Dean Jagger Movies
An Ohio farm boy, Dean Jagger dropped out of school several times before attending Wabash College. He was a schoolteacher for several years before opting to study acting at Chicago's Lyceum Art Conservatory. By the time he made his first film in 1929, Jagger had worked in stock, vaudeville and radio. At first, Hollywood attempted to turn Jagger into a standard leading man, fitting the prematurely balding actor with a lavish wig and changing his name to Jeffrey Dean. It wasn't long before the studios realized that Jagger's true calling was as a character actor. One of his few starring roles after 1940 was as the title character in Brigham Young, Frontiersman--though top billing went to Tyrone Power, cast as a fictional Mormon follower. Jagger won an Academy Award for his sensitive performance in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) as one of General Gregory Peck's officers (and the film's narrator). Physically and vocally, Jagger would have been ideal for the role of Dwight D. Eisenhower, but he spent his career studiously avoiding that assignment. Having commenced his professional life as a teacher, Dean Jagger came full circle in 1964 when cast as Principal Albert Vane on the TV series Mr. Novak. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1935
This Zane Grey adaptation stars Dean Jagger as Adam and Gail Patrick as Ruth, two rugged individuals heading to gold country by riverboat. The couple's burgeoning romance is interrupted when Adam inadvertently gets involved in a murder. On the lam from the authorities, he links up with grizzled old prospector Dismukes (Edward Ellis), the titular wasteland wanderer. In typical Zane Grey fashion, hero and heroine are ultimately reunited by a series of convenient coincidences -- but there's still villainous Big Ben (Buster Crabbe) to contend with. Hefty vaudeville headliner Trixie Friganza also shows up in a choice supporting role. Previously filmed by Paramount in 1924 (in Technicolor, no less), Wanderer of the Wasteland was remade by RKO Radio in 1945. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dean Jagger, Gail Patrick, (more)
- 1935
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
- Starring:
- Fred MacMurray, Guy Standing, (more)
- 1934
Paramount's You Belong to Me is a showcase for juvenile performer David Jack Holt, youngest son of action star Jack Holt. The boy is cast as Jimmy Faxon, the son of recently widowed vaudeville performer Florette Faxon (Helen Mack). When Florette marries acrobat Hap Stanley (Arthur Pierson), Jimmy takes an instant dislike to his new stepfather, preferring the company of happy-go-lucky vaudeville comic Bud Hannigan (Lee Tracy). Though Bud tries to encourage Jimmy to give Hap a chance, it turns out that the kid's instincts are correct: Hap is a philandering heel, who walks out on Florette at the earliest opportunity. The upshot of all this is that poor Jimmy is left an orphan, with old reliable Bud providing the boy with a shoulder to cry on at the fadeout. Helen Morgan adds to the overall gloominess with one of her patented torch songs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lee Tracy, Helen Mack, (more)
- 1934
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
- Starring:
- Joe Penner, Lanny Ross, (more)
- 1930
Adapted from Owen Davis's stage comedy The Nervous Wreck (itself filmed in 1927), Flo Ziegfeld's musical spectacular Whoopee! was one of the solid hits of the 1928-29 Broadway season, thanks largely to the irrepressible Eddie Cantor. The property was transferred to film virtually intact in 1930, again produced by Ziegfeld (in collaboration with Sam Goldwyn) and again starring Cantor. The star plays Henry Williams, a wide-eyed hypochondriac who heads to a western resort town in the company of his long-suffering nurse Mary Custer (Ethel Shutta). Meanwhile, Wanenie (Paul Gregory), the son of an Indian chief, pines away out of love for white heiress Sally Morgan (Eleanor Hunt), who has been forbidden to marry Wanenie because of their racial differences. One of the most unsympathetic heroines in screen history, Sally coerces Henry into helping her elope then allows the poor boob to be accused of kidnapping. All sorts of zany complications ensue, not least of which is the side-splitting scene in which Henry, disguised as an Indian, adopts a thick Jewish accent while trying to sell a rug to a tourist. The Sally/Wanenie dilemma ends happily when the young man turns out not to be Indian after all, while Henry, cured of his ills by all the excitement, marries nurse Marie. The "Ziegfeld Touch" is most obvious in the final reels, when the story stops dead in its tracks to offer a long, drawn-out parade of "Glorified" Follies girls wearing enormous headdresses and precious little else. But the film's highlight is Eddie Cantor's sly, insinuating rendition of the title song, in which he details in humorous fashion the pitfalls of "makin' whoopee" with the wrong girl. Featured among the Goldwyn Girls are such future stars as Claire Dodd, Virginia Bruce, and 14-year-old Betty Grable, who energetically performs the very first chorus of the very first song in the film. Lensed in eye-pleasing early Technicolor, Whoopee was a success, launching a long and fruitful cinematic collaboration between Eddie Cantor and Sam Goldwyn. It was remade by Goldwyn in 1944 as Up in Arms, a showcase for the producer's "new Cantor" Danny Kaye. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Cantor, Eleanor Hunt, (more)
- 1929
Filmed silent, but outfitted with a Movietone musical score and sound effects, Woman From Hell was inspired by From Hell Came a Lady, a play by Jaime Del Rio, George Scarborough and Lois Leeson. The title character, played by Mary Astor is Dee Renaud, the principal attraction of a cheap sideshow. The seedy barker promises the yokels that if they're able to catch the "Lady From Hell," she will reward them with a kiss. When rapacious customer Slick Ericks (Roy D'Arcy) tries to go beyond kissing, Dee is rescued by lighthouse keeper Jim Coakley (Dean Jagger, in his film debut). Marrying Jim out of gratitude, Dee unsuccessfully tries to convince Jim's salty old father (James Bradbury Sr.) that she'll be a good and faithful wife. Alas, she is a slave to her passions, and it isn't long before she has become smitten by Jim's best friend Alf (Robert Armstrong), who responds in kind, inviting the girl to run off with him. When Jim's dad is incapacitated, however, Dee loyally remains in the lighthouse to operate the beam and avert a shipwreck. Realizing that Dee's true place is with her husband and father-in-law, Alf does the "right thing" and walks out of her life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mary Astor, Robert Armstrong, (more)
- 1929
Directed by action specialist Duke Worne and starring Worne's wife Virginia Brown Faire, this minor murder mystery featured newcomer Dean Jagger as a young man framed for the murder of his late father's enemy (Broderick O'Farrell). Convicted of the killing, Jagger is saved in the nick of time by the murdered man's daughter (Faire), who had been forced into marrying the real culprit (Wheeler Oakman). Produced by Poverty Row entrepreneurs Trem Carr and W. Ray Johnston, Handcuffed was only the second film for Jagger, a former stage juvenile and radio performer whose premature baldness became his trademark. Jagger would go on to win a deserved Academy Award as the retired major in Twelve O'Clock High (1949). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Virginia Brown Faire, Wheeler Oakman, (more)
