Otto Hoffman Movies

David Clary (Charles Ray), fed up with the old-fashioned way his father is running the family dry-goods store, decides to go to New York to make good. Although he is but a tie clerk naive enough to be victimized by a burlesque actress (Catherine Young), he brags that he is a success and that his father has had him come home to run the store. This, David does with much fanfare, but in spite of the flashy exhibitions he executes, it still loses money. The burlesque show comes to town, and once again the actress tricks David; this time it's a badger game in which her husband demands five thousand dollars in hush money. David desperately puts on a sale at the store, but it's not making enough money to cover this amount; luckily the husband walks in and the corset model (Dorcas Mathews) recognizes him as her husband. As a result, the man is taken away to jail. A man who owns a chain of stores comes in and shows interest in buying the Clary business. David bluffs him into offering 75,000 dollars. So finally David makes good and wins the store clerk (Jane Novak) who secretly loved him all along. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Gangster boss Egan (Sam Hardy) manages to beat a murder rap by framing his mistress Marion (Margaret Livingston) for the crime. After eight years in stir, Marian is released on good behavior. She seeks out Egan and tries to persuade him to confess his crime, but he is unmoved. But when his life is saved by Marian's sweetheart Dr. Bradford (Lloyd Hughes), Egan magnanimously turns himself in. In the course of the film, ratchet-voiced Sam Hardy sings the Irving Berlin standard What'll I Do, which was at least good for laughs (whenever he hears or sings the song, the sentimental gangster decides not to kill his latest victim!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ball of Fire is a delightful retelling (by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett) of the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" legend -- though strictly for grownups. Gary Cooper is the youngest of eight bookish professors authoring an encyclopedia. They find a perfect "research associate" in the curvaceous form of stripteaser Barbara Stanwyck, who (chastely) hides on the professors' domicile to escape her gangster boyfriend (Dana Andrews). As Stanwyck interprets various slang expression, she and the professors grow quite fond of one another; she brings out their sentimental sides, while they revive her essential decency. Naturally, Cooper is the one most smitten, though he hides his true feelings until the inevitable clinch. When gangster Andrews and his torpedo Dan Duryea show up to claim Stanwyck (Andrews wants to marry her so she can't testify against him), the professors save the day and it is Cooper who ends up with the beautiful Stanwyck. For the record, two of the "ancient" professors are Richard Haydn and O.Z. Whitehead, still in their mid-thirties (the others are S.Z. Sakall, Tully Marshall, Oscar Homolka, Leonid Kinskey and Aubrey Mather). Producer Sam Goldwyn later remade Ball of Fire as a Danny Kaye musical, A Song is Born (1948). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A wealthy young heir rebels when his snooty parents refuse to allow him to marry a lovely young secretary. Deciding to teach them a lesson, he goes West where he falls in love and marries the daughter of a Native American chief. He brings her home to meet his parents, who are naturally appalled, and vengeance is his. Unfortunately their marital bliss is disturbed when a woman shoots her married lover and the Indian girl is blamed for the crime. The husband then goes to the police and confesses the crime to protect her. Fortunately, the astute police put the couple together in a room bugged with a concealed microphone. They then learn that both are innocent. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Bunty Pulls the Strings was adapted from the immensely popular stage farce by Graham Moffat. Leatrice Joy stars as a Scottish lassie who has her hands full solving various domestic problems. Her brother Raymond Hatton faces a prison term, and she herself is in danger of losing boyfriend Cullen Landis. All ends happily with a double wedding ceremony, with Leatrice's father (Russell Simpson) not only giving the bride away but taking a bride himself. Surprisingly, comic actor James Finlayson, who co-starred in both the British and American stage versions of Bunty Pulls the Strings, does not participate in the film version. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

James Barton plays a salty old sea captain on the verge of retirement, forced to return to the sea when his funds run out. Planning to stay with his ship only long enough to pay his mortgage, Barton finds himself on the bounding main a lot longer than expected due to bad weather and unexpected delays. When his ship catches fire, Barton rescues his crew and guides them to shore. He returns to his Cape Cod home a hero, and the mortgage is forgotten. Likewise forgotten is Captain Hurricane, which disappeared shortly after its 1935 release and is seldom resurrected for TV--except in the wee small hours on cable's American Movie Classics. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cimarron was the first Western to win the Oscar for Best Picture--and, until Dances with Wolves in 1990, the only one. The film begins on April 22, 1889, the opening day of the great Oklahoma Land Rush on the Cherokee Strip. Boisterous Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) is cheated out of his land claim by the devious Dixie Lee (Estelle Taylor). Instead of becoming a homesteader, Cravat establishes a muckraking newspaper, and with pistols in hand he becomes a widely respected (and widely feared) peacekeeper. He also displays a compassionate streak by coming to the defense of Dixie Lee, who is about to be arrested for prostitution. Cravat's insistence on sticking his nose into everyone's affairs drives a wedge between him and his young wife Sabra (Irene Dunne), but she stands by him--until he deserts her and her children, ever in pursuit of new adventures. Sabra takes over the newspaper herself, and with the moral support of her best friend, Mrs. Wyatt (Edna May Oliver), she creates a powerful publishing empire. Cimarron makes the mistake of placing most of the action early in the film, so that everything that follows the spectacular opening land-rush sequence may feel anti-climactic. While it's always enjoyable to watch Irene Dunne persevering through the years, it's rather wearing to sit through the overblown performance of Richard Dix, who seems to think that he can't make a point unless it's at the top of his lungs. Cimarron creaks badly when seen today, but it still outclasses the plodding 1960 remake. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Victor Sjöström gave MGM this well-crafted adaptation of Alphonse Daudet's novel, Kings in Exile. The King of Illyris (Lewis Stone) weds the princess from a neighboring mythical kingdom, making her his Queen (Alice Terry). She is disgusted to discover that he has a mistress, Sephora (Helena D'Algy), and turns to Prince Alexei (John Bowers) for friendship. A revolution flares up in the little nation, and the King is willing to abdicate, but the Queen wants the crown for the sake of their son. The royals escape to Paris, and the King finally begins to grow on the distrustful Queen. In spite of his behavior, the King admits that he has always loved her. It turns out that Sephora is in league with the revolutionists, and this puts the King's life in danger. He decides to abdicate in favor of his son, and the Queen resolves to stick by his side. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

A bachelors' club is shaken when one of its members forfeits his five thousand dollar fee to wed. Then another member adopts the child of a dying friend. This inspires Robert Audrey (Harry Myers) to adopt, too -- he figures it will get his mother (Georgia Woodthorpe) off his back. Mrs. Audrey picks out the photo of an adorable six-year-old war orphan, not realizing that the photo is 12 years old. So Audrey is quite shocked when pretty Ruth Atkins (Mae Marsh) shows up on his doorstep. The other members of the club also adopt war orphans with unexpected results -- crotchety old James Crockett (Claude Gillingwater) requests a boy but winds up with a girl and the highly efficient Henry Allen (William Louis) gets triplets. These children win over their reluctant adopted daddies with no problem, while Audrey falls in love with Ruth. Crockett and Allen both find wives who can mother their children and the bachelors' club is dissolved. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

When the brutal Captain Briggs (a miscast Dustin Farnum) destroys a Malay idol, a native witch (Evelyn Selbie) puts a curse on him. From there on in, death follows him. He marries, but his wife dies when their son is born. The son reaches adulthood and weds, but the couple catch a fever and die, leaving Briggs with an orphaned grandson. The boy, Hal (Bernard J. Durning, also the film's director), grows up to be as violent and mean-tempered as his grandfather. He gets into a brawl and is stabbed by a poison dagger. Briggs, who had once had his own encounter with a poison dagger, has both the poison and the antidote -- unfortunately, he doesn't recall which is which. But he risks his life by tasting one of the powders. It turns out to be the antidote, and he gives it to Hal, who recovers. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Anyone who believes that the career of silent screen idol John Gilbert ended because his voice has too high for the talkies hasn't seen this marvelously black comedy. In perhaps his best performance of the sound era (with his supporting role in 1934's The Captain Hates the Sea running a close second), Gilbert plays a rogue who can get away with just about anything because of his charisma and charm -- and his voice suits his character perfectly. Karl (Gilbert) is a chauffeur who goes to work for a Viennese Baron and Baroness (Reginald Owen) and Olga Baclanova) on the day that two of their servants -- head butler Albert (Paul Lukas) and maid Anna (an astonishingly lovely Virginia Bruce) -- are being wed. Almost immediately Karl creates havoc in the household -- he flirts with the innocent, susceptible Anna, blackmails the Baroness, who is having an affair, and seduces the middle-aged head cook, Sophie (Bodil Rosing), only so he can get his hands on her life savings. In spite of his wickedness, there is something magnetic about Karl, and Anna -- who is vaguely dissatisfied with her loving but dogmatic husband -- finally succumbs. But all of his schemes inevitably backfire on him and after Albert gets Sophie's money back, he gladly tosses Karl out of the Baron's mansion. The next we see of him, he is c harming his way into yet another chauffeur position (hinting at a potential sequel that, unfortunately, never came). Gilbert, who wrote the story four years earlier, originally had an appropriately macabre ending -- after a brutal fight, Albert drowns Karl in a vat of wine. When he first came up with the idea, Gilbert had wanted Erich Von Stroheim to direct. By 1932, this was out of the question (MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer had little use for Stroheim). Instead, the highly capable Monta Bell was given the job -sadly, it was one his last directing assignments. During the shoot, Gilbert and Virginia Bruce fell in love and they were married in August, 1932, the month that the film was released. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Filmed on location at Big Bear and Wrightwood, CA, this Tim McCoy series entry from Columbia moved the stalwart hero from the range to the Pacific Northwest and gave him a handsome young co-star in Robert Allen, a former singer. McCoy played Tim O'Hara, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police assigned to investigate an illegal fur trading racket. A former friend of Tim's, Brad Harrison (Ward Bond), gets in the way of things, and the mountie is at one point falsely accused of killing Randall (Bud Osborne). But Randall was one of gang leader Stalkey's (Otto Hoffman) henchmen assigned to murder Tim. Bob Rutledge (Allen) arrives from mountie headquarters with orders to arrest his colleague but Brad comes through in the end and clears Tim of all charges. Columbia producer Irving Briskin was rather obviously grooming handsome Robert Allen to take over from the aging McCoy but then changed his mind and Allen was instead re-assigned as leading man for coloratura Grace Moore (Love Me Forever, 1935). Allen did eventually get his own B-Western series, six Texas Rangers films from 1936 to 1937. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide