Ethel Sykes Movies

Kay Francis, Warner Bros.' resident "wronged woman," was the star of Give Me Your Heart. Francis plays a socialite whose illicit romance with married Patric Knowles results in a baby. When the father, a titled Englishman of means, declares that the child would be better off in his care, Ms. Francis suffers luxuriously in a series of fashionable evening gowns. She finds lasting happiness in the arms of attorney George Brent. Give Me Your Heart was based on Joyce Carey's stage play Sweet Aloes, and bore that title when released in Great Britain. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Walter Catlett plays Charles J. Porter, a mild-mannered, middle-class milquetoast of a man who thinks he can be a heavyweight champion (don't ask). His wife pays off the owner of a local gymnasium where he plans to train, to dissuade him of this notion by any means possible -- and what he walks into is a topsy-turvy, Bizzaro-like environment (anticipating Olsen & Johnson's Hellzapoppin') in which nothing from the most routine conversation on up is logical, all in hopes of gaslighting Porter. This is a peculiarly passive kind of role for Catlett, who is reacting to -- rather than generating -- the nutsiness around him, but he's so funny even in this relatively limited role, that he's worth seeing, especially in a scene in which he has a conversation with Ethel Sykes, the latter doing a very good Gracie Allen-like turn as the receptionist at the gymnasium. Completists will want to see it in any case, and it is a amusing short even if it doesn't represent Catlett at his funniest. And the ever-reliable Frank Moran is on hand as one of the denizens of the gymnasium, as always looking like the toughest pug in the picture. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Frank Capra's seminal screwball comedy, which won all five major Academy Awards for 1934, is still as breezy and beguiling today. Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, a spoiled heiress who has married fortune-hunting aviator King Westley (Jameson Thomas), despite her father (Walter Connolly)'s objections. To keep Ellie from marrying this lothario, her father has been holding her prisoner aboard his yacht. But Ellie bolts from the yacht, swims ashore in her clothes, and eventually slips onto a Greyhound bus bound for New York. Aboard the bus is newspaper reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who has recently been fired for drinking on the job. Peter gets the last seat on the bus -- but when he gets up to argue with the bus driver, Ellie takes his seat. Since it is the last seat on the bus, they have to share it. When Ellie has her purse stolen and she refuses to report it, Peter begins to suspect something. The next morning, they both miss the bus after a leisurely breakfast, and Peter reveals that he knows her identity. She makes a deal with him: if he helps her get to New York, he can write a scoop about her for his paper. Peter thinks she is a spoiled brat, however, and refuses a monetary bribe: "I'm not interested in your money or your problem. You, King Westley, your father -- you're all a lot of hooey to me!" But as they travel northward and engage in a series of misadventures, the gruff newspaperman and the spoiled rich girl, thrown together by circumstances, fall in love with each other. This movie set the pace for the "screwball" comedy, the witty and romantic clash of temperaments between a man and a woman mismatched in both personality and social position, a type of movie often associated with Katherine Hepburn in such classics as Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and, with Spencer Tracy, Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957), among others. The only other movies to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay) were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide