Vernon Dent Movies

The Three Stooges play ice delivery men in this comic short. It's a hot day, and they've been cooling off in the back of the truck; in fact, Curly has gotten his head stuck inside a block of ice. After the other two Stooges free him, he bowls a strike with another block of ice and some milk bottles. Finally he is put into service carrying some ice up a long, long flight of stairs (no, they're not the same stairs used in Laurel and Hardy's short, The Music Box, but they seem to be located in the same area of Los Angeles -- the Silverlake district). By the time Curly reaches the top, the ice block has melted into an ice cube. As a solution the boys bring the ice box down the stairs and load it up at the bottom -- a good idea except that near the top the filled cabinet goes barreling down the steps and smashes into a man (Vernon Dent) holding a cake. Up at the house, the Stooges annoy the cook into quitting, and the dismayed matron has no one to fix dinner for her husband's birthday party. The well-meaning Stooges volunteer their services, with the predictably disastrous results. The finale is a fresh cake, which the boys have pumped full of gas because it fell. With a huge blast it explodes, sending the Stooges back down the long, long flight of stairs. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Mobster Louie the Wolf (Eddie Featherstone) sends an unsuspecting handyman (Buster Keaton) to gather up the collection money owed him, hoping the sap will get rubbed out by Slugger McGraw (Matt McHugh), a rival gangster. Keaton, however, innocently escapes all the perils that whiz about him without his even knowing it, much to the consternation of McGraw's hoods. When he finally does wake up to Louie's plot, Keaton provokes various policemen to chase him and leads them back to the hoodlum's hideout (in a reinvention of the climax of Keaton's 1934 feature shot in France, Le Roi des Champs Elysees). Note the use of stock footage from the 1935 Columbia feature She Couldn't Take It for the car-chase finale. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide

In this drama, set in Paris, a devout communist is slowly seduced into becoming a capitalist by a persuasively pretty young woman. The tale begins as the young man shoots at a banker and then flees the police. He runs into the woman's apartment, and for some reason, she decides to let him stay. She then tells him that she is the banker's ex-wife, and they begin to converse; she is fascinated by communist philosophies and in turn shares her views on capitalism with him. He comes to like them and so abandons his other ideologies for the bourgeois life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Whether in the newsroom or on board a speeding train, aspiring reporter Buster Keaton creates havoc in this funny short. To get Keaton out of his hair, the city editor (Vernon Dent) assigns him to shadow a wealthy woman (Dorothy Appleby) who is taking the train to Reno to divorce her mobster husband (Richard Fiske). Keaton travels with his parrot Clarice, and because its cooing sounds like the wife, the jealous gangster attacks Keaton in his berth. A wild chase ensues which ends with Keaton trussing up the gangster in the train's emergency chord, thus winning himself a spot on the newspaper as a star reporter. Note that producer/director Jules White remade this script (written by longtime Keaton collaborator Clyde Bruckman) as the 1947 Columbia two-reeler Rolling Down to Reno starring Harry Von Zell. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide

The plot to this particular Three Stooges short actually makes some sort of sense! The boys are singing waiters, known as the "Hilarious Hash Slingers," at Ye Colonial Inn. Two doctors who are having lunch are delighted at their antics and think that perhaps they can cheer up a sick little girl who is pining for her father. The father, a bank cashier, disappeared with three hundred thousand dollars' worth of bonds and is believed kidnapped. The Stooges show up at the hospital dressed like little girls but while their act makes the doctors and nurse laugh, the child barely notices. So the Stooges decide to find the girl's father, armed with the following description: he's 40 years old, 5'10" in his stocking feet, has a bald spot and an anchor tattoo, and can yodel. The boys accost a number of strangers on the street, checking for bald spots, pulling off shirt sleeves to look for tattoos and measuring for height. Eventually their search narrows when they hear yodeling. It's just a radio, but it happens to be coming from the room where the father is being held captive. The Stooges find the father and overpower the crook who's present, but before they can make their escape, the rest of the gang shows up. In the nick of time, they take the dumbwaiter to the basement. They try to find a way out and battle the crooks, who have found them, in a hilarious set of blackouts as lights keep getting turned on and off. The bad guys are finally vanquished and the little girl is reunited with her father. Back at Ye Colonial Inn they watch the Stooges sing a song (pie fight included). ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

This Three Stooges comedy has no story to speak of, but it's loaded with great gags. The boys are fix-it men who are sleeping under their car. A flood of water from a fire hydrant sends them floating down the street and they wake up in front of an oncoming car. They try to get back to work, but pause to help Curly remove his sweater which he can't seem to get out of. Crowbars don't seem to work, but scissors finally do. To create work for themselves, the Stooges punch holes in the lunch boxes belonging to a group of workmen, but their scam is quickly discovered and they're on the run. To escape their pursuers, the boys claim to be "three of the best riveters that ever riveted," and are sent to work on the 97th floor of a high rise that's under construction. About the only thing Curly knows to do with a rivet is eat it, and the boys' craftsmanship is horrifying at best -- their labor results in a mess of crooked beams. The supervisor is steamed, and the boys fall off the building. Luckily, Curly has a parachute which he figures out how to open just in time. The Stooges land in their car and take off at high speed. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Frank Capra's classic comedy-drama established James Stewart as a lead actor in one of his finest (and most archetypal) roles. The film opens as a succession of reporters shout into telephones announcing the death of Senator Samuel Foley. Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), the state's senior senator, puts in a call to Governor Hubert "Happy" Hopper (Guy Kibbee) reporting the news. Hopper then calls powerful media magnate Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold), who controls the state -- along with the lawmakers. Taylor orders Hopper to appoint an interim senator to fill out Foley's term; Taylor has proposed a pork barrel bill to finance an unneeded dam at Willet Creek, so he warns Hopper he wants a senator who "can't ask any questions or talk out of turn." After having a number of his appointees rejected, at the suggestion of his children Hopper nominates local hero Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), leader of the state's Boy Rangers group. Smith is an innocent, wide-eyed idealist who quotes Jefferson and Lincoln and idolizes Paine, who had known his crusading editor father. In Washington, after a humiliating introduction to the press corps, Smith threatens to resign, but Paine encourages him to stay and work on a bill for a national boy's camp. With the help of his cynical secretary Clarissa Sanders (Jean Arthur), Smith prepares to introduce his boy's camp bill to the Senate. But when he proposes to build the camp on the Willets Creek site, Taylor and Paine force him to drop the measure. Smith discovers Taylor and Paine want the Willets Creek site for graft and he attempts to expose them, but Paine deflects Smith's charges by accusing Smith of stealing money from the boy rangers. Defeated, Smith is ready to depart Washington, but Saunders, whose patriotic zeal has been renewed by Smith, exhorts him to stay and fight. Smith returns to the Senate chamber and, while Taylor musters the media forces in his state to destroy him, Smith engages in a climactic filibuster to speak his piece: "I've got a few things I want to say to this body. I tried to say them once before and I got stopped colder than a mackerel. Well, I'd like to get them said this time, sir. And as a matter of fact, I'm not gonna leave this body until I do get them said." ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Regarded as the best of Columbia's "Lone Wolf" B-picture series, The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt stars Warren William as Michael Lanyard, a onetime criminal known as the Lone Wolf. He is determined to remain reformed for the sake of his daughter (Virginia Weidler), but a gang of foreign spies abducts Lanyard and force him to steal the blueprints for a secret anti-aircraft gun. Ever the ladies' man, Lanyard has two lovelies to contend with here: dizzy heiress Ida Lupino and seductive spy Rita Hayworth (just prior to her superstardom). Lone Wolf Spy Hunt is a remake of 1929's The Lone Wolf's Daughter, and like the earlier film is based on the character created by Louis Joseph Vance. Incidentally, the character of the daughter would never be seen or heard from after this 1939 film, though Warren William would make seven more appearances as the Lone Wolf. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Twentieth Century-Fox borrowed Spencer Tracy, from MGM for the sprawling (yet economically produced) historical drama Stanley and Livingstone. Tracy plays 19th-century American journalist Henry M. Stanley, an adventure-prone sort who is assigned by his editor (Henry Hull) to locate lost Scottish missionary David Livingstone (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) in darkest Africa. There are perils aplenty before the inevitable meeting in the clearing, capped by the immortal courtesy "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Though seriously ill, Livingstone is content ministering to the natives, declining Stanley's invitation to return home. Upon arriving back to civilization, Stanley tells his story of Dr. Livingstone, but without tangible proof, he is accused of perpetrating a fraud. Only at the very last moment is Stanley vindicated; at this point, he decides to go back to Africa to continue the late Dr. Livingstone's work. This didn't happen in real life, nor is the studio-dictated romance between Spencer Tracy and Nancy Kelly completely copacetic with the facts; outside of this, Stanley and Livingstone comes pretty close to living up to Fox's ad-campaign slogan "The Most Heroic Exploit the World Has Known." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Virtually a textbook example of Howard Hawks' "macho" mode, Only Angels Have Wings takes place high in the Peruvian Andes. Cary Grant heads a ramshackle airmail and freight service, forced to fly in the most perilous of weather conditions to the most treacherous of destinations. Facing death on a near-hourly basis, Grant and his flyers have adopted a casual, all-in-day's-work attitude towards mortality. If a pilot cracks up and dies, it's simply because he didn't have what it took, and that's that. Stranded showgirl Jean Arthur can't stand this cavalier attitude at first, but before long she becomes, in true Hawksian fashion, "one of the guys". Complicating the story is the presence of Richard Barthelmess, who has been persona non grata with the other pilots ever since his carelessness cost the life of one of their number. In addition to a surfeit of guilt, Barthelmess is saddled with a faithless wife, played by Rita Hayworth in her first important A-picture role. Hayworth makes a play for Grant, but he spurns her, finally realizing that, in spite of himself, he's in love with Arthur. Grant himself is riddled with guilt when near-blind pilot Thomas Mitchell insists upon taking on one final flight. Having lost his best friend, Grant drops his hard-bitten shell, and for the first time opens himself up emotionally to Arthur-which of course leads to a nail-biting climax wherein Arthur suffers mightily as Grant faces certain death. Scripted by Jules Furthman from a story by Hawks, Only Angels Have Wings is a treasure trove of terse, pithy dialogue: our favorite scene occurs when, upon discovering that he's about to die, Thomas Mitchell says he's often wondered how he'd react to imminent death-and, now that death is but a few moments away, he'd rather that no one else be around to witness his reaction. Though sometimes laid low by obvious miniatures, the aerial scenes in Only Angels Have Wings are by and large first-rate, earning a first-ever "best special effects" Oscar nomination for Roy Davidson and Edwin C. Hahn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Three Stooges play aspiring artists in this comic short. They're honing their craft in "Paris -- somewhere in France" (as the title card helpfully offers). The boys are no better at art and music than they were at the blue-collar jobs they had in their other films. They're eight months behind on the rent and the landlord is furious. In an attempt to escape his wrath, the Stooges dash into an office of the Foreign Legion. Believing that the organization is somehow related to the American Legion, they sign up for what they believe is passage home to America. In reality, they've been contracted for a term of service in the desert. Their commanding officer (Bud Jamison) orders them to keep guard over Captain Gorgonzola. Predictably, the captain is kidnapped by bandits almost immediately. Faced with the firing squad, the Stooges beg for a chance to rescue the captain. Because no white man has ever entered the chief's domain, the Stooges disguise themselves as a trio of Santa Clauses and manage to sneak their way in. When they encounter the chief's harem and start playing games with the girls, Curly gives their presence away. They escape from the bandits long enough to dress up as harem members and are able to knock the chief and his slave unconscious. Unfortunately, they take a wrong turn with the captain and end up in the lion's den. They're able to vanquish the beast and hook him up to a cart like a horse. The lion takes them back to headquarters. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

The Three Stooges play inept Navy tailors for the Republic of Telvana in this comic short. The Admiral has been invited to a luncheon by Count Gehrol, a possible spy, but Curly intercepts the telegram and puts on the Admiral's suit himself. Moe and Larry are temporarily tossed in the brig for hitting an officer -- Curly. But he gets them out (for five dollars), and they borrow a couple more officer uniforms and head for the luncheon. The count sends a woman-spy to get secret information out of Curly, and her technique sends him into throes of ecstasy; he also gets the seat of his pants stuck on a couch spring. When the real admiral shows up, the Stooges allow a policeman to cart him off as an impostor. "We'll be shot at sunrise for this," Moe remarks. "Maybe the sun won't come out tomorrow. It might rain," replies Curly, who promptly gets poked. The Stooges get into even more trouble when the Count and his female associate hold them at gun-point on a submarine, but somehow the boys manage to knock them unconscious. They also get the sub off the ocean floor only to discover that the Navy is trying to bomb it to keep it out of enemy hands. Some of the submarine footage for this short came from Columbia's 1937 film Devil's Playground. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

The popularity of both Bob Hope and the sentimental tune "Thanks for the Memory" by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin in The Big Broadcast of 1938 led to this plodding little domestic comedy-drama in which Hope plays a stay-at-home author and Shirley Ross his working wife. The situation is, of course, ripe for misunderstandings, and soon each spouse accuses the other of infidelity, with everything neatly solved in the final reel. In addition to the title tune, Hope and Ross also perform Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser's "Two Sleepy People." The film was an unofficial remake of the 1931 production Up Pops the Devil. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide