Marsha Hunt Movies

The 1922 silent comedy Don't Write Letters was updated to the war years and remade as A Letter for Evie. Marsha Hunt is the title character, a girl who does her patriotic bit by sending affectionate letters to a soldier overseas. The soldier (Hume Cronyn) comes to visit on leave, accompanied by his best friend (John Carroll). Evie wants to be loyal to her pen-pal, but the pen-pal's pal is so doggone cute. Letter for Evie represents one of the earliest feature film assignments for Jules Dassin, who would eventually contribute such notable films as Rififi and Never on Sunday. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Iris Teleton (Margaret Leighton) is invited to tea by Blanche Herbert (Marsha Hunt), who is carrying on an affair with Iris' husband, Oliver (Murray Matheson). When Blanche asks Iris to give Oliver a divorce, Iris turns her down -- thus setting in motion a chain of events leading to murder. In the end, Iris' fate rests in the hands of her husband...and one might conclude that he knew all along what the outcome of the story would be. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this routine possession potboiler, Peggie Castle plays a suburban housewife being slowly driven mad by the intrusive, restless spirit of her husband's first wife, whose soul has been tainted by her participation in a Satanic cult headed by high priest Father Renall (Otto Reichow). The woman's husband (Arthur Franz) and his sister (Marsha Hunt) decide to infiltrate the cult in order to put an end to its murderous practices, but it is only through the intervention of a former cultist (Marianne Stewart) that they are able to overthrow the evil master's reign of terror once and for all. The tepid screenplay by Catherine Turney is an adaptaion of her novel The Other One. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Greer Garson is dignity and integrity personified in the role of the real-life Edna Gladney. After several life experiences which rival daytime drama for unrelenting misery and melodrama, Edna marries flour-mill owner Sam Gladney (Walter Pidgeon). They have a baby, who dies shortly after Edna discovers that she can never have any other children. To give her life some meaning, Edna sets up the Texas Children's Home and Aid Society, which specializes in caring for illegitimate children and offering them for adoption. After her husband's death, Edna becomes a powerful political figure, succeeding in removing the stigma of illegitimacy by having that word stricken from all future Texas birth certificates; in this way, she honors the memory of her own half sister, who had killed herself upon discovering she was born out of wedlock. MGM thought enough of Blossoms in the Dust to film the production in Technicolor, a luxury usually reserved in 1941 for musicals or Westerns. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Karl Malden plays an air force sergeant who is tempted by a better-paying civilian job. Malden's daughter Natalie Wood is in love with a young colonel (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) whom her father regards as an insolent hothead. The younger man proves his worth during jet maneuvers, while Malden decides that he's of more value in the service than as a working stiff. Bombers B-52 has some excellent moments, including a well-staged variation of the obligatory "breaking the news to the pilot's widow" scene. The film earned latter-day notoriety in the 1980s when a prominent movie historian analyzed the script (by Irving Wallace) and found an overabundance of sexual innuendo--including such in-flight dialogue as "She's unable to receive fuel" and "Request jet penetration!" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This dark comedy charts the chaos that results when the panicked staff of a major English hospital attempts to prepare for a visit by the Queen Mother, only to face every problem imaginable. Britannia Hospital clearly attempts to recapture the anarchic bite of director Lindsay Anderson's previous satires If... and O Lucky Man, but fails to achieve the same combination of intelligent political critique, comic lunacy, and skillful filmmaking. (Indeed, the three films are often considered a loosely linked trilogy, largely due to the presence in all three of lead Malcolm McDowell). The film does make a valiant effort, but its commentary on the poor, labor disputes, and the inhumanity of bureaucratic institutions mixes uneasily with the film's broader elements, like the experiments of a cartoonish mad scientist. The result is often quite entertaining on a scene-by-scene basis, but the film never reaches the level of delirious, farcical energy or satirical sharpness to which it clearly aspires. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Something of a distaff Mr. Chips, schoolteacher Ella Bishop (Martha Scott) devotes her life to her work, ageing 50 years (from 19 to 69) in the course of the film. At a testimonial dinner on the occasion of her retirement, Miss Bishop's former students wonder why their beloved teacher never married. In flashback, the audience learns that town grocer Sam (William Gargan) has carried a torch for her for five decades, while she obliviously pursued unfortunate romantic relationships with weak-willed Delbert Thompson (Donald Douglas) and unhappily married John Stevens (Sidney Blackmer). Adapted by Stephen Vincent Benet from the melancholy novel by Bess Streeter Aldrich, Cheers for Miss Bishop was not only a tour de force for Scott, but also represented the screen debut of another young character actress, Rosemary De Camp. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a young man must choose between a military career or a career in professional football. The story opens as the young man has just graduated from Annapolis. There he had been a football star and a second lieutenant. His father the colonel wants him to stay in the Marines, but he has also been offered a contract with a pro-football team. He finally makes his decision after he exposes a ring of gun runners. It is then that he decides that serving his country is most important. He joins Leathernecks. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Generous stock footage from Paramount's silent Zane Grey series enhances the production values of the entertaining "pocket" western Desert Gold. Though most of the storyline is taken up the romance between young pioneers Dick Gale (Tom Keene) and Jane Belding (Marsha Hunt), the most compelling character is young Indian chief Maya, played by Buster Crabbe. Faithfully guarding the gold deposits which rightfully belong to his people, Maya finds his hands full fending off the villainous incursions of claim-jumping Chetley Kasedon (Monte Blue) and his gang. Dick Gale casts his lot with Maya, forming a united front against the villains. Featured among the supporting cast are new Paramount contractees Robert Cummings as an eastern tenderfoot, and Glenn (later Leif) Erikson as Kasedon's brother. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An outwardly upstanding and inwardly corrupt politician provides the focus for this thriller. While campaigning the man espouses policies based on "traditional moral values," but he himself is a poor example of those values as an vengeful reporter soon discovers. With the help of an ex-hooker, the journalist learns that the politician is deeply involved in the underworld. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Financier J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) -- known in the press as "the Bull of Broad Street" -- may be one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the country, but he also knows the value of a dollar. And when his wife (Mary Nash) spends 50,000 of them on a sable coat, he is driven into such a fury in the ensuing argument on the roof of their Fifth Avenue townhouse, that he throws the coat into the street -- where it promptly lands on the head of Mary Smith (Jean Arthur), a clerk-typist on her way to work, riding on the upper deck of a double-decker bus, ruining her hat in the process. She jumps off the bus to try to return the coat, but Ball insists that she keep it. What she really needs, however, is not a 50,000-dollar sable coat so much as a ride to work -- as she doesn't even have a dime for bus fare -- and perhaps a new hat. Ball obliges, taking her to one of the top clothing stores in New York, buying her an expensive fur hat to go with the coat, and then dropping her at work in his limo. Her superiors, seeing her decked out in a sable coat and a new hat, and getting out of the chauffeured car, conclude that Mary is a kept woman, and, therefore, unfit to work for the boys magazine where she is employed, and they fire her. Now out of work and virtually broke, she seems to have become a victim of random fate, but suddenly the scales start to tip the other way from the very same misunderstanding that got her fired. Having been seen in the company of J.B. Ball -- whose name she didn't even get -- she is rumored to be his mistress; the prissy clothing store proprietor (Franklin Pangborn) spreads this story, and that turns Mary into the object of attention for Mr. Louis Louis (Luis Alberni), the owner of a failed luxury hotel on which Ball's bank holds the mortgage, and is about to foreclose. For reasons that she can't begin to understand, since there is nothing going on between her and J.B. Ball (whose name she doesn't even know), or between her and anyone, Louis moves her into the most luxurious suite in his hotel for a dollar a day, asking her only to inform "that certain someone" of how she loves living there. Mary has no idea of who "that certain someone" is, or what Louis is talking about, but she needs a place to live, and Louis is insistent. She still needs to eat, and, while trying to get a meal at the automat, she crosses paths with a handsome, well-meaning, but inept waiter (Ray Milland), who gets fired for helping her. She takes him into her suite so he has a place to stay, and the two fall in love in the course of finding out about each other. She knows that he is John Ball Jr., but doesn't realize that he is the son of J.B. Ball, trying to make it on his own, nor does she yet realize who J.B. Ball is, in terms of being the man who gave her the coat and the new hat, or one of the wealthiest men in the country. But after the elder Ball spends an innocent night at the Hotel Louis, a gossip columnist named "Wallace Whistling" (William Demarest) prints that he is keeping a woman at the hotel, and suddenly the Hotel Louis, perceived as a fashionable playground for the upper-crust, is filled with guests. This multiple case of mistaken identity plunges through two or three new layers, eventually bringing about an impending stock market crash to rival 1929, before Mary discovers who her would-be benefactor and her would-be fiancé are. She bails them out of the jam that they're in, also restoring the Ball's marriage, her own reputation, and her romance with Ball's son in the process. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Ralph Bellamy made the first of four appearances as fictional sleuth Ellery Queen in Columbia's Ellery Queen, Master Detective. For reasons that defy logic, the studio elected to transform the brilliant, analytical Queen into a hopeless bumbler, who seems incapable of tying his own shoes, much less solving a murder. Set at a posh health resort, the story gets under way when wealthy physical culturalist John Braun (played by former director Fred Niblo) is killed after threatening to cut all his heirs out of his will. Investigating the killing is crime novelist Ellery Queen, his police-inspector father (Charles Grapewin), and another mystery writer, Nikki Porter (Margaret Lindsay). In short order, the body disappears, along with the will, a set of X-rays, and an ambulance! Somehow, Ellery Queen manages to put the pieces together and solve the crime, whereupon Nikki Porter offers to become Ellery's secretary-even though it's clear she's got more brains in her left toe than he has in his whole carcass. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

MGM had a tendency to overglamorize the sort of rough-hewn film fare that Warner Bros. offered to its public without adornments. Such was the case of Flight Command. Instead of Warners' streetwise James Cagney, the MGM film stars pretty-boy Robert Taylor as the obligatory hotshot cadet who chafes at the authority and discipline of a naval flight squadron. While Warners might have done without a romantic subplot, MGM contrives to have Taylor fall for the wife (Ruth Hussey) of squad commander Walter Pidgeon. And whereas Warners would have told this story compactly in 90 minutes, MGM lolls around for nearly two hours before Taylor's anticipated redemption and "make good" scene. MGM newcomer Red Skelton shows up in Flight Command for comedy relief, which turns out to be neither. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide