Gloria Dickson Movies

MGM intended Rationing to be an object lesson as well as a comedy, to teach the moviegoers the importance of rationing products during World War II. Wallace Beery plays a small town butcher who comes under fire from the local citizens for attempting to honor the ration system. Beery finds himself swamped in a sea of government red tape, and at times is tempted to sidestep the law, but at the end he does his patriotic duty. Like Laurel and Hardy's MGM feature Air Raid Wardens (43), Rationing tends to sacrifice laughs to get its message across. The Beery film has the added handicap of running about twenty minutes too long. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Barbara Stanwyck shines in her second portrayal of a showgirl in less than two years (the first was in Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire in 1941). In Lady of Burlesque -- which, at times, has a Hawksian edge to the dialogue -- she portrays Dixie Daisy, a striptease artist at a Broadway theater in New York at the end of the 1930s. In the course of fending off the unwanted advances of brash comic Biff Brannigan (Michael O'Shea), with whom she is teamed in several numbers, and staying clear of the dressing room feuds of her fellow dancers -- including a very nasty dispute between Dolly Baxter (Gloria Dickson) and Lolita La Verne (Victoria Faust) -- she finds herself up to her neck in trouble when one of the women is found strangled with her own G-string. The police don't know what to make of it, especially as the victim was already dying of a fatal dose of poison, which means that there are two murderers somewhere in the theater; and when a second woman turns up strangled inside a prop that Dixie was supposed to be hiding in onstage, she looks like a good suspect. Between the backstage comedy-drama, and the songs, dances, and on-stage comic routines, with the police breathing down both their necks at different times, Dixie and Biff manage to solve the mystery and find each other in this briskly paced, funny, yet amazingly gritty comedy-thriller. Lady of Burlesque was allowed to fall out of copyright in 1971, and since then it was seen in substandard editions until the May 2001 DVD release from Image Entertainment. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

A remake of Return of Jimmy Valentine (1936), Republic Pictures' Affairs of Jimmy Valentine is a sequel of sorts to the oft-filmed O. Henry story Alias Jimmy Valentine. In the original tale, an incognito safecracker blew his cover by rescuing a little girl from a safe, prompting a detective who'd planned to arrest the criminal to let him off scot free. Affairs of Jimmy Valentine is set some twenty years later: A radio station decides to improve ratings by launching a nationwide search for reformed cracksman Jimmy Valentine. The search leads to a small town--and a mysterious murder. Roman Bohnen plays the kindly old editor of the small town's newspaper, who may or may not be Guess Who. Acted and directed with a slick professionalism that belies its small budget, Affairs of Jimmy Valentine has been released to TV in an abridged version titled Unforgotten Crime. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The beautiful Florida Keys provide the setting of this adventure that tells the tale of a fun-filled fishing trip that becomes a nightmare when the charter boat is wrecked on an isolated island. Unfortunately, there are very few provisions and the group must fend for themselves. They are eventually assisted by a hermit, but before that one of the group goes insane, and another is eaten by an alligator. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A lumber camp provides the setting for this romantic drama that chronicles the love between a nightclub singer, her new husband, a lumberjack, and her old flame, who also happens to be working in the same camp. When the singer spies her former love, the affair is rekindled. Unfortunately, neither wants to hurt her gentle new husband. When he spies them embracing, he gets angry and sets them on a runaway train. Fortunately, he reconsiders his actions before it is too late and unhitches their car before the train hurtles off a steep cliff into a deep gorge. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This Thing Called Love extracts its laughs from the prehistoric concept of sexual frustration. Business partners Rosalind Russell and Melvyn Douglas marry, but only on a trial basis. Russell wants to prove that a married couple can function merely as friends, and to that end she denies her husband access to the conjugal bed for three months. By the time she's ready, he isn't, having contacted a vicious case of poison oak. All experimentation dissolves by the fade-out, when Russell and Douglas surrender to the passions that have been smouldering from the outset. This Thing Called Love is a remake of the 1929 film of the same name, which starred Constance Bennett and Edmund Lowe. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Waterfront moves so quickly that the film is half over by the time all the characters have been introduced. Dockworker Jim Dolan (Dennis Morgan) keeps landing in jail because he can't keep his fists to himself. He mends his ways with the help of waterfront priest Father Dunn (Aldrich Bowker), but goes back to his old bad habits when his brother is murdered. Attempting to outguess the cops, Dolan tries to hunt down the murderer by himself, much to the dismay of Jim's wife level-headed wife Ann (Gloria Dickson). Basically a Jimmy Cagney film without Cagney, Waterfront is fascinating in that Dennis Morgan, whom Warners was then building up as a star, plays a character with practically no sympathetic qualities whatsoever-at least until the climax. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

They Made Me a Criminal opens in New York, depicting the latest victory in the ring for Johnny Bradfield (John Garfield), a young boxer who seems headed for a championship. When a reporter finds Bradfield drunk and carousing with women, and learns that the squeaky-clean image that he has cultivated is a complete lie, he threatens to blow the lid off the boxer's real life, and is beaten to death by Bradfield's manager. Bradfield, who was in a drunken stupor during the fight, is framed for the killing by his manager, who rolls him for his wallet, watch, and anything else of value, makes a run for it, and is killed in a fiery car accident. As far as the police are concerned, the case is closed, "Bradfield" having been identified in the wreck by the watch he was wearing. But Johnny Bradfield now has to disappear from New York and anyplace else he's ever been seen, in order to stay "dead." He is sent on his way by his crooked attorney with just a few dollars in his pocket, thumbing rides and walking west. Bradfield collapses one day from exhaustion and near starvation outside of a ranch in Arizona. The ranch is run by May Robson as part of a relief effort to help a group of boys from the New York slums -- Tommy (Billy Halop), Spit (Leo Gorcey), Dippy (Huntz Hall), T.B. (Gabriel Dell), Angel (Bobby Jordan), and Milty (Bernard Punsly) -- keep out of trouble. Identifying himself as "Jack Dorney," he first tries to see what he can get in the way of a free ride from the kids and Tommy's sister, Peggy (Gloria Dickson), who doesn't trust Dorney or his influence over the kids. Meanwhile, back in New York, one police detective, Phelan (Claude Rains), is convinced that the body found in the burned wreck of Johnny Bradfield's car wasn't Bradfield. Phelan is an outcast in his department for having once presented "conclusive" evidence in court against a man who was executed for murder, only to discover later that the man was innocent. He sees this as his chance to redeem himself and his career, and he is such a pariah that his chief gives him permission to follow up leads anywhere he needs to. At the ranch, Dorney takes a genuine liking to the kids, and sees Peggy as a kind of woman he's never known, who has no "angles" in her approach to life. The ranch may have to be sold, however, as there is no more money coming from the church in New York to keep it going. In order to save the ranch and set Peggy and the kids up in a roadside business pumping gas -- an idea of Tommy's -- Dorney decides to enter a prize fight for money against a barnstorming boxer. On the eve of the fight, however, Phelan shows up, drawn by a newspaper photo of Dorney, his face obscured but using the same unusual left-handed boxing stance he used as Johnny Bradfield. Dorney goes into the ring, and finds himself up against a brute who has already flattened two opponents in less than one round each, trying to hide his identity by fighting right-handed. He gets savaged, round after round, until Phelan tells him from ringside that he knows who he is. Free to use his left, Dorney saves himself. Phelan confronts him in the dressing room, and Johnny tells him he'll give him no trouble -- they're about to head back east, with Peggy and the kids trying to thank him, and it dawns on Phelan that possibly this is one case that might better be left "solved" officially the way it is already, even though it means the detective going back to his job as a laughing stock. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Probably as a reward for her energetic performance in Torchy Plays with Dynamite, pert Jane Wyman was given another Glenda Farrell-like leading role in Private Detective. Wyman plays gorgeous P.I. Myrna Winslow, the principal rival of male gumshoe Jim Rickey (Dick Foran). The case at hand concerns the murder of a millionaire, with the dead man's wife and her boy friend as principal suspects. Also adding to the intrigue is an enormous trust fund, set up in the name of the millionaire's adopted son. A goodly portion of the film takes place in a deserted mansion at midnight, with Myrna snooping where she shouldn't. The finale finds Myrna and Jim joining forces to capture the real murderer in a well-staged donnybrook. Private Detective runs 57 minutes-and "runs" is the right word here. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this gangster movie set in the Big Apple, a crime lord strong arms teamsters into paying him protection money. One young trucker with a very pregnant wife, stands up to the thug. His partner also refuses to pay in the hopes that they will help the other truck drivers. Naturally this enrages the king-pin and his mob. Simultaneously an idealistic young attorney is chosen by the DA to do all he can to get that crime boss convicted and off the streets for good. Back on the streets, the mobster manages to force the young trucker into paying up; this causes the man to quit and begin selling tomatoes. The lawyer finds him and offers him a chance to help the government and prosecute the gangster. He accepts and together the two do just that. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The last and least of Warner Bros.' Gold Diggers musicals, Gold Diggers in Paris at least has the novelty of a Gallic setting. The stars this time are Rudy Vallee, Rosemary Lane, and Warners musical perennial Hugh Herbert. There aren't really any "gold diggers" (i.e. young ladies on the prowl for rich husbands), merely a troupe of stranded nightclub chorines whom Vallee passes off as a ballet troupe in order to win an international prize. Busby Berkeley's choreography is far from his best, especially since he's dealing with real dancers this time instead of geometrically arranged nonmoving bodies. The one song of note is "The Latin Quarter," later put to excellent use in countless Bugs Bunny and Pepe Le Pew cartoons. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide