Frank Wayne Movies

Several of Paramount Pictures brightest stars make cameo appearances in this comedy set in "Duffy's Tavern," a favorite watering hole from old time radio shows. The trouble begins when the neighborhood bar is in danger of closing. The trouble begins when the proprietor, Archie, discovers that one of his regulars, Michael O'Malley, owner of a record company is going broke. This means that many veterans will soon be unemployed and therefore, unable to pay their tab at the tavern. Archie immediately begins recruiting famous stars to donate their services and help. They do, the record company is saved and so is the tavern. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

You'll Never Get Rich was the first of two films made by Fred Astaire at Columbia, and also the first in which he was paired with his favorite female dancing partner--not Ginger Rogers or Cyd Charisse, but Rita Hayworth. Fred and Rita play a team of Broadway dancers whose partnership is abruptly rent asunder when Fred is drafted into the Army. Unable to adapt to military routine, Astaire frequently ends up in the guardhouse; during one of these visits, he and the Delta Rhythm Boys collaborate on the lively song-and-dance number "The A-starable Rag." Back to the plot: Rita shows up on the army base as the girl friend of captain John Hubbard. This leads to more fancy footwork, and, of course, a happy ending for our stars. Though the Cole Porter score yielded no hits, one of the songs, "Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye", was nominated for an Academy Award. Robert Benchley provides comic relief, as he would in the subsequent Astaire vehicle The Sky's the Limit. You'll Never Get Rich was followed by the even better Astaire-Hayworth pairing You Were Never Lovelier. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After having terrorized singing cowboy Tex Ritter in 19 consecutive Westerns, veteran Bad Guy Charles King found himself relegated to that of a minor henchman in The Man from Texas. The chief villain this time was the now forgotten Vic Demourelle, Jr., who played Jeff Hall, a nasty rancher plotting to take over his neighbor's spread. Said neighbor, Speed Dennison (Kenne Duncan), hires Ritter to help protect the property from Hall's hired gunslingers. One of them, the Shooting Kid (Charles B. Wood), is a friend of Ritter's and is being blackmailed by Hall. Unless he can get his cattle to the railroad station in time, Speed will forfeit his ranch, but Hall refuses him passage through his land. Aided by Sheriff Happy Martin (Hal Price), Tex and Speed nevertheless manage to get the cattle through Hall's illegal barbed wire fencing but in the ensuing shootout, the Kid is mortally wounded after taking a bullet meant for Tex. After the villainous Hall has been apprehended, Ritter reveals himself to be an agent for the railroad and that Hall was trying to steal the Dennison spread hoping to sell it to the company for a profit. Filmed on the Monogram ranch in Newhall, California, The Man from texas was even cheaper than Ritter's previous efforts and the former radio crooner only got to sing two songs: Prairie Lights and Men Who Wear the Stars, both composed by Frank Harford. On a more positive note, this was the first Ritter Western sans the so-called comedy relief by Snub Pollard and/or Horace Murphy ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In all aspects a mediocre B-Western, Smoky Trails once again trotted out the old story of a young man pretending to join a gang of outlaws in order to find the villain that killed his father. Bob Steele had played the role many times before but usually under better conditions. Smoky Trails was the second of eight Steele Westerns produced by Gower Gulch company Metropolitan Pictures Corp., which was actually Harry S. Webb and Bernard B. Ray's old Reliable Pictures under a new moniker. Jean Carmen, a 1934 WAMPAS Baby Star who had starred as Julia Thayer in the serial The Painted Stallion, played Steele's leading lady, veteran comic Jimmy Aubrey supplied a bit of low-brow humor and Carleton Young essayed the killer. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In his third of four action serials, horror star Bela Lugosi played Boroff, an internationally notorious fiend who's attempting to pawn off his deadly invention, a disintegrating gas, to the highest bidder. Before the gas can be manufactured, however, Boroff must go in search of certain hard to come by ingredients and the villain is thwarted at every step by US coastguard agent Terry Kent (Ralph Byrd and crusading newspaper woman Jean Norman (Maxine Doyle. In the serial's 12th and final chapter, "The Deadly Circle," Boroff is finally destroyed by his own invention, civilization thus saved for Democracy. Down on his luck by 1937, Lugosi could only watch as Republic Pictures' screenwriters Barry Shipman and Franklyn Adreon wickedly named his character "Boroff," an obvious reference to Lugosi-rival Boris Karloff. S. O. S. Coastguard nevertheless emerged as one of the Hungarian star's better vehicles, in no small measure due to its vigorous hero, Ralph Byrd, a handsome actor perhaps better remembered from Republic's Dick Tracy serials. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide