Edward J. Le Saint Movies

Owen Davis Jr. plays Bunker Bean, a meek and mild office worker who loves the boss' daughter (Louise Latimer) from afar. Bunker impulsively visits a mystic, who gazes into a crystal ball and determines that Mr. Bean is the reincarnation of such past leaders of men as Napoleon and an Egyptian Pharaoh. Armed with new confidence, Bunker charges back into his office, gives his boss (Robert McWade) a piece of his mind, and becomes a hotshot businessman. Several reverses later, Bunker Bean realizes that he doesn't need to rely on his imaginary "past lives" to make good and to win the girl. Based on the novel by Harry Leon Wilson (and its stage adaptation by Lee Wilson Dodd), Bunker Bean was the third film version of this enjoyable "worm turns" fable. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When wealthy Mr. Ames is murdered, his beautiful wife Hope (Madeleine Carroll) is the principal suspect. She is acquitted through lack of evidence, but it's hardly a happy ending: her son Bobbie (Scotty Beckett) is taken away from her by spiteful relatives, who poison the boy's mind against her. Making matters worse, assistant DA Matt Logan (George Brent) is still convinced that Hope is guilty. Upon seeing Hope's devotion to her child, Logan softens a bit and alters his strategy. He offers a huge reward for additional information pertaining to the case, ostensibly to prove Mrs. Ames' guilt, but actually to clear her name so that she and her son can be reunited. If the outcome of The Case Against Mrs. Ames seems predictable, it is only because the actor who plays the real murderer was nearly always revealed as the "surprise" culprit in the final reel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his second of an unprecedented 131 Westerns for Columbia Pictures, handsome Charles Starrett donned his trademark white Stetson to portray Ranny Maitland, a Texas Ranger whose father (Lafe Mckee) is feuding with his neighbor, Lockhart (Edward Le Saint. Pretending to be on Lockhart's side in the feud, Ranny goes to investigate. Old man Maitland, meanwhile, is murdered and Lockhart arrested. Evidence found in Maitland's safe points to ranch foremen Brophy (Wheeler Oakman and Gilman (Dick Botiller), foremen of the respective ranches, as the culprits but the documents also incriminates Lockhart's son Lafe (Charles Locher). Believing Lafe to be innocent, Ranny organizes a posse to capture the foremen and the film concludes in a gigantic (for Columbia Pictures) battle at Blockade Canyon. Handsome young Charles Locher, in one of his earliest featured roles, later changed his name to Jon Hall and starred in escapist melodramas at Universal. As she had in Starrett's first Western for Columbia, brunette Joan Perry once again played the heroine, this time the daughter of the opposing rancher. Perry later married her boss, feared (and foul-mouthed) Columbia studio czar Harry Cohn. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Having settled a feud between ranchers and homesteaders in his initial Western for Columbia Pictures, handsome Charles Starrett got himself involved in yet another B-Western perennial in his fourth: the fight between cattle ranchers and sheepmen. Lee Jamison (Starrett) and his friend Ed Randall (Edmund Cobb are the only cattlemen not opposed to sheepherders sharing their grazing land. Saloonkeeper Barney Ross (Albert J. Smith, takes umbrage to this decision and attempts to form an opposing vigilante. Blackmailing bank clerk Quigley (Ralph McCullough) into foreclosing on Jamison's ranch, Ross then purchases the place and forbids the sheepmen to enter. When Jamison protests, Ross has him framed in a bank robbery. But at the trial, Quigley is made to reveal his own part in the treachery and Ross is arrested. With the feud settled, Jamison is free to marry rancher's daughter Janet Parker (Mary Blake). Having signed a contract with Columbia in late 1935 (at a reported $400 a weak), Starrett went on to make 131 Westerns, the longest run by any cowboy star for a single studio. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

When a car crash ends the life of a fabulously wealthy patron of the arts, the decedent's $20,000,000 fortune is inherited by one Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. Already a reasonably successful local businessman, Deeds doesn't really feel the need for anything extra in his life: he just wants enough time to practice his tuba and compose greeting-card doggerel. When Deeds is convinced to move to New York, hard-boiled newspaper reporter Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur) is dispatched to get the inside scoop on "The Cinderella Man." Babe's stories of Deeds' eccentricities and no-nonsense dealings with phonies and poseurs provide excellent headline fodder; but she begins to regret her actions, having fallen in love with the big lug. Deeds ultimately sets up a foundation to dispense his fortune to the country's neediest souls, on the proviso that the recipients do their best to get back on their feet, a turn of events that leads his lawyer John Cedar (Douglas Dumbrille) to try to have him declared insane. By the end of the sanity hearing, the judge (H. B. Walker) declares: "Not only are you sane, but you're the sanest man who ever walked in this courtroom!" A joyously unadulterated hunk of Frank Capra-corn, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was adapted by Robert Riskin from Clarence Buddington Kelland's short story "Opera Hat." In addition to the pleasure of watching the country bumpkin outwit city slickers, the movie is a film buff's dream, boasting one of the best character-actor casts ever assembled for a single film. Nominated for four Academy Awards, the film won Frank Capra his second Oscar (out of three) as Best Director. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This drama focuses upon a beleaguered surgeon. He is first involved with a social-climbing fiancee who constantly puts him down. Then he suffers amnesia and wakes to find himself in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Though he cannot remember his name, his medical skills remain intact and he is able to find work as a steel mill doctor helping injured workers. There he encounters a thug who wants to destroy the mill and kill him. After the good doctor saves the life of the thug's son, the bad-guy has a change of heart and spares the doctor. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Oklahoma's own Will Rogers stars in In Old Kentucky. The storyline is in the grand tradition of most films about the Bluegrass State: There's a long-standing family feud, a pair of star-crossed lovers, and a crucial horse race. Rogers cuts through the banality with his seemingly off-the-cuff observations about Kentucky life in particular and the World in general. The best moment of In Old Kentucky has Rogers attempting to escape from jail by putting on blackface makeup and disguising himself as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson--whereupon he's forced to tap-dance to prove his identity. 1935's In Old Kentucky was the third film version of Charles T. Dazey's 1895 stage play. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this romantic drama, a horsewoman is forced to work in a society dame's stable. There she meets and falls in love with a destitute polo-player who has curried the favor of his lovely employer. The matron gets jealous of the budding relationship between the horsewoman and the player. A wealthy man, who wants the stable girl, also gets jealous. Fortunately, the young lovers are able to withstand the ensuing turmoil and they elope. A while later, the other man attends a lively party aboard a yacht. There a drunken chorine falls overboard and drowns. One of the ship's officers blames the wealthy man and says he saw him leaving with a mysterious "woman in red." During the ensuing trial, the horsewoman clears his name by admitting that he was with her. It is a difficult admission because she knows she is risking her marriage. Fortunately, her husband and his family support her all the way and the marriage is strengthened. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this drama, two disparate brothers use radically different methods to raise their sons. The brothers co-own a successful steel mill, but that is about all they have in common. One of them is a social climber while the other is a hard worker. The trouble begins because the fathers insist on raising the boys to become spitting images of themselves. The hardworking father has never told his son that he owns the mill. The son grows up and stages a strike against the mill. Then he learns his father's status and begins trying to make peace. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A superior Tim McCoy Western, Justice of the Range featured a range feud between John Mclean (Edward J. LeSaint) and his neighbor, Lafe Brennan (Jack Rutherford), each believing the other to be behind a series of cattle rustlings in Apache Basin. Hired to look into the matter by commission agent Hadley Graves (Guy Usher), range detective Tim Condon (McCoy) discovers that neither is the culprit. But before he can do anything about it, he is framed in the murder of Pegleg Sanderson (George "Gabby" Hayes), a crime actually committed by a couple of Brennan's henchmen. Tim escapes the sheriff and, together with Brennan's estranged brother, Bob (Ward Bond), discovers that the real leader of the rustlers is Graves, who had hired Tim in order to divert attention from himself. About to take over the Mclean ranch, Graves and his henchmen are arrested by Sheriff Burns (Stanley Blystone) and Tim is free to continue his budding romance with lovely Janet Mclean (Billie Seward). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Filmed on location at Big Bear and Wrightwood, CA, this Tim McCoy series entry from Columbia moved the stalwart hero from the range to the Pacific Northwest and gave him a handsome young co-star in Robert Allen, a former singer. McCoy played Tim O'Hara, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police assigned to investigate an illegal fur trading racket. A former friend of Tim's, Brad Harrison (Ward Bond), gets in the way of things, and the mountie is at one point falsely accused of killing Randall (Bud Osborne). But Randall was one of gang leader Stalkey's (Otto Hoffman) henchmen assigned to murder Tim. Bob Rutledge (Allen) arrives from mountie headquarters with orders to arrest his colleague but Brad comes through in the end and clears Tim of all charges. Columbia producer Irving Briskin was rather obviously grooming handsome Robert Allen to take over from the aging McCoy but then changed his mind and Allen was instead re-assigned as leading man for coloratura Grace Moore (Love Me Forever, 1935). Allen did eventually get his own B-Western series, six Texas Rangers films from 1936 to 1937. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Previously filmed in 1918 and 1923, Harry Leon Wilson's novel achieved movie classic status when it was remade by Leo McCarey in 1935. The story opens in Paris, circa 1908. Ruggles, beautifully underplayed by Charles Laughton, is the ultra-obedient manservant to the bibulous Earl of Burnstead (Roland Young). During one of the Earl's nocturnal forays, nouveau riche American cattle baron Egbert Floud (Charles Ruggles) wins Ruggles in a poker game. Terrified at the prospect of being bundled off to the Wild West, Ruggles' resolve is weakened somewhat when he and the raucous but ingratiating Egbert spend a wild night on the town. (The besotted butler's periodic exclamations of "Whoopee!" are priceless.) Back in the frontier "boom town" of Red Gap, a misunderstanding obliges Egbert's social-climbing wife Effie (Mary Boland) to pass off Ruggles as an aristocratic British army officer, immediately arousing the suspicions of priggish social arbiter Charles Belknap-Jackson (Lucien Littlefield). The longer he spends in America, the more Ruggles grows to like the concept of democracy and self-determination. Of the film's many highlights, two are standouts: the scene in which Ruggles silences a rowdy saloon crowd with his recitation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and the droll, semi-improvised vignette in which dancehall girl Nell Kenner (Leila Hyams) teaches the Earl of Burnstead how to play the drums. Ruggles of Red Gap was filmed for a fourth time in 1950 as the Bob Hope-Lucille Ball musical Fancy Pants. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Fearing that her unsavory past will be revealed, a young girl is prepared to kill her erstwhile benefactor in this hectic low-budget thriller directed by former serial star Charles Hutchison. A young child, Jane (Betty Jane Graham), is caught pick-pocketing and custody is awarded to crooked politician Al Murray (Monte Blue). The girl grows into a pretty young woman (Lucile Browne) and despite their now filial relationship Al falls in love with his charge. She loves dashing socialite Bill Coleman (William Bakewell), however, and Al threatens to expose her sordid past. A bump to the head takes care of that tricky situation and the supposedly dead politician is stuffed into a suitcase. A train wreck follows and Bill is forced to make a daring rescue when learning that Al is still very much alive. The revitalized Al is arrested and charged with attacking the innocent Jane. Produced by poverty row company Peerless, this little action thriller was filmed on rented stages at Hollywood's Talisman Studio. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide