Barbara Kent Movies

"That Girl" isn't Marlo Thomas, but instead heiress Jeanne Hudson (Barbara Kent). Someone has tried to murder Jeanne with a bow and arrow, obliging the Hudson family to hire detective Larry (Robert Allen) as a bodyguard. As was typical in films of this nature, Larry is saddled with a "helpful" secretary named Helen (Florence Rice), who fancies herself an ace gumshoe. But it's the family dog Lobo who sniffs out the villain, leaving Larry to explain the miscreant's motives. Barbara Kent, a second-echelon heroine of the silent era (she co-starred twice with Harold Lloyd), made one of her last screen appearances in Guard That Girl. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Wallace Ford plays Terry McCall, a small-town baseball star with a monumental ego. Terry's gift for self-aggrandizement alienates him from everyone in town, including his waitress sweetheart May Malone (Barbara Kent). After suffering a concussion during a baseball game, Terry goes blind, whereupon he bitterly retreats from the world. Fortunately, May's kid brother Billy (Dickie Moore), who has always idolized Terry, helps the now-humbled ballplayer to find a reason for living. That Swell-Head was obviously filmed several years before its 1935 release is proven by the presence in the cast of former baseball pro "Turkey" Mike Donlin, who'd been dead since 1933. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Her Forgotten Past was released by Mayfair Studios, meaning that all the characters suffer in evening clothes in a handful of interior sets. Eddie Phillips plays the villain, the lowborn chauffeur of highborn Barbara Kent. She marries him on an impulse then lives to regret it. When Phillips is apparently killed, she starts life all over again as the wife of district attorney Monte Blue. But then her "forgotten past" catches up with her when Phillips shows up very much alive. When her intrusive first husband is promptly murdered -- this time for real -- Kent falls under suspicion, and for a while it looks as though the DA is going to be in the awkward position of prosecuting his own wife! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A young woman believes that her mother's gambling house is a hotel. When a gambler angry about being cheated there convinces her to join her mother's business, it really does turn into a hotel. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi

The title of this RKO western refers to the wagons which bore settlers Westward during the mid-19th century. Following in his father's footsteps, Tom Keene guides a wagon train through perilous territory, facing constant danger at the hands of a scurrilous outlaw gang. The bad guys are in the employ of a "respectable" banker, who wants to get his mitts on the freighter franchise and will stop at nothing to achieve his goal. Barbara Kent is the eminently protectable heroine, while Billy Franey, a fixture of the Tom Keene westerns of the early 1930s, provides comedy relief. Costing a paltry $39,000, Freighters of Destiny earned back its cost more than tenfold. The film was partially remade in 1940 as the Tim Holt western Wagon Train. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Emma is a turn-of-the-century domestic drama completely dominated by star Marie Dressler. She plays the maid of an upper middle class family, keeping her wits about her as her employers suffer crisis after crisis. When the master of the house (Jean Hersholt), a prominent inventor, is widowed, he proposes marriage to Emma. Shortly afterward, Hersholt dies, and Emma, who has married "out of her class", is accused of murder by Hersholt's jealous children. Cleared of the accusation, Emma turns over her inheritance to the selfish children and heads off to work for another family, once again making the best of any and all bad situations. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Before he moved to MGM, director Richard Thorpe virtually lived at the tiny production firm of Chesterfield-Invincible. Thorpe's Beauty Parlor is a Chesterfield programmer that aspires to be Grand Hotel. The titular parlor is the setting for a multitude of comic and dramatic episodes, most of them involving manicurists Barbara Kent and Joyce Compton. Among the supporting players is Mischa Auer, essaying one of the villainous roles he was stuck with before turning to zany comedy parts in the mid-1930s. Beauty Parlor wraps up all its loose plot strands in 66 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Chinatown After Dark is where you'll find Madame Ying Su (Carmel Myers), a "dragon lady" type who'll stop at nothing to get her hands on a rare dagger belonging to the Royal House of Lee Fong. Unbeknownst to the authorities, the dagger contains a priceless jewel, the owner of which will be able to wield untold power over all of Chinatown. American Jim Bonner (Rex Lease), in love with Lee Fong's ward Lotus (Vera Reynolds), is set up as the fall guy when the dagger is stolen and a man is murdered. Bonner spends the rest of the picture trying to prove his innocence to a sneezing comic-relief detective (Billy Gilbert, in one of his first important feature-length roles. "See what happens in the underworld dens after dark!" entreated the ads for this fast-moving cheapie. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Divesting herself of her own production company, silent-screen queen Gloria Swanson entered into a two-picture deal with producer Joseph M. Schenck, which paid her a straight (and very hefty) salary for both productions. The first film completed under this arrangement was the trivial romantic comedy- musical Indiscreet, scripted and scored by songwriters Buddy G. DeSylva, Ray Henderson, and Lew Brown and directed by the matchless Leo McCarey. Swanson plays Geraldine "Gerry" Trent, a worldly socialite who endeavors to protect her sister Joan (Barbara Kent) from the lecherous machinations of Jim Woodward (Monroe Owsley). But when Joan discovers that Jerry and Woodward were once lovers themselves, she mistakenly believes that Jerry's attempts to break up her romance is motivated by jealousy. In fact, Jerry is completely committed to Joan's brother Tony Blake (Ben Lyon). One of the more successful of Gloria Swanson's talkies, Indiscreet posted a much-needed profit for financially strapped United Artists. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Made in the final years of director John S. Robertson's career, Night Ride is a crime drama starring Joseph Schildkraut as Joe Rooker, a reporter who finds himself pulled away from his wedding reception to cover a bank robbery. When he figures out that the robber is gang leader Tony Garotta (Edward G. Robinson), Rooker makes a case proving so and files his story. In retaliation, Garotta kidnaps him and another reporter with plans of permanently disposing of them and falsely tells the newlywed that he has bombed his house and killed his new wife, Ruth (Barbara Kent). If the police can't get there in time to save him, Rooker will die, never knowing that his wife was alive the whole time. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

Harold Lloyd's second talkie finds The Bespectacled One playing a shoe clerk in Honolulu. Harboring dreams of becoming an executive, Lloyd passes himself off as a millionaire to heiress Barbara Kent. As the plot merrily rolls along, Harold stows away on a ship bound for the mainland, and ends up at the top of a dizzying skyscraper. In a reversal of his dilemma in 1923's Safety Last, Lloyd must find the safest way to climb down the building--with the dubious assistance of bumbling black janitor Willie Best (here derogatorily billed as "Sleep 'N' Eat"). Attempting to extend his silent-film technique into the talkie era, Harold Lloyd is successful about half the time. The climactic building-climbing sequence, though amusing, pales in comparison to Lloyd's earlier excursions into "high and dizzy" humor. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi