Sylvia Field Movies
Sylvia Field's several-decades-long career encompassed performances on stage, screen, and television, where she was best known for playing the kindhearted Mrs. Wilson opposite crotchety Joseph Kearns and mischievous towhead Jay North on Dennis the Menace between 1959 and 1962. Born and raised in Boston, Field was 17 when she launched her professional career in a Broadway production of The Bluebird. She entered films in The Exalted Flapper (1929) and would appear in eight more features before retiring from movies in 1958 after appearing in Annette. Married to comedian Ernest Truex since the 1940s, she made her television debut along with him in Mr. Peepers. The show was produced in New York and ran three years before Field and her family decided to quit the show and move to Southern California. Following her departure from Dennis the Menace (which was precipitated by the death of Kearns), Field continued to appear as a television guest star on series such as Perry Mason and Father Knows Best. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide- 1966
Meredith MacRae joins the cast as the third (and final) actress to assume the role of Billie Jo Bradley as Petticoat Junction launches its fourth season. Ever on the lookout for a fast buck, Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) tries to drum up business at the Shady Rest Hotel with a "Free Wedding and Honeymoon Contest". Without further elaboration, it can be noted that the supporting cast includes veteran character actors Ernest Truex and Sylvia Field, husband and wife in real life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1957
While vacationing in Bear Valley, Perry (Raymond Burr) is pressed into service when wheelchair-bound water skiier Mark Cushing (Eric Sinclair). It seems that Belle Adrian (Sylvia Field) had sworn vengeance against Mark for assaulting her daughter Carla (played by a pre-I Dream of Jeannie Barbara Eden). The key evidence in the case turns out to be something as simple as a lipstick sample. Paul Fix makes the first of several appearances as William Hale, the small-town district attorney with whom Perry matches wits whenever outside the jurisdiction of his tradtional nemesis Hamilton Burger. This episode is based on a 1951 novel by Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Glynis Johns and Cameron Mitchell are top-billed in All Mine to Give, but they're out of the picture halfway through. Johns and Mitchell play a Scottish couple, Mamie and Robert, living in the American wilderness of the mid-19th century. Robert dies, whereupon Mamie takes on the responsibility of raising their six children. And when she succumbs to illness, it is the oldest child, Robbie (Rex Thompson, who'd previously played Louis Leonowens in The King And I), who takes on the challenge of finding homes for his siblings on Christmas Day. Based on a true story, All Mine to Give has heart-tugging potential, but the script isn't up to the performances. One year before its American release, the film was distributed in Great Britain under the title The Day They Gave Babies Away. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Glynis Johns, Cameron Mitchell, (more)
- 1945
This campy little drama launched the career of B-girl Yvonne De Carlo. It is set during the Franco-Prussian war and chronicles the exploits of Salome, a beautiful Viennese dancer who falls for an American reporter and for him gets involved in cloak-and-dagger activities involving the Bismarck, before returning to Arizona with him. There, she uses her talent and abundant charms to inspire the lawless residents of his hometown to reform. They in turn, name the town after her. She then goes to San Francisco where she seduces and marries a wealthy Russian who builds her an opera house and gives her the happy life she had always craved. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yvonne De Carlo, Rod Cameron, (more)
- 1945
Adapted from the high school drama-class perennial by Jerome Chodhorov and Joseph Fields, Junior Miss stars Peggy Ann Garner as a troublesome teenager. Garner means well, but can't help meddling in the affairs of her father (Allyn Joslyn) and other unsuspecting grownups. Most of the story revolves around Peggy's matchmaking habits: she pairs up her uncle (Milo O'Shea) with the daughter of her father's employer, which nearly loses dad his job. The mess sorts itself out before the third-act curtain, with Garner promising to mind her own business...until next time. Keep an eye out for a brief appearance by a young Mel Torme. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peggy Ann Garner, Allyn Joslyn, (more)
- 1944
In this crazy comedy, a casino worker writes a book about headhunters and finds himself the target of the leader of an anthropological society who is determined to prove that the book is phony. The writer tricks the woman into going on a head-hunting expedition to prove his claims. He dresses up as a headhunter, and allows her to capture and return him to her society for study. Dressed as a native, the writer also manages to secure a $10,000 advance from his publisher to write an expose of the wealthy society-leader's life. Meanwhile, another heiress pursues the writer to collect on a $10,000 debt. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louise Allbritton, Robert Paige, (more)
- 1944
After producing, writing and directing one hit film after another, Preston Sturges finally misfired with the biopic The Great Moment. Sturges was always fascinated with the saga of W.T.G. Morton, the 19th century Boston dentist who, after inventing the first truly effective anesthesia, was forced to give up his proprietary interest in the invention and ended up dying in poverty and obscurity. Joel McCrea stars as Morton, a young oral surgeon determined to find a painless method for exracting teeth-which he does, virtually by accident. Betty Field costars as Morton's faithful spouse Elizabeth, while Sturges regular William Demarest offers a gem of a performance as Morton's best friend-guinea pig Eben Frost (his persistence upon recalling his first meeting with Morton -- "I was in excru-ci-ating pain"-is one of the film's highlights). Completed in 1942, The Great Moment was taken out of Sturges' hands and heavily re-edited and re-arranged by the Paramount executives: as a result, the story is confusing and downright incomprehensible at times (the film's present ending, for example, originally occured in the middle of the film). The result was varying runtimes for the film of 80, 83, 87, and 90 minutes. An enormous box-office flop in 1944, the film proved to be the beginning of the end for Sturges, who was never able to completely recover from its failure. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joel McCrea, Betty Field, (more)
- 1943
In this musical, the teenage daughter of a popular movie star tires of being ignored by her separated parents and decides to make it as a star on her own. She does. Songs include: "It Had to Be You," "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1942
Anxious to do her bit for the war effort, Blondie (Penny Singleton) joins the Housewives of America, a home defense league. Husband Dagwood (Arthur Lake) soon finds that Blondie is neglecting her responsibilities at home in favor of her war work; also disgruntled are Dagwood's chauvinistic boss Mr. Dithers (Jonathan Hale) and a newlywed husband (Stu Erwin) whose wife is never home thanks to the defense league. Following a slapstick denouement at a power plant, in which the husbands are shown the error of their macho attitude, Blondie promises to devote more time to Dagwood--but at the same time delivers a patriotic speech to the women in the audience, exhorting them to align with the "Home Front". Blondie for Victory was twelfth in Columbia's series of comedy films based on Chic Young's popular comic strip Blondie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Penny Singleton, Arthur Lake, (more)
- 1941
Previously brought to the screen as a Marion Davies vehicle in 1927, Russ Westover's long-running comic strip Tillie the Toiler was again cinematized in 1942 with Kay Harris (who looked not at all like the original "Tillie") in the lead. While attending stenographer school, Tillie Jones meets office boy Mac (William Tracy), who falls in love with her at first sight. Though Tillie likes Mac as a friend, she continually throws him over for handsomer men, but ultimately comes to realize that faithful Mac is the one for her (in the original comic strip, she didn't come to this realization until 1959!) Before this happens, however, Tillie manages to bungle one assignment after another, finally saving her job with a fashion show, evidently designed to show of Columbia's 1942 crop of starlets. Diminutive Daphne Pollard, best known for her Mack Sennett starring 2-reelers and her supporting work in Laurel & Hardy comedies, is well cast as Tillie's down-to-earth mother. Intended as the first of a series, Tillie the Toiler never got any farther than this "pilot" entry. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kay Harris, William Tracy, (more)
- 1929
In this romantic fantasy, a delightful flapper princess refuses to marry her intended, a prince she has never met. Later she meets a young man, the prince in disguise, and falls in love. The queen is also fooled by the young man's disguise. She disapproves of the match and kidnaps the lad. He is rescued by the princess and reveals his true identity. They live a long and happy life together. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barry Norton, Irene Rich, (more)
- 1929
Writer/director/actor Willard Mack took one look at the blockbuster stage play Broadway and said to himself "I can do that, and at half the price." The result was Voice of the City, in which Mack does what amounts to a carbon copy of Thomas Jackson's performance as the detective protagonist of Broadway. The plotline involves Robert Ames, a young man wrongly accused of murder. At first, Mack relentlessly pursues Ames, but once convinced of the boy's innocence, the detective uses as many dirty tricks as he can muster to pin the blame on the real killer, gangster John Miljan. Opera star Geraldine Farrar once described Willard Mack as "brilliant--but a lousy writer." Not exactly lousy, Mack did however worship at the altar of banality in Voice of the City. Trivia note: This film's leading lady was Sylvia Field, wife of Broadway star Ernest Truex and later the first Mrs. Wilson on the TV sitcom Dennis the Menace. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Ames, Willard Mack, (more)
