Byron Foulger Movies

Arrogant Mike Brannan (Clark Gable) is a famous driver of midget race cars and is the type of man crowds love to hate. He earned his bad-boy image after he is blamed for causing a fatal crash during a race. Wanting to see if all the hoopla is true, tough columnist Regina Forbes (Barbara Stanwyck) tries to interview her, but Mike refuses. Later she watches as he is involved in another deadly crash. Believing he deliberately caused the accident, she rakes him over the coals in her column and this leads to his disbarment from the racing circuit. In order to make ends meet, the disgraced Mike begins driving in a stunt show. Eventually, he earns enough money to allow him to buy a full-sized race car. The film's exciting finale was shot at the Indianapolis Speedway. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Experiment Alcatraz stars John Howard as a doctor who develops a serum to cure radioactive poisoning. He tests it on several Alcatraz "lifers," who have volunteered for the experiment on the promise of freedom if they survive. A murder within the group casts aspersions on the doctor, but the mystery is solved before the allotted hour's running time is up. While hardly a surefire candidate for box office success, Experiment Alcatraz was purchased for release by RKO for a sum of $100,000. The film had been independently produced a year before its distribution, its lack of production polish betraying its shoestring origins. Coincidentally, leading man John Howard "continued" in the medical profession as the star of the mid-1950s TV series Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Anxious to remain active in the 1950s, director Frank Capra wanted to prove to Paramount Pictures that he could deliver an "A" picture on a modest budget. To that end, Capra bought the rights of his 1934 film Broadway Bill from Columbia, and remade it under the title Riding High. He then hired many of the supporting actors who'd appeared in Broadway Bill -- including Clarence Muse, Douglass Dumbrille, Ward Bond, Charles Lane and Frankie Darro -- so he could match up his newly shot scenes with stock footage from the earlier film. Capra even kept the musical costs down by having star Bing Crosby sing such public-domain favorites as "Camptown Races" (though there is one delightful original song, "We Ought to Bake a Sunshine Camera" performed without dubbing by Crosby, Muse, and leading-lady Colleen Gray). Crosby steps into the old Warner Baxter role as Dan Brooks, scion of a wealthy family who prefers hanging around racetracks to the responsibilities of his family business. Scheduled for a "proper" marriage to Margaret Higgins (Frances Gifford), the snooty daughter of millionaire J. L. Higgins (Charles Bickford), Dan infinitely prefers the company of Margaret's younger sister Alice (Coleen Gray), who loves horses as much as he. Hoping to declare his financial independence, he pins his future on a racehorse named Broadway Bill. Though not in the same league as Capra's earlier classics, Riding High is lots of fun. It is especially enjoyable for film buffs, thanks to Capra's decision to fill the picture with uncredited celebrity cameo appearances -- including Oliver Hardy, minus Stan Laurel, as an apoplectic horse player. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

George Sidney directs this pleasant romantic comedy concerning mayoral love. During a convention of mayors in San Francisco, Clarissa Standish (Loretta Young), the mayor of a small town in Maine, meets Steve Fisk (Clark Gable), the down-to-earth leader of a tiny northern California community. During the rowdy proceedings of the convention, the two find themselves pushed together frequently, with the typical result -- they fall in love. After the convention, the two head back to Steve's town, where crooked local politician Les Taggart (Raymond Burr) is squaring off against Fisk in a mayoral election. With the help of Clarissa, Steve gears up for his reelection bid. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

This musical comedy stars William Powell as Emery Slade, who was once a major film star but lately isn't getting much work. Arrogantly determined to climb back to the top, Slade convinces studio chief Melville Crossman (Adolphe Menjou) to give him the male lead in the film version of a Broadway musical. However, Crossman's offer comes with a catch: Emery has to persuade the show's female lead to appear in the movie. Slade heads to New York to seal the deal, but instead he discovers a gifted young unknown named Julie Clark (Betsy Drake) and decides she's perfect for the role. Crossman is not too enthusiastic about this news, and neither is publicist Bill Davis (Mark Stevens), who is given his pink slip along with Slade. However, Slade is determined to make a career for Julie in Hollywood, though it's not until later that he realizes why he feels so strongly about her. Movie buffs will get a kick out of Menjou's performance, closely modeled on 20th Century Fox boss Darryl F. Zanuck. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Streets of Laredo is a streamlined and Technicolorful remake of Paramount's 1936 box-office champ The Texas Rangers. William Holden, William Bendix and MacDonald Carey star as roguish outlaws Jim Dawkins, Wahoo Jones and Lorn Remming. After rescuing a little girl named Rannie Carter from a wicked tax collector, Dawkins and Jones decide to switch to the right side of the law; Remming, however, has other ideas. Years later, Rennie has grown up quite prettily into Mona Freeman, while Jim and Wahoo have become scrupulous members of the newly-formed Texas Rangers. Jim is in love with Rennie, but she has eyes for the still-crooked Lorn -- at least until Lorn proves to be the louse that the audience knew he was from the first reel. Streets of Laredo meticulously recreates the most famous scene from Texas Rangers, wherein one of the film's more sympathetic characters is abruptly shot to death from under a table; the scene still works, though it packed a bigger wallop in the original. Alfonso Bedoya, the "I don't have to show you any stinking badges" bandit from Treasure of the Sierra Madre, is appropriately menacing as the tax collector. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The satirical bite of Gogol's play The Government Inspector is dispensed with in favor of traditional Danny Kaye buffoonery in The Inspector General. Kaye plays the illiterate stooge of two-bit medicine-show- entrepreneur Walter Slezak. Abandoned by Slezak, the starving Kaye wanders into a corruption-ridden Russian village, which is all geared up for a visit from the Inspector General. Mistaking Kaye for that selfsame royal inspector, the townsfolk fawn on the confused Kaye, granting him his every whim and plying him with all sorts of bribes. In the original Gogol play, the boorish phony inspector takes advantage of the villagers' error by laying waste to the town and seducing a few local maidens; in the film, Kaye is as pure as the driven borscht, as is his true love (Barbara Bates), the only honest person in town. The treachery is in the hands of Slezak, who fakes Kaye's death and tries to blackmail the crooked local officials. The deus-ex-machina arrival of the real Inspector General foils the crooks and places the nonplused Kaye in the job of town mayor. Those of you who read the play in college may remember it ends with everyone frozen in horror when the genuine inspector shows up, with Gogol's stage directions insisting that the actors hold their fearful poses for a full sixty seconds. Be assured that in the film version of Inspector General, nothing stands still--least of all Danny Kaye, who cuts quite a swath through several Sylvia Fine/Johnny Mercer specialty songs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"This boy...and this girl...were never properly introduced to the world we live in." With this superimposed opening title, director Nicholas Ray inaugurates his first feature, They Live by Night. Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell play a "Bonnie and Clyde"-type fugitive couple, who in trying to escape their past are hell-bent down the road to Doom. Despite their criminal activities, Bowie (Granger) and Keechie (O'Donnell) are hopelessly naïve, fabricating their own idyllic dream world as the authorities close in. The entrapment -- both actual and symbolic -- of the young misfit couple can now be seen as a precursor to the dilemma facing James Dean in Ray's 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause. A box-office disappointment upon its first release, They Live by Night has since gained stature as one of the most sensitive and least-predictable entries in the film noir genre. The film was based on a novel by Edward Anderson, and in 1974 was filmed by Robert Altman under its original title, Thieves Like Us. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hot on the heels of Columbia's The Fuller Brush Man, MGM released another Red Skelton gagfest, A Southern Yankee. Set during the Civil War, the film casts Skelton as bumbling bellboy Aubrey Filmore. Yearning to help the Northern cause by becoming an undercover spy, Aubrey succeeds beyond his wildest dreams when circumstances force him to pose as notorious Southern secret agent Major Drumman (George Coulouris), aka "The Grey Spider". Infiltrating rebel territory, our hero does his best (which is none too good) to intercept the Grey Spider's messages and smuggle them to the North. Along the way, he falls in love with pert Southern belle Sallyann Weatherby (Arlene Dahl). Many of the side-splitting gag routines were devised by Buster Keaton, notably the now-famous scene in which Aubrey gingerly walks across the battlefield between Northern and Southern lines carrying a two-sided flag -- the Northern Stars and Stripes on one side, the Southern Stars and Bars on the other -- a strategy that works until the wind suddenly changes! Though Edward Sedgwick is credited with the direction, Red Skelton later revealed that A Southern Yankee was actually directed by S. Sylvan Simon. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Newly arrived at Columbia, quickie producer Sam Katzman tried his hand at a musical with I Surrender Dear. Gloria Jean stars as Patty Nelson, the daughter of "old fashioned" radio disc jockey Russ Nelson (Robert Emmet Keane). When Patty's bandleader boyfriend Al Tyler (David Street) gets her father's radio job, she walks out on him. The lovers are eventually reunited, but not before plenty of misunderstandings and musical numbers. Worth noting is the presence in the cast of three real-life deejays: Jack Eigen (immortalized by Nichols and May's "Jack Ego" routine), Peter Potter (of Juke Box Jury fame), and future Today Show host Dave Garroway. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Former "Henry Aldrich" James Lydon acquits himself nicely in a serious role in Republic's Out of the Storm. Lydon plays Donald Lewis, a low-paid clerk in a high-profile shipbuilding firm. When the company is robbed in broad daylight, Lewis gathers up $100,000 on his own and skeedaddles, figuring that the lost funds will be attributed to the holdup. Before his girlfriend Ginny (Lois Collier) can persuade him to go straight, the hapless Lewis finds himself hotly pursued by cops and crooks alike. Top-heavy with movie "bad guys" like Marc Lawrence and Roy Barcroft, Out of the Storm is edge-of-the-seat entertainment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this period musical, Ricardo (Frank Sinatra) is the son of a Mexican innkeeper who has come to California to take over a hotel owned by his family after the death of his father. Ricardo makes the startling discovery that his father was best known as a "kissing bandit," a dashing thief who aptitude for crime was matched by his gift for romancing the ladies. When tax collectors from Spain begin to overrun his homeland, Ricardo decides to follow in his father's footsteps, liberating the taxmen's ill-gotten gains and winning the heart of Teresa (Kathryn Grayson), the governor's daughter. Also starring J. Carrol Naish, Billy Gilbert and Mildred Natwick, The Kissing Bandit also features the fancy footwork of Ann Miller, Ricardo Montalban, and Cyd Charisse, who appear as specialty dancers in the production numbers. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Described by one critic as a western version of The 39 Steps, Relentless stars Robert Young as a cowboy on the lam. Framed for murder, Young must find the one man who can clear him, while a posse dogs his trail. He briefly becomes an outlaw, hoping to make contact with his quarry by befriending the dregs of the west, notably mercenary saloon keeper Akim Tamiroff. Marguerite Chapman plays the love interest, while Barton MacLaine does his usual as the main heavy. Directed at a rapid clip by George Sherman, Relentless does its best to live up to its title. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide