Frank S. Hagney Movies

Law of the Saddle stars Bob Livingston as Rocky Cameron, aka "The Lone Rider". With his sidekick Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al St. John), Rocky rides into a small town plagued by cattle rustlers. He can expect no help from the Law, since the sheriff is as crooked as the Yellow Brick Road. In fact, the sheriff is the head of the rustlers, meaning that Rocky's really got a dilemma on his hands this time out. The villain in Law of the Saddle is played by Lane Chandler, a former silent-film cowboy star who sustained his career into the 1960s by specializing in stubble-chinned heavies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper paired off again after For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) with this overwrought melodrama based on the romance novel by Edna Ferber. Bergman plays Clio Dulaine, a beautiful half-Creole woman whose return to 1875 New Orleans from Paris creates a stir. Born out of wedlock, Clio's mother was a local woman who became pregnant by a wealthy, married landowner. Scandalized, his wife and family set about humiliating Clio's mother and even paid for Clio's voyage to France in an effort to get rid of the girl. Now Clio returns with a dwarf, Cupidon (Jerry Austin), and a maid, Angelique (Florence Robson) in her entourage. At the docks, Clio meets a handsome gambler from Texas, Colonel Clint Maroon (Cooper) and is smitten. To Clio's delight, their blossoming romance inspires calumny, but Maroon soon realizes that Clio is a gold digger. He departs for Saratoga Springs, where he is working on a venture involving the railroad. Clio follows him there, bent on marrying either Clint or his business partner, Bart Van Steed (John Warburton). Saratoga Trunk (1945) was exhibited to servicemen overseas in WWII for two years before it was released to the general public. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Buster Crabbe and Al St. John (or "Our Old Pals", as they were invariably billed) star in the PRC western Blazing Frontier. As ever, Crabbe plays Billy the Kid, aka Billy Carson, while St. John is the daffy Fuzzy Q. Jones. This time, Billy intervenes in a feud between the railroad company and local settlers. Crooked land agents are busily stoking the flames of the feud, and it's up to Billy and Fuzzy to keep things from getting out of hand. Also known as Billy the Kid in Blazing Frontier, this 6-reel western didn't make it to New York theatres until April of 1944, nearly eight months after its regional release. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on Norman Corwin's satirical radio play My Client Curley, Once Upon a Time is an engaging bit of whimsy, completely dominated by the personality of star Cary Grant. It all begins when fly-by-night Broadway producer Jerry Flynn (Grant) learns of a trained caterpillar (!) that dances to the tune of "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby." In short order, Jerry has promoted Curly the Caterpillar to international stardom-and in the process he alienates both Pinky Thompson (Ted Donaldson), the impressionable 9-year-old who owns Curley, and Pinky's attractive older sister Jeanne (Janet Blair). Eventually, Flynn comes to his senses and regains his essential decency-though it's too late to continue capitalizing on Curley, who has turned into a non-dancing butterfly! Full of delightful contemporary references and "cameo appearances" by such celebrities as producer Walt Disney and radio commentator Gabriel Heatter (both played by uncredited impressionists), Once Upon a Time proved an agreeable diversion for wartime audiences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Complete with a final production number filmed in Technicolor, this tuneful musical depicts the highly fictive ups and downs of fabled vaudeville headliners Jack Norworth (1879-1959) and Nora Bayes (1880-1928). After rejecting a partnership with songstress Blanche Mallory (Irene Manning), Norworth (Dennis Morgan) discovers Miss Bayes (Ann Sheridan), who is wasting her considerable vocal talents by working in a honky tonk. Jack convinces the girl to become his partner but Nora's controlling boss, Costello (Robert Shayne), insures that the team is blacklisted everywhere. Despite this setback, the talented husband-and-wife duo finagles an engagement with the 1907 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies and vows the audiences with Jack's newest composition, the lilting "Shine on Harvest Moon." In reality, Norworth met the already famous Bayes at the office of a music publisher and later became one of her five husbands. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Outdistancing all competing studios, tiny PRC managed to register the title Corregidor for copyright within hours after the surrender of the Allied forces at the real-life Corregidor. PRC even ponied up the money to commission a poem specially written for the film by the great Alfred Noyes. The film finds female Red Cross doctor Royce Lee (Elissa Landi) in love with a colleague named Michael (Donald Woods). Royce in turn is loved by Dr. Jan Stockman (Otto Kruger). But when the Japanese lay siege upon Corregidor, the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans. Actual combat stock footage (not from Corregidor) is intermingled with staged scenes of hand-to-hand combat between the Allies and the Japanese. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this musical, a lovely and ambitious young woman masquerades as the daughter of a formerly beloved stage actress to help launch her Broadway career. She chooses one entertainment columnist in particular. But the starlet's carefully-made plans begin to unravel when a rival columnist learns of her ruse and tries to expose her. Songs include: "Let's March Together" (Saul Chaplin), "I Bumped My Head on a Star" (Cindy Walker), "Honk, Honk" (Roy Jacobs, Gene De Paul), "Timber Timber" (Don Reid, Henry Tobias), "Moon on My Pillow" (Charles, Henry, Elliot Tobias). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Surprisingly little known, Universal's Men of Texas boasts an impressive cast and a fairly exciting and complex storyline. Set just after the Civil War, the film stars Robert Stack as Chicago war correspondent Barry Conovan, who is sent by his newspaper to Texas to get the low-down on the martial law that has been imposed on the state. Conovan is accompanied by Sam Sawyer (Leo Carrillo), his photographer-and never mind that newspapers didn't run photographs in 1866! Despite the good intentions of General Sam Houston (William Farnum), Texas is in the hands of carpetbaggers, scallawags and tinhorn dictators, the worst of whom is Henry Jackson (Brod Crawford), a self-styled patriot who runs his section of the territory like his own private fiefdom, with an army of outlaws at his beck and call. The plot gets even hairier when both Conovan and Jackson fall in love with Jane Baxter Scott (Anne Gwynne), whose younger brother Robert (Jackie Cooper) is a living embodiment of the ideological confusion plaguing postwar Texas. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Maybe Errol Flynn was never the war hero that he often played, but he was a capable boxer, and Gentleman Jim makes full use of this skill. Flynn stars as Jim Corbett, the 19th-century American pugilist who introduced "scientific" methods to bare-knuckle boxing. Originally an office clerk, Corbett is introduced to the then-illegal sport of fighting when one of the bank executives sponsors the young man's training at the Olympic Club. His arrogance wins Corbett a few enemies, including high-born lady Victoria Ware (Alexis Smith), whose dislike turns to casual affection when she realizes that Corbett is a sincere young fellow who can back up his boasts. What "Gentleman Jim" desires most in life is a match with reigning heavyweight champ John L. Sullivan (Ward Bond). Corbett and Sullivan finally meet in a bout governed by those new Marquis of Queensbury rules that Corbett has helped popularize. Twenty-one epoch-making rounds later, Corbett emerges victorious. At the victory celebration, Sullivan and Corbett graciously exchange mutual words of respect and affection. At this point, Corbett has totally won over the lovely Victoria -- but hasn't quite convinced his brawling brothers that "scientific" boxing is the wave of the future, and the film ends with a typical Raoul Walsh-directed battle royal. More faithful to the facts than most Errol Flynn biopics (but still with enough poetic license to drive historical purists up a wall), Gentleman Jim is broad, boisterous entertainment. Though it looks expensive, the film was made under Warner Bros.' standard pinchpenny restrictions; if you look closely at that moored ship where Corbett has one of his first professional fights, you'll notice that it's a leftover set from the 1940 Errol Flynn swashbuckler The Sea Hawk. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This contemporary western centers on two cowboy radio gossip columnists who get themselves in trouble after they begin talking about a certain outlaw's illicit activities. The outlaw and his gang are involved with an enemy spy and secrecy is of the essence. They decide to permanently silence the two. Fortunately, a brave sheriff rides to their rescue and brings the crooks to justice. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This Time for Keeps is a followup to 1940's Keeping Company, with Ann Rutherford repeating her role from the earlier film. Rutherford is cast as newlywed Katherine White, at present undergoing a rocky "period of adjustment" with her husband Lee (Robert Sterling, replacing the original film's John Shelton). Having trouble landing a good job, Lee is persuaded to go to work for his father-in-law Harry Bryant (Frank Morgan in the first film, Guy Kibbee in the second). Unfortunately, Harry doesn't believe in allowing his employees to think for themselves, resulting in even more friction between Katherine and Lee. It's up to Harry's all-knowing wife (Irene Rich, another carryover from Keeping Company) to smooth everyone's ruffled feathers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marlene Dietrich was supposed to have starred in Universal's Sin Town, but the script was not to her liking. Dietrich was replaced by Constance Bennett in the role of a glamorous suspect in a small-town murder. Broderick Crawford and Leo Carrillo costar as a couple of con men who must solve the killing of a newspaper publisher lest they be convicted of the crime. At 75 minutes, the film moves too quickly to pause for such niceties as motivation and logic, but few in the audiences of 1942 complained. Sin Town's three-person writing staff included Richard Brooks, later the director of such "A" pictures as Elmer Gantry and In Cold Blood (though he never did write for Marlene Dietrich). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the eerier chillers of its period -- and one of the best ever to come out of Paramount -- Stuart Heisler's Among the Living is a strange and compelling mix of social drama, horror film, and suspense thriller. The story opens with the funeral of Maxim Raden, the patriarch who was pretty much responsible for building up the town that bears the family name, and which has been dominated for decades by the now-idle mill that he owned. Present at the funeral is Dr. Ben Saunders (Harry Carey Sr.), Raden's oldest friend, and the surviving Raden son John (Albert Dekker), who has been away for most of the last 25 years and recently married Elaine (Frances Farmer), a beautiful young woman from New York. John was one of a pair of twin boys; the other, Paul, died in an accident a quarter century ago, just after John was sent away to school. But Saunders and Maxim Raden had a secret between them -- that Paul Raden didn't die, but went dangerously insane, and has kept been alive all of this time, in a hidden room in the decaying Raden mansion, tended to by the doctor and the faithful family servant Pompey (Ernest Whitman). Paul was a victim of abuse by his overbearing father, and suffered brain damage from a beating he received while trying to protect his mother. He has never stopped "hearing" his father's threats or his mother's weeping, and they leave him prone to violent, potentially murderous outbursts of rage. Worse still, the death of his father has agitated him into a state where he is able to escape the mansion. Once freed and relieved of his quarter century of isolation, Paul is at once confused by and delighted with the company of people; he heads to the town and rents a room at a seedy boarding house, where he immediately attracts the attention of the landlady's frisky (and avaricious) daughter Millie (Susan Hayward) with his large bankroll, free-spending habits, and lost-puppy-dog demeanor. Meanwhile, the doctor reveals the truth about Paul to John, who wants to notify the authorities that his brother is loose and potentially dangerous -- but the doctor won't hear of it, fearing that news of the insane son will tarnish the Raden name and the reputation of the clinic that Maxim founded and funded on the doctor's behalf, in return for his covering up the son's existence.
The stakes get raised higher when the coroner reveals that a death the doctor tried to cover up was, in fact, a murder, and then a young woman is found strangled. While John is torn between sympathy for his brother, who never got the help or care he needed, and his feeling of responsibility to the town, the doctor tries to continue the cover-up by posting a 5,000-dollar reward for the capture of the killer. This sets off an orgy of assaults and destruction as the work-starved townspeople, led by Millie's ex-boyfriend Bill Oakley (Gordon Jones), begin rounding up anyone who looks even the least bit suspicious or out of place, trying to get the reward. Millie's greed is also brought to the fore and she persuades her new boyfriend, Paul, to go with her to the one place no one has searched yet -- the Raden mansion. Paul's veneer of calm unravels as he finds himself back in the location of his imprisonment, and in the course of the fight and the chase that ensues, John is caught and accused, by Millie and all of the other witnesses to Paul's outbursts, as the killer. Now it looks like a lynching is in the offing as hundreds of angry, drunken, greedy townspeople gather together to mete out justice -- and John must make them believe that he has a twin who is responsible for the murders. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide