Charley Foy Movies

With his movie career fading in 1955, Bob Hope was amenable to writer/director Mel Shavelson's suggestion that Hope try something different. The Seven Little Foys was the first of Hope's two "straight" biopics (the second was 1956's Beau James). Though not completely abandoning his patented persona, Hope does an admirable job of impersonating legendary Broadway song-and-dance man Eddie Foy, right down to the soft-shoe shuffle and affected lisp. A successful "single" in vaudeville, Foy meets and marries lovely Italian songstress Madeleine Morando (Milly Vitale). The union results in seven children, moving the Foys' priest to comment "we're running out of Holy water" after the seventh baptism. Hardly an ideal family man, Foy leaves Madeleine and her sister Clara (Angela Clarke) behind in their Connecticut home to raise the kids, while he rises to spectacular career height. Returning home after attending a testimonial for George M. Cohan (James Cagney, who played this unbilled cameo on the proviso that Hope turn over Cagney's salary to charity), Foy discovers that his wife has died of pneumonia. Months pass: Foy sulks in his rambling house, while his seven kids run roughshod. Foy's manager (George Tobias) suggests that the entire family be assembled into a vaudeville troupe called The Seven Little Foys. Though the kids are profoundly bereft of talent, the act gets by on its charm, and before long Foy is a bigger success than ever. But when Foy and the kids are booked into the Palace on Christmas Day, Aunt Clara decides that the kids are being cruelly exploited, and arranges for the authorities to arrest the act on charges of violating a state law barring children from singing and dancing. The authorities decide to drop the charges when the kids rally around their father, declaring their genuine love for him--but the deciding factor is a quick demonstration that the kids can't sing or dance to save their lives! The Seven Little Foys is a standard Hollywood whitewash job, emphasizing Eddie Foy's virtues (including his on-stage heroism during the infamous Iroquois Theatre fire of 1903) and soft-pedaling or ignoring his faults (e.g. his capacity for alcohol). Wisely, the scenes between Bob Hope and the seven children playing the Little Foys (including Father Knows Best's Billy Gray, The Real McCoys' Lydia Reed and Leave It to Beaver's Jerry Mathers) are refreshingly free of cloying sentiment. Also, Hope is a good enough natural actor to convince us that he deeply cares for his children without gooey effusions of emotion. The film's hands-down highlight is the "challenge dance" between Foy (Bob Hope) and Cohan (James Cagney)--a lasting testament of the superb terpsichorean talents of both men. The Seven Little Foys was narrated by Eddie's son Charley Foy, a fine comedian in his own right. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the 1930s and 1940s, Warner Bros. developed a positive genius for remaking earlier films in new, disguised fashion, retaining the plotlines but altering the circumstances and character names. Wagons Roll at Night was a 1941 reworking of the prizefight drama Kid Galahad, filmed only four years earlier. The original film was about a naive boxer who falls in love with the sister of his semi-crooked manager. The remake stars Eddie Albert as a bucolic lion tamer, Humphrey Bogart (who'd been the villain in Kid Galahad) as the circus manager, and Joan Leslie as the girl. The earlier film also included Bette Davis as the manager's put-upon mistress; her counterpart in Wagons Roll at Night is Sylvia Sidney as a worldly circus star. It's amazing how well the prizefight milieu adapts itself to the lion cage, and for this alone Wagons Roll at Night is memorable. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this comedy, a young waitress is given $1,000 from her grandfather. She desires to buy a race horse and so trustingly gives the money to a man at the track. The trouble begins when he loses the money. To make up for his mistake, he gives her a ticket for the Irish sweepstakes and then sells her a broken-down horse. Not surprisingly, both end up winners and happiness ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A remake of Dr. Socrates (1935), this middling melodrama features Kay Francis as Carol Nelson, a medical doctor blaming gangster Joe Gurney (Humphrey Bogart) for the death of her husband (John Eldredge) during a police raid. Determined to get even, Dr. Nelson sets up practice in a small town where a couple of Gurney's henchmen are serving time. And sure enough, Gurney is soon in dire need of Carol's help after being wounded in a jailhouse break. Convincing the gang boss and his men that they all suffer from eye infections, the good doctor proceeds to blind the mobsters with adrenaline eye drops and then calls the cops. Warner Bros. used the general idea a third time in Bullet Scars (1942), yet another B-movie. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

RKO's Conspiracy attempts to be an up-to-date (for 1939) espionage drama without using such problematic words as "Nazi" or "Fascist". The film solves this problem by taking place in a mythical Central American country, though the key figure of a despotic dictator is clearly meant to be an Hispanic Hitler. Allan Lane stars as an adventurer who joins forces with Linda Hayes, who plays a revolutionary dedicated to toppling the dictator's regime. If the average filmgoer of 1939 detected parallels to the recent Spanish Civil War, then screenwriter Jerome Chodhorov had succeeded. Conspiracy bears no relation to a 1930 RKO feature of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Who better to direct Warner Bros.' Daredevil Drivers than B. Reeves "Breezy" Eason, the fast-action specialist who staged the chariot race sequence in 1925's Ben-Hur? Dick Purcell stars as suspended racecar driver Bill Foster who lands a job with a disreputable bus company. This puts him on the outs with his girlfriend Jerry Neeley (Beverly Roberts), the owner of a rival (and honest) bus firm. Bill gets back into Jerry's good graces when he exposes the criminal element running the company for which he works. As proof that everything's "relative" in Hollywood, Daredevil Drivers features Gloria Blondell, the sister of Warners contractee Joan Blondell, in a supporting role, while Charley Foy, the brother of the studio's B-movie unit supervisor Bryan Foy, provides comic relief. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this comedy, two racetrack gamblers lose all their dough by betting on a long shot. Now they must hitchhike to the next racetrack. En route they take cover in an apparently abandoned mansion. There they find some clothing, which they put on. Unfortunately, in that garb, they are mistaken by the servants for the owner's son and his friend. Complications ensue. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Jim Turner (Barton MacLaine) loves "wine, women and horses," though not always in that order. Our hero's revelry is interrupted by his shrill and prudish wife Marjorie (Peggy Bates), who tells him to stay away from the racetrack or she'll walk. Presumably to the cheers of the audience, Turner ultimately dumps her, enjoying a happily-ever-after denouement in the arms of down-to-earth Valerie (Ann Sheridan), who has loved Jim all along, warts and all. Critics looked down their noses at this harmless bit of frivolity, but like most Warner Bros. programmers of the period the film posted a profit. On the strength of its title alone, Wine, Women and Horses was included in a popular 1970s book devoted to the worst films of all time (though one suspects that the authors never bothered to see the picture). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Operatic tenor James Melton stars as on-the-skids bandleader Tod Weaver, who finds himself in charge of an all-girl orchestra. Though he tries to remain oblivious to his musicians' charms, he can't help but fall in love with assistant conductor Gale Starr (Patricia Ellis). Things look bad for hero and heroine when seductive Lorna Wray (Winifred Shaw) comes between them, but Tod is brought back to earth with a well-aimed slap. The cast of Melody for Two contains some potent comedy talent, including Marie Wilson and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, but the spotlight is on the golden-throated James Melton. The film's one memorable song is "September in the Rain," later hilariously re-created in the "Looney Tunes" installment Porky's Preview (1938). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

District attorney Victor Shanley (John Litel) is forced out of his job through the machinations of gang boss Al Kruger (William B. Davidson). Thirsting for revenge against the legal system that apparently failed to back him up, Shanley goes to the "other side," becoming a defense lawyer on Kruger's payroll. This distresses his ex-wife Carol (Ann Dvorak), but Shanley cares only for the money he's raking in. At long last, however, Shanley's conscience is reawakened by Bob Terrell (Carlyle Moore Jr.), a mob functionary who elects to "go straight" and suffers mightily as a consequence. Midnight Court was co-scripted by Don Ryan, a Los Angeles reporter specializing in the night-court beat. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In their third crime-solving adventure, smart-aleck newspaper woman Torchy Blane (Glenda Farrell) and slightly dense homicide dick Steve McBride (Barton MacLane) are about to get hitched when Torchy's reporter friends pull a practical joke on them. As a wedding present, the harebrained newsboys hire a stage actor, Harvey Hammond (Leland Hodgson), to simulate a murder victim. But when Torchy and Steve arrive at the scene of the supposed crime, Hammond has been killed for real. Suspects, of course, abound, including Hammond's fellow thespians Hugo Brand (Anderson Lawlor) and Grace Brown (Anne Nagel), whose romance the actor had tried to destroy. Even more suspicious to Torchy are Hammond's long-suffering wife (Virginia Brissac), and his socialite mistress (a surprisingly brunette Natalie Moorhead). With little help from Steve and his even dumber sergeant, Gahagan (Tom Kennedy), Torchy sets a trap for the killer. Produced by Warner Bros.'s busy B-unit, The Adventurous Blonde was acted at breakneck speed by a justly famous stock company, who, as always, nearly managed to make a hackneyed plot seem fresh and new. Torchy herself was ostensibly based on reporter Dorothy Kilgallen and had begun her crime-solving career in Smart Blonde (1937). Eight more Torchy films were made, but Farrell and MacLane were replaced by Lola Lane and Paul Kelly in Torchy in Panama (1938), the seventh entry, and by Jane Wyman and Allen Jenkins in the final, Torchy Plays With Dynamite (1939). By then, then series had more than run its course. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

At the time of its release, Polo Joe was critically lambasted as the worst Joe E. Brown starrer to date. Compared to his later non-Warners efforts, however, it's not so bad: the biggest criticism that can be levelled against it is that it's virtually indistinguishable from Brown's other 1930s vehicles. The plot and comedy of the film can be summed up in a single sentence: Joe Bolton (Brown) is terrified of horses, but joins a polo team to impress his sweetheart Mary (Carol Hughes). The climax borrows a page from Brown's 1935 baseball flick Alibi Ike, with the villains holding Joe prisoner so that he can't ride in a polo championship. As always, Brown does all his own stunts in Polo Joe, a fact that is more impressive than amusing. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this comedy a sneaky salesman tries to sell an inventor's newest product, a water-based fuel. Before the inventor can finish testing the product he needs cash, so the salesman desperately endeavors to come up with some by creating a phony stock promotion. When he announces that the great invention has finally been perfected, investors begin handing him money hand-over-fist. The salesman then uses the cash to create a phone corporation complete with a fake board of directors. Just as their success seems assured, the inventor is abducted. The salesman must then find him or end up in prison. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi