Marya Marco Movies

The title refers not to James Cagney's curtain line in White Heat but to Northern Alaska, where this film is set. Dale Robertson plays an Air Force jet pilot who resents the fact that he's been transferred from Hawaii to the frozen north. He changes his mind when he meets his ex-wife (Evelyn Keyes), now the proprietress of an Alaskan nightclub. Alas, Evelyn is planning to get married again -- and her intended is none other than her ex-husband's commanding officer (Frank Lovejoy)! Hostilities build to a fever pitch, but all petty differences are forgotten when the commander oversees a rescue mission to save the pilot and his crew from a floating glacier. The aerial photography is the most entertaining ingredient of Top of the World. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Self-centered Washington socialite Rosalind Russell joins the WACS in order to be near her boyfriend William Ching, a GI stationed in Paris. Russell is certain that her DC connections will enable her to get out of the service as easily as she got in. Unfortunately for her, Russell's ex-husband Paul Douglas decides to teach her a lesson by pulling a few strings himself. Several of the army-camp scenes are stolen by Marie Wilson as an amply proportioned chorus girl, who's joined the WACS to escape stage-door johnnies. Filmed in part on location at the Women's Army Corps training center at Fort Lee, Virginia, Never Wave at a WAC was produced by Rosalind Russell's husband, Frederick Brisson. The film was released in England as The Private Wore Skirts. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

I Was an American Spy is a true story, based on a series of autobiographical Reader's Digest articles written by Claire Phillips. Ann Dvorak stars as Ms. Phillips, an American nightclub singer trapped in Singapore when the Japanese march in. Having lost her husband to the Bataan death march, Phillips agrees to join an American secret agent (Gene Evans) in undermining the Japanese occupation troops. She is captured by the enemy, tortured, and sentenced to be shot, but is rescued at the last minute by her American contact. I Was an American Spy handles its more brutal scenes with a marked degree of tastefulness, thanks to the careful direction of Lesley Selander. Just as in their wartime movie appearances, Chinese actor Richard Loo and Korean actor Philip Ahn are eminently hissable as the Japanese villains. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Richard O. Fleischer made his feature-film directorial debut with the well-crafted melodrama Clay Pigeon. Inspired by a true story, the film stars Bill Williams as Jim Fletcher, whose wartime experiences in a Japanese POW camp have left him with profound emotional problems. Awakening from a coma in a naval hospital, Jim is astonished to learn that he's been accused of murder. Not quite certain of his own guilt or innocence, he escapes from the hospital in search of his best friend, another ex-POW named Ted Niles (Richard Quine). En route, he is forced to kidnap Martha Gregory (Barbara Hale, Williams' real-life wife), the widow of the murdered man. Martha despises Jim at first, but is won over to his side when it becomes obvious that someone has set Jim up as a fall guy. Clay Pigeon was the first RKO film produced under the new Howard Hughes regime. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide