Dean Jagger Movies

This '40s film (based upon a Jack London story) is set in Alaska's gold rush days and revolves around the dilemma faced by a man wrongfully accused of murder whose future depends upon his ability to solve the crime. ~ All Movie Guide

This powerfully tense, fast-paced suspense drama also yields a grim social message about racial prejudice. Spencer Tracy is John J. MacReedy, a one-armed stranger who comes to the tiny town of Black Rock one hot summer day in 1945, the first time the train has stopped there in years. He looks for both a hotel room and a local Japanese farmer named Komoko, but his inquiries are greeted at first with open hostility, then with blunt threats and harassment, and finally with escalating violence. MacReedy soon realizes that he will not be allowed to leave Black Rock; town boss Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who had Komoko killed because of his hatred of the Japanese, has also marked MacReedy for death. MacReedy must battle town thugs, a treacherous local woman (Anne Francis), and finally Smith himself to stay alive. The entire cast is flawless, especially Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin as the mean-spirited town bullies, and the relentlessly paced action never eclipses the film's sobering themes. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

Ultra-pasteurized pop singer Pat Boone makes his feature film debut in this comical and tuneful look at adolescent life in the late 1950s. A group of teen-age boys discuss the attributes of the perfect girl and proceed to create a mental image of their dreamboat. Later they find her in the form of Jean, the new telephone operator in town. One of the lads, Sanford Wilson, falls hard for the comely lass. They begin dating, but as final exams approach, Sanford must temporarily shift his attention to his school work. To keep her from the other less-honorable boys who want her, he has handsome Lieutenant Langley Beaumont squire her around. Unfortunately, she and Langley soon fall in love, causing the anguished Sanford to join the military and leave for a year and a half. ~ Sandra Brennan, 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

Inspired by the true story of the leader of the Mormon Church, this film features Dean Jagger in the title role. The members of the Church of Latter Day Saints are subjected to religious persecution by the people of Nauvoo, Illinois, where they've settled; so under the leadership of Brigham Young, the Mormons head west, facing tremendous adversity along the way. However, a gravely ill Young has a prophetic dream in which he sees what he believes is his people's promised land, where they will be allowed to live and worship as they see fit. Soon they discover the land Young saw in his dream -- Salt Lake City, Utah. Young and his followers settle there, but their hardship does not end soon. The first winter in Utah is cruel, and while the spring brings the promises of a bountiful planting season, soon a plague of locusts appears, threatening to devour the crops the settlers have just planted. A huge flock of seagulls arrives to save the day by consuming the insects. Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell play a pair of settlers who fall in love in the course of the journey. Brigham Young downplays the more controversial aspects of the Mormon church (particularly polygamy) in favor of portraying Young as a trail-blazing man of the land; in some markets, the film was shown as Brigham Young, Frontiersman. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In his first starring role (after being second-billed to Claudette Colbert in The Gilded Lily), Fred MacMurray plays officer Ross Martin of the Michigan State Police. After completing his training, Martin is pitted against dignified Professor Anthony (Sir Guy Standing), who uses his academic status as a cover for his bank-robbery activities. Keeping himself abreast of police maneuvers by listening to car radios and unobtrusively hanging around headquarters, Anthony ultimately uses his technological know-how to paralyze the police communications systems. But with the cooperation of the Massachusetts police department, whose radios are in full working order, rookie Martin and rustic sheriff Pete Arnot (Frank Craven) combine forces for a final assault upon Anthony's hideout. Its sometimes illogical plot twists notwithstanding, the screenplay is based on a series of factual articles, first published in Saturday Evening Post. Also given a career boost in Car 99 is another new Paramount contractee, Ann Sheridan. ~ 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

Though he had previously appeared in David Bradley's film adaptation of Julius Caesar, Dark City marked Charlton Heston's first role in a major Hollywood production. Danny (Heston) and his pals Augie (Jack Webb), Soldier (Henry Morgan), and Barney (Ed Begley Sr.) set up a poker game to take Arthur Winant (Don DeFore) for all his money, but after the fact they discover that the money he lost wasn't really his and, in desperation, Arthur killed himself. Arthur's brother Sidney (Mike Mazurki), a large man not known for his emotional stability, becomes enraged when he learns the facts about Arthur's death, and he vows to kill the men responsible. When his friends start dropping like flies, Danny hides out with his girlfriend, nightclub singer Fran Garland (Lizabeth Scott), and pays a visit to Arthur's widow Victoria (Viveca Lindfors) in hopes of finding out who the killer might be. Jack Webb and Henry Morgan later reformed after their first appearance together as criminals when they co-starred in the TV show Dragnet. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Allan Dwan directs the family-oriented drama Driftwood, starring nine-year-old Natalie Wood. Orphan Jenny Hollingsworth (Wood) is found in a rural small town in Nevada that is ravaged by Rocky Mountain fever. She meets the local doctor, Steve Webster (Dean Jagger), who is working on a research project. Steve plans on leaving the girl with his girlfriend, Susan Moore (Ruth Warrick), while he goes to San Francisco to do research. However, enny's dog attacks a little boy and gets taken away by Sheriff Bolton (James Bell). Jenny develops Rocky Mountain fever from the dog and gets deathly ill. Also starring Walter Brennan as Murph, Charlotte Greenwood as Mathilda, and Jerome Cowan as Mayor Snyder. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

In this pastoral drama, a ruthless gang of fugitives, hide from the law on a remote farm. There they find themselves profoundly affected by the old blind man and his loyal dog that lives there. They also gradually begin to respect the honest toil and simple rewards of country life. When the gang leader finally asks them to come out of hiding, the former criminals turn him in. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Cameron Hawley's novel Executive Suite appeared around the same time as two other tales of big-business intrigue, the 1954 film A Woman's World and the 1955 Rod Serling teleplay Patterns. Elements of all three properties inevitably overlap. In Executive Suite, a furniture-store executive dies suddenly, resulting in a power play between five of his vice presidents. Julia O. Tredway (Barbara Stanwyck), daughter of the company founder and mistress of the president, must choose between solid family man McDonald Walling (William Holden), blackmail-prone Josiah Walter Dudley (Paul Douglas), ruthless Loren Phineas Shaw (Fredric March), duplicitous George Nyle Caswell (Louis Calhern), and eternal corporate bridesmaid Frederick Y. Alderson (Walter Pidgeon). Only Walling, the most honest of the bunch, refuses to campaign for the presidential chair. Despite the presence of the A-list leads and of supporting actors Shelley Winters, Dean Jagger, and Nina Foch, Executive Suite is a true ensemble effort, with everyone carrying like weight onscreen. The property was later adapted into a TV series, which owed more to Dallas than it did to the Hawley novel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda headline this western in which an old lawman (Stewart) attempts to keep his town safe from a band of recent returnees from the Missouri range wars and their villainous leader (Fonda), who threaten to destroy it with their drunken revelry. The old sheriff usually avoids the town, preferring to live on the outskirts of town with his pregnant wife. He is a bit of a pacifist, and when he sees what the outlaws are doing to the peaceful little village, he decides he must intervene, as no one in town seems to have the grit to fight back. At first the lawman attempts to reason with the outlaws. He fails at this, and even more violence ensues, forcing the sheriff to use a stronger form of persuasion. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide