Jimmy Aubrey Movies

The seventh of thirteen singing Westerns to star former opera baritone Fred Scott, The Ranger's Roundup was also the first of three Scott vehicles to be executive produced by comedian Stan Laurel. No hands off producer, Laurel apparently suggested several bits of business for comic relief Al St. John, whose popular "Fuzzy Q. Jones" character originated with the Scott series. Ranger Tex Duncan (Scott) joins a travelling medicine show disguised as a singer, a plot development that allowed the hero to warble such ditties as The Terror of Termite Valley and Just a Spanish Shawl, both by Lew Porter who also appeared in the film as a piano player. Going undercover, Tex is able to get close to a gang of express office robbers, discovering the hard way that Burton, the office manager (Richard Cramer), is the leader of the gang. Blonde Christine McIntyre made her screen debut in this film as Mary, a singing waitress and Scott's love interest. In later years, Miss McIntyre was only too happy to share her memories of the 20 B-Westerns she would end up making but refused to answer questions regarding her better known work with The Three Stooges. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

A golddigger finds that romance doesn't always equal finance in this comedy. Crystal Wetherby (Jean Harlow) is an American widow left stranded in London with a stack of debts incurred by her late husband and barely a shilling to her name. Raymond Dabney (Robert Taylor) is the black sheep of a formerly wealthy family who has just been released from prison for fraud and is looking for work. Crystal hires Raymond to watch over her home so that her creditors won't repossess her belongings; Raymond soon learns that Crystal is being courted by his brother Claude (Reginald Owen), much to Raymond's amusement, since both Crystal and Claude are motivated less by love than the mistaken belief that the other has money. However, Crystal and Raymond become increasingly fond of each other, even though they know they're both flat broke. The supporting cast features two of Old Hollywood's favorite U.K. expatriates, E.E. Clive and Una O'Connor. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Produced by Sam Katzman's Victory Pictures, $1,000,000 Racket stars Katzman's biggest "name," ex-Olympic athlete Herman Brix. Our hero falls in with a gang of racketeers, pretending to play along with them until he can notify the authorities. Along the way, Brix falls in love with apple-cheeked Joan Barclay. Featured in the cast are veteran silent leading man Bryant Washburn as the chief heavy, and one-time 2-reel comedy star Jimmy Aubrey as a dopey crook. Herman Brix did rather better for himself in the 1940s when he changed his name to Bruce Bennett. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Fred Scott musical westerns were high in audience appeal, but invariably handicapped with syrupy titles like Moonlight on the Range. On this occasion, our hero is suspected of being an outlaw, but the real culprit is his look-alike half-brother (Scott plays both roles). At first hoping to wreak vengeance on his crooked sibling. Scott relents at the end, bringing brother dear in unharmed in hopes of reforming the boy. The film's highlight is a fierce gun battle between hero and villain, with director Sam Newfield doing an excellent job differentiating the two brothers. In the course of events, Fred Scott sings four songs, several of them for the benefit of leading lady Lois January. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although slow-moving at times, Aces and Eights is nevertheless a fine little Western and certainly the best of the ten Tim McCoy would make for low-budget (and short-lived) Puritan Pictures. McCoy plays the legendary Wild Bill Hickock in a prologue that depicts how Wild Bill is assassinated during a poker game in which he holds two pair, aces and eights, from that day forward known in the West as the "death hand." Gambler gentleman Tim Madigan (also McCoy) is then introduced as Hickock's successor. After witnessing Madigan accusing a notorious cardshark (John Merton) of cheating, young José Hernandez (Rex Lease), a victim of the crook, pulls his gun and the gambler bites the dust. Madison is accused of the killing and quickly leaves Nevada for California, hotly pursued by the town marshal (Earle Hodgins). En route Tim is reacquainted with José, whose ancestral hacienda is about to be usurped by Ace Morgan (Wheeler Oakman), a notorious gambler in league with nasty saloon proprietor Amos Harden (J. Frank Glendon). To restore the hacienda to José's kind-hearted father (Joseph W. Girard), Tim engages in a high stakes game of poker and wins the Harden saloon. Along the way, Madigan discovers that it was Ace Morgan who killed the gambler back in Nevada and not José. McCoy, who earned a generous 4,000 dollars per picture, delivers his usual solid performance in Aces and Eights, which also benefits by the presence of Hodgins, as the gum-chewing marshal, and Charles Stevens, as a comic opera Mexican captain of police. McCoy filmed three additional Westerns for Puritan before moving on to Victory Pictures. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

A coarse cowboy is heralded as a fast-draw gunslinger in this western film. ~ All Movie Guide

Directed by William Berke (under the pseudonym of "Lester Williams"), Gun Grit was the last of four above-average B-Western starring former silent lead Jack Perrin. Perrin, who also co-produced with Berke, played Bob Blake, an FBI agent masquerading as a ranch hand in order to infiltrate a gang of city gangsters terrorizing a Western community. Tired of dodging federal agents in Los Angeles, Mack (Roger Williams), Looey (Phil Dunham) and Dopey (Ralph Peters) escape to a small Western community where they proceed to threaten the local ranchers, gang-land style, into paying protection money. After the expected ridin', shootin' and sluggin', undercover agent Blake, with ample assistance from his horse Starlight and young Dave Hess (stunt-man David Sharpe), manages to deliver the gangsters to the city authorities. His job finished, Blake offers pretty rancher's daughter Jean Hess (Ethel Beck) a little "protection" of his own. Filmed at the former Tiffany studios in Hollywood, Gun Grit managed to combine two popular genres -- the gangster film and Western melodrama -- without sacrificing the essence of either. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Silent screen juvenile Lloyd Hughes, who once starred opposite Mary Pickford, found himself headlining this ultra-low-budget melodrama, the final release from Poverty Row company Peerless Pictures Corp. Searching for his long-lost love, Bruce Donaldson (Hughes) makes the acquaintance of Shark Moran (Walter Miller), a Singapore planter who eventually makes him his partner. Unbeknownst to Bruce, his missing fiancée, Claire Martineau (Jacqueline Wells), is working as a dancer in a Singapore dive under the name of Marty. Shark, who is bankrolling the dive, asks Marty to marry him but she is still pining for the man who once left her because his wealthy family took a dim view of showgirls. When Marty presents him with a photograph of Bruce, Shark flies into a rage and is stabbed by the girl's faithful servant (Jimmy Aubrey). While trying to flee, Marty runs into Bruce who brings her to the plantation. There, Tiana (Carlotta Monti), Shark's servant who has been trying to seduce Bruce, accuses Marty of murdering her employer. In the end, however, a witness acknowledges that Shark was killed in self-defense by Marty's servant and the lovers are reunited. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Of the many film versions of Alfred Lord Tennyson's narrative poem, 1936's Charge of the Light Brigade has the least relationship to the facts concerning the famous 19th century British military blunder in the Crimea. Reflecting the popularity of 1935's Lives of A Bengal Lancer, the film uses the climactic charge as the culmination of events which begin in British India. Errol Flynn and Patric Knowles are cast as cavalry officers who are also brothers; both love Olivia De Havilland, but it is Knowles who wins out (this should tip us off that the rest of the film is pure fantasy). Indian potentate C. Henry Gordon, angered that the British government has cut off his subsidy, stages a revolt against the English settlements. Ordered on maneuvers, Flynn is unable to bring rescue troops to the besieged fort commanded by De Havilland's father. Gordon supervises the slaughter of every man, woman and child at the fort, then leaves India in the company of his Russian advisors. Flynn and his fellow Light Brigade lancers are then transferred to the Crimea--where, as luck would have it, Gordon is now ensconced with the Russians. Thirsting for revenge, Flynn falsifies an official order so that he and the Light Brigade can battle Gordon and his allies at Balaclava (thus are Britons Lord Cardigan and Lord Ragan, the actual instigators of the doomed charge, exonerated). As passages from the Tennyson poem are superimposed on the action, Flynn leads a suicidal charge against the Russians; he manages to kill the treacherous Gordon before being slain himself. Its dozens of historical inaccuracies aside, The Charge of the Light Brigade is rousing entertainment. Animal lovers be warned, however: several horses were killed during the climactic charge, a fact that compelled Hollywood (under the auspices of the ASPCA) to install safer and more stringent standards concerning the treatment of animals. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It is a tale known well, filmed many times over the years, but never better than this early black and white version from the MGM Studios, David O. Selznick producing. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"-- Charles Dickens juxtaposes England and France, George and Louis, tradition and revolution. One of the most beloved of Dickens' stories, finding not only countries and conditions compared, but also two individuals thrown up in stark contrast to one another: -- the dissolute barrister Sydney Carton (Ronald Colman) and the young, somewhat callow aristocrat Charles Darnay (Donald Woods), both in love with Lucie (Elizabeth Allan), daughter of a victim of the French Regime. Their lives intertwine until the violent revolution that overtook an entire nation engulfs them all as well.

Dickens' story has stood the test of time; remade frequently since the release of this1935 version. It is this version by director Jack Conway's that is best remembered and to which all others are compared. The settings, cinematography, and direction are all right on the mark, recreating the streets of London and of Paris with great skill and realism. The supporting cast, filled with faces we have grown to cherish-- Reginald Owen, Edna May Oliver, Claude Gillingwater, Walter Catlett, H. B. Warner, Basil Rathbone, and E. E. Clive-comes through with crystalline performances which add substance to the inexorable stream of events. Blanche Yurka's bravura turn as Therese de Farge delights us even as we shudder at her intensity. Second unit directors Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton, who would both go on to memorable careers as leading directors in their own right, staged the storming of the Bastille and other "revolutionary" scenes brilliantly, managing to combine fervor with panache. It is, however, Colman's portrayal of the lonely man redeemed by love and sacrifice which stands at the center of the story.

Sydney Carton first saves Charles Darnay from a charge of treason, thereby meeting those who care for him: the beautiful Lucie Manette, her father, Doctor Manette (Henry B. Walthall), released from the Bastille after many years of unjust incarceration; Lucie's servant Miss Pross, (Oliver) and Mister Lorry (Claude Gillingwater), an functionary of Tellson's Bank. His relationship with this circle of kind friends grows rocky when Darnay marries Lucie, whom Carton has loved from afar, but even this turn of events cannot change his feelings for them all and he grows to love them even more when daughter Lucie comes along. He reforms, leaving old ways behind and enjoying a familial warmth he has never known. This happy life is shattered when Darnay returns to France during the first revolutionary struggles, intent on saving his old tutor from the guillotine. He soon finds himself behind bars and facing the blade instead. The Revolution does not forget an aristocrat, even one who has recanted and lived life abroad as a commoner. The whole family makes the channel crossing to come to the young man's aid and Carton seeks a way to save him, discovering only one path to free Darnay and return everyone to safety. It is a sacrifice easily promised and quickly made.

Ronald Colman had long wanted to make a film of this story and, when he finally got his chance, he happily shaved off his signature mustache in an appropriate gesture to historical realism. Reviews of his work indicate his portrayal of Sydney Carton surpassed all his previous endeavors; he had been accused of walking through light parts, once he started making "talkies," and not putting his many talents to good use. "A Tale of Two Cities" put rest to those complaints. He dominates completely the scenes he which he does appear, and his skill gives substance to a literary achievement, a melancholy man of intelligence and wit, given to drink and despair, whose life seems to attain meaning only when it is given up for someone else. It is one of the portrayals for which Ronald Colman has come to be remembered.

There are various remake versions of A Tale of Two Cities. Dirk Bogarde played Carton in 1958 and Chris Sarandon starred in a television remake in 1980. While these and other versions have all been good films, none has achieved the stature of the 1935 version and its excellent combination of star power, technical brilliance and great storytelling. ~ All Movie Guide

Make a Million stars Charles Starrett in one of his last non-western roles, as idealistic college professor Jones. Because of his radical "share the wealth" theories, Jones is fired on the say-so of banker Corning (Guy Usher). Seeking a new source of income, our hero turns to panhandling, and before long he's raking in more bucks than he'd ever done as a teacher! Through a series of plot twists that would put Dickens to shame (among them a highly suspicious nationwide lottery and a chain-letter racket), Jones emerges as a millionaire at film's end, winning the hand of Corning's daughter Irene (Pauline Brooks). One of the screwiest of the screwball comedies of the 1930s, Make a Million deserves to be better known. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide