Jinx Falkenburg Movies
A pioneer of talk radio whose undeniable beauty and glamour also resulted in a successful modeling and film career, Jinx Falkenburg teamed with partner (and husband) Tex McCrary to innovate an entirely new form of radio entertainment. Born Eugenia Lincoln Falkenburg in Barcelona and nicknamed Jinx by her mother, the young beauty got her start in Spanish films before her stateside career took off in the late '30s. Thanks in no small part to a memorable cover shot on a 1937 issue of American Magazine, Falkenburg's career truly took hold with the release of the 1941 musical comedy Two Latins From Manhattan. An easygoing bit of entertainment that helped to ease the public's wartime woes, the film later spawned an equally popular sequel, Two Senoritas From Chicago (1943). In the time between her most popular films, Falkenburg also appeared in such efforts as Sing for Your Supper (1941) and Lucky Legs (1942). Making the acquaintance of McCray when he interviewed her for her role in the Broadway musical Hold on to Your Hats, the duo married in 1945 and teamed for the breakthrough hit Meet Tex and Jinx the following year. An innovative program, it sometimes broadcast from New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in order to speak with celebrities as they stopped at the front desk to pick up their room keys. Moving to the small screen with NBC's At Home (and later the Swift Home Service Club), the pair interviewed celebrities from the comforts of their own home. In addition to being a key figure in convincing Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for the presidency, Falkenburg entertained troops during World War II and was appointed head of the Republican Party's women's division in 1954. Despite the fact that she and McCrary eventually separated, the couple never officially divorced. On August 27, 2003, a mere 29 days after the death of longtime partner McCrary, Jinx Falkenburg died of natural causes in Manhasset, NY. She was 84. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide- 1946
Meet Me on Broadway is a pocket Columbia musical about aspiring performers and a shoestring production (though the dialogue is careful to include a reference to Columbia's Cover Girl, just to prove that the studio was capable of an "A" product). Fred Brady plays an overbearing director who has been blackballed by Broadway and must settle for staging country-club charity events. Marjorie Reynolds plays the daughter of the country club's owner, who helps Brady mount his Big Comeback Show--which has the ancillary effect of making stars of the whole cast. Jinx Falkenberg is the show's leading lady, while Spring Byington and Gene Lockhart are around as stuffy society types who un-stuff themselves by film's end. Among the performers are the dance team of Gloria Patrice and Nita Bieber, who enjoyed a better showcase in the concurrently filmed Columbia "Three Stooges" short Rhythm and Weep (46). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fred Brady, Spring Byington, (more)
- 1946
The "lady" is country lass Janie Clark (Jinx Falkenberg) in this peppy Columbia musical. Upon inheriting several million dollars' worth of real estate, Janie heads to Manhattan, where she runs up against her snooty, avaricious relatives. One of Janie's assets is a nightclub, providing the heroine ample opportunity to exhibit her singing and dancing skills. The film is stolen by jumbo Joe Besser as Roly Q. Entwhistle, a would-be magician who unofficially adopts Janie and protects her against her enemies. Five songs are heard during the proceedings, none as entertaining as Besser's "You Craaazy You" antics. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jinx Falkenburg, Forrest Tucker, (more)
- 1945
Sam White, brother of Columbia Pictures' 2-reel-comedy maven Jules White, served as producer of the quickie Columbia musical Tahiti Nights. The lissome Jinx Falkenberg plays Tahitian princess Luana, who is promised in marriage to American bandleader Jack (Dave O'Brien). Luana is delighted by the arrangement, but Jack is less enchanted, and he spends most of the film trying to wriggle out of the wedding. In the meantime, Luana and a chorus line of sun-kissed sweeties dance to such tunes as "Let Me Love You Tonight," which in 1945 was a Hit Parade favorite. Featured in the cast of Tahiti Nights is hefty Hawaiian nightclub entertainer and radio star Hilo Hattie, who brightened many an otherwise dreary tropical musical of the 1940s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jinx Falkenburg, Dave "Tex" O'Brien, (more)
- 1945
In this drama, a young building contractor falls for a pretty Mexican woman who convinces him not to evict the inhabitants of a California barrio so he can replace it with developments. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Thanks to its Jerome Kern/Ira Gershwin/Yip Harburg score and the luminescence of stars Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly, Cover Girl has taken on a legendary status in recent years. In truth, the film has a banal and predictable premise: a chorus girl (Hayworth) is given a chance for stardom by a wealthy magazine editor (Otto Kruger), who years earlier had been in love with the girl's mother. Offered an opportunity to be a highly-paid cover girl, our heroine would faithfully remain with her tacky nightclub act if only the club manager (Kelly), whom she pines for, would ask her. He loves her too, but doesn't want to stand in her way, so he fakes an argument to send her packing. You don't need a crystal ball to known that the girl and her guy will be reunited for the finale. Phil Silvers, everybody's best friend, and Eve Arden, Kruger's acid-tongued assistant, provide comic relief. The story sags badly at times, but the fans went home happy thanks to the powerhouse musical numbers, including Long Ago and Far Away and Kelly's famous "alter-ego" dance. The film skyrocketed both Hayworth and Kelly to superstardom, and didn't do Silvers any harm, either. Cover Girl is an extraordinarily lavish Technicolor production from the usually parsimonious Columbia Pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, (more)
- 1944
Nine Girls stars several of Columbia's loveliest contract actresses as sorority sisters at an exclusive California college. None of the girls is fond of nasty student Anita Louise--in fact, sometime dislikes her enough to kill her. Police detectives William Demarest and Willard Robertson are called in to solve the mystery, and as in most films of this type, there are plenty of suspects to choose from. The solution of the crime will be obvious to hardened movie buffs, simply by checking out the name of the film's top-billed actress. For the record, the Nine Girls of the title are Anita Louise, Evelyn Keyes, Jinx Falkenberg, Leslie Brooks, Lynn Merrick, Miss Jeff Donnell (as she was usually billed), Nina Foch, Marcia Mae Jones, and Shirley Mills. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ann Harding, Evelyn Keyes, (more)
- 1943
In this musical, a lovely and ambitious young woman masquerades as the daughter of a formerly beloved stage actress to help launch her Broadway career. She chooses one entertainment columnist in particular. But the starlet's carefully-made plans begin to unravel when a rival columnist learns of her ruse and tries to expose her. Songs include: "Let's March Together" (Saul Chaplin), "I Bumped My Head on a Star" (Cindy Walker), "Honk, Honk" (Roy Jacobs, Gene De Paul), "Timber Timber" (Don Reid, Henry Tobias), "Moon on My Pillow" (Charles, Henry, Elliot Tobias). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jinx Falkenburg, Tom Neal, (more)
- 1943
Jinx Falkenburg supplies the music and beauty and Bert Gordon provides the chuckles in Columbia's Laugh Your Blues Away. In his standard "Mad Russian" characterization ("How do you doooooo!"), Gordon plays an unemployed actor who poses as one Count Boris Rascalnikoff at the home of Texas cattleman Conklin (Dick Elliot). Also along for the ride is the actor's pretty sister Pam (Ms. Falkenburg), who impersonates the Countess Olga. It's all part of a scheme engineered by the social-climbing mother (Isobel Elsom) of Jimmy Westerly (Douglass Drake) to marry off her son to Conklin's daughter Priscilla (Phyllis Kennedy). But when Jimmy falls in love with Olga-er, Pam-the borscht hits the fan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jinx Falkenburg, Bert Gordon, (more)
- 1943
The Two Senoritas from Chicago are Gloria (Jinx Falkenburg) and Maria (Ann Savage). When their goofy pal Daisy Baker (Joan Davis) passes off a discarded Portuguese play manuscript as her own, producer Rupert Shannon (Emory Parnell) agrees to bankroll the production. With stars in their eyes, Gloria and Maria pretend to be a pair of Portuguese musical comedy stars, thereby winning parts in the new production. The fun begins when the play's original authors sell the same manuscript to a rival producer. The story's for the birds, but Two Senoritas from Chicago is at the very least decorative, with stars Jinx Falkenburg (later a popular TV talk host) and Ann Savage attractively garbed in what one observer has described as Carmen Miranda's leftovers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Davis, Jinx Falkenburg, (more)
- 1942
When a young woman inherits $1 million she finds herself the target of a criminals who wants her money too! ~ All Movie Guide
- 1942
In this musical comedy, an agent for an advertising agency begins trying to push a new "Blind Date" service and so engages two popular USO singers to perform for the Navy. He hides the young women and keeps their looks a secret because the two singers are terribly unattractive. To keep the sailors from booing them off the stage, the adman decides to have two prettier models lip-sync the songs. Unfortunately, the ad agent's plans go awry when the homely singers decide to elope with two nice sailors. Songs include: "I Surrender Dear" (Harry Barris, Gordon Clifford), "We Did It Before and We Can Do It Again," "All Over the Place" (Charles Tobias, Cliff Friend), and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Davis, Jinx Falkenburg, (more)
- 1941
Next to Ann Miller, few Columbia contractees made more B musicals than Jinx Falkenberg. In Sing for Your Supper, Falkenberg is cast as Evelyn Palmer, the gorgeous proprietor of a dime-a-dance emporium. Bandleader Larry Hays (Charles "Buddy" Rogers) is the official owner of the joint, but when he finds himself in financial hot water, Evelyn, a wealthy socialite, secretly buys up the lease and takes a job as one of the dancers to keep tabs on her money-and the handsome Mr. Hays. Much of the film's running time is given over to comedian Bert Gordon, better known as radio's "Mad Russian" ("How do you doooooo?") Eve Arden is rather wasted as a wisecracking taxi dancer, but better things were to come her way within a few short years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jinx Falkenburg, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, (more)
- 1941
Two Latins From Manhattan was Columbia's 1941 contribution to the "Good Neighbor Policy" towards South America. Joan Davis heads the cast as pushy nightclub press agent Joan Daley, while Jinx Falkenberg and Joan Woodbury are costarred as Joan's roommates, aspiring showgirls Jinx Terry and Lois Morgan. Having heavily promoted the upcoming nightclub appearance of a famous Cuban singing-sister team, Joan is left in the lurch when the sisters fail to show up. But not to worry: our heroine gives Jinx and Lois a crash course in Cuban dialects, and in a twinkling the two Manhattanites are successfully posing as the Cubanos. The fun begins when the real Cubans show up unannounced. Evidently, Columbia was so enamored with this plotline that the studio used it again, with only minimal changes, as Two Senoritas From Chicago (1942), which also featured Joan Davis and Jinx Falkenberg. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Davis, Jinx Falkenburg, (more)
- 1939
An above-average entry in the Monogram Tex Ritter series of music Westerns, Song of the Buckaroo proved to be a memorable event for the star in more ways than one. Appearing in a small role of a pioneer woman, pretty Dorothy Fay was killed off early on, leaving the remainder of the film to glamorous former Powers model Jinx Falkenburg. Miss Fay, however, became Ritter's leading lady off-screen, a partnership that lasted a lifetime and would produce future television star John Ritter. Song of the Buckaroo featured Ritter as Texas Dan, a Robin Hood-like outlaw hunted by the law. Determined to go straight, Tex is framed in the murder of Alden (Dave O'Brien and his wife Anna (Miss Fay) by a former cohort, Max Groat (Charles King). Tex assumes Alden's identity and determines to raise the Aldens' little daughter Mary (Mary Ruth) as his own. Having become the respected banker and mayor of a small town, Tex's engagement to lovely Evelyn (Miss Falkenburg) is rudely interrupted by Groat, who forces him to assist in robbing his own bank. In the ensuing melee, Groat and his men are killed, leaving Tex free to pursue happiness with Evelyn and little Mary. The latter performed the title tune while Ritter himself took care of Texas, by Carson Robison, Tenderfoot, by Johnny Lange and Fred Stryker, and his own and Frank Harford's I Promise You. Discovered too late to replace Jinx Falkenburg, Dorothy Fay was instead cast as Ritter's leading lady in his next entry, Sundown on the Prairie). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tex Ritter, Mary Ruth, (more)
"This is New York, Skyscraper Champion of the World...Where the Slickers and Know-It-Alls peddle gold bricks to each other...And where Truth, crushed to earth, rises again more phony than a glass eye..." With this jaundiced opening title, scripter Ben Hecht introduces his classic comedy Nothing Sacred. Fredric March plays Wally Cook, a hotshot reporter condemned to writing obituaries because of his unwitting complicity in a fraud. Anxious to get back in the good graces of his editor Oliver Stone (Walter Connolly), Cook pounces on the story of New England girl Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard), who is reportedly dying from radiation poisoning. Actually, Hazel isn't dying at all; she's been misdiagnosed by Moscow's eternally drunk doctor (Charles Winninger). But when Cook offers to take her on an all-expenses-paid trip to New York in exchange for her exclusive story, it's too good an offer to pass up. Once in the Big Apple, Hazel is feted as a heroine by the novelty-seeking populac; she enjoys the adulation at first, but soon (and with the help of gallons of alcoholic beverages) suffers the pangs of conscience. She confesses her deception to Cook, who by now has fallen in love with her. Cook and Stone conspire to keep the public from discovering the truth, eventually dreaming up a phony suicide. Travelling incognito to avoid arrest, Wally and Hazel marry and go on a honeymoon, secure in the knowledge that New York City has forgotten all about her and moved on to their next fad. Brimming with witty, acerbic dialogue and hilarious bits of physical business, Nothing Sacred is among the best "screwball" comedies of the 1930s. The musical score by Oscar Levant both mocks and celebrates the George Gershwinesque musical style then in vogue. As an added bonus, the film is lensed in Technicolor (avoid those two-color reissue prints), allowing modern viewers to see what New York City looked liked back in 1937. Nothing Sacred was later adapted into a Broadway musical, Hazel Flagg, which in turn was filmed by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis as Living It Up (1954), with Lewis in the Carole Lombard role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carole Lombard, Fredric March, (more)
- 1936
Musical comedy star Eddie Cantor stars in this story, well suited to his talents, as Eddie Pink, a meek gentleman who works as a tailor and has a terrible crush on Joyce (Ethel Merman), a nightclub singer. Eddie buys a book (through the mail, of course) called Man or Mouse: What Are You?. Taking its advice, he tries to become more confident and assertive, and his new, outgoing personality helps him get a job running an amusement park called Dreamland. But when racketeers move in for a piece of the action on the park's slot machines, he wonders if he's gotten himself in deeper waters than he can safely navigate. Cantor sings four songs in Strike Me Pink, three of them with co-star Merman. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Cantor, Ethel Merman, (more)
