Virginia Hammond Movies

A follow-up to the highly successful Bolero, this lively romantic drama stars George Raft as Joe Martin, a Cuban-American dancer who lives and works in Havana with his lovely partner Goldie Allen until a bad case of varicose veins forces impacts his career. One night, the beauteous gringa heiress Diane Harrison (Carole Lombard) comes to the club. Joe is immediately smitten. His interest takes a less fleshly turn when he learns that she owns a yacht. When Diane compliments Joe on his moves, her escort gets jealous and a fight ensues. Joe finds himself jobless and flees to the jungle where he learns the rumba from the exotic Carmelita (Margo). He loves the dance and predicts that it will be the next fad. To promote it, he and Margo open a new club in Havana. The place is a smash. Diane returns, is wowed by both Joe and the dance and offers to bring back to his native New York. But Joe came to Havana after ratting on a gangster and if he returns, will surely die. Still, he and Margo decide to take the risk and their choice results in romance. The spectacular dance numbers were choreographed by the famed dance team Veloz and Yolanda. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A variation on the Lady for a Day theme, Universal's Lady Tubbs stars Alice Brady as Henrietta "Mom" Tubbs, the no-nonsense cook in a rowdy railroad construction camp. Upon inheriting a fortune, Mom Tubbs trains herself to enter high society, not so much for her sake as for that of her pretty niece Wynne (Anita Louise). But before she can stage-manage the marriage between Wynne and Long-Island socialite Phil Ash-Orcutt, Mom must expose a few pompous stuffed shirts for the hypocritical phonies that they really are. Lady Tubbs scores most of its laughs from its central situation, but it's never above resorting to slapstick to make a few comic points. Particularly amusing is a wild fox-hunt sequence, portions of which later showed up in Abbott and Costello's In Society. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this romance, a slightly crooked and highly ambitious mayoral candidate convinces a woman to help him blackmail the incumbent by using a little baby as evidence in a paternity suit. The girl goes along with it until she learns that the mayor is innocent. Suddenly she begins working for him. In the end, the crooked candidate changes his ways and romantic bliss ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This drama examines the rivalry between a mother and the daughter she is too vain to acknowledge. The mother is a famous actress who does not want her true age to be known. She, therefore, keeps her 19-year old daughter secreted away in a boarding school. The daughter is too old to be concealed. She wants her own life, and she wants her mother to acknowledge her existence. She goes to New York to see her mother. At her mother's house, the young woman encounters her mother's newest suitor. He sees the young girl and falls for her. The mother becomes terribly jealous and tries to thwart the romance. She fails, and the happy young couple get married. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The second of three Kay Francis films in which the star was cast as a dedicated lady physician, Doctor Monica was adapted from a Polish play by Marja Morozowicz Szezepkowska. Francis plays obstetrician Dr. Monica, whose husband John (Warren William) cheats on her with young Mary (Jean Muir). When Mary becomes pregnant, the selfless Monica befriends her, provides her with advice, and delivers the baby. The good doctor even offers to give up John so that the child will have a father. But after giving birth, Mary calmly tells John to go back to Monica -- even though there's every indication that he'll never give up his philandering ways! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Back in the 1930s, the "Search for Beauty" contests were designed to scout the hinterlands of America and England for beautiful girls and handsome men who might qualify as movie contractees -- though most the winners were drawn from the ranks of Hollywood residents. These contests, coupled with a play by Schuyler E. Gray and Paul R. Milton, formed the basis for this 1934 comedy. Real-life "Search for Beauty" winners Larry "Buster" Crabbe and Ida Lupino (both of whom had already appeared in a few films) head the cast in this story of a contest staged by a two-bit "physical culture" magazine. When the winners, Don Jackson (Crabbe) and Barbara Hilton (Lupino), realize that they've been hired exclusively to pose in bathing suits for the pin-up trade, they leave for the greener pastures of a legitimate health farm. The magazine's crooked publishers try to extort money from Don and Barbara, but they're foiled by a local justice of the peace (Frank McGlynn Sr.) who turns out to be an agent of the U.S. Department of Justice! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This is the second movie version of Willa Cather's Pulitzer Prize winning novel that tells the story of a bride-to-be whose fiance is near-fatally injured by the jealous husband of a woman he had an affair with. The poor young woman is so upset by the situation that she swears she will never love another and takes off to live in an isolated mountain retreat. There she feels terribly sorry for herself. One day she is moping along a rough trail, falls and hurts herself. Fortunately, she is rescued by an elderly lawyer who helps her heal both physically and psychologically. The grateful girl ends up marrying him. Unfortunately she meets a handsome young man with whom she falls passionately, but chastely in love. Now she regrets marrying the old attorney. She decides to tell the lawyer her true feelings. When she is finished he promptly keels over with a heart attack. It might be noted that after Cather saw this film, she forbade the further sale of her works to Hollywood. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this musical drama from directors Alexander Hall and George Somnes, Claudette Colbert stars as Sally Trent, a children's radio show host by day and a nightclub singer by night. After giving her only child (a daughter) up for adoption amid hard times, Sally uses the listeners of her show as surrogate children while she searches for the girl in hopes of being reunited. Unfortunately, the girl's father also has plans of tracking him down. Penned by songwriters Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin, some of the songs in the film include "Don't Be a Cry Baby," "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Love," "It's a Long Dark Night," "The Torch Singer". ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

Beautiful but impractical socialite Penelope Newbold (Carole Lombard) has convinced herself that "the perfect marriage" is an impossible concept. After all, she reasons, no one man could possess all the virtues required for an ideal husband. Thus, she divides her time between dependable, hard-working gynecologist Dr. Karl Bemis (Paul Lukas) and wastrelly playboy Bill Hanaway (Ricardo Cortez). Penelope wises up in a hurry when Bill turns up murdered in the bedroom of another woman, whereupon our heroine takes a crash course in nursing to prove worthy of the faithful Dr. Bemis. If Carole Lombard had continued starring in dreck like No One Man, chances are that she wouldn't have attained the legendary status she presently enjoys in the annals of movie history. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on the radio serial of the same name, Chandu the Magician is a veritable rollercoaster ride of thrills and terror, boasting some of the best special effects of its period. Edmund Lowe stars as suave Frank Chandler, better known to his enemies as Chandu the Magician. Though he tries to keep his supernatural powers a secret from his beloved sister Dorothy (Virginia Hammond), niece Betty Lou (June Vlasek, aka June Lang) and nephew Bobby (Nestor Aber), Chandu's hand is forced by megalomaniacal villain Roxor (Bela Lugosi at his ripest). Holding Dorothy's scientist husband Robert Regent (H. B. Walthall) captive, Roxor hopes to force Regent to reveal the secret of his death ray (created, of course, "for the good of mankind") by kidnapping the scientist's wife and kids. Chandu manages to remain one step ahead of Roxor, performing all manner of miraculous magical feats to confound his enemy, but even our hero temporarily falls victim to the villain's machinations when Roxor abducts Chandu's sweetheart, Princess Nadji (Irene Ware). The production-design expertise of co-director William Cameron Menzies is never so obvious than when Chandu and his friends are subjected to the various serial-like perils imposed upon them by Roxor; some of these cliffhangers would seem to have been the inspiration for similar situations in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark. Counterpointing the excitement is the comedy relief of Herbert Mundin, cast as a bibulous valet who is bedeviled by a remonstrative, pint-sized "alter ego." Two years after Chandu the Magician, the film's villain, Bela Lugosi, was offered the rare opportunity to play the heroic Frank Chandler himself in the exhilarating 12-part serial The Return of Chandu. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Despite a troubled production that witnessed the exits of both leading man (Phillips Holmes) and director (George Fitzmaurice), this tearjerker was a winner at the box office in November of 1932. Constance Bennett plays Broadway diva Judy Carroll who loses custody of a wee orphan after testifying in a notorious embezzlement case. To get over the blow, Judy co-produces a play that basically mirrors her own life experiences, falling in love with playwright Jake (Joel McCrea) in the process. But when she learns that Jake's wife (Virginia Hammond) is with child, Judy nobly severs the romance and instead finds solace in the arms of the worldlier Tony (Paul Lukas). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

In this drama, set in 1929 when the stock market crashed, a selfish, money-grubbing wife ruins her husband, an accountant after she feeds him a fake stock market tip. Prior to that, she had been having an affair with a wealthy fellow. She destroys her husband because she is bored with her lover and wants to start fresh in Bermuda. On the island, she meets a wealthy Australian who wants to get married. Her husband wants his fortune back. To get it, he blackmail's his wife's former lover. The capricious woman soon tires of the Australian and returns to her spouse. She then tears up the blackmail check. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi