Bennie Bartlett Movies

Angels Alley was the ninth entry in Monogram's Bowery Boys series. This time around, Slip Mahoney (Leo Gorcey) welcomes his cousin Jimmy (Frankie Darro) into his home. Fresh out of jail, Jimmy takes a job with a ring of car thieves. Slip covers for Jimmy to the extent of confessing to a crime that his cousin has committed. A contrite Jimmy decides to turn the tables on the thieves, and with the help of Slip's buddies Sach (Huntz Hall), Whitey (Billy Benedict) and the rest (sweet shop owner Louie [Bernard Gorcey] isn't around for this trip), the crooks are rounded up by the cops. Any attempts by the makers of Angels Alley to pass off their film as a serious crime melodrama are dissipated when, at the end of the picture, Huntz Hall whines to Leo Gorcey "This is the last time I make a movie with you!" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It's the Bowery Boys again, in their 35th feature film. Sach (Huntz Hall) buys a battered oil lamp, which turns out to have belonged to Aladdin some 2000 years earlier. Out pops a genial genie (Eric Blore), who grants every wish of Sach and his pal Slip (Leo Gorcey). Gangsters steal the lamp, but discover that the genie won't grant any wishes unless Slip and Sach tell him to, so the baddies snatch Our Heroes as well. The boys escape by insisting that the genie take them home. He does--to his home, ancient Baghdad. Slip and Sach barely escape the scimitar of the angry Caliph; they return to the Bowery minus the genie but with their heads intact. In typical Bowery Boys fare, this entry is pepped up by the appearance of veteran comic actor Eric Blore in his final screen appearance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Even non-fans of the East Side Kids will get a goodly share of laughs out of the 1943 series entry Clancy Street Boys. The story commences when Muggs McGinnis (Leo Gorcey) learns that his wealthy Uncle Pete (Noah Beery Sr.) is coming to town for a visit. The problem: Muggs' mom (Martha Wentworth) has claimed that she has seven children so that big-hearted Pete will continue sending much-needed money to her fatherless family. To avoid disillusioning Pete, Muggs' pals are enlisted to pose as his siblings, with Glimpy (Huntz Hall) posing as sister Annabelle (it is explained that Scruno, the black member of Muggs' gang, was "adopted"). Uncle Pete and his pretty daughter Judy (Amelita Ward) are taken in by the ruse until local crook George Mooney (Rick Vallin) spills the beans. But all is forgiven when Muggs, Glimpy and company rescue Pete from kidnappers. Best bit: About to go into a huddle, the East Side Kids turn "en masse" towards the camera, politely tip their hats and say "Excuse us!" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Three Mesquiteers are back in the saddle in Republic's Code of the Outlaws. In this outing, the Mesquiteers are played by Bob Steele (as Tuscon Smith), Tom Tyler (as Stony Brooke) and Rufe Davis (as Lullaby Joslin). Bennie Bartlett costars as the son of outlaw Weldon Heyburn, who refuses to inform on his dad's outlaw gang even after Heyburn is shot dead. Our three heroes try to set Bartlett on the right path-and, incidentally, attempt to round up the gang on their own. Reviewers in 1942 felt that Code of the Outlaws was one of the best "Mesquiteers" entries since the series' salad days of the late 1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An airy screwball comedy, Danger--Love at Work explores the lives of a wealthy but wacky family. Ann Sothern plays the daughter, the only remotely "normal" member of the clan. Poor Jack Haley enters the scene as a feckless attorney who tries to get the family to finalize an important land deal. Sothern falls for Haley, and through the machinations of her looney parents the timorous lawyer winds up the object of a "shotgun wedding." The amusing but inconsequential Danger--Love at Work was the second American film of director Otto Preminger. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Financier J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) -- known in the press as "the Bull of Broad Street" -- may be one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the country, but he also knows the value of a dollar. And when his wife (Mary Nash) spends 50,000 of them on a sable coat, he is driven into such a fury in the ensuing argument on the roof of their Fifth Avenue townhouse, that he throws the coat into the street -- where it promptly lands on the head of Mary Smith (Jean Arthur), a clerk-typist on her way to work, riding on the upper deck of a double-decker bus, ruining her hat in the process. She jumps off the bus to try to return the coat, but Ball insists that she keep it. What she really needs, however, is not a 50,000-dollar sable coat so much as a ride to work -- as she doesn't even have a dime for bus fare -- and perhaps a new hat. Ball obliges, taking her to one of the top clothing stores in New York, buying her an expensive fur hat to go with the coat, and then dropping her at work in his limo. Her superiors, seeing her decked out in a sable coat and a new hat, and getting out of the chauffeured car, conclude that Mary is a kept woman, and, therefore, unfit to work for the boys magazine where she is employed, and they fire her. Now out of work and virtually broke, she seems to have become a victim of random fate, but suddenly the scales start to tip the other way from the very same misunderstanding that got her fired. Having been seen in the company of J.B. Ball -- whose name she didn't even get -- she is rumored to be his mistress; the prissy clothing store proprietor (Franklin Pangborn) spreads this story, and that turns Mary into the object of attention for Mr. Louis Louis (Luis Alberni), the owner of a failed luxury hotel on which Ball's bank holds the mortgage, and is about to foreclose. For reasons that she can't begin to understand, since there is nothing going on between her and J.B. Ball (whose name she doesn't even know), or between her and anyone, Louis moves her into the most luxurious suite in his hotel for a dollar a day, asking her only to inform "that certain someone" of how she loves living there. Mary has no idea of who "that certain someone" is, or what Louis is talking about, but she needs a place to live, and Louis is insistent. She still needs to eat, and, while trying to get a meal at the automat, she crosses paths with a handsome, well-meaning, but inept waiter (Ray Milland), who gets fired for helping her. She takes him into her suite so he has a place to stay, and the two fall in love in the course of finding out about each other. She knows that he is John Ball Jr., but doesn't realize that he is the son of J.B. Ball, trying to make it on his own, nor does she yet realize who J.B. Ball is, in terms of being the man who gave her the coat and the new hat, or one of the wealthiest men in the country. But after the elder Ball spends an innocent night at the Hotel Louis, a gossip columnist named "Wallace Whistling" (William Demarest) prints that he is keeping a woman at the hotel, and suddenly the Hotel Louis, perceived as a fashionable playground for the upper-crust, is filled with guests. This multiple case of mistaken identity plunges through two or three new layers, eventually bringing about an impending stock market crash to rival 1929, before Mary discovers who her would-be benefactor and her would-be fiancé are. She bails them out of the jam that they're in, also restoring the Ball's marriage, her own reputation, and her romance with Ball's son in the process. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this entry in the long running "Bowery Boys" series, one of the boys is bequeathed a farm in Kentucky. The boys go there and find themselves in the middle of a hillbilly feud between the Smiths and the Joneses. The warring clans unite when bank robbers break into the Jones' house and force the hapless family to assist them. The boys begin calling the thieves "Joneses" and this causes the Smiths to come a runnin' with their shot guns and capture them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this musical drama, a Vermont farm lad goes to the Big Apple to become a member of the National Dairy Association. He happens to bring with him his beloved trombone. Soon, with the help of bandleader Skinnay Ennis, the boy gets a job in a nightclub and subsequently becomes a popular radio star. His girlfriend back home is not amused. Eventually she slides on back into his life. Songs include: "My Melancholy Baby," "My Devotion," "Ain't Misbehavin," "Swingin' the Blues," "Spellbound," "Hilo Hattie," "The Army Air Corps," "Rosie the Riveter," and "Don't Tread on the Tail of Me Coat." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The second of three "Bowery Boys" rip-offs produced by bargain-basement Producers Releasing Corporation, Gas House Kids Go West finds the kids in question vacationing at a California ranch. City boys all, the Kids have a lot of difficulty adjusting to western life, none more so than former "Our Gang" members Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer and Tommy Bond. Unbeknownst to everyone but the audience, the ranch is being used as a hiding place for stolen cars. But Alfalfa and his compadres manage to thwart the bad guys and save the day, after numerous low-budget slapstick situations. Gas House Kids Go West was followed by Gas House Kids in Hollywood, released a scant two months later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Republic's heartwarming Heart of Virginia has the homey charm of a 1930s "regional" picture. In one of his rare late-1940s leading roles, Frankie Darro plays a reckless jockey who'll stop at nothing to win. His fierce competitiveness results in the death of another rider. With the help of understanding Janet Martin, the daughter of his former boss, Darro redeems himself. The film benefits from its location footage and thrill-packed racing sequences. Originally released at 60 minutes, Heart of Virginia is generally available in the slightly abridged TV version. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Believe it or not, those boobish Bowery Boys Slip Mahoney (Leo Gorcey) and Sach Jones (Huntz Hall) are drafted into the Marine Corps (drafted into the Marine Corps?) Because of his father's sterling war record, simple-minded Sach is promoted to sergeant, and has a high old time lording it over his former "chiefie" Slip. Seemingly born under a lucky star, the more Sach screws up during boot camp, the higher he's promoted. Just when this running gag threatens to wear out its welcome, the scriptwriters bring in a gang of crooked gamblers who've been victimizing the Marine trainees, leading to a maelstrom of fisticuffs between the Bowery Boys and the bad boys in the final reel. Extra laughs are supplied in Here Come the Marines by Donald MacBride as Slip and Sach's dough-faced drill sergeant. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hold That Baby! was the 14th entry in Monogram's money-spinning "Bowery Boys" series. Ever in search of spare change, the Bowery Boys, headed by Slip Mahoney (Leo Gorcey) go into the laundromat business. While unfolding some linen, Sach (Huntz Hall) comes across a seemingly abandoned baby. The infant turns out to be their heir to a huge fortune. Hoping to return the baby to its mother (Anabel Shaw), who has been wrongfully committed to a mental institution, Slip, Sach and the boys must contend with the child's avaricious aunts (Florence Auer and Ida Moore) and a bunch of gangsters. The best scene finds Slip posing as a Viennese psychiatrist; almost as good is a vignette involving Sach and a hospital supply room. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide