Stanley Andrews Movies

Escape from Devil's Island delivers exactly was the title promises...almost. Victor Jory and Norman Foster play two desperate Devil's Island inmates, bitter enemies who pool their resources and work out an escape plan. They bribe those who can be bribed, befriend those willing to be befriended, and strong arm potential "stoolies" into silence. At last, Jory and Foster make good their breakout, but their mutual hatred bubbles to the surface and ruins their clean getaway. In typical Hollywood fashion, the essentially all-male Escape From Devil's Island manages to squeeze in a female romantic interest in the form of Florence Rice. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Oklahoma's own Will Rogers stars in In Old Kentucky. The storyline is in the grand tradition of most films about the Bluegrass State: There's a long-standing family feud, a pair of star-crossed lovers, and a crucial horse race. Rogers cuts through the banality with his seemingly off-the-cuff observations about Kentucky life in particular and the World in general. The best moment of In Old Kentucky has Rogers attempting to escape from jail by putting on blackface makeup and disguising himself as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson--whereupon he's forced to tap-dance to prove his identity. 1935's In Old Kentucky was the third film version of Charles T. Dazey's 1895 stage play. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first major film about psychiatry, Private Worlds stars Claudette Colbert as a psychiatrist with more than a few problems of her own. Colbert's appointment to a top mental hospital is frowned upon by head doctor Charles Boyer, who doesn't have much confidence in woman doctors of any kind. A secondary storyline involves Boyer's sister Helen Vinson, who lusts for a young married doctor (Joel McCrea). The doctor's wife (Joan Bennett) subsequently goes insane in an "off-angled" scene anticipating the techniques of film noir by nearly a decade. Meanwhile, doctors Boyer and Colbert establish a mutual respect which deepens into love. Based on a novel by Phyllis Bottomes, Private Worlds is stronger in its vignettes (including a scene in which Boyer comforts a dying patient by speaking a few words in the patient's native tongue) than in its longer "plot" scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy with musical numbers set in the Old South, Bing Crosby plays a singer (talk about a casting stretch!) from Philadelphia named Tom Grayson, who has fallen in love with Southern heiress Elvira Rumford (Gail Patrick). Tom wants to marry Elvira, but a man called Major Patterson (John Miljan) has announced his desire to do the same, and he challenges Tom to a duel to decide who will have Elvira's hand. Tom is not at all agreeable to this idea, which leads Elvira's father (Claude Gillingwater) to proclaim Tom to be a coward and deny him permission to wed his daughter. Elvira's sister Lucy (Joan Bennett), who is infatuated with Tom, thinks that he's merely being sensible, but Tom thinks that Lucy is too young for a serious relationship. In need of work and not especially welcome in the Rumford's community, Tom takes a job performing on a riverboat piloted by the blustery Commodore Orlando Jackson (W.C. Fields). One night, Tom finds himself in a barroom brawl with a man named Captain Blackie (Fred Kohler), who dies accidentally from a shot fired by his own gun. Hoping that his infamy will draw crowds, Jackson begins billing Tom as "The Singing Killer." Tom comes to realize that Lucy may be the right woman for him after all, but Lucy is not interested in a man with blood on his hands, and now Tom must convince her that he's not a killer at all. Noted gambling aficionado Fields has a hilarious poker-playing bit, and he steals most of his scenes from the rest of the cast. Mississippi was loosely based on the play "Magnolia" by Booth Tarkington. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

"I'll See You in My Dreams" could well have been the theme music of Peter Ibbetson, the second film version of George du Maurier's 1891 novel. Peter Ibbetson (Gary Cooper) is an architect who, while working on a restoration job for the British Duke of Towers (John Halliday), discovers that The Duchess of Towers (Ann Harding) is actually Mary, his childhood sweetheart. The jealous duke pulls a gun on Ibbetson, but Peter kills him. He is sent to prison for life, certain that he'll never meet his Mary again. But both lovers are reunited in one another's dreams, which connect them spiritually. The years pass, but the aging Peter and Mary remain ever youthful in their dreams. Upon their deaths, they are reunited in the afterlife. Somehow this fragile fantasy works, thanks to the steady guiding hand of director Henry Hathaway. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a waitress at a local lunch counter inadvertently foils a bank robbery and finds herself turned into a national heroine by an eager-beaver reporter. Unfortunately, her sudden notoriety causes gangsters to abduct her. The plucky waitress not only manages to talk them into returning her, she also convinces them to go straight. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Never mind the title and the musical content: College Scandal is at heart a murder mystery, and a pretty suspenseful one at that. Several mysterious killings have taken place at a co-ed college, and it looks as though there won't be anyone left alive to appear in the annual campus musical. The police, headed by the irascible Chief Magoun (William Frawley) are at a loss to solve the murders, so the students take it upon themselves to play detective. It is college cutie Sally Dunlap (Arline Judge) who discovers that the killing spree is related to the accidental death of a student during a long-ago fraternity hazing. The film's most startling moment occurs when music student Paul Gedney (Johnny Downs) is knocked off while singing his latest composition, ironically titled "In the Middle of a Kiss." College Scandal was remade in 1942 as Sweater Girl. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Easily the best of Eddie Cantor's gargantuan musical comedies for producer Sam Goldwyn, Roman Scandals begins in the middle-America community of West Rome, where our hero Eddie (Cantor) is employed as a delivery boy. A self-styled authority of Ancient Roman history, Cantor bemoans the fact that the local shanty community is about to be wiped out by scheming politicians, certain that such an outrage could never have happened during Rome's Golden Days. After a blow on the head, Cantor wakes up in Imperial Rome, where he is sold on the slave auction block to good-natured tribune Josephus (David Manners). Cantor soon discovers that the evil emperor Valerius (Edward Arnold) is every bit a crook and grafter as the politicians in West Rome, and he intends to do something about it. He gets a job as food taster for Valerius -- a none-too-secure position, inasmuch as the emperor's wife Agrippa (Veree Teasdale) is constantly trying to poison her husband -- and does his best to smooth the path of romance for Josephus and recently captured princess Sylvia (Gloria Stuart). Cantor's well-intentioned interference earns him a session in the torture chamber, but he escapes and commandeers a chariot, setting the stage for a spectacular slapstick climax. On the verge of recapture, Cantor wakes to find himself in West Rome U.S.A. again, where he quickly foils the modern-day despots and brings about a happy ending for all his friends.

Co-written by George S. Kaufman, Robert E. Sherwood, George Oppenheimer and Arthur Sheekman (the soon-to-be husband of leading lady Gloria Stuart), Roman Scandals manages to get off a few clever satirical licks, but essentially it's a "lappy" lowbrow vehicle for Eddie Cantor, and in this it succeeds immensely. The Busby Berkeley-staged musical numbers, written by Harry Warren, Al Dubin and L. Wolfe Gilbert, must be seen to be believed: In "No More Love", Ruth Etting, playing the Emperor's cast-off mistress Olga, sings a plaintive torch song as dozens of enslaved Goldwyn Girls (including Lucille Ball and Barbara Pepper), wearing nothing but long, blonde wigs, are chained to a rotating pedestal; and in "Keep Young and Beautiful", these same maidens gleefully cavort around a Roman bathhouse in the near-altogether while Cantor, in blackface, hops about, rolls his eyes and claps his hands -- just before a jet of steam "shrinks" him, at which point he metamorphoses into midget Billy Barty! The quintessence of Depression-era escapism, Roman Scandals is must-see entertainment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide