Bess Flowers Movies

Considering the fact that it was the only Universal horror film directed by cult favorite Joseph H. Lewis, it's a shame that Mad Doctor of Market Street isn't better than it is. Lionel Atwill dominates the proceedings as Dr. Benson, an addlepated medico obsessed with the notion of restoring the dead to life. After his experiment on the unfortunate William Saunders (Hardie Albright) goes awry, Benson escapes from the authorities by boarding a passenger ship. When the vessel sinks during a storm at sea, Benson and several survivors manage to pull ashore on a remote tropical island. Here the mad doctor wows the natives with his scientific knowhow, and before long he is appointed king of the tribe. In this capacity, he hopes to marry helpless heroine Patricia (Claire Dodd) and to use the rest of the shipwreck survivors as guinea pigs for his experiments. The main problem with Mad Doctor of Market Street is the inclusion of youthful Una Merkel as the heroine's aunt, a role obviously intended for an older, less prominent actress. Obliged to radically alter and "beef up" Merkel's part, the screenwriters were forced to shortchange the rest of the picture, and as a result Mad Doctor of Market Street is nowhere near as frightening or atmospheric as it should have been. Still, the film is worth the price of admission for its chilling closing sequence alone. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Acclaimed French filmmaker Rene Clair made his American debut with this period comedy/drama. Claire Ledeux (Marlene Dietrich) leaves her native France and arrives in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1841, with one goal in mind: marrying a wealthy man. Posing as a pillar of society and a woman of means, Claire sets her sights on Charles Giraud (Roland Young), who is good looking and rich, but she soon discovers that ship captain Robert Latour (Bruce Cabot) is also vying for her hand. However, when Zoltov (Mischa Auer), who knew Claire from the old country, starts dropping heavy hints about her scandalous reputation in Europe, Claire tries to convince everyone that he's really talking about her cousin, even going so far as to disguise herself as the phantom cousin to add weight to her ruse. Three Stooges fans should keep an eye peeled for a brief appearance by Shemp Howard, who plays a waiter; Andy Devine, Franklin Pangborn, and Clarence Muse also appear in the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Faith, Hope and Charity motivate the wacky storyline of Columbia's Three Girls About Town--or to be more exact, gorgeous sisters Faith, Hope and Charity Banner, played respectively by Binnie Barnes, Joan Blondell and Janet Blair. Faith and Hope are gainfully employed as New York hotel hostesses, whose job it is to entertain wealthy out-of-town conventioneers (but no hanky panky, if you please!) They've remained in this profession in order to afford the expensive private-school education of their sister Charity, who shows up in the Big Apple in pursuit of her own career, or a wealthy husband, or both. Charity's arrival coincides with several big-time conventions, one of which is being covered by Faith's newspaper-reporter boyfriend Tommy Hopkins (John Howard). Things get dicey when the three girls discover a corpse in one of the hotel rooms. Certain that they'll be blamed for the death (or at the very least fired from their jobs!), the sisters conspire with Tommy to hide the body from the cops. Trouble is, the body just won't stay hidden, not even when our heroines try to dispose of the awkward stiff in one of the coffins brought into the hotel for an undertaker's convention. Blessed with a generous supply of belly-laughs and an unending stream of familiar character actors, Three Girls About Town sustains a proper level of zaniness right up to the cop-out finale. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Three Stooges play ice delivery men in this comic short. It's a hot day, and they've been cooling off in the back of the truck; in fact, Curly has gotten his head stuck inside a block of ice. After the other two Stooges free him, he bowls a strike with another block of ice and some milk bottles. Finally he is put into service carrying some ice up a long, long flight of stairs (no, they're not the same stairs used in Laurel and Hardy's short, The Music Box, but they seem to be located in the same area of Los Angeles -- the Silverlake district). By the time Curly reaches the top, the ice block has melted into an ice cube. As a solution the boys bring the ice box down the stairs and load it up at the bottom -- a good idea except that near the top the filled cabinet goes barreling down the steps and smashes into a man (Vernon Dent) holding a cake. Up at the house, the Stooges annoy the cook into quitting, and the dismayed matron has no one to fix dinner for her husband's birthday party. The well-meaning Stooges volunteer their services, with the predictably disastrous results. The finale is a fresh cake, which the boys have pumped full of gas because it fell. With a huge blast it explodes, sending the Stooges back down the long, long flight of stairs. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Attempting to Americanize Greta Garbo to appeal to American audiences (since most of the foreign markets for Hollywood product had been cut off due to World War II), M.G.M.'s Two-Faced Woman succeeded in making Garbo angry enough to announce her retirement from the screen. Two-Faced Woman was Garbo's final screen appearance, as the legendary actress slipped into a reclusive existence that lasted until her death. This George Cukor romantic comedy casts Garbo as ski instructor Karin Borg Blake. She gives lessons to wealthy American playboy Larry Blake (Melvyn Douglas), and the two fall in love and marry even though Larry has a girlfriend named Griselda Vaughn (Constance Bennett) waiting for him back in New York. Returning to New York, Karin fears that Griselda will win Larry back. In an effort to foil Larry's imagined dalliance, Karin poses as her own twin sister, Katherine, hoping to get Larry to fall in love with her instead of Griselda. Larry is onto the scheme and plays along with her, pretending to fall in love with Katherine. But this infuriates Karin, who can't believe that her husband would fall in love with her sister, and she storms back to her ski resort. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Married Bachelor is a cute little MGM situation comedy, designed for the bottom half of the studio's double bills. Robert Young plays an married author who has penned several books on how to stay single. Naturally, he has to pose as a bachelor for publicity purposes...but wife Ruth Hussey is expecting. The only other leading-man material in the cast is the feckless Lee Bowman, so it is he who must pose as Hussey's husband. Married Bachelor was adapted by future MGM head man Dore Schary from a story by Manuel Seff (we don't know if Seff was married or not). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Having struck pay dirt with its Blondie films, Columbia Pictures launched another "domestic" film series, based on Margaret Sidney's "Five Little Peppers" stories. The third and last entry in the series was The Five Little Peppers in Trouble, neither the best nor worst of this negligible project. Once more, Dorothy Peterson plays the widowed Mrs. Pepper, while her five precocious and resourceful offspring are portrayed by Edith Fellows, Dorothy Ann Seese, Charles Beck, Tommy Bond (best remembered as "Butch" in the Our Gang comedies) and Bobby Larson (replacing Jimmy Leake, who appeared in the first Pepper outing in 1939). Unable to watch over her kids and go to work at the same time, Mrs. Pepper bundles the little Peppers off to boarding school. The Five Little Peppers in Trouble is describable only as "cute"; you take it from there. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Considering that it was adapted from a Broadway musical by Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and George Abbott, The Boys From Syracuse must rank as a disappointment, though it manages to remain entertaining throughout its surprisingly brief 74-minute running time. Like its theatrical predecessor, the film was inspired by Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors ("After a play by William Shakespeare long, long after" reads the opening title). In ancient Ephesus, young tyrant Antipholus (Allan Jones) sentences elderly merchant Aegeon (Samuel S. Hinds) to death unless the latter can come up with a handsome ransom. What Antipholus doesn't know is that Aegeon is his own father; he also doesn't know that he has a twin brother, also named Antipholus (and also played by Allan Jones) who has just arrived from Syracuse in search of dear old daddy. Further complicating matters is that Antiopholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse both have slaves named Dromio (Joe Penner)-likewise identical twins! The mistaken-identity angle is played to the hilt, with A. of E.'s wife Adriana (Irene Hervey), A. of S.'s girlfirend Phyllis (Rosemary Lane), and Dromio of Ephesus' main squeeze Luce (Martha Raye) ending up just as confused as everyone else. Only four of the original Rodgers & Hart songs were retained-"This Can't Be Love", "Falling in Love with Love", "Sing for Your Supper", and "Oh, Diogenes"-while two new ones were written for the film. Most of the best jokes are based on anachronisms, with Dromio the slave organizing a labor union (complete with placards), a cheering section at an execution shouting "Give him the ax", and a parchment newspaper bearing such headlines as "Ephesus Blitzkriegs Syracuse". Originally purchased by Universal as a vehicle for the Ritz Brothers, The Boys from Syracuse isn't any great shakes, but it would certainly be well worth seeing again (last telecast in the 1970s, it seems to have fallen off the face of the earth in recent years!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this romance, a young woman journeys from Syracuse to New York to see her sweetheart, a prominent architect. She is bitterly disappointed to discover that he has lost interest in her. The residents of the women's hotel at which she stays offer the heartbroken lass words of encouragement. They tell her to take a stand and to show him what he is missing. She takes their advice and becomes a renowned fashion model. Naturally this piques the designer's interest and he wishes to court her anew. Of course, she by then has many suitors, so he must really work to win her back. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Sigrid Gurie, the Swede from Brooklyn who in 1938 was touted as Sam Goldwyn's answer to Garbo, was taking whatever work she could get in 1939. Forgotten Woman casts Gurie as a woman unjustly sent to prison. Four years go by before the DA unearths new evidence that proves her innocence. But first, the guilty party must be rounded up--and that's no walk in the park, since the miscreant is an influential gangster. Forgotten Woman ran its course, made back its cost, then became the Forgotten Movie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this interesting drama, a highly respected straight-arrow Irish cop is pleased when his son follows him onto the force. Unfortunately, the son is more interested in promotions than in upholding the law and he makes few friends among his peers. When he shoots a child caught stealing, the others frame him and he is sent to prison where his attitude becomes even worse than before. Upon his escape, the bad seed goes on a crime spree. He then learns that his wife has just borne him a son. When he goes to the hospital to see the babe, his father, who set this trap, arrests him and sends him back to the pokey, proving that in this case, justice is thicker than blood. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A model of precision and economy, the MGM "B" thriller Tell No Tales represented the feature-film directorial debut of former actor Leslie Fenton. Reportedly an expansion of a "Crime Does Not Pay" 2-reeler, the story follows editor Michael Cassidy (Melvyn Douglas) as he tries to save his newspaper from being shut down by corporate fat-cat Matt Cooper (Douglass Dumbrille). Hoping to track down the perpetrators of a recent kidnapping (and thereby obtaining an "exclusive"), Cassidy illegally gets hold of one of the bills used for the ransom, tracing the bill to all its previous owners. In the course of his odyssey, Cassidy stumbles into a wake for a murdered black boxer, a haunting sequence dominated by the powerhouse performance of Theresa Harris. He also learns that the much-hated Cooper was tenously connected to the ransom bill, though the identity of the actual miscreants aren't revealed until the last two reels. Louise Platt costars as Ellen Frazier, a harried witness to the kidnapping who winds up being taken "for a ride" along with the unconscious Cassidy. Also figuring prominently in the action is gambling boss Arno (Gene Lockhart) and his weakling brother Phil (Tom Collins), not to mention musical-comedy star Lorna Travers (Florence George), the main attraction at a Policeman's benefit show (another highlight). Showing up unbilled is one Jack Carlton, later known as Clayton Moore. Tell No Tales definitely deserves to be better known. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this prison drama, a female robber is sent to prison. She is the only one in the gang who knows the location of the loot and so the rest of them are anxious to free her. One of the desperate robbers frames the warden's daughter for murder so he can blackmail the prison leader. It doesn't work and the woman remains incarcerated. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide