Edgar Dearing Movies

This upbeat domestic drama chronicles the struggles of a newlywed couple as they try to keep their marital status secret from their boss (company police forbids marriages between co-workers), cope with money issues and the wife's pregnancy. Real woes begins when the boss finds out about their union and fires the woman. Unable to pay their bills, the couple lose their furniture. Desperate for money, the husband gets involved with loan sharks. When his boss finds out about that, he fires him too. Despite their terrible troubles, the young couple remain steadfast in their love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A Child is Born is a remake of 1932's Life Begins, softened to conform to stricter movie censorship and lengthened to qualify as an "A" picture. The film is an episodic account of one particularly busy night in a maternity hospital. A generous portion of screen time is lavished on a gangster's moll (Geraldine Fitzgerald), about to give birth to her illegitimate baby. The young woman dies in childbirth, but other subplots end more happily. Even at 79 minutes, A Child is Born seems more padded and protracted than its 1932 predecessor--notably in a contrived sequence wherein the only surgeon qualified to perform a delicate operation is blinded in an accident. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

S.N. Behrman's hit Broadway show about a guy who writes hit Broadway shows comes to the screen in this comedy. Gaylord Esterbrook (James Stewart) is a reporter from Minnesota who writes a play about life in New York City -- a place he's never visited. To his surprise, a Big Apple producer wants to stage Gaylord's show and asks him to come to New York immediately. While Gaylord hardly seems like a Big City sophisticate, his regular-guy charm makes a big impression on leading lady Linda (Rosalind Russell), who is tired of jaded braggarts like her director, Morgan (Allyn Joslyn). Gaylord and Linda get married, and he becomes one of the most successful playwrights in town, but his new popularity goes to his head, and Linda wonders what happened to the man she married. However, Gaylord's career takes a turn for the worse when he meets Amanda (Genevieve Tobin), a snooty high society type who convinces him that he ought to be writing the Great American Tragedy instead of crowd-pleasing comedies. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In addition to being a fine Western in its own right, this film served to introduce perhaps Hollywood's oddest romantic couple: the gruff but lovable Wallace Beery and the tart but lovable Marjorie Main. Beery plays "Reb" Harkness who, with his Mexican pal Pete (Leo Carrillo), is almost caught red-handed attempting to rob a train carrying General Custer (Paul Kelly) and the cavalry. Double-crossed by his partner and with the cavalry in hot pursuit, Reb escapes to Wyoming where he finds shelter on a ranch belonging to orphaned Lucy Kinkaid (Anne Rutherford) and her kid brother Jimmy (Bobs Watson). The local ranchers are battling an unscrupulous empire builder, Buckley (Joseph Calleia), and Reb is involuntarily dragged into the feud. When plain-speaking blacksmith Mehitabel (Marjorie Main) loses her brother to Buckley's bullets, Reb takes matters into his own hands, and with the help of Custer's men, he manages to end Buckley's reign of terror. Casting plain-looking, twangy Marjorie Main as Beery's leading lady was a stroke of genius. The two actors complimented each other to the nth degree, and Main was seen as a worthy replacement of the late Marie Dressler. As a result, the former stage actress (Dead End) was put under a seven-year contract by MGM, who co-starred her with Beery in Barnacle Bill (1941), The Bugle Sounds (1941), Jackass Mail (1942), Rationing (1944), and Bad Bascomb (1946). Wyoming, which also benefitted from fine performances by Henry Travers as a sly sheriff and Stanley Fields as Buckley's chief henchman, was filmed on location at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the Grand Tetons National Park by a director, Richard Thorpe, who had worked in the Western field since the silent days. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Lewis Milestone directs the lightweight romantic comedy Lucky Partners, based on a story by Sacha Guitry. David Grant (Ronald Colman) is an artist in New York's Greenwich Village. After he wishes good luck to passing ingenue Jean Newton (Ginger Rogers), she is immediately offered a beautiful dress. Thinking that David is lucky, she agrees to go in with him on a ticket for the Irish Sweepstakes. Their horse wins the race, and he asks her to accompany her to Niagara Falls to celebrate their winnings. Jean's fiancé, Freddie Harper (Jack Carson), is not pleased about the arrangement, so he follows them. Eventually Jean and David fall for each other and they end up in the courthouse, where the judge ($Harry Davenport) sorts everything out in favor of the new couple. Lucky Partners was released in 1940, the same year Rogers gave her Oscar-winning performance in Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

The third film version of Earl Derr Biggers' novel Love Insurance, One Night in the Tropics stars Allan Jones as a hotshot insurance salesman who sells a policy to his best pal Robert Cummings. Cummings will earn $1 million if he fails to marry his fiance Nancy Kelly. Half of the policy is underwritten by tough gambling-house owner William Frawley, who panics when Cummings heads for a Caribbean isle in pursuit of Peggy Moran. As for Kelly, she wants no part of Cummings once she finds out she's a pawn in his policy. Well, who cares? The real attraction of One Night in the Tropics is the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, here making their feature film debut in the roles of Frawley's flunkeys. Though they never get in the way of the plot (worse luck!), Abbott and Costello have plenty of time to perform several of their best routines, including "Mustard," "Jonah and the Whale," and a tantalizingly brief excerpt of "Who's on First?" Outside of A&C's contributions, the film boasts several pleasant if forgettable tunes by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields. Though not a big box-office success, One Night in the Tropics garnered such positive reviews for Abbott and Costello that the team was rewarded with its own vehicle, the 1941 cash cow Buck Privates. Note: many TV prints of Tropics are struck from the 69-minute reissue of the late 1940s, in which the "straight" plot was pared to down to give more emphasis to Abbott and Costello. The original 82 minute version was recently restored for videocassette release. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

William Holden and Bonita Granville, heavily if not convincingly decked out in "old age" makeup, recall on their 35th wedding anniversary how they first met in 1904. Holden was a brash college freshman, while Bonita was the daughter of a local judge (Vaughn Glaser). Since Holden couldn't stay out of trouble, the judge prohibited him from visiting his daughter, but the boy opposed the edict and ended up being arrested--with Bonita managing to have herself thrown in jail as well. The anecdotal storyline comes to a comically ironic conclusion when the ageing Holden complains that he can't control his own headstrong son. Based on the "Siwash" stories by George Fitch, Those Were the Days gets by on its nostalgic appeal, but cannot be considered one of William Holden's more significant pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Pulp-novel detective Nick Carter was created in the 1880s, but most film versions of the character have been updated to modern times. Such was the case with MGM's three-episode "Nick Carter" series, which got off to a good start with Nick Carter, Master Detective. Walter Pidgeon plays the title character, who in this episode gets mixed up with industrial espionage. Posing as one "Robert Chalmers", Nick gets the goods on a gang of foreign spies (no country names, please!), bringing them to heel during a serial-like waterfront chase. Rita Johnson essays a rare sympathetic role as stewardess Lou Farnsby, while Donald Meek steals the show as Bartholomew the beekeeper (a character who would grow increasingly annoying as the series went on). Nick Carter, Master Detective was coscripted by Bertram Millhauser, who also penned several of the Rathbone-Bruce "Sherlock Holmes" films. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rhythm Romance is the television title for the 1939 Bob Hope comedy Some Like It Hot (the change was made to avoid confusion with the 1959 Billy Wilder film of the same name). Hope plays a penny-ante carnival concessionaire with both eyes on the Main Chance. Exploiting the musical talents of his girl friend (Shirley Ross), Hope tries to bankroll a big-time stage show. The prospect of riches goes to Hope's head and loses him his girl, but the two are reunited before the film's 64 minutes run out. This minor Bob Hope/Shirley Ross vehicle was first filmed in 1934 as Shoot the Works, which in turn was based on The Great Magoo, a Broadway flop written by Ben Hecht. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

George Burns and Gracie Allen made their last screen appearance together in the 1939 MGM musical Honolulu; indeed, it would be Burns' last film until his 1976 "comeback" in The Sunshine Boys. The nonsensical plotline is carried by Robert Young as famous movie star Brooks Mason, who wants to go to Honolulu for a long rest but can't shake off his throngs of adoring female fans. As luck would have, Mason has an exact double, a Hawaiian plantation owner named George Smith. Mason convinces Smith to switch identities, with the expected comedy-of-error complications as a result. Things get really complicated when Smith, posing as Mason, proposes marriage to lovely Dorothy March (Eleanor Powell), who then can't understand why the real Mason seems to be so fickle. Clearly in support, Burns and Allen are cast respectively as Mason's personal manager Joe Duffy and Dorothy's scatterbrained friend Millie de Grasse. The film contrives to separate George and Gracie for most of the footage, bringing them together in the last reel for a characteristic comedy routine about Gracie's dizzy relatives. Also on hand in a minor role is another comedy giant, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Highlights include a masquerade-party production number in which Gracie Allen is serenaded by the King's Men Quartet (disguised as the Marx Brothers), and Eleanor Powell's blackface stair-tap tribute to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (Powell also performs a tap-dance hula, which scores on its novelty value alone!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Nancy, a jilted bride-to-be, is played by Janet Gaynor in one of her last starring films. The three loves are novelist Robert Montgomery, publisher Franchot Tone, and gormless nebbish Grady Sutton (Sonny TUFTS??). In New York to find her runaway groom Sutton, Janet runs across Montgomery and Tone. More selective since her unfortunate near-wedding, Gaynor decides to have the two swains demonstrate their worthiness, leading to a brief (and chaste) menage-a-trois in which all three are under the same roof. Three Loves Has Nancy is a sedate screwball comedy, carried completely by the charm of its stars. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Fifteen thousand dollars may have been a fortune back in 1938, but to high-powered literary agent Lynn Conway (Virginia Bruce), it's next to nothing. Unfortunately, Lynn is married to chauvinistic Massachusetts shipbuilder David Conway (Robert Montgomery), who stubbornly insists that she quit her job and live on his measly 15-thou-per-year income alone. David also demands that Lynn move from her posh New York apartment to a tiny cottage in provincial New Bedford. Lynn's ex-partner Harry Borden (Warren William), who's always carried a torch for her, tries to convince her to leave David and return to Manhattan. But love conquers all, and Lynn ultimately realizes that a woman's place is in the home -- especially when there's a baby on the way. One suspects that Patricia Ireland and Gloria Steinem will not be entertained by The First Hundred Years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide