Ruth Donnelly Movies

Slight Case of Murder is a breakneck-paced comedy starring Edward G. Robinson as a tough but good-hearted bootlegger. When Prohibition is repealed, Robinson faces a financial crisis: His beer tastes so awful that no one wants to drink it legally. As an additional headache, Robinson is under scrutiny from the Law, which is waiting to slip the cuffs on him for the slightest infraction. He arrives at his rented Saratoga mansion with his wife (Ruth Donnelly), daughter (Jane Bryan) and adopted son (Bobby Jordan), only to discover that a killer has left four corpses in his bedroom. Robinson and his stooges are forced to hide the bodies before his future son-in-law (Willard Parker), who happens to be a cop, tumbles to the dilemma. Based on a stage play by Howard Lindsay and Damon Runyon, A Slight Case of Murder a just as entertaining in the 1990s as it was fifty years ago (please ignore a tepid 1953 musical remake titled Stop, You're Killing Me). Surprisingly, this film was not a favorite of star Edward G. Robinson, who felt that director Lloyd Bacon rushed through the material without taking full advantage of its comic potential. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Zany actress Annabel goes on a promotional tour in this lively comedy, the second in the Annabel series. During her tour, she allows her promoter to "leak" a story that she is having a romantic fling with a famous romance novelist. The ploy is successful, until she really does fall in love with the writer and decides to abandon her acting career to be with him. Unfortunately, he is already married. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Few actresses other than Joan Crawford could have successfully pulled off the melodramatic excesses of Autumn Leaves. Though a very attractive fortysomething, Crawford remains aloof from romance until she meets Cliff Robertson, a young man half her age. An ardent and persistent suitor, Robertson finally breaks down her resistence to marriage. After a few weeks of wedded bliss, Crawford is confronted by Vera Miles, who claims to be Robertson's first wife. Miles further insists that Robertson is mentally unbalanced...and his subsequent behavior seems to bear this out. What Crawford doesn't know-but the audience does-is that the real villains of the piece are Miles and her middle-aged lover, Robertson's own father (Lorne Greene). Autumn Leaves works far better on screen than it does in print, thanks to the virtuoso performances of practically everyone in the cast. And, as anyone who's listened to top-40 radio during the past four decades already knows, the film also yielded a hit title song, written by Joseph Kosma, Jacques Prevert, and Johnny Mercer and performed during the credits by Nat King Cole. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although claiming to be based on actual cases, this mild crime drama appears to have been derived more from a screenwriter's manual than a police blotter. Newly transferred from robbery to missing persons, glib Butch Saunders (Pat O'Brien) is like the proverbial bull in a china shop at first, but quickly gets the hang of things. In walks pretty Norma Roberts (Bette Davis), claiming to be missing her new husband, whom she accuses of shipping out. Despite being married to nagging Belle (Glenda Farrell), Butch falls in love with the dame, until, that is, he learns the truth. Norma's last name isn't Roberts at all, but Williams, and she is wanted in Chicago for the murder of her boss, Therme Roberts. Begging Butch to cover for her -- "just for a little while. I'll explain everything later" -- Norma does a disappearing act herself and makes it look like suicide. But Butch refuses to buy the act and with the help of his boss, Captain Webb (Lewis Stone), the fast-talking cop arranges for a corpse to be lying in state at a local funeral parlor under the name of Norma Williams, hoping to flush out the real Norma. Norma walks right into the trap with another cockamamie story at the ready. But this time, it may just be the truth and Butch becomes determined to clear the lady of murder. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Busby Berkeley directed this lightweight musical comedy in which Judy Jones (Joan Leslie) is informed that she's due to receive a $10 million inheritance, but with one very large string attached: she has to marry an unusually intelligent man. With the call of her checking account ringing loudly in her ears, Judy gives her boyfriend Tommy Coles (Robert Alda), the leader of a dance band, his walking papers. She next enrolls in a (previously) all-male Institute of Technology, where she figures that bright boys will be easy pickings. However, snaring her dream man proves more difficult than she imagined, and she finds out that Tommy is a lot brighter than she originally thought. Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne wrote the songs for this film, which include "You Never Know Where You're Goin' Till You Get There" and "When the One You Love Simply Won't Love Back." ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

True Confession was one of the unfunniest of the "screwball" comedies of the 1930s, and its musical remake, Cross My Heart, isn't much of an improvement. Betty Hutton steps into the old Carole Lombard role as Peggy, a compulsive liar who'll do anything to help her attorney fiance Oliver Clarke (Sonny Tufts) get ahead. When it looks as though an unsolved murder case will be Clarke's ticket to success, Peggy, sticking her tongue in her cheek (as she always does when she's about to tell a whopper), glibly confesses to the killing. Peggy's plan is to allow her boyfriend to prove her innocence, thereby cementing his reputation as a man of integrity-but things don't go quite as planned. The subsequent trial is enlivened by the antics of looney Russian actor Peter (Michael Chekhov), who may or may not be the actual murderer. Betty Hutton's song numbers are just about as mediocre as the rest of the film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An espionage drama set in the early 20th century, Ever in My Heart stars Barbara Stanwyck as a New England naif who marries a German citizen (Otto Kruger). In 1915, Stanwyck and her husband suffer a brace of blows: The death of their son, and the sinking of the Lusitania, the latter incident sparking a wave of anti-German sentiment. Hounded out of their small town by the angered citizens, Stanwyck and Kruger move to Europe, where the husband voluntarily leaves his wife to join the Kaiser's army. In 1917, Stanwyck, working as a canteen volunteer in France, discovers that her once pro-American husband is now a German spy. To save him from a firing squad, she poisons his wine, then kills herself. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ruth Chatterton tears up the screen in this fast-paced, lusty comedy. Alison Drake is an automobile magnate, a hard-nosed, hardboiled business woman making dozens of important decisions a day. In her private life, however, she is passionate and bold in her pursuit of male companionship, which she frequently finds among the ranks of her own employees and executives; the problem is that these men can't abide the fact that back at work, she's all business again; and she keeps having to get their long, mopey faces out of her presence by transferring them elsewhere. Then she meets Jim Thorne (George Brent), a gifted engineer who is attracted to Drake but isn't a callow, cowtowing yes-man, and isn't awed by her millions. After a few awkward encounters, they find a balance in their lives together, or so she thinks, until he proposes marriage. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The last--and to some aficionados, the best--of choreographer Busby Berkeley's three Warner Bros. efforts of 1933, Footlight Parade stars James Cagney as a Broadway musical comedy producer. Cagney is unceremoniously put out of business when talking pictures arrive. To keep his head above water, Jimmy hits upon a swell idea: he'll stage musical "prologues" for movie theatres, then ship them out to the various picture palaces in New York. Halfway through the picture, Cagney is obliged to assemble three mammoth prologues and present them back-to-back in three different theatres. There are all sorts of backstage intrigues, not the least of which concerns the predatory hijinks of gold-digger Claire Dodd and the covetous misbehavior of Cagney's ex-wife Renee Whitney. Joan Blondell plays Jimmy's faithful girl-friday, who loves him from afar; Ruby Keeler is the secretary who takes off her glasses and is instantly transformed into a glamorous stage star; Dick Powell is the "protege" of wealthy Ruth Donnelly, who makes good despite this handicap; Frank McHugh is Cagney's assistant, who spends all his time moaning "It'll never work"; and Hugh Herbert is a self-righteous censor, who ends up in a censurable position. The last half-hour of Footlight Parade is a nonstop display of Busby Berkeley at his most spectacular: the three big production numbers, all written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, are "By a Waterfall", "Honeymoon Hotel", and "Shanghai Lil", the latter featuring some delicious pre-code scatology, a tap-dance duet by Cagney and Keeler, and an out-of-left-field climactic salute to FDR and the NRA! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After nearly a decade of nominal "leading lady" roles, Carole Lombard landed her first genuine starring vehicle with Hands Across the Table. Reasoning that the way to a man's heart is through his cuticles, Regi Allen (Carole Lombard) takes a job as a manicurist at a fancy barbershop, unabashedly admitting that she hopes to use this position to snag a rich husband. Sure enough, Regi's charms prove irresistable to Allen Macklyn (Ralph Bellamy) a wealthy and charming invalid, who knows that the girl is a golddigger but doesn't care. The other man in Regi's life is Theodore "Ted" Drew III (Fred MacMurray), who though born into a wealthy family is stone broke, and on the verge of marrying a rich debutante (Astrid Allwyn) to replenish his lost fortune. Hoping to briefly escape this fate and his other financial problems, Theodore hides out in Regi's apartment. It is, of course, a platonic relationship: Having been burned in the past, Regi doesn't want to get romantically entangled with a pauper, while Ted is already promised to someone else. But, as is often the case in 1930s comedies, things don't quite turn out the way that either Regi or Ted expect. Full of delightful, unexpected touches, Hands Across the Table proved to be a major boost for Carole Lombard's career, and didn't exactly do any harm to up-and-coming Fred MacMurray either. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hard to Handle stars James Cagney as a fast-talking promoter who pounces upon every current fad and foible to make a quick buck. He promotes marathon dances (where spectators feel cheated because no one drops dead), crash diets, reducing creams and treasure contests, finagling his way into the confidence of high rollers and money men. In a cute "inside" joke harking back to a choice Cagney moment in The Public Enemy, our hero at one point takes up the promotion of grapefruits! Like most conners, Cagney isn't aware when he is being conned himself, and he falls victim to his marathon-dance business partner, who absconds with the winnings. The contest winner is pretty Mary Brian, whose mother (Ruth Donnelly) tries to extract payment by forcing Cagney to marry her daughter. He does, but only after eight reels of high-pressure wheeling and dealing. In the tradition of Jimmy Cagney's other early-1930s, Hard to Handle is socked over by the energetic insouciance of its star. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An interesting precursor to such films as The Petrified Forest and Bus Stop, Heat Lightning takes place in a remote California-desert gas station-café. Several strange characters pass through the establishment's portals during one fateful 24-hour period, including cad-and-bounder George (Preston S. Foster). Resourceful proprietress Olga (Aline MacMahon) tries to remain detached throughout but is forced to take drastic action when George threatens to seduce and abandon her own sister Myra (Ann Dvorak). Glenda Farrell, one of Warners' most reliable players, is surprisingly wasted in a glorified bit role; even further down the cast list as "Husband and Wife" are 2-reel comedy star Edgar Kennedy and future Oscar winner Jane Darwell (talk about an odd couple!) Heat Lightning was based on a stage play co-scripted by George Abbott. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide