Howard Hickman Movies

With a little extra effort, Washington Melodrama might have passed muster as an A picture. Frank Morgan stars as millionaire philanthropist Calvin Claymore, who comes to Washington in hopes of promoting a Senate bill on behalf of European war relief. Away from his wife (Fay Holden) and daughter Laurie (Ann Rutherford) for the first time in years, Claymore succumbs to tempation and spends a night on the town with chorus girl Mary Morgan (Anne Gwynne). Though nothing of a sexual nature transpires, Claymore finds himself in a compromising-and possibly fatal-position when Mary later turns up murdered. Blackmailed by slimy nightclub emcee Whitney King (Dan Dailey), Claymore is unable to turn to the police, and must stand by helplessly as the trail of clues leads inexorably to himself. Making matters worse, reporter Walt Thorne (Kent Taylor), the principal investigator on the case, has fallen in love with Claymore's daughter Laurie. It's a melodrama, all right, done up in style by MGM and a topnotch cast. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Scattergood Pulls the Strings was the second in a series of B pictures based on the long-running radio series Scattergood Baines. Guy Kibbee returns as Baines, the philosophy-dispensing proprietor of the general store in the village of Coldriver. Living up to the film's title, Scattergood manages to solve practically everyone's problems in the course of the film's brief running time. He is especially effective in helping a pair of young lovers (Susan Peters and James Corner) achieve their life's ambition, and in reuniting a 10-year-old boy (Bobs Watson) with his long-missing father (silent screen veteran Monte Blue). If this film were any more heartwarming, it would catch fire. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Unrelated to Monogram's series of "Bowery Boys" B pictures, Republic's Bowery Boy stars Dennis O'Keefe as a crusading slum doctor. Actually, O'Keefe doesn't play the title character: that honor goes to Jimmy Lydon, a tough street kid who tries to block the plans made by O'Keefe and nurse Louise Campbell to build a health clinic. But when mobster Roger Pryor sells tainted meat that results in an outbreak of botulism, Lydon becomes O'Keefe's biggest booster. Also in the cast is Jimmy Lydon's younger brother Ormund, who plays...Jimmy Lydon's younger brother. Bowery Boy served as the directorial debut of former film editor William Morgan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The lives of female hoboes in the Great Depression are chronicled in this interesting drama. In order to fully understand the travails of their existence, the governor's daughter dresses down and joins them. There in the hobo camps she experiences their aimless unlucky lives as they hitchhike across the country, and live out of doors. The women are hindered by a pesky sheriff who constantly harasses them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

There are three key characters in Anatole Litvak's filmization of Aben Kandel's novel City for Conquest, as opposed to the six or more in the book -- but the real star, to a large extent, is New York City and its entire population. For purposes of the movie, however, the dramatic arc is linked to James Cagney, as honest, unpretentious truck driver Danny Kenny, whose life is involved with two other people -- his kid brother, Ed (Arthur Kennedy), a gifted musician trying to survive in the rough-and-tumble world of New York's Lower East Side, and Peggy Nash (Ann Sheridan), the neighborhood girl from the Lower East Side whom he's loved, one way or another, since he was a kid. Danny is happy doing what he does, driving a truck, but when Ed's scholarship is cut in half, he reluctantly takes an offer of a boxing match to raise the cash he needs, going into the ring under the fighting name "Young Samson." At about the same time, Peggy -- who loves to dance -- has her head turned by Murray Burns (Anthony Quinn), an ambitious but sleazy aspiring professional dancer. Eventually Peggy goes into partnership with Murray and is ultimately driven by her own ambition to leave Danny after she accepts his marriage proposal. By now, he's getting up in the boxing world, and in his bitterness over losing Peggy he accepts a bout for the world's welterweight championship. He's not overmatched as a boxer, but the money involved in this fight is just too big for it to be honest, and Danny is left all but blinded when his opponent's handlers slip resin dust onto his gloves. Danny is left seemingly a shell of a man, though he's content with his lot in life as far as it goes. He doesn't want any special attention or favors from anyone; the only thing he would like, though he's too proud to admit it, would be for Peggy to come back. But by now her dancing career with Murray has fallen apart, and she's too tortured by guilt, over the sequence of events she helped start, to come near Danny. It falls to Ed, who has never given up composing, to express the inexpressibles that each of these characters feels through his music. His first major classical work is a symphony ostensibly about New York City, which he conducts in its premiere at Carnegie Hall; but it's also about Danny and his life, and his dreams. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

From the same folks who brought us My Son is a Criminal comes the near-lookalike property My Son is Guilty. Veteran police patrolman Tim Kelly (Harry Carey) despairs over the antics of his ne'er-do-well son Ritzy (Bruce Cabot), who prefers to live life in the fast lane. Released from prison after getting mixed up with mob activities, Ritzy promises his dad that he'll try to reform, but before long he's back with a bad crowd, compounding his misdeeds by plotting the demise of his own father. Meanwhile, Ritzy's sweetheart Julia Allen (Jacqueline Wells) gives up on the lad entirely, preferring a much safer relationship with young author Barney (Glenn Ford, in one of his first major roles). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a young man becomes a criminal lawyer after witnessing the police shooting of his father, a thief. Most of his clients are criminals and he soon finds himself involved with a mob boss. Together they build a new crime syndicate. Unfortunately, the attorney's partner is secretly an FBI spy. When the agent is shot, his partner, the lawyer saves his life. He then reconsiders his life and rats on his gangster client to the cops. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

They just don't make 'em like They Drive By Night anymore. This slam-bang Warner Bros. attraction stars George Raft and Humphrey Bogart as Joe and Paul Fabrini, owners of a small but scrappy trucking firm. The film deftly combines comedy with thrills for the first half-hour or so, as the Fabrini boys battle crooked distributors and unscrupulous rivals while establishing their transport company. Things take a potentially tragic turn when the overworked Paul Fabrini falls asleep at the wheel and cracks up, losing an arm in the accident. He's pretty bitter for a while, but, with the help of his loving wife, Pearl (Gale Page), Paul eventually snaps out of his self-pity and goes to work as a dispatcher for the Fabrinis' company. Meanwhile, Joe's on-and-off romance with wisecracking waitress Cassie Hartley (Ann Sheridan) is threatened by the presence of seductive Lana Carlsen (Ida Lupino), the wife of glad-handing trucking executive Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale). At this point, the film metamorphoses into a remake of the 1935 Paul Muni-Bette Davis vehicle Bordertown. Desperately in love with Joe, Lana murders her husband, making it look like an accident, then offers Joe half-interest in Carlsen's organization. Joe accepts the offer, but spurns Lana's romantic overtures, whereupon the scheming vixen accuses Joe of plotting Carlsen's murder. Thus, the stage is set for a spectacular courtroom finale, completely dominated by a demented Lana, whose "mad scene" rivals those of Ophelia and Lucia di Lammermoor. In addition to the full-blooded performances by the stars and the virile direction by Raoul Walsh, They Drive By Night benefits immeasurably from the nonstop brilliant dialogue by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay -- especially in an early lunch-counter scene between Ann Sheridan and George Raft, generously seasoned with hilarious double- and single-entendres. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Promoted as a follow-up to the popular 1939 western Dodge City (which, indeed, was left wide open for a sequel in its closing scenes), Virginia City bears only surface resemblance to the earlier film. Indeed, the only discerning links between the two pictures are the western setting and the presence in the cast of Errol Flynn, Frank McHugh, Alan Hale and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams. After escaping from a Confederate prison during the Civil War, Union officer Flynn vows to stop a $5,000,000 gold shipment from reaching the South. He is challenged by Southern sympathizer Randolph Scott, whose interest in the gold is patriotic, and by outlaw Humphrey Bogart (complete with a Mexican accent that wouldn't convince a cow), whose interests are purely mercenary. Adding spice to the proceedings is Miriam Hopkins as a dance hall chanteusse-cum-Confederate spy. Better in individual components than sum total, Virginia City pleased the crowds in 1940, assuring that the Tasmanian-born Errol Flynn would continue appearing in westerns in the future. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Pat O'Brien is his usual likably obnoxious self in the Warner Bros. newspaper yarn Off the Record. While trying to smash a numbers racket, star reporter Breezy Elliot (O'Brien) takes tough young numbers-runner Mickey Fallon (Bobby Jordan) under his wing. The kid gets a job as a copy boy, earning the enmity of one and all because of his inability to keep his fists to himself. Mickey redeems himself-and, by extension, Breezy-when he engineers the capture of his gangster brother Joe Fallon (Alan Baxter). The romantic angle is handled by Breezy's gal Friday Jane Morgan (Joan Blondell), who eventually agrees to marry the hero only if he adopts the troublesome Mickey as his son (gee, things were so much simpler in the movies!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When both John Wayne and Ray "Crash" Corrigan defected from Republic's "Three Mesquiteers" series, the studio hastily replaced them with Robert Livingston (whom Wayne had originally replaced) and future "Cisco Kid" Duncan Renaldo. In Kansas Terrors, Stoney (Livingston) and his saddle pal Rusty (Raymond Hatton) take a job delivering horses to a flyspeck Caribbean island. Here they join forces with Rico (Renaldo) to topple the regime of a despotic commandante (George Douglas). Despite the fact that Rico was introduced as a horse thief, he becomes fast friends with Stoney and Rusty, and by film's end has agreed to return with them to the US, so that there'll be three Mesquiteers once more. After two years' worth of the Livingston-Renaldo-Hatton team, Republic would come up with yet another winning combination, consisting of Livingston, Bob Steele and Rufe Davis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gone With the Wind boils down to a story about a spoiled Southern girl's hopeless love for a married man. Producer David O. Selznick managed to expand this concept, and Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel, into nearly four hours' worth of screen time, on a then-astronomical 3.7-million-dollar budget, creating what would become one of the most beloved movies of all time. Gone With the Wind opens in April of 1861, at the palatial Southern estate of Tara, where Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) hears that her casual beau Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) plans to marry "mealy mouthed" Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). Despite warnings from her father (Thomas Mitchell) and her faithful servant Mammy (Hattie McDaniel), Scarlett intends to throw herself at Ashley at an upcoming barbecue at Twelve Oaks. Alone with Ashley, she goes into a fit of histrionics, all of which is witnessed by roguish Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), the black sheep of a wealthy Charleston family, who is instantly fascinated by the feisty, thoroughly self-centered Scarlett: "We're bad lots, both of us." The movie's famous action continues from the burning of Atlanta (actually the destruction of a huge wall left over from King Kong) through the now-classic closing line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Holding its own against stiff competition (many consider 1939 to be the greatest year of the classical Hollywood studios), Gone With the Wind won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), and Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to win an Oscar). The film grossed nearly 192 million dollars, assuring that, just as he predicted, Selznick's epitaph would be "The Man Who Made Gone With the Wind." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Following up their successful film Love Affair, Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne team up again for the romantic melodrama When Tomorrow Comes, based on a story by James M. Cain. Philip (Boyer) is a concert pianist who stops into a restaurant for lunch and meets waitress Helen Lawrence (Dunne). He follows her to a rally where she is planning a strike. The two fall in love despite the fact that Philip is married to Madeline (Barbara O'Neil), who suffers from psychotic spells after a miscarriage has brought her to madness. Helen goes on strike and Philip wants to take her to Long Island on his sailboat, but they are stranded by a hurricane. Taking refuge in a destroyed church, Helen learns about his wife and is forced to make a difficult decision. When Tomorrow Comes won an Academy award in 1939 for Best Sound, mostly due to the novel hurricane scene. This is one of three films by director John M. Stahl to be remade by Douglas Sirk in the late '50s and early '60s. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide