Dorothy Davenport Movies

Handsome Lester Cuneo, formerly of the Tom Mix stock company, advertised himself as "The Smiling Daredevil" in the hopes of becoming a viable rival to his former employer, Mix. He never came close, but some of the Cuneo westerns did have some merits, especially The Masked Avenger. Cuneo plays a carefree rancher who's suddenly faced with a series of cattle rustlings. To catch the rustlers, the rancher dons the disguise of a masked avenger, foraging into the moonlit prairie nights in search of his prey. Cuneo -- or screenwriters Henry McCarty and Leo Meehan -- had undoubtedly the Zorro legend in mind when they assembled this western. The film did benefit from an above-average supporting cast that included Mrs. Wallace Reid (AKA Dorothy Davenport), the wife and soon-to-be widow of one of the era's great matinee-idols. Reid's son, Billy, had a supporting role. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Three of Hollywood's more enterprising women created this sentimental treatise on sin and redemption: Mrs. Wallace Reid (the former actress Dorothy Davenport) produced and co-directed (with Walter Lang) and Dorothy Arzner's screenplay was based on a story by influential journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns. Priscilla Bonner starred as Gabrielle Darley, a real-life prostitute acquitted of murdering her procurer in 1917. Left in a New Orleans brothel by a bounder she mistakenly believed to be her fiancé, Gabrielle tracks down the man (Carl Miller) in a Los Angeles jewelry shop and kills him in cold blood. Immediately regretting her brutal act, Gabrielle is resigned to her fate when the jury surprisingly returns a verdict of not guilty. A free woman, Gabrielle wants to change her wayward life by becoming a nurse, but is instead invited to live in the palatial Wilshire Boulevard estate of Mrs. Fontaine (Virginia Pearson). With Freddy the chauffeur (Theodore Von Eltz) as her only ally, Gabrielle is cruelly paraded in front of Mrs. Fontaine's society friends, some of whom "have skipped a matinee to see you." Tiring of the notoriety quickly enough, Mrs. Fontaine arranges for an interview with the local hospital, knowing full well that Gabrielle's sordid past will prohibit her ever becoming a nurse. Distraught and penniless, Gabrielle returns to New Orleans, never realizing that Freddy is desperately searching for her. Chased by a pimp in the French Quarter, the exhausted girl runs out into the crowded street and is hit by a passing car. While recovering in the hospital, she fortuitously learns that the hospital needs personnel due to the devastating influenza epidemic and is soon employed as a cleaning woman. It is in the hospital where she is finally found by Freddy as he arrives with soldiers wounded overseas. Despite being shipped off to fight the war in Europe the following day, the former chauffeur vows to return and make Gabrielle his wife. A huge box-office success, The Red Kimono ended up nearly bankrupting Mrs. Reid when the real Gabrielle Darley sued for libel. In the end, Darley won a huge settlement that included the Beverly Hills home which Reid had shared with her late husband, 1910s matinee-idol Wallace Reid. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

One of the most overworked plots of the silent era was the one about an Eastern wastrel who toughens up on a Western ranch. The charismatic Douglas Fairbanks popularized the character in the mid 1910s, but George Duryea, the Eastern snob this time around, was no Fairbanks. Duryea hires out as a ranch hand on a dude ranch, and there is plenty of low comedy as the effeminate Easterner learns the tough ways of the West. There's a girl involved, of course (Lina Basquette) and a couple of rivals among the guests (including veteran movie star Francis X. Bushman), but this early talkie from low-rent Sono Art-World Wide was not worth anybody's while. Leading man Duryea later changed his name to Tom Keene and enjoyed a brief vogue as a "B"-western star. Later still, he became Richard Powers and played character roles. Lina Basquette married one of the Warner Bros., starred in a couple of flops, but was better known for her off-screen antics, all of which she described in salacious details in her often very funny memoirs DeMille's Godless Girl. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

A homely woman gets the best kind of revenge upon her philandering husband in this drama. Tired of his constant cheating, the woman puts on make up, takes their daughter, and starts a new, more modern life. She becomes an acclaimed dress designer while her daughter falls in love with a stodgy young doctor. The daughter then gets involved with less reputable types and mayhem ensues until she goes back and settles down with the physician. The wife eventually tires of her own life and decides to go back to her chastened husband. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this drama, a writer, dissatisfied with his flagging career, decides to raise some money by walking from New York to San Francisco in six months. Along the way, he will be writing about the experience. One of his buddies bets that the writer won't make it, and this makes him even more determined. Along the way, a terrible storm erupts forcing the intrepid ambler to take refuge in a cabin. There he encounters a runaway and her two little sisters. Trouble ensues when the cabin's owner and some mobsters show up to retrieve their loot. The writer is ecstatic. At last he has some decent material to write about. He joyfully begins to write. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

If the big-time studios could score in the "screwball comedy" genre, then small-time Monogram Pictures could join the club with A Bride for Henry. Warren Hull, fresh from a contract dispute with Warner Bros., played Henry, with fellow Warners refugee Anne Nagel as his bride. Henry Mollison, a newcomer from England, is the third spoke of the romantic triangle which motivates the story. The film slaps a new coat of paint on the old gag about a honeymoon continually being interrupted by a handsome ex-suitor. A Bride for Henry delivered plenty of laughs to a 1937 audience unaccustomed to seeing a comedy emerge from the action- and mystery-oriented Monogram studios. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the late 1930s-early 1940s, Monogram Pictures hoped to create a popular screen team in the form of teenaged thespians Jackie Moran (he was Huck Finn in Selznick's 1938 version of Tom Sawyer) and Marcia Mae Jones (a former child star who'd been in pictures since the silent days). In The Haunted House, Jackie plays a newsboy, while Marcia is cast as the niece of the paper's publisher. There's a killer loose in town, and both police and reporters are baffled. Jackie and Marcia join forces to catch the killer themselves so as to clear their mutual friend of a murder charge. The climax takes place in the haunted house of the title, with thrills and chills abounding. The high slapstick content in The Haunted House can be attributed to screenwriter Monty Collins, a veteran of the Columbia Pictures comedy short subjects unit. The director is Robert McGowan, formerly the guiding hand behind Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies of the 1920s and 1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Twixt and tween his Dick Tracy movies, Ralph Byrd plays a Foreign Legionnaire in Drums of the Desert. Byrd and his pal Peter George Lynn alternately fight off the Riffs and fight each other over the affections of lovely Lorna Gray. Gee...we always thought that people joined the Foreign Legion to forget women. Monogram's resident black comedian Mantan Moreland is on hand for his usual impeccably timed (albeit politically incorrect) comedy routines. Drums of the Desert was directed by veteran actionmeister George Waggner, long before he began billing himself as "George WaGGner." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Rhubarb is an amusing, if not entirely faithful, adaptation of the H. Allen Smith novel of the same name. When Thaddeus J. Banner (Gene Lockhart), multimillionaire owner of the Brooklyn baseball team, passes away, he wills the team -- and his $30 million estate -- to his pugnacious pet cat Rhubarb. Banner's press agent Eric Yeagar (Ray Milland) finds this hilarious, until he discovers that he's been appointed Rhubarb's guardian and business manager. One of the crosses Yeagar has to bear is the fact that his sweetheart Polly Sickles (Jan Sterling), the daughter of Brooklyn team manager Len Sickles (William Frawley), is deathly allergic to cats. Still, Yeagar must keep Rhubarb with him at all times, especially when the cat turns out to be a good-luck charm for the perennially basement-dwelling Brooklyn ballplayers. Thanks to Rhubarb's inspiration, the team makes it to the Pennant Race, whereupon the plot really thickens. The first two-thirds of Rhubarb adheres to the original Smith novel, culminating with a zany sanity hearing brought about by Banner's disgruntled relatives to prove that the cat is mentally unfit to control the old man's money. But the final reels abandon the novel in favor of a Guys and Dolls-inspired plot strand, wherein crooked gamblers kidnap the cat to prevent a Brooklyn pennant win. As a result, H. Allen Smith's satiric barbs are somewhat blunted in the final scenes -- which, however, is not to suggest that the film is any less funny than before. One of the better baseball comedies of the era, Rhubarb maintains its merriment right to the end, which is capped by a cameo appearance by a well-known actor who happened to be married to leading lady Jan Sterling. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi