Dickie Hall Movies

MGM's musical extravaganza Meet the People top-bills two future powerful TV executives: Dick Powell and Lucille Ball. Ball plays a popular but stuck-up Broadway star who leaves the bright lights to become a welder in a shipyard. Here she meets and falls in love with coworker Powell. This being a wartime musical, the plotline is periodically abandoned for the guest-star turns of the likes of Virginia O'Brien, Bert Lahr, Spike Jones and His City Slickers, Vaughn Monroe, and Mata and Hari. Buried beneath this cornucopia of corn is a stage play by Louis Lantz, upon which Meet the People was supposedly based. (Note: some sources mistakenly list Edward Dmytrk as the director of this film). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

MGM's Our Gang series had fallen into such disrepute by 1944 that the studio released the series' valedictory offering, Tale of a Dog, as an "MGM Miniature." This one begins as black youngsters Buckwheat (Billie Thomas) and Big Shot (Cordell Hickman) decide to give their dog Smallpox to the Our Gang kids as a present. Overhearing this, the gang misunderstands, thinking that "smallpox" is the dreaded contagious disease rather than a pooch. Within minutes, the kids manage to spread rumors about an impending smallpox epidemic, and before long the entire city -- and the Board of Health -- is in a state of panic. It is hard to determine which scene in this film is worse: the "Loose Lips Sink Ships" curtain speech delivered by the mayor or the appalling racial humor when Buckwheat's mom (Willa Pearl Curtis) misinterprets the doctor's instructions to "isolate" her son. Then there's the closing gag, in which Smallpox the dog speaks in an exaggerated Negro dialect. First shown on April 15, 1944, Tale of a Dog was the final Our Gang one-reeler to be filmed, but not the last to be released; that dubious honor went to the equally unfunny Dancing Romeo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

As the incumbent for the presidency of the "One for All and All for One Club," little Mickey (Robert Blake) is so certain he will win that he refuses to campaign. The situation changes radically when Mickey is challenged by political upstart Froggy (Billy Laughlin), who gains popular support with a steady stream of empty promises. But both candidates are in for an unpleasant surprise when Janet Burston appears as a write-in. The one-reel Our Gang comedy Election Daze was released on July 31, 1943, not long before the actual presidential campaign between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thomas E. Dewey. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This fourth entry in MGM's Thin Man series could just as well have been titled "Nick and Nora Charles Go to the Races". Officially retired from sleuthing, Nick Charles (William Powell) does his best to be a dutiful husband to his lovely wife Nora (Myrna Loy) and a good father to his young son Nick Jr. (Dickie Hall). But when murder rears its ugly head at the local race track, Nick is called in by Major Jason I. Sculley (Henry O'Neill), head of the New York athletic commission, to help solve the case. As usual, there is no shortage of suspects: This time the "rogue's gallery" includes high-rolling gamblers Link Stevens (Loring Smith) and Fred Macy (Joseph Anthony); Link's hoity-toity girlfriend Claire Porter (played by legendary acting teacher Stella Adler); two-bit tout "Rainbow" Benny Loomis (Lou Lubin); reporters Whitey Barrow (Paul Kelly) and Paul Clarke (Barry Nelson); and Clarke's sweetheart Molly Ford (Donna Reed). Highlights include a zany episode on a department-store merry-go-round, an outsized brawl at a fancy sea-food restaurant, and the inevitable gathering together of suspects in the offices of police lieutenant Abrams (Sam Levene). The flippant nature of Shadow of the Thin Man can be attributed to screenwriters Irving Brecher and Harry Kurnitz, both longtime friends and associates of comedian Groucho Marx. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide