William Janney Movies

Produced by Warner Bros. in 1934, A Modern Hero was the only American talkie directed by the great German filmmaker G. W. Pabst. Richard Barthelmess plays Pierre, the bastard son of blowzy, besotted circus performer Mme. Azais (Marjorie Rambeau). Fiercely ambitious, Pierre enters the world of automobile manufacturing, rising to the heights of success by callously using wealthy women to get ahead. After breaking one heart after another, Pierre is finally beaten at his own game by a disgruntled young lady who walks out on him, forcing him to admit that he's an utter flop as a human being. Jean Muir co-stars as Joanna, seduced and abandoned early in the proceedings, while other women crucial to Pierre's ascension are played by Veree Teasdale and Florence Eldredge. Based on a novel by Louis Bromfield, A Modern Hero has been correctly assessed by one of the director's devotees as having "little of Pabst in it." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, an experienced newspaperman caves in to the constant badgering of his thoughtless family and ends up losing his job. Fortunately, he finds a new niche on the radio. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Stanley MacLaurel (Stan Laurel), the American "black sheep" of the MacLaurel clan, stows away on a cattle boat to Scotland in the company of his pal Ollie (Oliver Hardy) so that he can claim his share of his late uncle Angus Ian MacLaurel's fortune. Alas, Stan's inheritance consists of a snuffbox and a pair of bagpipes, while the bulk of the estate goes to Angus' granddaughter Lorna MacLaurel (June Lang) -- provided she move from Scotland to India, where she and her aunt Lady Vi Ormsby (Anne Grey) will reside with Vi's handsome brother, Colonel Gregor MacGregor (Vernon Steele) of His Majesty's Service. After nearly setting fire to their lodgings while trying to cook a fish, the penniless Stan and Ollie are booted out into the street, with Ollie rendered pants-less by a previous misadventure. Heading to a tailor shop to get a new suit of clothes on approval, the boys inadvertently join the British Army, and soon they're shipped off to Colonel MacGregor's regiment in India. Accompanying our heroes is Lorna's sweetheart, law clerk Alan Douglas (William Janney), who has joined the army to be reunited with his lady love. This could prove disadvantageous to Lady Vi, who has been scheming to separate Alan from Lorna and marry off the girl to Col. MacGregor, thereby gaining control of Lorna's fortune.

Meanwhile, Stan and Ollie get off on the wrong foot with their grouchy Sergeant (James Finalyson), redeeming themselves only when they help put down a native uprising (with the assistance of several fully-occupied beehives!) Though it proved to be their biggest moneymaker to date, Bonnie Scotland was one of the weaker Laurel & Hardy features, with far too much time devoted to the supporting characters. Too, the picture was rather raggedly re-edited after several unsatisfactory previews: as it now stands, the film stops cold after 80 minutes, without even bothering to wrap up the plotline. Still, it contains two of the team's funniest sequences: the boys' impromptu dance to the tune of "A Hundred Pipers", and the classic marching scene, wherein an out-of-step Stan manages to convince everyone in the regiment that they're out of step! Bonnie Scotland was later reissued theatrically as Heroes of the Regiment, and was distributed to TV in four abridged versions, each running approximately 20 minutes: All Wet, In a Mess, The Rookies and Bang! Bang! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cimarron was the first Western to win the Oscar for Best Picture--and, until Dances with Wolves in 1990, the only one. The film begins on April 22, 1889, the opening day of the great Oklahoma Land Rush on the Cherokee Strip. Boisterous Yancey Cravat (Richard Dix) is cheated out of his land claim by the devious Dixie Lee (Estelle Taylor). Instead of becoming a homesteader, Cravat establishes a muckraking newspaper, and with pistols in hand he becomes a widely respected (and widely feared) peacekeeper. He also displays a compassionate streak by coming to the defense of Dixie Lee, who is about to be arrested for prostitution. Cravat's insistence on sticking his nose into everyone's affairs drives a wedge between him and his young wife Sabra (Irene Dunne), but she stands by him--until he deserts her and her children, ever in pursuit of new adventures. Sabra takes over the newspaper herself, and with the moral support of her best friend, Mrs. Wyatt (Edna May Oliver), she creates a powerful publishing empire. Cimarron makes the mistake of placing most of the action early in the film, so that everything that follows the spectacular opening land-rush sequence may feel anti-climactic. While it's always enjoyable to watch Irene Dunne persevering through the years, it's rather wearing to sit through the overblown performance of Richard Dix, who seems to think that he can't make a point unless it's at the top of his lungs. Cimarron creaks badly when seen today, but it still outclasses the plodding 1960 remake. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Coquette is Mary Pickford's first talkie, based on the play by George Abbott and Ann Preston Bridgers. The story was already made famous on the stage by star Helen Hayes. At almost 40 years old and lacking her signature curls, Pickford plays the young Southern belle Norma Besant, who is courting three different men: Stanley (Matt Moore), Robert (George S. Irving), and bad boy Michael Jeffrey (Johnny Mack Brown). She naturally falls for Michael and flees with him to a cottage. Her angry father, Dr. John Besant (John M. St. Polis), follows them with his shotgun, shooting both Michael and himself. Superstar Pickford won Best Actress at the 1930 Academy awards. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

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

Two holdovers from the silent-film era top the cast of Columbia's Meet the Wife. Laura La Plante and Lew Cody are cast respectively as scatterbrained wife Gertrude Lennox and Getrude's first husband Phillip Lord. Long believed dead, Lord returns from the ashes as a successful writer. Meanwhile, poor Gertrude has taken a second husband, Harvey Lennox (Harry Myers). When the heroine proves incapable of choosing between her two spouses, Phillip and Harvey put their heads together to come up with a solution of their own. A subplot concerns the romantic travails of Gertrude's sister Doris (Joan Marsh), who is ardently pursued by gormless juvenile Gregory Brown (William Janney) and silly-ass Englishman Victor Staunton (Claud Allister). Meet the Wife is based on the play of the same name by Lynn Starling. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a middle-aged housewife decides that she has had enough of her philandering husband's neglect and her children's ingratitude. To liven up her life, she has an enormous penthouse party where she proceeds to drink herself blind. Fortunately, her adult children intervene and get her back together with her husband. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This tight little melodrama opens with a group of wealthy people staying at a luxurious European mansion. According to legend, the mansion's "blue room" is cursed--everyone who has ever spent the night in that room has met with an untimely end. The three suitors of the heroine (Gloria Stuart) wager that each can survive a night in the forbidding blue room. The first to brave the room is a callow young man (William Janney) in whom the heroine has no real interest. A scream is heard in the middle of the night; when the other guests investigate, the young man has vanished, and the available clues suggest that he has met with foul play. Within the next several months, more murders occur in the blue room, prompting the lord of the manor (Lionel Atwill) to belatedly summon the authorities. A police inspector (Edward Arnold) solves both the mystery of the missing guest and the series of murders. Veteran moviegoers will be able to guess the outcome without even trying, but somehow Mystery in the Blue Room was deemed worthy of two remakes: The Missing Guest (38) and Murder in the Blue Room (44) (a musical!) Though not publicized at the time, Murder in the Blue Room was Universal's least expensive non-western feature film of 1933. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this romantic comedy, a middle-aged woman married to a much older man begins a harmless flirtation with an artistically inclined gigolo after she mistakes him for her long-lost lover. Unfortunately, the opportunist really loves the woman's daughter. He is also smitten with another woman. Romantic mayhem ensues when the artist's true identity is revealed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Universal plunged into the clutches of its creditors with its expensive fiasco Sutter's Gold. Edward Arnold plays Swiss immigrant Johann Sutter, who seeks his fortune in the California of the 1830s. Against all odds, Sutter builds up a huge land empire, only to watch its explode when gold is discovered at Sutter's mill in 1848. Prospectors, speculators and claim-jumpers strip Sutter of his hard-earned riches, and he is forced to retire on a minimal government pension. While the film ignores the dicier facts about the real Johann Sutter, who was as much confidence trickster and philanderer as he was visionary, and while history is distorted to the point that Sutter's Fort is subject to an Alamo-style Mexican raid, there is nothing really wrong with this on an entertainment level. But it went way over budget and was too downbeat a tale to score with a depression audience looking for optimistic answers to its own financial problems. The failure was softened somewhat by the success of Universal's subsequent Show Boat, but it was too late for the studio's Carl Laemmle regime, which would be ousted by the end of 1936. That same year, incidentally, a German film about Johann Sutter, The Kaiser of California, was made, with Hans Albers in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this suspenseful mystery, a murderous psychopath aboard a luxury liner begins a series of grisly but creative murders. One victim is found in a refrigerator, one is poisoned. Still others are shot and stabbed. In the end, he dumps a lifeboat filled with sailors into the sea where they drown. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Set during World War I, The Dawn Patrol is a study of the pressures and pitfalls of authority. A British Royal Flying Corp squadron commander (Neil Hamilton) is compelled by the higher-ups to send his boys out in dangerous, rickety aircraft. He is tormented by the responsibility, but does his duty as prescribed, and is branded a "butcher" by his top pilot (Richard Barthelmess). Hamilton is transferred, and with grim glee hands his command over to Barthelmess. Suddenly Barthelmess finds himself as much an unwilling "butcher" as a predecessor, and in exercising his authority he is alienated from his pilot buddies. Things come to a head when Barthelmess sends the brother of his best friend (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) on a suicide mission. The lad is killed, and the friendship is shattered. To make amends, Barthelmess gets Fairbanks drunk and flies the next mission himself--and is shot down while in battle with the fearsome German ace Von Richter. Now more understanding of his fallen companion, Fairbanks takes over command of the squadron. Because of the 1938 remake of the same title, the 1930 Dawn Patrol has been retitled Flight Commander for television. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide