Charles Drake Movies

The title tells all--or at least most--in I Was a Shoplifter. The title character, played by Mona Freeman, is Faye Burton, a well-off socialite suffering from kleptomania. Faye falls into the hands of a professional shoplifting ring headed by Herb Claxton (Charles Drake) and Ina Perdue (Andrea King), who want to exploit her high-society connections. It's up to undercover agent Jeff Andrews (Scott Brady) to save Faye from the villains--and from herself. Cast as a brutish henchman is one Anthony Curtis, who grew up to become you-know-who. Featured in a role so small that it wasn't listed in the studio's official credits is still another star in the making: Rock Hudson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In Johnny Stool Pigeon, the title character's name is really Johnny Evans (Dan Duryea). Evans is an imprisoned crook whose wife died as a result of a vicious narcotics ring. Federal agent Howard Duff works out a deal with Evans, who agrees to help the agent infiltrate the gang. After making connections up and down the West Coast, the gang is brought to heel by the combined efforts of Evans, the agent, and a reformed gun moll (Shelley Winters). Johnny Stool Pigeon was one of a group of intriguing Universal second features directed by future horror-film maestro William Castle between 1948 and 1951. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though Republic's Winter Wonderland sounds like a vehicle for the studio's resident skating star Vera Hruba Ralston, she's nowhere to be seen in this 71-minute comedy. Instead, Lynne Roberts plays heroine Nancy Wheeler, the daughter of a farmer (Roman Bohnen) whose property is in close proximity to a posh skiing lodge. Nancy falls in love with the lodge's handsome ski instructor Steve Kirk (Charles Drake), leading somewhat circuitously to a series of skating exhibitions, sled races and even a ski ballet. Eric Blore goes through his paces as the droll lodge owner, while the heroine's daughter is played by future Father Knows Best co-star Elinor Donahue. Winter Wonderland was co-written by Arthur Marx, son of Groucho. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After a five-year absence, the Marx Brothers returned to the screen in the independently-produced effort A Night in Casablanca. Originally conceived as a parody of Casablanca (with character names like "Humphrey Bogus" and "Lowen Behold"), the film emerged as a spoof of wartime melodramas in general. Someone has been methodically murdering the managers of the Hotel Casablanca, and that someone is escaped Nazi war criminal Heinrich Stubel (Sig Ruman). Disguised as a Count Pfefferman, Stubel intends to reclaim the stolen art treasures that he's hidden in a secret room somewhere in the hotel, and the only way he can do this undetected is by bumping off the managers and taking over the hotel himself. The newest manager of Hotel Casablanca is former motel proprietor Ronald Kornblow (Groucho Marx), who, blissfully unaware that he's been hired only because no one else will take the job, immediately takes charge in his own inimitably inept fashion. Corbacchio (Chico Marx), owner of the Yellow Camel company, appoints himself as Kornblow's bodyguard, aided and abetted by Stubel's mute valet Rusty (Harpo Marx). In his efforts to kill Kornblow, Stubel dispatches femme fatale Beatrice Reiner (Lisette Verea) to romance the lecherous manager, leading to a hilarious recreation of a key comedy sequence in the Marxes' earlier A Day at the Races. Arrested on a trumped-up charge, Kornblow, Corbacchio and Rusty escape in time to foil Stubel and his stooges. As in most Marx Brothers epics, A Night in Casablanca includes a tiresome romantic subplot, this time involving disgraced French flyer (Pierre) and his faithful sweetheart Annette (Lois Collier). Though hampered by listless direction and witless one-liners, A Night in Casablanca contains enough hilarity to compensate for its many flaws; some of the best visual gags were conceived by an uncredited Frank Tashlin, including Harpo's legendary "holding up the building" bit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"You can live a long time in three days -- sometimes when you're in a tight spot, you can live a year in ten seconds." US Army Air Force Major Bob Collins (Robert Cummings), Captain "Shakespeare" Anders (Don Defore), and Lt. "Handsome" Janoshek (Charles Drake) are three happy-go-lucky combat pilots, decorated heroes who are on a tour promoting War Bonds. Their public relations representative from the Treasury Department, Ivy Hotchkiss (Lizabeth Scott), finds at first that can't do much more than tag along, picking up after them and observing their carousing, especially Collins, who seems to have a wide array of female acquaintances in every city they visit. Indeed, although she says little about it, their carousing is out-of-proportion to their circumstances -- yes, their current mission involves a lot of cramped traveling cross-country. shaking hands, endless speechifying, and even more endless listening to tributes to the heroism of the air corps, all of which gets boring and tiring very fast; but these men act like they're burning the candle at both ends, almost manic in their pursuit of women and laughs, and just as devoted to the three of them enjoying anything they do together, past the point of pilots' usual comraderie. They go so far as to sneak out ahead of one extremely important rally, but eventually Ivy gets them to straighten up and fly right, at least when they're supposed to, and the trio -- who has taken a liking to her for being such as good sport -- agrees to behave, at least when they're supposed to be meeting the public. After a few more misunderstandings, some of them comical, she actually gets to like the trio; the four of them become friends, and Ivy starts getting especially close to Bob, despite his womanizing ways -- but whenever she asks Handsome and Shakespeare about Bob's story, they get very close-mouthed and vague. She doesn't think too much of it, enjoying the time she's having with them, until the truth is accidentally dumped in her lap by a well-meaning medical officer (Rhys Williams) -- that Bob, for all of his freewheeling, happy-go-lucky outlook on life and love, is terminally ill. She suddenly understands their behavior and the true depth of the friendship that Handsome and Shakespeare share with him -- she's also nearly shattered, but she dares not let Bob know that she knows, for fear of destroying what little time he has left. The trio at last becomes a true foursome, bound together around Bob and Ivy. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

On December 6, 1941, a squadron of nine B-17 bombers takes off for Hickam Field, HI. The crew of the Mary Ann, including two new men, assistant radio man Private Chester (Ray Montgomery) and gunner Sergeant Joe Winocki (John Garfield), assembles for the flight, and in the first 20 minutes, the movie reveals certain things about the crew: the shadowy past of one, the mother of another, and the wife of a third; two of them are good friends with the sister of McMartin (Arthur Kennedy), the bombardier, who lives in Honolulu; the son of the senior member of the crew, Sgt. White (Harry Carey Sr.), is a pilot stationed at Clark Field in the Philippines. Then more characters make entrances: the aircraft commander Quincannon (John Ridgely); Weinberg (George Tobias), a Jewish mechanic from New York; and a man from a farm in the upper Midwest -- they all represent a broad cross-section of America as it saw itself, and the "regular guys" in the Army Air Force as it existed in 1941. The flight proceeds without incident. Winocki, an embittered, washed-out flight school candidate who accidentally killed another pilot, is about to leave the service when the weather report from Hickam Field is interrupted, and the radio man begins picking up transmissions in Japanese. The Mary Ann and the rest of the squadron fly right into the middle of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor unarmed and out of gas, and nearly crack up landing on an emergency field; no sooner do they make repairs than the crew comes under attack, and the plane takes off and makes for Hickam Field, which they find a flaming shambles. They fly on to the Philippines, stopping at Wake Island just long enough to meet a few members of the doomed Marine garrison, taking their company mascot, a dog, with them. At Clark Field, the Mary Ann and her crew finally go into action against the enemy, flying in alone against a Japanese invasion force; Quincannon is mortally wounded in the brief action, which leaves the plane damaged seemingly beyond repair. The remaining crew won't give up the plane, however, even when ordered to abandon and destroy her; they get the bomber off just ahead of the advancing Japanese, and survive to help bring retribution to the invading fleet and the Japanese empire. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this grim melodrama, Barbara Stanwyck plays the eldest of three wealthy sisters who become orphans when their father dies in France. Threatened with the danger of losing the opulent family home, Big Sister makes a grand sacrifice and secretly marries a real estate developer so she can inherit her aunt's fortune. A few years later, she learns that he is after the family estate and wants to tear it down so she leaves him and tries to stop him. More time passes and the husband ends up taking her to court when he learns that she has borne him a son without telling him. The part of "Gig Young" was played by actor Byron Barr who later assumed the name before he became famous. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel was transformed into nearly two hours of high-grade soap opera by several masters of the trade: Warner Bros., Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, director Irving Rapper, and screenwriter Casey Robinson. Davis plays repressed Charlotte Vale, dying on the vine thanks to her domineering mother (Gladys Cooper). All-knowing psychiatrist Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains) urges Charlotte to make several radical changes in her life, quoting Walt Whitman: "Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find." Slowly, Charlotte emerges from her cocoon of tight hairdos and severe clothing to blossom into a gorgeous fashion plate. While on a long ocean voyage, she falls in love with Jerry Durrance (Henreid), who is trapped in a loveless marriage. After kicking over the last of her traces at home, Charlotte selflessly becomes a surrogate mother to Jerry's emotionally disturbed daughter (a curiously uncredited Janis Wilson), who is on the verge of becoming the hysterical wallflower that Charlotte once was. An interim romance with another man (John Loder) fails to drive Jerry from Charlotte's mind. The film ends ambiguously; Jerry is still married, without much chance of being divorced from his troublesome wife, but the newly self-confident Charlotte is willing to wait forever if need be. "Don't ask for the moon," murmurs Charlotte as Max Steiner's romantic music reaches a crescendo, "we have the stars." In addition to this famous line, Now, Voyager also features the legendary "two cigarettes" bit, in which Jerry places two symbolic cigarettes between his lips, lights them both, and hands one to Charlotte. The routine would be endlessly lampooned in subsequent films, once by Henreid himself in the satirical sword-and-sandal epic Siren of Baghdad (1953). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This parody of gangster flicks centers on an incarcerated gangster who decides to reform after he is released from Sing Sing. He and his cell mate have earned a small fortune in investments and are planning to buy a dog track. Unfortunately, another prisoner eavesdrops and attempts to force the fellow to use his savings to buy a luggage store and then dig a tunnel to the bank next door so they can easily rob it. The reformer and his partner refuse. They sing a different tune when they learn that most of their money was lost by their third partner. In desperation, he buys the suitcase outlet. While he tries to deal with his many customers, the other two bumblers attempt to dig, but it's not easy because every time someone comes in, they must stop their noisy operation. More trouble follows when another gangster tries to get in on their operation. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

After two previous film versions of Dashiell Hammett's detective classic The Maltese Falcon, Warner Bros. finally got it right in 1941--or, rather, John Huston, a long-established screenwriter making his directorial debut, got it right, simply by adhering as closely as possible to the original. Taking over from a recalcitrant George Raft, Humphrey Bogart achieved true stardom as Sam Spade, a hard-boiled San Francisco private eye who can be as unscrupulous as the next guy but also adheres to his own personal code of honor. Into the offices of the Spade & Archer detective agency sweeps a Miss Wonderly (Mary Astor), who offers a large retainer to Sam and his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) if they'll protect her from someone named Floyd Thursby. The detectives believe neither Miss Wonderly nor her story, but they believe her money. Since Archer saw her first, he takes the case -- and later that evening he is shot to death, as is the mysterious Thursby. Miss Wonderly's real name turns out to be Brigid O'Shaughnessey, and, as the story continues, Sam is also introduced to the effeminate Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) and the fat, erudite Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet, in his film debut). It turns out that Brigid, Cairo and Gutman are all international scoundrels, all involved in the search for a foot-high, jewel-encrusted statuette in the shape of a falcon. Though both Cairo and Gutman offer Spade small fortunes to find the "black bird," they are obviously willing to commit mayhem and murder towards that goal: Gutman, for example, drugs Spade and allows his "gunsel" Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.) to kick and beat the unconscious detective. This classic film noir detective yarn gets better with each viewing, which is more than can be said for the first two Maltese Falcons and the ill-advised 1975 "sequel" The Black Bird. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lieutenant Commander Joe Blake (Fred MacMurray), Lt. Tim Griffin (Regis Toomey), and Lt. Swede Larson (Louis Jean Heydt) are longtime US Navy flying buddies, about to be transferred to different posts when Larson suffers a blackout during high-altitude maneuvers and cracks up. Navy doctor Douglas Lee (Errol Flynn) insists on trying to save him with an immediate operation, and the mortally injured pilot dies on the table. This sets the stage for a long, lingering, and bitter hatred between Blake and Lee -- which is only exacerbated when Lee chooses to become a flight surgeon so he can help to find a solution to the problem of high altitude blackout. Lee is assigned to medical research with Lt. Cdr. Lance Rogers (Ralph Bellamy), a flight surgeon whose dedication to high-altitude research has left him unfit for further flying. Their work proceeds through small triumphs and terrible tragedy, and Lee and Blake keep crossing paths, unwillingly -- they not only don't like each other personally, but end up competing for the attentions of the same woman (Alexis Smith) at one point. But they're forced to work together for the good of the service, even after Lee grounds Tim Griffin as medically unfit to keep flying. A fresh tragedy shows Blake that Lee has always been looking out for the best interests of the pilots, and they begin working together in earnest, at last. Blake pushes his piloting skills to their limit and beyond, and he soon finds a purpose and dedication that he's never known before -- and then he learns that he may have to be grounded because of his own deteriorating medical condition. While Lee frets over having to give the news to his friend, the only question for Blake is whether he will be able to see the final test of Lee's high-altitude pressure suit through to the end. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In the wake of Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates, every studio in Hollywood began cranking out service comedies. Warner Bros.' contribution to this trend was You're in the Army Now, featuring the unlikely but undeniably chucklesome duo of Jimmy Durante and Phil Silvers. The stars are cast as Jeeper and Breezy, erstwhile vacuum-cleaner salesman who stage a demonstration at a local army camp, only to end up in uniform themselves. Thanks to their ineptitude and chronic inability to follow orders, our heroes spend most of their training period in the guardhouse. They try to atone for past misdeeds during maneuvers, only to end up trapped in a remote cabin which teeters perilously on a mountain ledge (the whole routine was borrowed-actually, stolen-from Chaplin's The Gold Rush). Not teamed in the traditional sense, Durante and Silvers are permitted to perform their solo specialties, with both comedians coming out fairly even in terms of laugh delivery. As a bonus, this is the film in which nominal romantic leads Regis Toomey and Jane Wyman performed the longest screen kiss in movie history (Leonard Maltin clocked it at three minutes, five seconds)-a feat that reportedly led Wyman's then-husband Ronald Reagan to wonder aloud why he couldn't keep his wife's interest that long! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Out of the Fog is the film version of the Irwin Shaw play The Gentle People, refashioned to mollify the Hollywood censors by expert wordsmiths Robert Rossen, Jerry Wald, and Richard Macaulay. Humphrey Bogart lobbied strenuously to play the leading role of charming but ruthless waterfront loan shark Harold Goff, but in the end Warners chose the more "bankable" John Garfield. The terror of Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, Goff is able to extort five dollars per week from people like tailor Jonah Goodwin (Thomas Mitchell) and short-order cook Olaf Johnson (John Qualen), knowing full well that his victims are too good-hearted to fight back. Making matters worse for Goodwin is the fact that his restless daughter, Stella (Ida Lupino), seeking to escape her humdrum existence, has fallen in love with the fascinating Goff, leaving her mild-mannered sweetheart George Watkins (Eddie Albert) in the cold. The Irwin Shaw play was a symbolic plea for a united front against European fascism, suggesting that the only way that dictatorial bullies like Goff can be destroyed is for good men to forget such edicts as "turn the other cheek" and "love thy neighbors." Originally, The Gentle People ended with Jonah and Olaf, pushed to the brink when Goff seduces Stella and then demands all their money, conspiring to murder the villain-and getting away with it. Hollywood's Hays Office, however, would never approve of an unpunished murder, no matter what the justification, so the screenplay contrives to have Goff killed by accident. This still doesn't resolve the moral guilt suffered by the two elderly conspirators, so the screenplay takes several dizzying twists and turns before it can arrive at a censor-proof happy ending. Atmospherically photographed by James Wong Howe, Out of the Fog was film noir before the term was even invented. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide