Don DeFore Movies

The unique comic talents of Groucho Marx, William Bendix and Marie Wilson are hardly exploited to their fullest in RKO's A Girl in Every Port. Groucho and Bendix play Benny Linn and Tim Dunnevan, respectively, a couple of scheming sailors who embark upon one get-rich-quick scheme after another. This time around, our heroes use a small inheritance to purchase two horses, one for racing purposes and one to be sold at a tidy profit. After a series of bizarre complications, both horses are pitted against each other in a crucial race which could spell either triumph or ruin for the two goofy gobs. Wilson co-stars as a birdbrained carhop who owns one of the horses coveted by Linn and Dunnevan. No stone is left unturned so far as wheezy comedy routines are concerned: writer-director Chester Erskine even manages to revive the old chestnut wherein the sailors sneak both horses on board their ship. The likeable supporting cast includes Don DeFore as a disgruntled stable owner, Dee Hartford (who later became Groucho Marx's sister-in-law) as DeFore's financially savvy fiancee, Gene Lockhart as a seedy horse dealer, Hanley Stafford ("Daddy" on radio's Baby Snooks) as the two protagonists' flustered commanding officer, and Teddy Hart as a Runyonesque gangster. A box-office disappointment, A Girl in Every Port ended Groucho Marx's efforts to become a solo screen star; fortunately, he still had TV's You Bet Your Life to fall back on. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

As in the real-life story which spawned it, Rare Breed deals with the kidnapping of a racehorse and the quest of its loving owner to retrieve it. Tracy Vaccaro plays the cute young girl who wants her horse back so she can continue on her European circuit-winning ways. This film is directed by the elder Nelson boy, David, from the Ozzie and Harriet series. ~ All Movie Guide

Lucy Baldwin (Eileen Heckart) hopes to escape her domineering invalid mother (Madge Kennedy) by marrying her new beau, Arthur (Don DeFore). Assuming that Arthur is just a fortune hunter, Lucy's mom refuses to allow the marriage, prompting Lucy to commit murder. Ultimately, Lucy and Arthur are wed--but their troubles have only just begun. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Battle Hymn was inspired by the true story of American minister Dean Hess, played here with rare sensitivity by Rock Hudson. A bomber pilot during World War II, Hess inadvertently releases a bomb which destroys a German orphanage. Tortured by guilt, Hess relocates in Korea after the war to offer his services as a missionary. Combining the best elements of Christianity and Eastern spiritualism, Hess establishes a large home for orphans. The preacher's efforts are threatened when the Korean "police action" breaks out in 1950. Battle Hymn was one of several collaborations between Rock Hudson and director Douglas Sirk--though Sirk felt that Robert Stack would have been better suited to the role of Rev. Hess. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this lively campus-set musical comedy, a budding entrepreneur nearly loses everything after his get-rich quick scheme to earn money selling "flunk" insurance his fellow students goes terribly awry. The plan was to sell the insurance for fifty cents a shot. In exchange, any policy-holder who flunks a test will get a ten dollar settlement. At first the young fresh fellow makes a mint, but then a particularly strict professor sees fit to flunk an entire class, all of whom are insured. Keep a sharp eye peeled for a young Alan Ladd in a bit part. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

It Happened On Fifth Avenue was easily the most ambitious movie made by the then-newly-organized Allied Artists for at least a decade after its release -- actually, as a "Roy Del Ruth Production," it was made through rather than by Allied Artists, which may explain why it stands so far apart from the Bowery Boys movies and other productions normally associated with Allied during this period. And amazingly, it works, mostly thanks to a genial cast and a reasonably light touch by director/producer Roy Del Ruth, and in spite of a script that needed at least one more editorial pass. Victor Moore is the star and dominant personality -- if there is one in what is, basically, an ensemble cast -- as Aloyisius T. McKeever, a genial hobo whose annual routine for finding winter quarters is to wait for multi-millionaire Michael O'Connor (Charlie Ruggles) to lock up his Fifth Avenue mansion and head to Virginia, and move in during the man's absence. He chances to meet Jim Bullock, a homeless WWII veteran (displaced, ironically, by one of O'Connor's development projects), and gives him shelter in the mansion. They become a trio when O'Connor's free-spirited daughter Trudy (Gale Storm) shows up, fleeing her finishing school, and the two men -- thinking she's an impoverished runaway from an abusive father -- take her in. She goes along with the masquerade and gradually falls in love with Jim, who also chances to meet two former army buddies (Alan Hale, Jr., Edward Ryan) who -- you guessed it -- are also desperately trying to find homes, in their cases for their wives and growing families. Now there are nine people living in the shelter of O'Connor's Fifth Avenue mansion, and in between setting up housekeeping, Jim and his two buddies manage to come up with an idea about how to build homes for veterans and their families. Trudy, her identity still a secret to the other, gets her father to meet the "squatters" incognito, in hope that he'll take to Jim, but a series of misunderstandings and his own impatience and lack-of-faith leads him to reject everything decent he sees about Trudy's friends. In desperation, to keep them from being evicted and arrested, she calls in reinforcements in the person of her mother (Ann Harding), long estranged from her father. O'Connor is still not convinced of Jim's worth, and definitely doesn't see him as a potential husband for Trudy -- and, in a comic mix-up, he ends up going head-to-head with Jim for the property where he plans to build those houses for veterans, causing them to lock horns once more. Matters do eventually fall into place, as they usually do in Christmas movies of this sort, which more closely resembles The Bells of St. Mary's or One More Spring -- to name another movie about displaced New Yorkers -- than It's A Wonderful Life (with which it is usually compared). It Happened On Fifth Avenue is usually defined as a Christmas movie, in part because of its plot time-line, but more than that, it's a movie that, like George Seaton's Miracle On 34th Street -- made the same year -- sings of the generosity of the human spirit, and the feeling of renewal that was in the air in the immediate post-World War II era, a funny, gentle, warm look at people making their way in a time when, for the first time since the Great Depression and the outbreak of the Second World War, cautious optimism seemed an appropriate approach to life. And not for nothing was this reportedly lead actor Don Defore's personal favorite of all of his movies. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Fight manager Nick Donati (Edward G. Robinson) has just lost his best fighter to crooked promoter Turkey Morgan (Humphrey Bogart). During a party at Donati's apartment, a bellhop (Wayne Morris) kayos Morgan's boxer, who has insulted the honor of Donati's girlfriend, Louise "Fluff" Phillips (Bette Davis). Sensing a good thing when he sees it, Donati takes the bellhop under his wing, promoting the erstwhile pugilist as Kid Galahad. Morris is shipped to Donati's farm for training, where he falls in love with Donati's sheltered kid sister, Marie (Jane Bryan). Angered at this, Donati sets up Kid Galahad for a fall, ordering him to take a dive in an upcoming bout and betting his bankroll on Morgan's boy. Kid Galahad takes a terrific beating until, at the urging of Fluff and Marie, he abruptly changes his ring strategy. When Galahad wins, Morgan, feeling he's been double-crossed by Donati, shoots the latter. Morgan manages to fatally wound Morgan before expiring himself; as he breathes his last, he gives his belated blessing to Galahad and Marie's romance. To avoid confusion with Elvis Presley's 1962 remake of Kid Galahad, the earlier film was retitled The Battling Bellhop for TV. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

My Friend Irma was supposed to be a straightforward adaptation of the popular radio sitcom of the same name. The film's focus therefore was supposed to be on air-headed Irma Peterson (Marie Wilson), her levelheaded roommate, Jane Stacy (Diana Lynn, taking over from the radio series' Cathy Lewis), and their various romantic misadventures. But the audience tended to ignore Irma, Jane, and the others in favor of two movie newcomers: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, cast respectively as would-be singer Steve Laird and dumb-dumb restaurant employee Seymour. Having risen to the top of the heap in the nightclub world, Martin and Lewis were discovered for films by producer Hal Wallis, who decided to test the boys out in secondary roles in an established property. Wallis felt that while Martin had potential as a singing star, Lewis was hopelessly inept as an actor. As the whole world knows by now, it was Lewis who ended up as the team's main attraction with his own inimitable brand of wacko humor. Even as early as Irma, Lewis manages to dominate every scene he's in, often by sheer force of will. Pretty soon, the viewer has forgotten the gossamer-thin plot (Irma's Runyonesque boyfriend, Al, played by John Lund, tries to promote Dino into stardom) and is waiting anxiously to get back to Jerry. When time came for the 1950 sequel, My Friend Irma Goes West, virtually the entire plot revolved around Martin and Lewis, with the official "stars" relegated to supporting roles. Like Marie Wilson, several of the My Friend Irma cast members were holdovers from the radio series, including Hans Conried as Professor Kropotkin. Felix Bressart had originally been slated to play Kropotkin on film, but when he died during shooting, Conried was brought in to complete his scenes (Bressart can still be glimpsed in a few medium and long shots). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This third film version of James Hagan's stage play One Sunday Afternoon was directed by Raoul Walsh, who helmed the second adaptation (1941's Strawberry Blonde). This time around, songs have been added to accommodate the talents of Dennis Morgan and Janis Paige. Morgan stars as turn-of-the-century dentist Biff Grimes, who has spent the last ten years regretting that he hadn't married Amy Lind (Dorothy Malone), the girl of his dreams. Biff also harbors a grudge against Amy's husband Hugo Barnstead (Don DeFore), who was instrumental in getting Biff sent to prison on a fraud charge. Unbeknownst to his ever-loving wife Virginia (Janis Paige), who has stood by him through thick and thin, Biff schemes to exact an awful revenge on the two-faced Barnstead-only to discover in the nick of time that he's been better off all along because he didn't wed the avaricious Amy. Though consistently pretty to look at, One Sunday Afternoon pales in comparision to the earlier movie adaptations of the Hagan play, especially Strawberry Blonde, which had the added benefit of Jimmy Cagney in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this romance, a spoiled, self-centered rich boy John T. Bromley III, is simultaneously disinherited by his wealthy aunt and kicked out by his social climbing girl friend. The fellow is naturally depressed and while slumping in a bar drinking heavily he meets a former pug who ends up knocking him flat in a brawl. Now the fellow is humiliated as well; and he demands a rematch, but before he goes through with it, he enrolls in a training camp for fighters. There he meets and falls for the trainer's daughter. Unfortunately her foster brother doesn't like her new beau and begins giving him a hard time. By the picture's end, the fellow has learned the proper etiquette for eating humble pie. Fortunately, his dream girl is there to eat it with him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

She's Working Her Way Through College is a completely depoliticized remake of the liberal-minded comedy The Male Animal (1942). Virginia Mayo plays an exotic dancer, Angela Gardner, who decides to improve her mind; she enrolls in a college where Professor John Palmer (Ronald Reagan) teaches English. In between Angela's lively musical numbers, the film concentrates on an old rivalry between the bookish Palmer and onetime college football jock Shep Slade (Don DeFore, who'd played a bit in The Male Animal). When the college trustees oppose Angela's presence on campus, Palmer staunchly defends her right to an education. In the original Male Animal, the climactic scene involved a controversial public reading of a letter by anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti; in She's Working Her Way Through College, Palmer stands up at a public assembly to convince the populace that exotic dancers have the same rights as anyone else. Of course, Ronald Reagan could take a political stance if he wanted to...but not in this film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With the considerable input of ex-Navy officer Frank Wead (who wrote the script) and technical adviser Cmdr. G. W. D. Dashielle, Submarine D-1 is far more realistic than the usual run of maritime melodramas. Pat O'Brien and Wayne Morris star as Butch Rogers and Sock McGillis, old submarine hands stationed in Panama. On land, Butch and Sock battle over pretty Ann Sawyer (Doris Weston). At sea and underwater, however, our two heroes are virtually inseparable. The documentary-style direction of Lloyd Bacon serves to heighten suspense when, during war games, Submarine D-1 is disabled deep, deep below the surface, endangering the lives of all on board. Ronald Reagan originally had a sizeable supporting role in this heady combination of laughs, thrills, and romance, but Reagan was cut from the final release print (though he still received billing in the film's pressbook). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide