John Hamilton Movies

Randolph Scott stars as a former Confederate Army officer known only as "Sugarfoot." Hoping to start life anew in Arizona, Sugarfoot manages to incur the wrath of territorial bigwigs Jacob Stint (Raymond Massey) and Asa Goodhue (Hugh Sanders), who've carried a grudge against him since the Civil War. Fortunately he also gets on the good side of saloon-hall singer Reva Cairn (Adele Jergens), which if nothing else affords him comfort during the plot's darker moments. Somewhere along the way, Sugarfoot loses Reva's affections, and nearly loses his life to Stint and Goodhue's hired guns. The aggressively mittel-European S.Z. Sakall is featured in the cast as a local merchant named Don Miguel. Based on a novel by Clarence Buddington Kelland, Sugarfoot was renamed Swirl of Glory when released to television, to avoid confusion with the TV series Sugarfoot--which, in turn, was based on the 1954 feature Boy From Oklahoma. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The title character (Paul Douglas) is a pro football player of the early 1940s at the end of his career. Douglas is offered a coaching job, but he stubbornly turns it down in hopes of making a comeback. Day after day he sits in his den watching movies of his past gridiron triumph, much to the dismay of his wife (Joan Bennett). When she chews him out for living in the past, Douglas walks out and takes up with a younger woman (Linda Darnell). To prove that he's still in top shape, Douglas takes a job as a professional wrestler. His new girl friend, realizing that Douglas is miserable without his wife, conspires with the other woman to get Douglas back on his old team. The wartime need for warm bodies allows Douglas a few more years in football, but eventually he gets wise to himself and takes the coaching job. Ironically, Guy Who Came Back star Paul Douglas was in his youth an football pro who retired from active play to become a sports announcer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Adventures of Kit Carson was a popular TV western series appearing in the early '50s. One of the all-time western good guys, Kit Carson, defended law and order in show after show. ~ All Movie Guide

Louis Calhern repeats his Broadway role as Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in this 1950 cinemazation of Emmet Lavery's stage play The Magnificent Yankee. The film is for the most part confined to the Holmes home in Washington, where the good gray judge parries affectionately with his level-headed wife Fanny (Ann Harding). A steady stream of historical personages parade through the Holmes manse, including jurist Louis Brandeis (Eduard Franz) and novelist Owen Wister (Philip Ober). The death of his wife devastates Holmes, but only briefly; he ends up serving his country for nearly forty years. The British title of Magnificent Yankee was The Man With Thirty Sons, a somewhat misleading reference to the Harvard Law graduates whom Oliver Wendell Holmes sponsored. Also available on videocassette is a 1965 TV production of Magnificent Yankee, starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Columbia Pictures attempted to duplicate the success of Monogram's "Bowery Boys" pictures with its 1950 programmer Military Academy with That Tenth Avenue Gang. Four tough-but-lovable juvenile delinquents are sent to military school but a tough-but-kindly judge. It is hoped that the school's regimen will straighten out the boys and send them down the right path in life. It does, but there are plenty of twists on that path along the way. Topping the cast in Military Academy is Stanley Clements, who in 1956 would replace "Bowery Boys" star Leo Gorcey. Among the supporting players is Buddy Swan, who in 1941 played young Orson Welles in Citizen Kane. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Monte Hale western casts the tall-in-the-saddle hero as a wandering cavalier who strikes a blow for tolerance. Hale is sheriff of a jerkwater frontier town where Polish/American Robert Neil is treated with contempt by certain prejudiced townsfolk. Neil's kinsman Roy Barcroft comes to town with the intent of pulling off a robbery. Implicated in the crime, Neil is cleared by Hale, who also makes a heartfelt speech against judging one by his heritage. As in all of his Republic program westerns, Monte Hale is given an opportunity to sing in The Missourians, though in this case the musical elements take a back seat to the story and its moral. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Judy Garland was originally slated to star in MGM's film version of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, but she was forced to pull out of the production due to illness (recently discovered out-takes reveal a gaunt, dazed Garland, obviously incapable of completing her duties). She was replaced by Betty Hutton who, once she overcame the resentment of her co-workers, turned in an excellent performance--perhaps the best of her career. Hutton is of course cast as legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who ascends from dirty-faced backwoods gamin to the uppermost rungs of international stardom. Her mentor is Buffalo Bill, played by Louis Calhern (like Hutton, Calhern was a last-minute replacement: the original Buffalo Bill, Frank Morgan, died before production began). Annie's great rival is arrogant marksman Frank Butler (Howard Keel) with whom she eventually falls in love. She goes so far as to lose an important shooting match to prove her affection--a scene that hardly strikes a blow for feminism, but this is, after all, a 1950 film. Of the stellar supporting cast, J. Carroll Naish stands out as Sitting Bull, whose shrewd business acumen is good for several laughs. Virtually all the Irving Berlin tunes were retained from the Broadway version, including "Doin' What Comes Naturally", "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun", "Anything You Can Do", "The Girl That I Marry", "My Defenses are Down", "They Say It's Wonderful" and the rousing "There's No Business Like Show Business", which was later tantalizingly excerpted in MGM's pastiche feature That's Entertainment II. Alas, due to a complicated legal tangle involving the estates of Irving Berlin and librettists Herbert Fields and Dorothy Fields, Annie Get Your Gun hasn't been shown on television in years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed on location in the Canadian Rockies, this historical adventure spins a fanciful account of the building of the Canadian Pacific railroad. Randolph Scott heads the cast as Tom Andrews, a rough-and-ready surveyor who meets and conquers all obstacles in the railroad's path. The biggest fly in the ointment is trapper Dirk Rourke (Victor Jory), who perceives the Canadian Pacific as a threat to his livelihood. Rourke foments an Indian uprising which very nearly destroys the railroad. But Andrews and his hardy band persevere. Jane Wyatt plays the heroine among more intelligent and self-reliant lines than is usual in films of this nature. Highly suspect on a historical level, Canadian Pacific is nonetheless an exciting piece of filmmaking, evocatively photographed in Cinecolor by Fred Jackman Jr. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Robert Rockwell, Republic Pictures' resident all-purpose hero, stars in Alias the Champ. This time, Rockwell plays Lt. Ron Peterson, who doubles as a homicide detective and local administrator of the professional wrestling code. When real-life rassler Gorgeous George (that's how he billed himself) is framed for murder by a gang of crooks, Lt. Peterson tries to prove George's innocence. It isn't just the job that motivates Peterson: he's sweet on the wrestler's pretty manager Lorraine (Audrey Long). Fans of the current WWF and WCW TV wrestling extravaganzas might get a kick out of the scenes wherein Gorgeous George, Bomber Kulkavitch, Billy Varga, Jack "Sockeye" MacDonald, the Super-Swedish Angel (aka Tor Johnson) and their confreres hunker down to business in the ring. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Warner Baxter plays the title role in Columbia's Prison Warden. A well-known reformer, Victor Burnell (Baxter) is put in charge of a prison in dire need of reforming. Meanwhile, Victor's faithless wife Elisa (played by future General Hospital star Anna Lee) carries on an affair with convict Al Gardner (Harlan Warde). Through Elisa's influence, Gardner is appointed Burnell's chauffeur, which results in disaster for all concerned. Prison Warden was directed by Seymour Friedman, with whom Warner Baxter had established a copacetic professional relationship during the run of Columbia's "Crime Doctor" series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Many observers felt that western star Monte Hale finally hit his stride with Law of the Golden West. This time, Hale plays young William Cody in his pre-Buffalo Bill days. When his wagon train is raided by bandits and his father is killed, Cody doggedly pursues the villains, with only a hotel-room key as a clue to the head culprit's identity. The bad guys include John Holland as a well-Educated easterner with a predilection for quoting Shakespeare to his nonplussed henchmen (including the inevitable Roy Barcroft) Gail Davis, who went on to play TV's Annie Oakley, is Hale's spirited leading lady, while Paul Hurst provides chuckles as a grizzled hotelier. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The rubber-stamp quality of Allan "Rocky" Lane's Republic westerns continued to manifest itself in Bandit King of Texas. Lane plays an honest cowboy who has seemingly fallen in with an outlaw gang. It comes as no surprise when Lane turns out to be working undercover to bring the gang to justice. As with his earlier films, the whole story is wrapped up in a brisk 60 minutes. One of the pleasanter aspects of Allan Lane's vehicles was their depiction of the villains as fairly normal human beings: in this case, Jim Nolan is the wicked but essentially believable heavy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The success of 1947's Badman's Territory prompted RKO Radio to assemble another "outlaw rally," Return of the Badmen. Randolph Scott plays US marshal Vance, assigned to rid the Oklahoma Territory of outlaws. This proves to be quite a challenge, inasmuch as virtually every frontier bad guy has converged upon the territory. Led by the surly Sundance Kid (Robert Ryan), the rogue's gallery includes the Younger Brothers (Steve Brodie, Richard Powers, Robert Bray), the Daltons (Lex Barker, Walter Reed, Michael Harvey) and Billy the Kid (Dean White). For all the formidable villainy, the film's most fascinating conflict develops between the two heroines: feisty Cheyenne (Anne Jeffreys) and prim 'n' proper Madge Allen (Jacqueline White). Return of the Badmen posted a huge profit, spawning yet another "all-star" western from RKO, 1951's Best of the Badmen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide