Vince Barnett Movies

In this family comedy, the wealthy executive of a steel company must endure life with a strict, teetotaling wife, a wild daughter, and a deadbeat son. To gain some much needed attention, the lonesome fellow hires a hitman to kill him. Instead, the gunman kidnaps him to frighten the family into appreciating their devoted father. Along the way, the kidnapper begins falling in love with his employer's daughter. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Secret Bride is Ruth Vincent (Barbara Stanwyck), the daughter of Governor Vincent (Arthur Byron). Attorney general Robert Sheldon (Warren William) falls in love with Ruth and they marry, but Sheldon insists that their marriage be kept secret. It seems that the Governor has been accused of accepting $10,000 in bribes, and Sheldon doesn't want to be accused of complicity while he investigates the matter. In the course of events, two murders occur, and it's up to Ruth to straighten the mess out. But how will she be able to manage this without involving herself or her secret husband in the scandal? It's funny how the various TV cable services tend to trot out The Secret Bride whenever a real-life political scandal bursts onto the scene. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Riff-Raff begins riff-raffing when boastful fisherman Dutch (Spencer Tracy) marries down-to-earth cannery worker Hattie (Jean Harlow). Their happiness is marred by Dutch's egomania, which results in the loss of his job and the alienation of his friends. Eventually he deserts Hattie, but she remains in love with him, even going to jail on a theft charge after trying to supply him with money. Reels and reels later, Dutch makes up for his past misdeeds by foiling a plot to sabotage a huge fishing vessel. Unfortunately, his reunion with Hattie is delayed when she tries to break out of prison, earning her an extended sentence, but he magnanimously promises to wait for her. Hard to believe that so sensible a heroine would put up with so much from a guy who's frankly not worth the trouble, but the chemistry between Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow compensates for the film's Grand Canyon-sized logic holes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Silk Hat Kid is Lew Ayres, a babyfaced gangland "torpedo." Circumstances force the Kid to hole up in a slum settlement house, where priest William Harrigan puts him to work as a boxing instructor. The Kid begins to reform, and falls in love with tenement girl Mae Clarke. When rival Paul Kelly shows up, the Kid has the urge to kill, but Father Harrigan orders the two men to settle their differences in the ring. The Silk Hat Kid is handicapped by the miscast Lew Ayres, but it serves as an interesting precursor to the Dead End Kids school of filmmaking which became popular towards the end of the '30s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Like many 1930s Warner Bros. films, Black Fury drew its inspiration from the headlines. The story is adapted from a true-life incident from 1929, wherein a striking Pennsylvania coal miner was beaten to death by three company detectives; this served as the focus for Henry R. Irving's stage play Bohunk as well as Judge M. A. Musmanno's story Jan Volkanik, both of which were woven into Black Fury's screenplay. Using a Polish accent so thick one can cut it with scissors, Paul Muni plays an illiterate miner, happy in his job and his company-town surroundings until his girl Karen Morley deserts him for policeman William Gargan. A disconsolate, drunken Muni stumbles into a labor meeting, where his loud, unthinking outbursts win him the leadership of the new miner's union. When the company locks out the strikers and brings in scabs, the angry miners hold the thick-headed Muni responsible. Fellow miner John Qualen, Muni's best friend, is then killed by a gang of rampaging hired goons. Vowing to "feex" the situation, Muni kidnaps head goon Barton MacLaine and takes him into the bowels of the mine with several sticks of dynamite in tow. Muni threatens to blow himself, MacLaine, and the mine to smithereens unless management comes to terms with the union. Thanks to overwhelming public support, the owners capitulate, and Muni is the hero of the hour. Though it seemed uncompromising in 1935, Black Fury obviously pulls its punches when seen today; for example, it is suggested that the mine owners are guiltless regarding violence against the strikers, laying blame on the hired detectives, who are shown to be in the employ of a crook who plays both sides against the other. Even allowing for this, Black Fury is one of the most powerful of Warners' "social conscience" films. Although the Academy gave Muni a Best Supporting Actor nod for this film, the AMPAS database indicates that it wasn't an "official nomination" - he was a write-in candidate, and came in second. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Lafayette Escadrille, that elite corps of volunteer WW I flyboys, is the collective "hero" of Fox's Hell in the Heavens. American lieutenant Steve Warner (Warner Baxter) heads to France to join the Escadrille in the months just prior to his country's entry into WW I. It is Warner's mission in life to blast the much-feared (and much-admired) German "Red Baron" Kurt von Hagen (Arno Frey) from the skies, but our hero manages to take enough time to help a fellow comrade-in-arms (Russell Hardie) overcome his fear of flying. The usual romantic subplot features Conchita Montenegro in one of her few major Hollywood roles. Hell in the Heavens was based on The Ace, a play by Herman Rossman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this sudsy hospital melodrama, a married nurse finds herself falling in love with one of two surgeons when her husband goes mad and needs an operation. One of the surgeons regards his pursuit a lark, while the other harbors genuine affections for the nurse. At first, she is attracted to the cad, but after her husband follows the suggestion of another insane patient and dives out of a window to his death, she seeks consolation in the arms of the other surgeon. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Produced by small-scale Mascot Pictures, this behind-the-scenes look at a now forgotten annual Hollywood event, the WAMPAS Baby Star selection, starred former MGM light leading man William Haines in his penultimate film role. Well cast as Bob Preston, the brash publicity director of Superba Pictures, Haines will stop at nothing to make his girlfriend, WAMPAS Baby Star June Dale (Judith Allen) a movie queen, never mind if the result should strain their relationship. Finagling a contract with Superba's Samuel Goldwyn-like president (Joseph Cawthorn), Preston nevertheless nearly loses June to a Pasadena playboy (John Miljan), winning her back only by staging a fake suicide attempt. While Bob pursues June, the other 12 WAMPAS babies get to join vaudeville comedians Shaw and Lee in a rousing production number to J. Keirn Brennan and Ted Snyder's "Hush Your Fuss" and generally strut their stuff. Inaugurated in 1922, the yearly selection by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers (WAMPAS) produced such future stars as Colleen Moore (1922), Clara Bow (1923), Joan Crawford (1926), and Ginger Rogers (1932), but by 1934 studio interference and competing pageants had made the event nearly obsolete. Instead of the yearly coming-out party, Hollywood studios were asked to feature the year's crop in their productions but only Paramount (with Kiss and Make Up) and Mascot obliged. In the end, only ten of the 1934 winners actually appeared in Young and Beautiful, albeit billed above the title: Judith Arlen, Betty Bryson, Jean Carmen, Dorothy Drake, Jean Gale, Hazel Hayes, Ann Hovey, Lucille Lund, Lu Anne Meredith, and Katherine Williams. One had to be left out to make room for the film's non-WAMPAS leading lady, Judith Allen, and the other two were apparently busy elsewhere. Helen Cohan, the daughter of George M. Cohan, Gigi Parrish, and Jacqueline Wells (aka Julie Bishop) were the no-shows and two of them were replaced with alternates Naomi Judge and Lenore Keefe. With the possible exception of Miss Wells/Bishop, none of the girls lasted more than a year or two and the yearly WAMPAS selection went the way of the Model-T. Aside from this now obscure yearly pageant, the best reasons to view Young and Beautiful today are William Haines' engaging performance and an enticing peek behind the gates at Mascot Pictures, the former Mack Sennett studios and future home of Republic Pictures. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The Affairs of Cellini is based on Edwin Justus Mayer's popular stage play The Firebrand, which in turn was based on the life and times of Renaissance artist/political reactionary Benvenuto Cellini. Fredric March plays the tempestuous, amorous Cellini, who spends as much time in swordplay with jealous husbands as he does in his artist's loft. When the duke of Florence (Frank Morgan) falls for Cellini's beautiful model (Fay Wray), Cellini is presented in court, whereupon he revives an ongoing affair with the duchess of Florence (Constance Bennett). Though a bumbling buffoon, the duke nonetheless holds the power of life and death over everyone in his domain, including Cellini. Thanks to his political activities and his overactive libido, Cellini is nearly executed, but a series of farce-like complications allows the plotline to turn out to the artist's advantage. Though hardly reliable as history, The Affairs of Cellini scores on its comic content, including the hilarious performances of Frank Morgan as the cuckolded duke and Fay Wray as the monumentally stupid artist's model. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Kansas City Princess came at the tail end of the "gold-digger" movie cycle. The inevitable Joan Blondell plays Rosie, a saucy-eyed manicurist who takes it on the lam when she loses a diamond entrusted to her by her gangster boyfriend Dynamite (Robert Armstrong). With nary a dime between them, Rosie and her pal Marie (Glenda Farrell) charm their way onto an ocean voyage to Paris. Also on board is daffy millionaire Junior Ashcraft (Hugh Herbert) enroute to the City of Light to check out rumors that his wife has been unfaithful. Unfortunately for Rosie, Ashcraft has hired himself a bodyguard -- none other than old friend Dynamite! Our heroine manages to wriggle out of her mess by saving Ashcraft from a frame-up engineered by his divorce-minded wife and her shifty attorney (Osgood Perkins). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Eight people, many of them strangers to one another, are summoned to a ritzy Manhattan penthouse apartment by an unidentified host. Once everyone has arrived, the servants are dismissed and all the doors and windows are automatically locked. The unseen host's voice is then heard emanating from a radio loudspeaker, explaining that all of the guests are old enemies of his, and that all are doomed to die this very evening! A couple of foolhardy souls try to escape, only to be electrocuted by one or another of the mysterious host's booby traps. Who is the "hidden" murderer --- and whoooooo will survive? Remarkably similar to Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians (which hadn't been written yet!), Columbia's The Ninth Guest was remade -- without acknowledgment -- as the 1939 Boris Karloff vehicle The Man They Could Not Hang. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Miriam Hopkins plays a showgirl who witnesses a gangland slaying. Bing Crosby and Elliot Nugent are somewhat over-aged Princeton University students who agree to hide Miriam. They disguise her as a boy (a remarkable achievement) and manage to pull the wool over the eyes of the dean (Henry Stephenson) and even the dean's daughter (Kitty Carlisle). Before the killers are vanquished and Hopkins' life is out of danger, Crosby gets to introduce the hit song "Love in Bloom," which ever after would be associated not with Crosby but with Jack Benny. Based on the Broadway hit by Howard Lindsay, She Loves Me Not was remade in 1942 as True to the Army with Judy Canova, and again in 1955 as How to Be Very, Very Popular with Betty Grable. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide