Arthur Ayleswofth Movies

This comedy centers around an inept reporter who wouldn't recognize a hot story if it burned him on the hand. The trouble begins when he is assigned to do a story on a local wine festival. Meanwhile an escaped convict holds the heated interest of the rest of the newspaper employees. The bungler gets involved when he goes to the wrong location and ends up on a bus where someone is killed. He becomes a suspect, and later when he must stop at an inn, he finds his girl friend and a detective there too. At the inn, the proprietor has two priceless jeweled chess pieces that have been attracting a lot of attention from the public, and from the fugitive convict. Mayhem ensues when the crook shows up to claim the chessmen. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Melodramatic gangster action characterizes this tough and freely fictionalized biography of notorious, murderous Chicago mobster Roger Touhy. Set during Prohibition, it centers on Touhy's rise from small time thug to the city's most powerful bootlegger whose empire is rivaled only by that of Al Capone (who is referred to, but never named in the story). It is his rival who frames Touhy for kidnapping and arranges for him to serve a life-long term in Stateville prison. Determined to be free again, the desperate Touhy and his cellmate Basil "the Owl" Banghart, begin plotting a violent break out. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Forced to flee Paris during the Occupation, the great French leading man Jean Gabin starred in a brace of Hollywood films, the best of which was the first, 20th Century-Fox's Moontide. Cast to type, Gabin plays Bobo, a brooding itinerant dock-worker who gets mixed up in a drunken brawl. Upon awakening, Bobo is convinced that he has killed a man by his mercenary "pal" Tiny (Thomas Mitchell). Despairing at the thought of having committed murder, not to mentioned being blackmailed for the rest of his life by the treacherous Tiny, Bobo is able to find a few fleeting moments of happiness with Anna (Ida Lupino), a suicidal young girl whom he has saved from a watery grave (The intensity of the love scenes may well be due to the allegedly real-life romance between Jean Gabin and Ida Lupino). Novelist John O'Hara adapted the screenplay from a book by actor Willard Robertson. ~ 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

From first frame to last, foxy Charles Coburn thoroughly dominates the proceedings in the bubbly RKO Radio comedy Unexpected Uncle. Living in retirement in Florida, ex-tycoon Seton (Charles Coburn) gets bored with sitting around doing nothing, and decides to extend himself to others for the first time in his life. Deftly pulling strings behind the scenes, Seton manipulates the budding romance between lingerie saleswoman Kathleen (Anne Shirley) and young millionaire Johnny (James Craig). Figuring that Kathleen will be a more desirable bride if Johnny's family thinks that she's rich herself, Seton poses as the girl's uncle, a guise that leads to all sorts of hilarity, including a chucklesome drunk scene. Ernest Truex tries to steal a scene or two as Johnny's manservant, but it's Charles Coburn's show all the way. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Faith, Hope and Charity motivate the wacky storyline of Columbia's Three Girls About Town--or to be more exact, gorgeous sisters Faith, Hope and Charity Banner, played respectively by Binnie Barnes, Joan Blondell and Janet Blair. Faith and Hope are gainfully employed as New York hotel hostesses, whose job it is to entertain wealthy out-of-town conventioneers (but no hanky panky, if you please!) They've remained in this profession in order to afford the expensive private-school education of their sister Charity, who shows up in the Big Apple in pursuit of her own career, or a wealthy husband, or both. Charity's arrival coincides with several big-time conventions, one of which is being covered by Faith's newspaper-reporter boyfriend Tommy Hopkins (John Howard). Things get dicey when the three girls discover a corpse in one of the hotel rooms. Certain that they'll be blamed for the death (or at the very least fired from their jobs!), the sisters conspire with Tommy to hide the body from the cops. Trouble is, the body just won't stay hidden, not even when our heroines try to dispose of the awkward stiff in one of the coffins brought into the hotel for an undertaker's convention. Blessed with a generous supply of belly-laughs and an unending stream of familiar character actors, Three Girls About Town sustains a proper level of zaniness right up to the cop-out finale. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With Paramount abandoning its "Zane Grey" western series in 1941, 20th Century-Fox took up the cudgel with such films as The Last of the Duanes. George Montgomery stars as Buck Duane, who in 1870 returns to his Texas hometown, only to find out that his father has been murdered. Following the most obvious suspect, Duane discovers that the culprit is a member of a highly organized outlaw gang. Realizing that he's outnumbered (no kidding!), Duane joins the Texas Rangers, hoping not only to break up the gang but also expose its mysterious leader. Eve Arden is surprisingly but effectively cast as a dance-hall girl who briefly befriends the hero. Last of the Duanes was previously filmed by Fox in 1931, with George O'Brien in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Future Universal contractees Robert Paige and Grace MacDonald (in her film debut) star in the Paramount mini-musical Dancing on a Dime. The story concerns an entertainment troupe financed by the government's Work Projects Administration. When the WPA drops its funding, the young performers despair until they come across an abandoned roll of money. Unaware that the cash is counterfeit, the kids use this windfall to finance their upcoming show, but the Feds catch up with them on opening night. Will a last-minute miracle permit the film to end on a happy note? The Frank Loesser-Burton Lane songs included one bonafide hit, "I Hear Music". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Inspired by the true story of the leader of the Mormon Church, this film features Dean Jagger in the title role. The members of the Church of Latter Day Saints are subjected to religious persecution by the people of Nauvoo, Illinois, where they've settled; so under the leadership of Brigham Young, the Mormons head west, facing tremendous adversity along the way. However, a gravely ill Young has a prophetic dream in which he sees what he believes is his people's promised land, where they will be allowed to live and worship as they see fit. Soon they discover the land Young saw in his dream -- Salt Lake City, Utah. Young and his followers settle there, but their hardship does not end soon. The first winter in Utah is cruel, and while the spring brings the promises of a bountiful planting season, soon a plague of locusts appears, threatening to devour the crops the settlers have just planted. A huge flock of seagulls arrives to save the day by consuming the insects. Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell play a pair of settlers who fall in love in the course of the journey. Brigham Young downplays the more controversial aspects of the Mormon church (particularly polygamy) in favor of portraying Young as a trail-blazing man of the land; in some markets, the film was shown as Brigham Young, Frontiersman. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The last of MGM's "Nick Carter" trilogy, Sky Murder is a tad too cute and clever for its own good, but its mystery angle holds up pretty well. Returning from a weekend party, amateur sleuth Nick Carter (Walter Pidgeon) boards a private plane, where urbane Fifth Columnist Andrew Hendon (Tom Conway) is murdered in a locked compartment. Suspicion immediately falls upon refugee Pat Evans (Kaaren Verne), who was being blackmailed into helping Hendon smuggle secrets to the Nazis. Dividing his time between the land and the air, Carter is eventually able to expose the real murderer, and to smash the Nazi spy ring for good and all (or at least until the next spy movie). The film is hampered by the excessive comedy relief of Carter's self-appointed assistant Bartholomew the Bee Man (Donald Meek), who once upon a time was an amusing character. Far better attuned to the film's framework is perennial dumb blonde Joyce Compton, here cast as deceptively scatterbrained female detective Chris Cross. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Kenneth Roberts' fact-based novel Northwest Passage would seem too raw and explicit a book to be considered for an MGM film adaptation-much less one in Technicolor. Amazingly, MGM retained many of the grim episodes from the Roberts' novel, though - thanks to the Hays Code - most are discussed rather than shown. The film is set in 1759, when the headstrong and gifted young artist Langdon Towne (Robert Young) is expelled from Harvard much to the chagrin of his parents and his fiancee, Elizabeth Browne (Ruth Hussey). Towne and his tough-as-nails sidekick, Hunk Marriner (Walter Brennan) get soused one night in a pub and - while intoxicated - viciously insult Elizabeth's father, Rev. Browne (Louis Hector). The two men are nearly arraigned for the incident, but escape just in time and ultimately wind up at the camp of famed Indian hunter Major Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy). Rogers then invites Towne to join his troupe as a cartographer, and suggests that Marriner tag along. Together, the hundreds of Indian fighters under Rogers's aegis team up and chart their way through the wilderness, headed straight for St. Francis, the base of the French-supported Abenaki tribe, notorious for bloodily wiping out British-controlled colonies, after which they will forge the titular 'northwest passage' to the Pacific. Along the route, the boys counter such obstacles as traitorous Native American guides and exploding gunpowder. Metro Goldwyn-Mayer originally slated this production for Tracy, Wallace Beery, Robert Taylor and Franchot Tone, but only Tracy signed on; the studio reeled in Brennan and Young as last-minute additions, to support Tracy's lead. Northwest Passage marked Vidor's first Technicolor film. William V. Skall and Sidney Wagner received Oscar nominations for their outstanding cinematographic work on the film. Nineteen years after its premiere, Northwest Passage later became an NBC TV series between 1959-60, starring Keith Larsen in the Tracy role, Buddy "Jed Clampett" Ebsen in the Brennan role, and Don Burnett in the Young role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a New York physician takes a much-needed vacation down South. Unfortunately, he encounters a nurse working in the backwoods and ends up helping her to combat an epidemic that rages through the mountain communities. The doctor she works for prefers traditional herbs to modern medicine. At first the locals resent the big city doctor's intervention, but when he stops the scourge, they change their opinions. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide