George Irving Movies

No relation to the 1935 Mascot programmer of the same name, Girls Demand Excitement offers an early starring appearance by John Wayne. The Duke is cast as college basketball player Peter Brooks, who's in love with sports-happy Joan Madison (Virginia Cherrill). Their hot-and-cold relationship culminates in a boys-against-the-girls basketball match, a scene only slightly less ridiculous than an early sequence in which a bunch of sexually integrated psychology students are assigned to test the "emotional reaction" to a group necking session! Evidently designed as a musical, Girls Demand Excitement contains no songs whatsoever, robbing future generations of the spectacle of John Wayne serenading his lady love. With films like these, it's no wonder that Wayne had to start his career all over again in cheap westerns. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Gay Diplomat was an attempt by RKO Radio to make a movie star out of Ivan Lebedeff, a Russian actor better suited to supporting roles as gigolos and stuffed shirts. Lebedeff plays a Russian military officer sent to Rumania to dispose of a beautiful female spy. Genevieve Tobin plays the suspected espionage agent; not surprisingly, Lebedeff falls in love with her and finds himself unable to carry out his mission. Just as well, since the real spy is another woman, played by Betty Compson. Henry Hobart, the original production supervisor of Gay Diplomat, was so upset by the film's inadequacies and by Lebedeff's lack of star quality that he walked off the project. His replacement was Pandro S. Berman, later the principal producer of RKO's wonderful Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A woman trying to live down her past finds it coming back to haunt her in this drama. Steve Pelton (Owen Moore) is the leader of a gang of confidence men and petty criminals who have set up a base of operations in a large house they all share. One of Pelton's roommates is his girlfriend, Janet Gordon (Joan Bennett), who is convinced Pelton will propose to her someday. However, when Pelton and his mob are raided by the police, Gordon ends up in jail with the rest of them. With the help of kindly cop Dan Emmett (Douglas Cosgrove), Gordon gets an early release, and she meets Stuart Elliot (Hardie Albright), a wealthy and sophisticated man about town. Elliot falls for Gordon and they soon marry, but her happiness is shattered when Pelton is released and decides to blackmail Gordon, threatening to tell Elliot about her scandalous past unless she does his bidding. Hush Money also features George Raft and Myrna Loy in supporting roles as members of Pelton's gang. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The fact that The Naughty Flirt was advertised as having a 78-minute running time but was released at 57 minutes is indication enough that the picture didn't test well with preview audiences. Alice White does her usual as Kay Elliot, a footloose heiress who spends most of her time in night court trying to explain her latest madcap escapade. Kay is in love with white-collar businessman Alan Ward (Paul Page), but he'll have nothing to do with her until she changes her ways. She tries to please him by working as his secretary, but to no avail. In desperation, she agrees to marry fortune-hunting Jack Gregory (Douglas Gilmore), who has been put up to his proposal by his mercenary sister Linda (Myrna Loy, once again far better than her material). Just as Kay is about to take her vows at the altar, she realizes she's still in love with Alan, who has likewise come to his senses. According to some sources, Bela Lugosi played a small role in Naughty Flirt, though he's nowhere to be found in the currently available prints. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The "conspiracy" of the title refers not only to a deadly narcotics ring, but also the combined efforts by the good guys to capture the villains. Margaret Holt (Bessie Love) and her brother Victor (Bert Morehouse) team up to destroy the drug peddlers responsible for their father's death. They are aided in this endeavor by cub reporter John Howell (Hugh Trevor), and by sourpuss mystery writer Winthrop Clavering (Ned Sparks). In the film's tension-packed climax, avenging-angel Margaret slowly sneaks up on gang leader James Morton (Otto Matiesen), dagger in hand. A remake of a Paramount silent film, Conspiracy barely made back its cost, precluding any future remakes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Adapted from a story by Rex Beach, Son of the Gods stars Richard Barthelmess as Sam Lee, a young Chinese-American, anxious to distance himself from his oriental heredity. While travelling throughout the world, Sam falls in love with wealthy white girl Allana (Constance Bennett). He chooses not to tell her about his Chinese ancestors -- a wise decision, as it turns out, since she mercilessly lambastes him with a stream of hateful racist epithets when she does learn the truth. Only after she walks out on him does Sam discover that he hasn't a drop of Chinese blood after all. Even so, he now despises the entire white race and vows revenge against the woman who so viciously spurned him. But when Allana finds out that he's a racially "acceptable" sweetheart, the two fall in love all over again! Modern-day viewers who may find the denouement of Son of the Gods both offensive and unbelievable can take comfort in the fact that reviewers in 1930 experienced a similar reaction. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Released in both silent and sound versions, this lurid melodrama from Universal was based on the 1924 play Carnival by William R. Doyle. Mary Nolan, whose demure name hid a rather volatile personality, played Helen Herbert, a sideshow dancer falling for handsome socialite Bobby Spencer (Leon Janney). After a tête-à-tête with Spencer Sr. (George Irving), Helen, like a carnival version of Marguerite Gautier, heroically disappears from young Bobby's life by leaping to her death from a balloon. A former Ziegfeld girl, Mary Nolan kept changing her moniker (from "Bubbles" Wilson to Imogene Robertson to Mary Nolan) in order to escape a series of lurid scandals. Retiring from films in 1932, she later suffered bouts with drug addiction, managed a bungalow court in Hollywood, and died all but forgotten at the young age of 43 in 1948. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Norma Shearer earned an Academy Award for playing the not so gay divorcée in this pre-Code offering based, loosely, on Ex-Wife, a 1929 Ursula Parrott novel. Shearer is Jerry, a socialite who marries handsome Ted (Chester Morris) after a whirlwind courtship. But Ted is not exactly the faithful type and after three years of what she in her naïveté considered marital bliss, Jerry learns of his affair with Janice (Mary Doran). "It meant nothing," Ted assures her but Jerry is devastated and decides to investigate adultery for herself by sleeping with Ted's best friend, Don (Robert Montgomery). When she discovers that the old double-standard still applies, Jerry announces that henceforth Ted, and only Ted, is no longer welcome in her bed. After a string of lovers who mean little or nothing to her, Jerry falls for an old flame, Paul (Conrad Nagel), but when she understands the effect their affair has on Paul's poor disfigured wife, Dorothy (Helen Johnson, aka Judith Wood), Jerry returns to Ted, who still loves her despite it all. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

This third film version of Rex Beach's rugged Yukon novel The Spoilers was also the first talkie adaptation. This time, Gary Cooper and William "Stage" Boyd are cast as gold prospector Glennister and crooked Alaska politician McNamara. In partnership with Dextry (James Kirkwood), Glennister is the proud owner of the Midas gold mine, but McNamara and the corrupt Judge Stillman (Lloyd Ingraham) conspire to gain control of the mine, using legal but highly unethical maneuvers. Preparing to shoot each other full of holes, Glennister and McNamara are temporarily dissuaded by Glenister's sweetheart Helen (Kay Johnson), who suggests that the courts handle the dispute. But saloon owner Cherry Malotte (Betty Compson), jealous of Helen, lies to Glennister, telling him that Helen and McNamara are conspiring to cheat him again. Matters come to a head when Glennister and McNamara settle their differences with a spectacular fistfight. During filming of The Spoilers, the stars of the 1914 version William Farnum and Tom Santschi showed up frequently on the set, ostensibly to serve as "technical advisers" for the climactic set-to (one suspects that their advice was merely for the benefit of the Paramount publicity department). The Rex Beach story would be filmed again in 1942 with John Wayne and Randolph Scott, and yet again in 1955 with Jeff Chandler and Rory Calhoun. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rubber-legged comedian Leon Errol made his talkie starring bow in Paramount's Only Saps Work. Based on a play by Owen Davis Sr., the film casts Errol as James Wilson, a kleptomaniac who starts with picking pockets and ends up robbing a bank. Wilson's friend Lawrence Payne (Richard Arlen) inadvertently aids our hero during one of his heists, ending up in deep doo-doo with the law. Before Wilson is able to extricate Payne from his dilemma for the sake of heroine Barbara Tanner (Mary Brian), he pauses long enough to pose as a private eye -- and even gives bellboy Oscar (Stu Erwin) tips on how to spot a crook! If only all of Leon Errol's feature films had been as consistently hilarious as Only Saps Work. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This drama is an adaptation of a popular 1927 play and tells the story of a pair of married liberals who are content to remain faithful in spirit only. The ends up having an affair with a musician while her husband heads for Europe. When he returns he tells her about his affair with a French woman. The wife is devastated, for never did she believe her husband would actually sleep with another. In the end, they decide to re-adopt traditional marital morals and remain monogamous. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a aging illusionist falls in love with his comely young assistant. Unfortunately, she is enamored with the young thief who has become the magician's student. Another assistant gets jealous of the affair and tells the master. In retaliation, the thief kills the snitch and then himself at his trial. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Completed as a silent film, Cecil B. DeMille's The Godless Girl was quickly converted into a part-talkie by the simple expedient of tacking on a 10-minute coda, wherein the characters discuss the weather. The film begins as a condemnation of the atheistic movement then prevalent on high-school and college campuses. Heroine Judith Craig (Lina Basquette) and hero Bob Hathaway (George Duryea, later known as western star Tom Keene) hold secret anti-religious meetings with their friends. During one such meeting, the police stage a raid, whereupon a stairway collapses and a young girl is killed. Arrested for complicity in the girl's death, Judith and Bob are sent to reform school, where they suffer mightily at the hands of their sadistic jailers. Likewise brutalized is hard-boiled Mame (Marie Prevost), who in one of the film's most notorious scenes is strung up by her wrists and beaten (DeMille claimed that he was only mirroring "real life," but he was always saying things like that). Somehow, their horrible experiences serve to renew Judith and Bob's faith in God. In a harrowing climax, Bob rescues Judith from a fire, a scene so realistically staged that, for the rest of her life, the actress retained vivid memories of how close she came to being genuinely incinerated. Featured in the cast are Noah Beery Sr. as "The Brute" and Eddie Quillan as "The Goat." The Godless Girl represented Cecil B. DeMille's final production for Pathe; shortly afterward, he moved to MGM, thence to Paramount. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide