Lee Kohlmar Movies

Eccentric professor Einfeld (Lee Kohlmar) is lecturing a select group of scientists at a darkened planetarium when one of the spectators is shot to death. Homicide detective Ted Mallory (Russell Hopton) can't get a straight story from the witnesses and refuses to allow reporter Kay Palmer (Lola Lane) to file her story until he can determine the direction from which the murderer fired the shots. Kay manages to phone in her story anyway, putting Mallory on the spot with the DA. Burying the hatchet, Mallory and Kay combine forces to nab the killer and expose his diabolically clever method of firing a gun without being present in the room! Though filmed on a tiny budget, Death from a Distance is an impressively spooky whodunit, benefitting immeasurably from the special-effects expertise of Jack Cosgrove. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Henry Fonda made his screen debut in this filmization of his Broadway success The Farmer Takes a Wife. The story is set along the Erie Canal in the 1850s. Fonda plays a farmer who takes a river job to make ends meet. He falls in love with Janet Gaynor, daughter of a canal-boat cook, who thinks very little of farmers. Nonetheless, Fonda and Gaynor marry, much to the displeasure of canal skipper Charles Bickford, who'd assumed that Janet was his girl. When Fonda avoids a fight with Bickford, Janet believes that he's yellow, but he eventually proves otherwise. It is said that during his first day on the set, movie novice Henry Fonda, noting the camera direction "dolly with Dan and Molly" in the script, asked director Victor Fleming who Dolly was. Adapted from the play by Frank B. Elser and Marc Connelly, The Farmer Takes a Wife was remade with Betty Grable and Dale Robertson in 1955. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on a barnstorming stage play by Gus Hill, McFadden's Flat seemed charmingly anachronistic in the mid-1935s. Walter C. Kelly, the "Virginia Judge" of vaudeville fame, adopts a molasses-thick Irish brogue as Dan McFadden, philosophical small-town bricklayer. McFadden spends most of his time quarrelling with his friendly enemy, Scottish barber Jock McTavish (Andy Clyde), but that doesn't stop Dan's daughter Molly (Betty Furness) and Jock's son Sandy (Richard Cromwell) from falling in love. The story goes off on several tangents, both touching (the tight-fisted Jock secretly helps Dan out of his financial woes) and dramatic (Molly grows ashamed of her parents after attending a hoity-toity finishing school). Hardly a memorable film, McFadden's Flats affords modern viewers a rare opportunity of seeing one of vaudeville's greatest monologists in action. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Love in Bloom ostensibly stars George Burns and Gracie Allen,but the team is actually comedy relief for the romantic leads, Joe Morrison and Dixie Lee. Burns and Allen are travelling carnival performers working in a rundown tent show for Lee's father. Lee tires of her nomad life and heads to New York, where she meets would-be songwriter Morrison. The hero loves Lee, but each time the twosome makes wedding plans some crisis or other gets in the way. The course of True Love finally runs smooth, but audiences can't help but feel disappointed that Burns and Allen aren't given more to do (Allen's big scene, set in a grocery store, is painfully unfunny). If nothing else, Love in Bloom features a rare screen appearance by Dixie Lee, better known as the first wife of Bing Crosby. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Katharine Hepburn suffers nobly while her philandering conductor husband Charles Boyer dallies with the likes of Helene Millard in this overheated melodrama directed by Philip Moeller of the renowned Theater Guild. Although receiving plenty of warning, prim lady composer Constance Roberti (Hepburn) is still devastated when her new husband, Franz (Boyer), is spotted dining with glamorous Sylvia (Millard) and promptly leaves him. A dipsomaniac, Roberti finds solace in a bottle and is soon reduced to playing in a seedy dive. Constance finds him there and after playing "their song" on the honky-tonk, Roberti resolves to go straight and return to the world of classical music. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

This espionage thriller with romantic comedy touches was loosely based on the book American Black Chamber by the real-life head of the U.S. Secret Service during World War I, Herbert O. Yardley. Bill Gordon (William Powell) is a newspaper puzzle editor who becomes a lieutenant in 1917 when he enlists to fight in the First World War. Before shipping out, Bill meets and becomes attracted to Joel Carter (Rosalind Russell), the niece of John Carter (Samuel Hinds), the Assistant Secretary of War. When Joel learns about Bill's former occupation, she arranges for his transfer to the War Department, where he is put to work code breaking for Major Brennan (Lionel Atwill). When Brennan is murdered as the result of a German-Russian spy ring's machinations, Bill investigates the spies and a comely secret agent (Bonnie Barnes), which jeopardizes his newfound romance with Joel. Russell received the role because MGM's first choice, Myrna Loy, was refusing to work for the studio at the time. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Based on a story by Zona Gale, When Strangers Meet concentrates on a small, interrelated community separated down the middle by a narrow path. The bungalow-dwelling residents on one side of the path consider their neighbors to be "beneath" them, and vice versa. Tensions come to a boil when a double murder is committed, with accusations flying back and forth. The solution to the crime comes about when a much-abused housewife (Sarah Padden) finally rebels against her tyrannical husband (played by the ever-hissable Charles Middleton). A good cast, headed by Richard Cromwell and Arline Judge, helps lift this independently-produced drama well above the "B"-picture norm. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The 1932 Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein Broadway hit Music in the Air was brought to the screen two years later by Fox Studios. Temperamental Bavarian prima donna Frieda (Gloria Swanson) and equally volatile lyricist Bruno (John Boles) spend half their time quarrelling and the other half making love. To arouse each other's jealousy, Frieda and Bruno pair off respectively with music teacher Lessing's (Al Shean) virginal daughter Sieglinde (June Lang) and her schoolmaster fiancee Karl (Douglass Montgomery). The impressionable young couple respond to the attentions heaped upon them until they realize they're being used, whereupon the tables are turned upon the main characters. Though boasting such lilting tunes as "The Song is You" and "I've Told Every Evening Star" and the stylish direction of Joe May (perhaps his best American film), audiences didn't respond to Music in the Air; as a result, star Gloria Swanson vowed for the millionth time to "permanently" retire from pictures, a promise she kept to herself for a whole seven years. Incidentally, one of the screenwriters of Music in the Air was Billy Wilder, who later co-wrote and directed Swanson's 1949 "comeback" feature Sunset Boulevard. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Flamboyant, egomaniacal theatrical impresario Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) transforms chorus girl Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard) into leading lady Lily Garland, the toast of Broadway. Once she's ascended to stardom, Mildred/Lily cannot abide Jaffe's obsessive control of her life and career. When he hires a private detective (Edgar Kennedy) to keep tabs on her, it's the last straw. Lily whisks herself off to Hollywood, where she quickly becomes a top movie star. Months pass: without his "creation" to star in his productions, Jaffe goes bankrupt. With his faithful stooges O'Malley (Roscoe Karns) and Webb (Walter Connolly) in tow, Jaffe boards the Twentieth Century Limited, one step ahead of his creditors. By an incredible coincidence, Lily is also on the Twentieth Century, accompanied by her stuffy fiance George Smith (Ralph Forbes). With near-maniacal glee, Jaffe undertakes the herculean task of signing Lily to star in his upcoming spectacular staging of "The Passion Play". Now the laughs, which have been erupting at safe intervals for the past 45 minutes, really begin to cascade, with Oscar, Lily, and a wide variety of eccentrics chasing each other around the Twentieth Century as it speeds its way from Chicago to New York. Based on the Broadway play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Twentieth Century is "screwball comedy" at its screwiest. Director Howard Hawks once claimed that he was the first to treat his romantic leads like comedians: whether he was or not, it is true than Barrymore and Lombard deliver two of the funniest performances of the 1930s. Nearly 50 years after the release of Twentieth Century, the property was revived as a Broadway musical, On the 20th Century, starring Kevin Kline and Madeline Kahn. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Easily the best of Eddie Cantor's gargantuan musical comedies for producer Sam Goldwyn, Roman Scandals begins in the middle-America community of West Rome, where our hero Eddie (Cantor) is employed as a delivery boy. A self-styled authority of Ancient Roman history, Cantor bemoans the fact that the local shanty community is about to be wiped out by scheming politicians, certain that such an outrage could never have happened during Rome's Golden Days. After a blow on the head, Cantor wakes up in Imperial Rome, where he is sold on the slave auction block to good-natured tribune Josephus (David Manners). Cantor soon discovers that the evil emperor Valerius (Edward Arnold) is every bit a crook and grafter as the politicians in West Rome, and he intends to do something about it. He gets a job as food taster for Valerius -- a none-too-secure position, inasmuch as the emperor's wife Agrippa (Veree Teasdale) is constantly trying to poison her husband -- and does his best to smooth the path of romance for Josephus and recently captured princess Sylvia (Gloria Stuart). Cantor's well-intentioned interference earns him a session in the torture chamber, but he escapes and commandeers a chariot, setting the stage for a spectacular slapstick climax. On the verge of recapture, Cantor wakes to find himself in West Rome U.S.A. again, where he quickly foils the modern-day despots and brings about a happy ending for all his friends.

Co-written by George S. Kaufman, Robert E. Sherwood, George Oppenheimer and Arthur Sheekman (the soon-to-be husband of leading lady Gloria Stuart), Roman Scandals manages to get off a few clever satirical licks, but essentially it's a "lappy" lowbrow vehicle for Eddie Cantor, and in this it succeeds immensely. The Busby Berkeley-staged musical numbers, written by Harry Warren, Al Dubin and L. Wolfe Gilbert, must be seen to be believed: In "No More Love", Ruth Etting, playing the Emperor's cast-off mistress Olga, sings a plaintive torch song as dozens of enslaved Goldwyn Girls (including Lucille Ball and Barbara Pepper), wearing nothing but long, blonde wigs, are chained to a rotating pedestal; and in "Keep Young and Beautiful", these same maidens gleefully cavort around a Roman bathhouse in the near-altogether while Cantor, in blackface, hops about, rolls his eyes and claps his hands -- just before a jet of steam "shrinks" him, at which point he metamorphoses into midget Billy Barty! The quintessence of Depression-era escapism, Roman Scandals is must-see entertainment. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

"I'm the finest woman who walked the streets," declares bejeweled, hip-swishing Lady Lou (Mae West) at the beginning of She Done Him Wrong. Lou works as a singer at the Gay Nineties saloon of Gus Jordan (Noah Beery Sr.), who plies her with diamonds to keep her by his side. She runs afoul of stalwart mission captain Cummings (Cary Grant), who warns her that she's on the road to perdition. Mae West's first starring film, She Done Him Wrong literally saved Paramount Pictures from bankruptcy. It would remain the best of her feature films, most of which were severely watered down by the Production Code (whose renewed stringency of 1933 was brought about in great part by West herself). She Done Him Wrong was based on West's own stage play, Diamond Lil, which ran on Broadway for 97 weeks. West sings "Frankie and Johnny," "I Like a Man Who Takes His Time," and ""I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone."" ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The factual story of H.A.W. Tabor and "Baby Doe" was the inspiration of Silver Dollar. Edward G. Robinson plays the Tabor counterpart, a prospector who strikes it rich with a silver mine. Robinson establishes the city of Denver, strongarms his way into political power, buys every creature comfort he can get his hands on, and deserts his faithful wife (Aline McMahon) for a flashy younger woman (Bebe Daniels, playing the character based on Tabor's mistress "Baby Doe"). Robinson is ruined by the decline of the silver market, spending his last days in near-madness planning and dreaming for a return to his glory days. In real life, it was Baby Doe who went insane, living (and dying) in a tiny shack near the once-prosperous silver mine. Stodgily directed, Silver Dollar isn't nearly as surrealistic as the true story it's based on. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi