Arthur Hoyt Movies

Two rich and wealthy millionaires who have a lot of money bet that reporter Robert Pryor can't spend $720,000 in twelve hours. If you're asking "Why $720,000?", the answer is: because this Republic programmer is titled $1000 a Minute . Anyway, a couple of cops spot Pryor flashing a roll of bills, and deduce that he's the bank robber they're looking for. For the rest of the film, Pryor must race around to spend his money, while remaining two steps ahead of the Law. The supporting actors in $1000 a Minute are delightfully cast to type, from Edgar Kennedy as a detective to Sterling Holloway as a helpful cabbie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sent to Sing Sing prison, influential crook Spencer Tracy is unregenerate and refuses to adhere to the rules. While in solitary confinement, Tracy reconsiders his attitude. Thanks to the correctional facility's compassionate warden (Arthur Byron), Tracy becomes a model prisoner, even refusing to participate in a jailbreak. The warden sets up a special program permitting selected prisoners a degree of freedom and even suggests allowing an occasional furlough. When Tracy's girl friend (Bette Davis) is hurt in an auto accident, he is given a 24 hour pass to visit her. It's a test case--if Tracy doesn't return, the warden will be discredited and replaced. While on the "outside," Tracy learns that his old rival (Louis Calhern) was responsible for his girl's injuries. Davis shoots the rival, who in turn fingers Tracy as the one responsible; the convict thus risks execution upon returning to the arms of the law. Based on the book by real-life Sing Sing warden Lewis E. Lawes, 20,000 Years in Sing Sing was remade in 1940 as Castle on the Hudson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The second of two low-budget murder melodramas starring Ginger Rogers and Lyle Talbot, A Shriek in the Night is not quite as good as the first (The Thirteenth Guest), but it far outclasses most other poverty-row thrillers of its period. The titular nocturnal shriek is heard just before a wealthy philanthropist falls from his penthouse balcony to his death. Virtually everybody in the apartment building comes under suspicion when it is determined that this "accidental" death was no accident. Rival reporters Pat Morgan (Rogers) and Ted Rand (Talbot) spend most of the picture snooping around where they don't belong, the better to outscoop one another. Meanwhile, the already baffled police become more flummoxed when three additional murders occur -- each preceded by a cryptic letter sent to the victim, stating "You Will Get It!" The method of execution turns out to be asphyxiation, but how is this being done? And better yet, why is this being done, and by whom? The solution was unfortunately tipped off in the film's lobby posters, which showed the unconscious heroine being carried off by the actor who turns out to be the killer. Even so, A Shriek in the Night remains an entertaining whodunit, with a pre-Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers doing a great job exhibiting stark, screaming terror. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though Will Rogers was still packing 'em in on Broadway, he was considered a Hollywood has-been when he starred in the independently produced A Texas Steer. Rogers also wrote the screenplay of this "topical comedy," in which he plays Texas rancher Maverick Brander, who is maneuvered into politics by his status-seeking wife Ma (Louise Fazenda). Unfortunately, Maverick finds himself at the mercy of a trio of corrupt political hacks who want our hero to use his influence to push through a piece of questionable legislation. The opponents of the bill contrive to abduct Maverick, but he escapes in time to strike a blow for honesty in Washington. The level of humor in the film can be gauged by such character names as "Bossy Brander," "Dixie Style" and "Fairleigh Bright." A Texas Steer had its moments, but Will Rogers would have to wait until talkies arrived to fully blossom as a film star. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bank president Thomas Dickson (Walter Huston) has instituted a lending policy that shows great faith in ordinary people but which also irritates his board of directors, as does his claim that an increased money supply will help end the Depression. Elsewhere in the bank, criminal Dude Finlay (Robert Ellis) has coerced head cashier Cluett (Gavin Gordon) into cooperating with a robbery by threatening to reveal Cluett as a habitual gambler. Dickson's neglected wife Phyllis (Kay Johnson), upset that Thomas has forgotten their anniversary, agrees to go out with Cluett, but they're spotted by head teller Matt Brown (Pat O'Brien). Matt goes to Cluett's apartment and convinces Phyllis to leave with him just as the robbery takes place back at the bank. Because he was responsible for locking the vault, Matt is assumed to be in league with the robbers, and he's arrested. News of the robbery leads to frantic depositors demanding their money back from the bank; Dickson cannot talk them out of it, and the bank is running out of money. This gives the board of directors the leverage over Dickson that they've been seeking, and they try to force his resignation. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide

This 1933 movie version of Sinclair Lewis's novel Ann Vickers stars Irene Dunne in the title role. Left alone and pregnant by her soldier sweetheart (Bruce Cabot), Ann turns her life around by devoting herself to social work. A frustrating tenure as psychologist in a poorly maintained woman's prison only strengthens Ann's resolve to improve the world around her. She falls in love with the politically progressive judge (Walter Huston) who helps finance her career, standing by him when he is unjustly accused of graft. Ann Vickers contains one startling sequence in which Ann, following the premature end of her pregnancy, walks with great discomfort around her garden while she speaks wistfully about,"the daughter I'll never have." Otherwise, the film suffers from its adaptors' soap-opera mindset, as well as the decision to cram Lewis's complex novel into a brief 75 minutes' screen time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis' satirical novel of the American "middle class" was first filmed as a silent in 1924, then as a talkie ten years later. In this second version, Guy Kibbee portrays George Babbitt, a small town businessman whose sense of self-importance has turned him into a pompous ass. Only Babbitt's loving wife (Aline MacMahon) sees the decent man behind the fatuous facade. Babbitt's ego gets the better of him when he is inveigled by a lovely but duplicitous young lady (Claire Dodd) into promoting a shady land deal. On the verge of ruin, Babbitt is rescued by his wife, though there's every indication that he hasn't completely learned his lesson. While the sting of Sinclair Lewis' original novel has been blunted, One couldn't ask for a better George Babbitt than Guy Kibbee. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this melodrama with strong racist overtones, Clara Bow attempts to revive her failing career by playing a free-spirited girl whose father is an American Indian and whose mother is Anglo Saxon. For some reason the girl doesn't know of her mixed heritage and constantly fights with her dad. The rebellious girl decides to show her dad who's boss by marrying a man he hates. Unfortunately it's a big mistake and soon after she gives birth to a sickly baby the marriage busts up. He leaves her impoverished and in desperation she turns to prostitution. Eventually, she returns to her homeland and learns the truth. Now at peace she meets a boy with similar heritage and they find marital bliss together. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Dore Schary, several years removed from his tenure as head of MGM, was screenwriter for the modest Universal actioner Chinatown Squad. Lyle Talbot plays Ted Lacey, a disgruntled ex-cop reduced to driving a sightseeing bus in Chinatown. When a man who has been collecting funds for the Chinese communist cause is murdered, Lacey leaps at the opportunity to solve the case in hopes of getting his badge back. The killing is tied in with some stolen airplanes -- and, this being Hollywood's version of Chinatown, there's an abundance of sinister-looking suspects. Eighteen-year-old Valerie Hobson is the pretty if antiseptic heroine. For reasons best known to the folks at Universal, Chinatown Squad was included in TV's "Shock Theatre" package, lumped together with the studio's Frankenstein and Dracula pictures! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paramount Pictures' annual college musical of 1934 is a pip, as they used to say. Jack Oakie plays Finnegan, a conceited gridiron hero whose prowess on the football field is exceeded only by his appreciation of the ladies. But his strutting manner and accompanying overbearing ego have alienated his one-time best friend Larry Stacey (Lanny Ross), a serious, more scholarly type who deeply resents the adulation heaped on Finnegan. Things go wrong for Finnegan after he graduates, as he pins his hopes on a job offer from a business firm that folds soon after. He finally shows up at Stacey's department store, where Larry -- the owner's son -- has taken over as general manager; and Larry, finally having the advantage over Finnegan, seeks to humiliate him in the course of helping him out with a menial job. But as it turns out, Larry is no sterling success either -- he's turned his father's once-thriving department store into a haven catering only to the very rich, of whom there were precious few in the midst of the Great Depression; Larry is also such a self-involved prig in his own way, wallowing in self-pity where Finnegan wallows in self-adulation, that he scarcely notices that his own secretary (Helen Mack) is almost dying in her unrequited love for him. In order to save his business, Larry's father, J. P. Stacey (eorge Barbier), turns to Finnegan, the football hero who used to sell 60,000 tickets a week on the playing field -- Finnegan understands ballyhoo, and what the public wants, and is put in charge of the store, and also becomes captain of a football team fielded by the store. Soon the place is jumping, especially when Finnegan brings back his old college team waterboy Joe (Joe Penner) and his duck mascot Goo-Goo, and fetching blonde cheerleader/singer Mimi (Lyda Roberti). Larry is reduced to running a department in the store and finally decides its time to step up and take on Finnegan head-to-head, joining the store's football team. But there's treachery and dirty tricks afoot -- in between a bright score by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel -- when Stacey's takes on a team fielded by their arch-rival store, Whimple's, in a bitter grudge-match fueled by the two owners' mutual dislike for each other. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Pola Negri is her usual overstated self in the outlandish comedy-melodrama Crown of Lies. Negri plays Olga, an immigrant girl who finds work as a domestic in a New York theatrical boarding house. Aspiring to become an actress herself, Olga studies the various boarders and mimics their behavior. This amuses car salesman John Knight (Robert Ames), who falls in love with Olga and invites her to accompany him to the mittel-European kingdom of Sylvania, where he is to open a dealership. But before they can start their journey, Olga is accosted by a servant of Sylvanian Count Mirko (Noah Beery Sr.), who is convinced that our heroine is the long-lost daughter of the Queen (shades of "Anastasia"!) She is spirited off to Sylvania with her boyfriend John in tow and is promptly installed in the royal palace, where she uses her "theatrical training" to pose as a noblewoman. So convincing is her performance that the peasants overthrow the present Sylvanian regime and install Olga on the throne. In the end, however, Olga gives up her regal splendor for a less glamorous but more fulfilling life as the wife of ever-patient John Knight. No, no one believed this one in 1926, either. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This fast-paced but undistinguished farce was Laura La Plante's second starring vehicle for Universal. Colonel Faraday (Arthur Hoyt) is a henpecked husband whose ill-tempered wife (Margaret Campbell) is a reformer. He manages to get himself vamped by Yvette (Eve Southern), who threatens to create a scandal with the love letters he has written her. In a panic, he asks his daughter, Diana (La Plante), to help him out. Diana flirts with Yvette's partner, Gerald Skinner (Philo McCullough), and gets the letters. Her college sweetheart, Royal Randall (Edward Hearn), jealously refuses to believe her explanations and hands the letters back to Yvette. When he finally figures out that Diana is trying to save her father, he convinces Yvette to give up the letters by claiming that Skinner has double-crossed her. Faraday makes his wife believe that he thoroughly disapproves of Randall as a mate for Diana; since she never agrees with him on anything, Mrs. Faraday is more than happy to give the match her blessings. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a dapper thief meets a female detective at a party and fall in love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide