Ariel Heath Movies
PRC's Machine Gun Mama is the sort of comedy that tries to get laughs by invoking the name of Brooklyn. Wallace Ford and El Brendel play a couple of American dimwits who find themselves travelling through Latin America with an elephant. Why an elephant? So Wally and El can sell the pachyderm to a broken-down carnival, thereby making the acquaintance of Armida, who is the prettier half of a trick-shooting act. What we have here is essentially a two-reel comedy, inflated to 61 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Armida, El Brendel, (more)
- 1944
The career girl in this PRC musical is Joan (Frances Langford), a Kansas City gal with showbiz aspirations. She heads to New York, where she sets up residence in a theatrical boarding house straight out of Stage Door. A few setbacks later, Joan lands the lead in a Broadway musical revue, which despite its threadbare production values (a PRC trademark) bids fair to be the hit of the season. Endearingly old-fashioned, Career Girl puts over its clichés with energy and verve. Besides, any picture with wisecracking Iris Adrian in a large role can't be all bad. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1943
Lupe Velez is "The Mexican Spitfire" in everything but name in the frantic baseball farce Ladies Day. Eddie Albert plays Wacky Waters, star pitcher of the Sox, a league-leading contender for the World Series. Alas, whenever Wacky falls in love, his game suffers-and so do the wives of his teammates, who are counting on that Series bonus money. When Wacky marries vivacious movie star Pepita Zorita (Velez), the wives, led by Hazel Jones (Patsy Kelly), take drastic action, kidnapping Pepita and hiding her out in a hotel room. But Pepita manages to wriggle out of the hotel towels that bind and gag, disguise herself as a bellboy, and head to the ballpark during the Big Game. Fortunately, Pepita turns out to be Wacky's prime motivation for winning the Series, and there's a happy ending for one and all. Pretty lame as far as baseball films go, Ladies Day will be best appreciated by fans of Lupe Velez and Patsy Kelly, who never speak when shouting will do. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lupe Velez, Eddie Albert, (more)
Manhattan working girl Jean Arthur bids goodbye to her three erstwhile suitors (Grant Withers, Hans Conried and Grady Sutton) to take a bus tour of the west. En route, she meets handsome rodeo-star John Wayne, whose bucking bronco hurls him directly into her lap. Stranded in a tank town with Wayne and his sidekick Charles Winninger, Arthur is introduced to the sort of frontier activities not covered by the tour books: gambling, boozing and brawling. Not surprisingly, Arthur wants to hightail it back to the East, but by now Wayne has fallen in love with her. Lady Takes a Chance was produced for RKO by Jean Arthur's then-husband, Frank Ross. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Arthur, John Wayne, (more)
- 1943
Black Hills Express gets off to a powerful start, as hero Lon Walker (Don "Red" Barry) and his sidekick Deadeye (Wally Vernon) pick through the bloody remains of a stagecoach holdup-massacre. Vowing to catch the varmints responsible, Walker is impeded by a crooked sheriff (Jack Rockwell) and a crookeder banker (George Lewis). But justice triumphs, with some help from Walker's fists and six-guns. Ariel Heath, a promising ingenue who disappeared from pictures after a handful of films, is the heroine. One of the plusses of Black Hills Express is that it affords comedy-relief Wally Vernon an opportunity for some convincing dramatics. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Don "Red" Barry, Wally Vernon, (more)
- 1943
- NR
One of Cary Grant's most financially successful 1940s vehicles, Mr. Lucky finds Grant atypically cast as a shifty, out-for-number-one gambler. Having dodged the draft by adopting the identity of a dead man, Grant sets his sights on purchasing a fancy gambling ship. To raise the necessary funds, he pretends to be working hand in glove with the American War Relief society. Once he meets Laraine Day, however, Grant is seized by an uncontrollable bout of honesty. It takes him awhile, but he finally does the right thing. The film is framed in flashback, as old seaman Charles Bickford explains why a tearful Laraine Day waits at the dock each evening for a certain ship to come in. Also in the cast is Paul Stewart as a cold-eyed but nonetheless semi-comic hoodlum, and Kay Johnson and Gladys Cooper as elegant but gullible society women. The best aspect of this breezy comedy-drama is Grant's cockney propensity for "rhyming slang," a running gag better heard than described. Mr. Lucky was later adapted into a TV series in 1959, with John Vivyan in the Cary Grant part and with Blake Edwards at the production controls. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cary Grant, Laraine Day, (more)
- 1943
Adapted from the Cornell Woolrich novel Black Alibi, The Leopard Man is a lesser but still fascinating psychological-horror effort from producer Val Lewton. Someone has been killing off the citizens of a small New Mexico town, and the most likely suspect is a huge leopard, purchased for a local nightclub act by press agent Jerry Manning (Dennis O'Keefe), which has escaped from its cage. Neither Manning nor his star Clo-Clo (Margo) are totally convinced that the big cat is responsible.The haunting finale takes place during the annual "Day of the Dead" festivities. The opening sequence of Leopard Man, atmospherically detailing the last few moments of murder victim Teresa Delgado (Margaret Landry), is so powerful that the rest of the film seems anticlimactic. Long available only in its 59-minute reissue form, the film was restored to its original 65-minute running time in the mid-1980s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dennis O'Keefe, Margo, (more)
- 1942
This modestly produced film version of Gregor Ziemmer's book Education for Death surprised everyone at RKO--and in the film industry--by becoming one the biggest hits of 1943. The "children" invoked in the title are borne on behalf of Adolf Hitler; according to the film, it is standard operating procedure in Nazi Germany for young girls to willingly submit to being impregnated by Aryan men (with or without the benefit of clergy) in order to sustain the "Master Race." Those who refuse are ticketed for sterilization, or worse. One of the holdouts is Bonita Granville, a German girl raised and educated in America whose taste of democracy has made her utterly resistant to Nazism. In the film's key scene, the near-naked Bonita is publicly flogged for her defiance, whereupon Bonita's lover, "good Nazi" Tim Holt, suddenly has an awakening of conscience and stops the whipping. This act of courage results in the executions of both Holt and Granville, but they willingly go to their deaths rather than accede to Hitler's demands. It is true enough that many people flocked to see Hitler's Children because of the sensational, censor-provoking aspects of the film, but equal numbers of filmgoers and critics also recognized the above-average artistic contributions of director Edward Dmytryk and scriptwriter Emmet Lavery (both of whom received substantial cash bonuses for their work on this film). Hitler's Children was the second biggest moneymaker of RKO's 1943-44 season, only slightly behind the Cary Grant vehicle Mr. Lucky. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tim Holt, Bonita Granville, (more)
