Lee Kohlmar Movies

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

Sparring landladies provide the focus of this comedy. The two women are constantly competing to take in the most boarders at their respective homes. Though outwardly jealous rivals, the women are actually best friends. The competition gets more intense when one woman's daughter falls for the other's son. Now the women, who have secretly made a killing playing the stock market, try to see which one can put on the fanciest wedding. In the end, the couple weds and the women renew their friendship. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

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

Adapted from Norman Krasna's Broadway hit A Small Miracle, Four Hours to Kill is a multi-plotted effort that can best be described as "Grand Hotel goes to the theater." Richard Barthelmess stars as Tony, a condemned murderer, who is handcuffed to Detective Taft (Charles Wilson) while en route to the death house. Tony breaks loose and heads for the theater, where the man who squealed on him is attending a play. As the killer prepares to rub out the stoolie, the action cuts away to the romance between a hatcheck boy (Joe Morrison) and his girlfriend (Helen Mack), which is complicated by the clerk's allegedly pregnant former love (Dorothy Tree). Another subplot involves unfaithful wife Gertrude Michael and her lover Ray Milland. All the various plotlines are knitted together in the climax, wherein Tony closes in on his intended victim. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Christine Trevor (Gladys Walton) is a spoiled young society girl who completely neglects her father and her brothers and sister. When her indulgent father dies, she finds out that the family is nearly broke. Thinking only of herself, Christine considers marrying a social-climbing young man. A friend of the family, Dr. Paul Denton (Frederick Vogeding), talks her out of it and helps her create a home for her siblings out of the money they have left. Christine's better nature finally comes out and she dumps the social climber when she realizes his true character -- or lack of it. She also risks her life to rescue Joshua Barton (William Worthington), her crotchety old neighbor. Barton, it turns out, was the one who ruined her father (financially) because of an old grudge. Christine, however, wins his paternal affection. Denton's affection for Christine is something far more romantic, and eventually she comes to realize that she loves him, too. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

This imitation-Lubitsch romantic comedy stars William Powell as an elegant jewel thief plying his trade in Vienna. Powell's latest victim is bored baroness Kay Francis, who is much taken by the gentleman crook's handsomeness and poise. Since Francis is casting about for a new lover and newer thrills, Powell meets her qualifications, criminal or no. But the lady's husband (Henry Kolker) is not so easily charmed, and he sets about to bring Powell to justice. Jewel Robbery was based on a play by Ladislas Fodor, previously filmed in an Austrian version. ~ 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

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

Having turned the creaky old stage melodrama Way Down East into a money-spinning film, director D.W. Griffith set about to perform the same magic with the barnstorming theatrical piece The Two Orphans. Adolphe Philippe Dennery's play told the story of two orphaned girls, one blind, who are separated early on and undergo innumerable deprivations before their tearful reunion. Though the play took place in France, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the French Revolution; this didn't stop Griffith from plunking the storyline smack dab in the middle of that late-18th-century maelstrom, allowing him full scope for the spectacular scenes which had brought him worldwide fame. Lillian Gish plays Henriette, the sighted sister, while Dorothy Gish is cast as the visually impaired Louise. Henriette brings Louise to Paris, in search of a surgeon who might be able to restore her sister's sight. Henriette is kidnapped by a lascivious nobleman, leaving Louise to wander helplessly about until she too is "stolen" by a family of beggars. Rescued by kindhearted aristocrat Chevalier de Vaudrey (Joseph Schildkraut), Henriette begins the arduous search for her lost sister. Just before the film's intermission, Henriette hears Louise begging on the streets. Before they can be reunited, Henriette is arrested by minions of the evil nobleman who'd earlier tried to seduce her. Released from the Bastille by the revolutionaries, Henriette resumes her search, only to be arrested again--this time because she has consorted with the aristocracy, and is therefore a candidate for the guillotine. The stage is thus set for a thrilling "race to the rescue" climax, and of course the reuniting of the two orphans. Orphans of the Storm was filmed at Griffith's east coast studio in Mamaroneck, New York, which explains why the exteriors are always so overcast. In an effort to be topical, Griffith took every opportunity possible to equate the French revolution with the recent Bolshevik rebellion in Russia, and to warn his audience of the dangers of mob rule (this from a man who glorified the Ku Klux Klan in Birth of a Nation!) The film opened to excellent reviews and great business; Griffith, who always placed art above commerce, poured virtually every penny of profit into his "smaller" project, Isn't Life Wonderful, which died at the box office. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Producer Samuel Goldwyn had first become familiar with Montague Glass' "Potash and Perlmutter" series of stories when he was a glove salesman. In 1923, he decided to make a film of the play (also written by Glass with Charles Klein), which went against the preference of most moguls of the day -- they shunned anything Jewish, although most of them were Jewish themselves. This ethnic comedy was Goldwyn's first as an independent producer. Alexander Carr as Morris Perlmutter and Barney Bernard as Abe Potash reprise the roles they played on Broadway; Vera Gordon, who played a Jewish mother in Humoresque, does so again here as Abe's wife Rosie. Potash's tailoring business is a failure, so he latches onto the more prosperous Perlmutter as a partner. Their enterprise promises to be a success, but they have an enemy in Feldman (Edward Durand), the rich attorney Potash has picked out as a husband for his daughter Irma (Hope Sutherland). Irma, however, has fallen in love with Boris Andrieff (Ben Lyon), a starving musician that Potash has hired as a fitter. When a murder is committed at the partners' establishment and Andrieff is charged with the crime, Feldman shows his true colors by refusing to clear the young man's name. Andrieff is eventually found to be innocent and proves to be a suitable husband for Irma. The film was so successful that Goldwyn made several more Potash and Perlmutter comedies. ~ Janiss Garza, 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

The Russian Revolution provides the backdrop of this costume epic that centers around a young nobleman who, with his maid, escapes from his homeland to Constantinople where the two marry and begin a new life as commoners. But though it seemed a good idea at the time, the aristocrat has trouble adjusting to the daily toil and grimness of his new existence and when he meets an exciting seductress he immediately, abandons his good, peasant wife. With his shady lady, the fellow tries to become a con artist, but it doesn't work. He decides to return to his wife, and gets there just as she is about to be sent back to Russia. Much of the film was shot in real homes in Constantinople. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi