared" black elevator operator, played by a superb African-American radio and vaudeville comedian named Wonderful Smith. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Milton Berle, Mary Beth Hughes, (more)
- 1941
In the 1930s and 1940s, Warner Bros. developed a positive genius for remaking earlier films in new, disguised fashion, retaining the plotlines but altering the circumstances and character names. Wagons Roll at Night was a 1941 reworking of the prizefight drama Kid Galahad, filmed only four years earlier. The original film was about a naive boxer who falls in love with the sister of his semi-crooked manager. The remake stars Eddie Albert as a bucolic lion tamer, Humphrey Bogart (who'd been the villain in Kid Galahad) as the circus manager, and Joan Leslie as the girl. The earlier film also included Bette Davis as the manager's put-upon mistress; her counterpart in Wagons Roll at Night is Sylvia Sidney as a worldly circus star. It's amazing how well the prizefight milieu adapts itself to the lion cage, and for this alone Wagons Roll at Night is memorable. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, Sylvia Sidney, (more)
- 1937
Scheduled to marry a man she doesn't love (and for good reason), spoiled heiress Barbara Blanchard (Claire Trevor) runs away from her wedding and hits the road. While hitchhiking, Trevor is given a ride by Bob Reynolds (Michael Whalen), a personable young auto salesman who's been hired to deliver what was then called a "caravan car" but would now be labelled an RV. As luck and the screenwriters would have it, a fugitive jewel thief hides his stolen gems in Bob's vehicle. Our hero is arrested, causing Barbara to cease her incessant put-downs of the poor guy. In trying to spring Bob from jail, Barbara realizes that she's fallen in love with him (why didn't she just ask the audience, who knew it all along?) It's positively awe-inspiring how many runaway-heiress films were spawned by the freak success of It Happened One Night. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claire Trevor, Michael Whalen, (more)
- 1936
Stage Struck is one of the least known of Busby Berkeley's Warner Bros. musicals, chiefly because there are no major production numbers. The plot is that old saw about young, unknown hopefuls who put on a Big Show and become overnight stars. Alas, the magic didn't work for leading lady Jeanne Madden, who disappeared from films shortly after this brief bid for fame. The film's highlight is a satirical number by the Yacht Club Boys, a "nut" singing group best described as the Gentile Ritz Brothers. The songs for Stage Struck were written by E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen, whose talents would be displayed to better advantage in 1939's Wizard of Oz. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, (more)
- 1935
In this rollicking adaptation of Ring Lardner's short story, Joe E. Brown plays an ace baseball player whose insistence upon making up excuses earns him the nickname "Alibi Ike." In the course of his first season with the Chicago Cubs, Brown also falls in love with Olivia De Havilland, sister-in-law of the team's manager. Brown's "alibi" habit prompts De Havilland to walk out on him, whereupon he goes into a slump-- which coincides with attempts by gamblers to get Brown to throw the World Series. The plot weaves its way towards a climax in which Brown escapes the gamblers by commandeering an ambulance and driving onto the ball field during the final Series game. Alibi Ike was the most successful of Joe E. Brown's "baseball trilogy" (which included Elmer the Great and Fireman Save My Child), and one the best baseball comedies of all time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Frawley
