Neely Edwards Movies

Donald Cook plays a fading actor whose son, Donald O'Connor, has just started his own theatrical career. It transpires that both Cook and O'Connor are up for the same part in a Broadway show, and the son is the winner. This results in jealousy from the father--and confusion from the audience, in that the stolid Cook and the loose-limbed O'Connor would never be considered the same "type" in any real-life situation. All is eventually forgiven, and as a bonus both father and son find the loves of their lives: Cook is paired with Frances Dee, and O'Connor gets Peggy Ryan. While Donald O'Connor is virtually the whole show in Patrick the Great, he is given formidable scene-hogging competition from supporting actress Eve Arden. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marlene Dietrich was supposed to have starred in Universal's Sin Town, but the script was not to her liking. Dietrich was replaced by Constance Bennett in the role of a glamorous suspect in a small-town murder. Broderick Crawford and Leo Carrillo costar as a couple of con men who must solve the killing of a newspaper publisher lest they be convicted of the crime. At 75 minutes, the film moves too quickly to pause for such niceties as motivation and logic, but few in the audiences of 1942 complained. Sin Town's three-person writing staff included Richard Brooks, later the director of such "A" pictures as Elmer Gantry and In Cold Blood (though he never did write for Marlene Dietrich). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This raucous series entry reunites Lupe Velez as Carmelita (aka "The Mexican Spitfire") and Leon Errol as Uncle Matt, with Walter Reed taking over from Charles "Buddy" Rogers as Carmelita's staid American husband Dennis Lindsay. The titular elephant is a tiny glass figurine, brought back from a trip abroad by Uncle Matt. On board a luxury liner heading to New York, jewel smugglers Ready (Lyle Talbot) and Diana (Marion Martin) hide a valuable gem in the miniature elephant, for the purpose of avoiding the customs inspectors. Upon arriving home, Uncle Matt misplaces the pint-sized pachyderm, causing no end of headaches for Carmelita and Dennis. The ensuing confusion requires Carmelita to march a live, regulation-sized elephant into a nightclub, and obliges Uncle Matt to once again disguise himself as his British lookalike Lord Epping. One could never confuse the "Mexican Spitfire" series with True Art, but the films were admittedly a lot of harmless fun. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Universal plunged into the clutches of its creditors with its expensive fiasco Sutter's Gold. Edward Arnold plays Swiss immigrant Johann Sutter, who seeks his fortune in the California of the 1830s. Against all odds, Sutter builds up a huge land empire, only to watch its explode when gold is discovered at Sutter's mill in 1848. Prospectors, speculators and claim-jumpers strip Sutter of his hard-earned riches, and he is forced to retire on a minimal government pension. While the film ignores the dicier facts about the real Johann Sutter, who was as much confidence trickster and philanderer as he was visionary, and while history is distorted to the point that Sutter's Fort is subject to an Alamo-style Mexican raid, there is nothing really wrong with this on an entertainment level. But it went way over budget and was too downbeat a tale to score with a depression audience looking for optimistic answers to its own financial problems. The failure was softened somewhat by the success of Universal's subsequent Show Boat, but it was too late for the studio's Carl Laemmle regime, which would be ousted by the end of 1936. That same year, incidentally, a German film about Johann Sutter, The Kaiser of California, was made, with Hans Albers in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Slim Summerville and Zasu Pitts star as Mark and Connie, a pair deceptively innocent-looking con artists. Connie has made a career out of orchestrating huge lawsuits, splitting the settlements with her equally shifty lawyer Mark. Their current scheme involves the framing of pompous J. B. Ogden (George Barbier), a self-styled arbiter of public morals. Love, Honor and Oh Baby is the only Summerville-Pitts vehicle in which the stars are cast as less than savory characters. Interestingly, the audience's sympathies are equally divided between the scammers and their victim; most everyone in the story is fairly likeable. The 1940 Universal comedy Love, Honor and Oh Baby is not a remake. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed in 1929 and released early in 1930, Dynamite was Cecil B. DeMille's first all-talking feature. As one observer has noted, this 128-minute opus has enough plots for seven pictures. The basic storyline here involves spoiled heiress Cynthia Crothers (Kay Johnson) who will lose her fortune if she isn't married right away. Her love Roger Towne (Conrad Nagel) isn't interested in marriage, so Crothers decides to wed convicted murderer Hagon Derk (Charles Bickford). Her plan: Derk will die, then she'll be a millionaire, free to chase after Towne without benefit of clergy. Unfortunately for Crothers, Derk is pardoned at the last minute when the real killer (Leslie Fenton) confesses. Crothers tries to drive Derk out of her life by humiliating him at a fancy party, only to discover that the conditions of her inheritance require that she live with her husband for a set period of time. She swallows her pride and heads for Derk's home town, a grimy mining village. Touched by Crother's inept efforts to keep house and cook dinner, Derk eventually falls in love with her--though he makes it clear that he wants no part of her money. Crothers, in turn, falls genuinely in love with her brutish but basically decent husband. It must needs be that fortune-hunting Towne arrives in the mining village, leading to a powerful climax wherein Derk, Crothers and Towne are trapped in a mine cave-in. Though the dialogue is occasionally quite silly (after the killer commits suicide in a crowded restaurant, one of the patrons is heard to complain "It's ruined my dinner!") and the performances overripe at times, Dynamite actually holds up better than you'd expect. DeMilles' utilization of sound is both innovative and imaginative, especially during the noisy climactic sequences. The film was a success, paving the way for DeMilles' camp classic Madame Satan (1930). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Previously filmed in 1923, Avery Hopwood's 1920 comedy The Gold Diggers was resurrected in 1929 as the Technicolor musical Gold Diggers of Broadway. Nancy Welford, Winnie Lightner and Ann Pennington stars as Jerry, Mable and Ann, three chorus girls who try to entice a wealthy backer to put his money in their cash-poor Broadway show. Stuffy Stephen Lee (Conway Tearle) shows up to rescue his brother Wally (William Bakewell) from the heroine's clutches, only to succumb to the girls' charms himself. According to contemporary reviews, the show was stolen by Winnie Lightner as the brassiest of the three gold-diggers, and by crooner Nick Lucas, performing his signature tune Tiptoe Through the Tulips. The other big number from the film, Painting the Clouds with Sunshine, served as the title for the 1951 remake of Gold Diggers of Broadway, which in the interim had been filmed as the more famous Gold Diggers of 1933. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

MGM star William Haines was at the peak of his popularity when he starred in Excess Baggage. Haines plays Eddie Kane, a juggler-acrobat whose specialty is a dangerous high-wire act. While playing small-time vaudeville, he marries aspiring actress Elsa McCoy (Josephine Dunn). She goes on to fame and fortune in Hollywood, while he's still stuck playing tank-town engagements. When Elsa starts an affair with sleek matinee idol Val D'Errico (Ricardo Cortez), Eddie begins to lose his nerve on stage, suffering a spectacular fall from the high wire. Eventually, Eddie and Elsa are reunited, she having realized that he's the only thing in life she truly cares about. A silent film, Excess Baggage was released with a synchronized score and sound effects; the Frances Marion-Ralph Spence screenplay was adapted from a play by John Wesley McGowan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the tradition of the venerable stage comedy The Gold Diggers, Footloose Widows zeroes in on two girls who hope to land millionaire husbands. Department-store models Flo (Louise Fazenda) and Marian (Jacqueline Logan) set their sights on wealthy young soft-drink magnate J. A. Smith (Jason Robards). Through a misunderstanding, they pick on the wrong J. A. Smith (John Miljan), a fortune hunter himself who assumes that Marian is a wealthy widow. Meanwhile, Marian falls for the real Smith, never dreaming that he's the millionaire. This merry melange was remade several times under several titles by Warner Bros. in the talkie era. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Depending on the source, this is either the last or next-to-last picture directed by William Desmond Taylor, who was mysteriously murdered two months before it was released (in fact, one of its stars, Theodore Kosloff, talked to police about an encounter Taylor had with a strange man during filming). Historically, that is perhaps the most interesting aspect of this romantic melodrama; its storyline involved the Great War, which was no longer popular subject matter (the war had been over for over three years and people were tired of it). In addition the plot, which relies a awful lot on coincidence, often has to be explained in the title cards. Nevertheless, Taylor did a competent, though not outstanding job, as he did on most of his films -- if not for his murder, his name would probably have faded into oblivion. To evade the police Genelle (Betty Compson), an Apache (member of the Parisian underworld), joins the Red Cross as a nurse. Her experiences change her for the better and at the war's end she decides to start over again in America under the name Joan Parker. While attending a garden party she runs into a former accomplice, Gaspard (Kosloff), who is also parading around under an assumed name. The reason for his identity change, however, is more sinister -- he's after an extremely valuable emerald, known as "the green temptation," which is owned by the hostess, Mrs. Duyker (Betty Brice). Gaspard tries to get Joan to help him and when she refuses, he exposes her dark past. Luckily a Scotland Yard man, John Allenby (Mahlon Hamilton) just happens to be in attendance and he is an admirer of Joan's. When Gaspard goes to snatch the jewel Allenby shoots him dead. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

This second of seven film versions of the old theatrical chestnut Brewster's Millions starred Roscoe Arbuckle, better known to his fans as Fatty. The rotund comedian plays a young lawyer who inherits a vast fortune. But in order to claim his legacy, he must spend a million dollars within a set time period. Adapted by Walter Woods from the play by Winchell Smith and Byron Ongley (which in turn was based on a novel by George Barr McCutcheon), Brewster's Millions had "box office hit" written all over it, and might have been as much were it not for the sex scandal that destroyed Arbuckle's career. The most recent incarnation of Brewster's Millions was lensed in 1985, with Richard Pryor in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide