Milt Kibbee Movies

A remake of Paul Leni's The Last Warning (1929), this "Crime Club" series entry once again presents the spectacle of an actor murdered in mid-performance and in front of a sellout crowd. This time the unfortunate thespian is John Wofford (Don Douglas), whose body subsequently disappears. To solve the mystery, police detective Arthur McHugh (William Gargan) goes undercover as a producer wishing to reassemble the original cast for a staging of the seemingly hexed play "Dangerous Currents." During rehearsal, the actor playing Wofford's old role, Carleton (Walter Woolf King), is found murdered and a series of threatening notes purportedly written by the dead actor continue to frighten the surviving cast and crew. Wofford's voice, heard over a disconnected telephone, adds to the terror, as does the actor's very dead body, which reappears behind a crumbling wall. But is the theater really haunted? And, if not, who is behind the strange goings-on and why? To learn the answers to these troubling questions, McHugh and his equally undercover wife, Gloria De Vere (Dorothy Arnold), must discover exactly how the original murder was committed. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

A remake of a 1930 Universal film, Little Accident was the third starring vehicle for androgynous juvenile star Baby Sandy. Hugh Herbert stars as Herbert Pearson, self-styled infant specialist on a big-city newspaper. When father Tabby Morgan (Ernest Truex) abandons his bundle of joy (Baby Sandy) on Pearson's desk, the latter is forced to play "papa"-and to play it with expertise-at the risk of losing his job. The slapstick consequences give way to thrills and spills when Baby Sandy finds himself (herself?) headed for a whirring laundry machine. Like its same-named predecessor, Little Accident was based on a play by Floyd Dell and Thomas Mitchell (yes, that Thomas Mitchell). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Thunder Afloat is set during the first world war. Wallace Beery plays an veteran tugboat captain who harbors a grudge against younger ex-pal Chester Morris. When Morris joins the navy as an officer, he runs across Beery, who resparks the feud. Both men bury the hatchet and work shoulder to shoulder when German U-boats threaten innocent shippers. Though the action takes place in 1918, the film was intensely topical in 1939 given the renewal of maritime hostilities in Europe and the Far East. Thunder Afloat made money by the bushel basket, as did most of Wallace Beery's formula vehicles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this tearful crime melodrama, a waitress becomes so taken with her dream of living in posh luxury and comfort that she leaves her honest boyfriend the district attorney to take up with a notorious gangster who lavishes her with stolen furs and fabulous diamonds. She has no idea that the crook is only using her as a pawn in his scheme to learn the DA's secrets. When she finally does learn the truth, she gives up her life for truth, justice and love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Zany actress Annabel goes on a promotional tour in this lively comedy, the second in the Annabel series. During her tour, she allows her promoter to "leak" a story that she is having a romantic fling with a famous romance novelist. The ploy is successful, until she really does fall in love with the writer and decides to abandon her acting career to be with him. Unfortunately, he is already married. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The most enjoyable of the Warner Bros.-Dick Foran singing Westerns, this film pitches lawyer Foran against unscrupulous land swindler Edmund Cobb. A "sooner" who cheated the starting gun in the Oklahoma Land Rush (shown via stock footage from William S. Hart's Tumbleweeds), Cobb becomes the de facto owner of the town of Big Rock while doing a bit of cattle rustlings on the side. The town's acting mayor (Tom Brower) soon has had enough of Cobb's schemes and finds an ally in Foran. With the assistance of Brower's pretty daughter, Jane Bryan, and young son, Tommy Bupp, Foran succeeds in bringing the villain and his gang to their knees, not by using his fists or gun but by his superior courtroom dexterity. Foran's introduction in the film is only one of many highlights: Warbling "Along the Old Frontier," he is shot at, not by a music critic, but by a target practicing Tommy Bupp. One of the more palatable of screen kids, the then 12-year old Bupp later performs an engaging duet with Foran and is given some of the film's better lines, basically functioning as the comic relief. One of the studio's best young actresses, Jane Bryan never lives up to her potential here, but she is certainly an improvement over such former Foran heroines as Anne Nagel and Alma Lloyd. A veteran silent Western star, the tight-lipped Edmund Cobb makes a formidable villain this time around, but future leading man Robert Paige (billed as David Carlyle) is wasted as a friend of Foran's. All in all, The Cherokee Strip remains one of the more entertaining horse operas of the era. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Warner Bros.' resident singing cowboy, the amiable Dick Foran, warbles "The Prairie Is My Home" and "When the Cowboy Takes a Wife" (by M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl) in between battling a corrupt judge in this pleasant B-Western produced by the studio's busy Bryan Foy unit. Foran is Steve Ainslee, a Texas Ranger who goes undercover as a cowboy in order to solve the killing of rancher Major Burton (Gordon Hart). Watching a gang of rustlers re-brand Burton's horses, Ainslee discovers that their leader, Hank (Henry Otho), is working for Judge Blake (Robert Middlemass), a corrupt jurist whose courtroom is the local saloon. Attempting to arrest the judge, Ainslee is accused of being a rustler himself and Burton's daughter, Alice (Anne Nagel) believes that he killed her father. But Ainslee and his bucolic sidekick, Jeff Carter (Eddie Acuff), obtain proof of the judge's guilt and are able to make an arrest following a climactic and quite exciting shootout. Although nothing out of the ordinary, Guns of the Pecos is never dull and contains several pleasant performances, including those of Acuff, the brother of country singer Roy Acuff, and Fay Holden, as the heroine's lovesick aunt. The latter was billed under her stage-name, "Gaby Fay," in this film. The director of this Western, Noel Smith, had begun his career helming Jimmy Aubrey comedies in the late 1910s. Not one of filmdom's most exciting personalities, Dick Foran, a baritone, looked good enough on a horse and was actually more convincing than some of his colleagues in clinches with the heroine. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The Warner Bros. custom of casting their Dick Foran singing Westerns with whomever was available from the studio's large roster of supporting players often made for an interesting change of B-Western pace. In Empty Holsters, a typical entry in the popular series, one of Boss Villain Emmett Vogan's henchman was the sophisticated Anderson Lawler, a prominent -- and unapologetic - member of Hollywood's gay set. Lawler, as flippantly nonchalant as ever, and George Chesebro help Vogan frame Foran in the murder of two stage-drivers, one of whom was the brother of Sheriff Edmund Cobb). With Foran sentenced to ten years in the hoosegow, Vogan hopes to get better access to lovely Patricia Walthall. But the girl keeps pestering the territorial governor and Foran is soon paroled for good behavior. Returning to the old homestead -- where he sings Old Corral by M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl -- Foran begins the arduous process of proving Vogan a killer, a task made even more difficult when he is forced to hand over his weapons to Sheriff Cobb. He succeeds against all odds, of course, and is soon able to face a brighter future with Miss Walthall, the off-screen daughter of veteran character star Henry B. Walthall. Baritone-cowboy Dick Foran remains a matter of taste -- audiences in 1937 increasingly preferred the less exalted vocalizing of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, et al. -- but his quickie Westerns benefit from the kind of care only a major studio like Warner Bros was able to lavish. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Coincidentally, Warner Bros. contractee Jane Wyman made her starring debut in the same year as her husband-to-be Ronald Reagan. In Public Wedding, Wyman plays Flip Lane, one of five young and healthy carnival workers. Broke and jobless, the five "carnies" concoct a publicity stunt to get work: a phony wedding, staged in the mouth of a stuffed whale. Flip is chosen to be the bride, while Tony Burke (William Hopper) is selected as the groom. The fun begins when Flip and Tony, between whom no love is lost, discover that they're really married after all. Without the benefit of foresight, critics in 1937 had no way of knowing that pert little Jane Wyman would one day win an Academy Award, so they lavished their praise on "dumb-blonde" supporting player Marie Wilson (then the wife of Nick Grinde, the film's director). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When Errol Flynn insisted that Warner Bros. cook up a non-swashbuckler for his next vehicle, the result was Green Light. Based on a novel by Lloyd C. Douglas (Magnificent Obsession, The Robe etc.), the film tells the story of a young surgeon (Flynn) who willingly takes blame for a fatal mistake committed by an older doctor (Henry O'Neill). Disgraced, Flynn takes the near-suicidal assignment of testing a new vaccine for spotted fever; to ascertain the serum's effectiveness, he must expose himself to the disease. Flynn's fiancee (Anita Louise), having learned that her lover was not responsible for the older doctor's error, is reunited with Flynn as he lies recuperating from the fever. Weaving in and out of Green Light is the kindly old spiritual leader (Cedric Hardwicke) who espouses the values of sacrifice and faith. Green Light did acceptable box office business, but Errol Flynn was back at his sword-wielding best in his next film, The Prince and the Pauper. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Returning to his home spread in the Red River border area between Texas and Oklahoma, Tal Holladay (Dick Foran) is falsely accused of murdering a young family friend (Carlyle Moore, Jr.) in this frequently entertaining Western directed, incongruously, by dance director Bobby Connolly. Imprisoned, Holladay later makes his escape while breaking Karen Ordley's (Anne Nagel) wild stallion. Forming a vigilante of fellow (innocent) prisoners, Holladay quickly learns that his own father was murdered in an attempt to prevent the building of a dam and that Karen's foster-brother Hub Ordley (Willard Parker) is the brain behind the scheme. In an attempt to plead his case to the visiting Secretary of the Interior (Walter Young), Tal is once again arrested by Sheriff Gorman (Raphael Bennett) and is nearly lynched. He is saved in the nick of time by the vigilantes, and with the help of newly elected U.S. Marshal Chris Madden (Granville Owens), he manages to disarm the evil Hub Ordley and save his ancestral ranch. Rather violent for a B-Western, The Devil's Saddle Legion incorporated three songs -- "When Moonlight Is Riding the Range," "My Texas Home," and "God's Country" -- all performed by leading man Foran, a pleasant baritone. Warner Bros.' answer to Gene Autry, Foran looked good on a horse but was rather obviously doubled in several fight sequences. Although surrounded by the studio's sumptuous production values (sumptuous for a B-Western), the former Academy Award nominee (The Petrified Forest, 1936) was perhaps a bit too "operatic" for B-Western stardom, and his 1936-1937 Warner Bros. series was never a threat to the supremacy of Autry, Rogers, et al. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Fight manager Nick Donati (Edward G. Robinson) has just lost his best fighter to crooked promoter Turkey Morgan (Humphrey Bogart). During a party at Donati's apartment, a bellhop (Wayne Morris) kayos Morgan's boxer, who has insulted the honor of Donati's girlfriend, Louise "Fluff" Phillips (Bette Davis). Sensing a good thing when he sees it, Donati takes the bellhop under his wing, promoting the erstwhile pugilist as Kid Galahad. Morris is shipped to Donati's farm for training, where he falls in love with Donati's sheltered kid sister, Marie (Jane Bryan). Angered at this, Donati sets up Kid Galahad for a fall, ordering him to take a dive in an upcoming bout and betting his bankroll on Morgan's boy. Kid Galahad takes a terrific beating until, at the urging of Fluff and Marie, he abruptly changes his ring strategy. When Galahad wins, Morgan, feeling he's been double-crossed by Donati, shoots the latter. Morgan manages to fatally wound Morgan before expiring himself; as he breathes his last, he gives his belated blessing to Galahad and Marie's romance. To avoid confusion with Elvis Presley's 1962 remake of Kid Galahad, the earlier film was retitled The Battling Bellhop for TV. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide