Hugh Huntley Movies

Another of Universal's Richard Arlen-Andy Devine actioners, Lucky Devils casts the mismatched duo as a pair of intrepid newsreel cameramen. When they're not risking their lives coverning the Hot Spots of the world, Dick (Arlen) and Andy (Devine) busy themselves romancing Norma (Dorothy Lovett) and Gwendy (Janet Shaw), respectively. Our heroes' predilection for sticking their noses where they shouldn't gets them mixed up with a gang of Axis saboteurs. Perfect nonthink entertainment, Lucky Devils was specifically designed for the lower half of double bills. Sharp-eyed viewers will spot future Universal star Maria Montez among the bit players. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this drama, a waitress leaves her husband after getting sick of being alone while her husband, a commercial pilot, plies his trade. To be near her, he quits his job and joins the state police air service. Unfortunately, he becomes mixed up in an interdepartmental rivalry between road-bound and airborne cops. Later it is the aerial cops that capture a ring of notorious jewel thieves. This causes his wife to respect him and his job and they are happily reunited. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In her only Warner Bros. starring film, Carole Lombard plays a Hollywood movie actress who makes the park-bench acquaintance of an impoverished French marquis (Fernand Gravet). Hoping to coerce Carole into marriage, the nobleman poses as a butler and enters her household. His plan is to compromise Lombard and force her to make him an "honest man"--with the attendant cash settlement. Ralph Bellamy, as ever, is the poor clod who really loves Lombard but who loses her in the end to the chastened Gravet. Rodgers and Hart were commissioned to write several songs for this film, but found most of their efforts consigned to the cutting room floor. Fools for Scandal was based on Nancy Hamilton's stage play Return Engagement. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Suzy is the film in which Cary Grant, overcome by the beauty and vivacity of Jean Harlow, sings her a love ballad! This lighthearted moment aside, Suzy, adapted from a novel by Herbert Gorman is a standard-issue love triangle, set against the tapestry of World War I. Harlow plays a London showgirl, married to Irish engineer Franchot Tone. When foreign spy Benita Hume shoots Tone, mistaking him as a threat against her mission, the terrified Harlow flees into the night, certain that she will be accused of her husband's murder. After the war breaks out, Harlow, believing herself a widow, falls in love with handsome aviator Cary Grant. She marries the well-bred but irresponsible young ace, only to discover that Tone has not been killed after all! This being an idealized World War I film, somebody is going to end up sacrificing his/her life on behalf of somebody else, but we're not about to reveal any more. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Kay Francis stars as Stella Parish, a London stage favorite who suddenly disappears without a trace. British news correspondent Keith Lockridge (Ian Hunter) girdles the globe in search of Stella, who has left her beloved daughter Gloria (Sybil Jason) in the care of an aunt (Jessie Ralph). Finally locating his quarry, Lockridge learns that Stella dropped from view to hide the fact that she once served a jail sentence as an accessory to murder. He promises to kill the story for Gloria's sake, but his dispatch is inadvertently published away, forcing Stella into a tawdry career as a "freak" stage attraction (not unlike Evelyn Nesbit Shaw). After hitting rock-bottom in a burlesque show, Stella is rescued by her old director Stephan Norman (Paul Lukas), who invites her to revive the show she was starring in at the time of her disappearance. Little does she know that this comeback has been arranged by Lockridge, who hopes to atone for betraying her trust. All roads lead to a tear-stained reunion between Stella and her daughter, a denouement as inevitable as death and taxes. For years, it was believed that Errol Flynn played an unbilled bit in I Found Stella Parish, but a researcher in the late 1960s discovered that the Flynn look-alike was actually Francis X. Bushman Jr. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Joan Colby (Ann Harding) is the unmarried older daughter in a once-wealthy family. She's always been the mature, level-headed one among the two sisters, but she is feeling the pressure to find a husband especially strongly these days, as her much more flighty and impetuous younger sister Valerie (Lucille Brown) is about to marry. Joan has been lately seen in the company of John Fletcher (William Powell), the wastral heir to a once-great shipping company -- he doesn't care a bit about the family business, but still has enough money to live an upper-class lifestyle without worry, and is a well-known playboy, and enjoys Joan's company. With her sister's help and the unwitting participation of her well-meaning father (Henry Stephenson), Joan manages to set up a situation in which John is forced to do what they used to call "the decent thing" and marry her. Joan is secretly torn by guilt about how she got his name, however, and tries to be a truly good wife for John over the months that follow -- she gets him to clean up his life a bit, and to take himself more seriously and look past the next game of polo, and even starts to convince him to take more of a role in his family's moribund shipping line, which is about to pass into outside control as a result of his neglect. But when Valerie, in a fit of anger, blurts out the truth about how their marriage came about, John loses all interest in Joan, returning to the company of his ex-girlfriend (Lillian Bond) and turning the matter over to his lawyers. Now Joan has to fight on two fronts, to help save her husband's business, and also to save their marriage before it's too late. Given this plot, it may seem odd that Double Harness was presented as a comedy, but it is, and a good one, too. The humor lies in the way the upper-class are shown "coping" with the Great Depression, and the witty presentation of the romantic flirtations in the lives of Joan, Valerie, and John (and their friends), as well as the tone of John and Joan's marriage -- Joan, in particular, has a wryly detached side that comes out even at her most unhappy moments. It's all very sophisticated, a comedy by adults, about adults, for adults, and it holds up amazingly well as a piece of entertainment across 75 years. In some ways, Double Harness is also a bit reminiscent of the 1930 version of Holiday, which is perhaps not entirely accidental or surprising, as the latter also starred Ann Harding, although Cromwell's 1933 film is a far more skillful and accomplished cinematic work by modern standards. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Magnificently restored by UCLA to its original "Grandeur" wide-screen format The Bat Whispers may not be a cinematic masterpiece but is certainly worth a second look. Opening with a series of flamboyant tracking shots, director Roland West soon enough settles down to the usual "Old House" shenanigans of sliding panels, mysterious bumps in the night, crawling hands, thunder and lightning (sounding more like an earthquake, incidentally, than a storm), etc. An official remake of the 1926 The Bat (which was itself based on an Avery Hopwood play), The Bat Whispers owed just as much to The Cat and the Canary (1927), the true grand-daddy of all haunted house mysteries. After taunting the New York City police a final time, the notorious criminal "The Bat" announces his retirement to the country. Meanwhile, in said country wealthy spinster Cornelia Van Gorder (Grayce Hampton is leasing the Courtleigh Fleming estate. The news of "The Bat" and the simultaneous disappearance of cashier Brooks Bailey (William Bakewell) shortly after a robbery at the Fleming bank set in motion a series of troubling events -- troubling especially for Miss Van Gorder's eternally frightened maid Lizzie (Maude Eburne). The missing Brooks Bailey shows up soon enough courtesy of Van Gorder's pretty niece Dale (Una Merkel), who persuades the young man to impersonate a gardener -- a disguise that fools no one. There is a mysterious doctor who speaks with an accent (Gustav von Seyffertitz); an equally alarming caretaker (Spencer Charters),; a piece of missing blueprint that leads to a secret room; and, of course, "The Bat," who appears to be prowling the estate as well. Enter into all this Detective Anderson (Chester Morris), who in his unique gritty way gets to the bottom of things. The "Grandeur" wide-screen format was lost on most movie-goers when the film premiered in late November of 1930. Exhibitors who had just spent fortunes rigging their theaters for sound were of course loath to spend even more on yet another "newfangled" invention. Of course, some of cinematographer Robert H. Planck's more breathtaking shots of "The Bat" climbing towering skyscrapers were lost in the standard 35mm prints. But cartoonist Bob Kane reportedly had this film in mind when he nine years later created his eternally popular comic-strip hero Batman. A sadly neglected craftsman, Roland West directed only 11 films before he retired at the age of 44. West (who also directed the 1926 The Bat co-starring his then-wife Jewel Carmen as the imperiled niece) left films to run a Santa Monica café with girlfriend Thelma Todd. He was questioned by the authorities but was apparently never a suspect in Todd's mysterious death in December of 1935. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Originally, Louise Brooks was only supposed to have a supporting role in this comedy-drama starring Adolphe Menjou. Partway through filming, however, Menjou's co-star Greta Nissen dropped out and Brooks' role was rewritten and expanded. It was only her third film. Menjou is Max Haber, a barber in a small town who works at the shop belonging to his father (a surprisingly unslapstick-y Chester Conklin). His sweetheart is Kitty Laverne, an ambitious manicurist (Brooks). She goes to New York in hopes that Max will follow. He does, and he manages to land a job at a big New York barber shop. Mrs. Jackson-Greer (Josephine Drake) convinces Max to pose as a French Count, and he is pursued by April King, a title-seeking young woman (Elsie Lawson). Eventually Max's fakery is unmasked and he happily returns to his small town, followed by Kitty. Unfortunately, no copies of this film seem to exist -- the last known print was lost in a fire at the Cinematheque Francais. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

This Horatio Alger-type drama stars John Striker. Titus Burke (Walter Lewis) is a thief, and the sheriff gathers up a posse to capture him. Burke's wife Martha (Mary Alden) convinces their son Angus (Joseph Drew) that their lives are in danger and, as a result of his fear, Angus shoots the sheriff dead. The mother is also killed in the fray. Although he's only a boy, and an orphan, Angus is tried for murder. He is found not guilty and a kind-hearted man gets him a job on the local newspaper. The small-minded townsfolk don't want him around, however, and he is sent away. Twelve years later he returns (played by Striker) and takes over the paper. In spite of opposition, he proves his worth and helps to save the town from a group of swindlers. Now firmly established in the town that once shunned him, he is able to settle down with his childhood sweetheart Lydia (Margaret Courtot). ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

After her success in Humoresque, character actress Vera Gordon became known for her matriarchal roles. Here, she is Mrs. Lantini, an Italian immigrant who keeps her family together in New York City. Her husband (Bertram Marburgh) makes plaster casts for a living. When the Lantini's boy, Lorenzo, saves little Dorothy Manton in an accident, her father (William H. Tooker) takes an interest in the family. He funds the boy's education and he becomes an architect. Because of his success, Lorenzo (Hugh Huntley) is able to move his family to fashionable Riverside Drive, and they are all happy except for the earthy mother Lantini, who thinks the servants get in the way. Lorenzo has designed a theater for Richard Sewell (Donald Hall). His sister, Francesca (Yvonne Shelton), approaches Sewell for some theatrical costumes and he attacks her. Lorenzo finds out that his sister has been raped, and when he goes to Sewell's, he finds him dead. The young man is arrested and convicted of the murder, and only Mrs. Lantini's love keeps the family from falling apart. Eventually the real killer is apprehended, and Lorenzo is freed to be united with Dorothy (Ray Kean). Francesca's sweetheart resolves to marry her in spite of the circumstances. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

In this tale of high society, Blanche Sterling (Corinne Griffith) is a spoiled young woman who weds a man who's after her money. Only after their marriage does she realize that he's mercenary and a philanderer. Things get even worse when her wealth is lost because of a stock speculation made by her father. Blanche has one faithful friend, however -- her former suitor Ned Warren (Percy Marmont), and he gives her his help and support. Conveniently, the wicked husband accidentally swallows poison and dies, leaving Blanche and Ned to be together. This picture was based on the turn-of-the-century stage success by Clyde Fitch, which back then was considered one of the "greatest plays of all time." ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi