Harry Lewis Movies

Police Captain Matthews (George Peppard) believes he has successfully pinned a murder and rape conviction on Paul Sanderson (Robert F. Lyons) only to have the sentence overturned by the United States Supreme Court. When his wife Adele (Jean Seberg) is found murdered, Matthews finds himself on the other side of the law. The disillusioned suspect finds that his police cronies and friends have turned their backs on him, particularly when Senator Cole (Paul McGrath) goes on a much-publicized tirade against crime. Woodrow Wilson King (Richard Kiley) is the civil libertarian who has doubts about Sanderson's insanity defense and uncovers information about his sadistic alcoholic mother who lead him to become a murderous misogynist. Matthews feels something is not quite right when his police colleagues are all too eager to pin the crime on him in this engaging murder mystery. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Pianist Gil Larkin (Robert Horton) falls in love with singer Mona Cameron (Cara Williams), who claims that her husband is abusing her. Gallantly, Gil heads to the husband's office to tell him off, only to witness the man's murder -- just before he himself is knocked unconscious. It soon develops that the husband's death had been carefully planned by an unknown party...and that Gil has been set up to take the fall. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The popular radio detective series The Fat Man was brought to the screen in 1951, with the series' original star J. Scott Smart retained in the title role. Smart plays porcine sleuth Brad Runyon, who tackles the mystery surrounding the murder of a Los Angeles dentist. With the assistance of general factotum Bill Norton (Clinton Sundberg), Runyon follows the trail of clues all the way to a three-ring circus. Famed Barnum & Bailey clown Emmett Kelly makes his screen debut as one of the suspects; others essential to the action are such up-and-comers as Rock Hudson, Julie London and Jayne Meadows. The film's flashback-within-flashback structure helps to enliven its more verbose passages. For the most part, The Fat Man plays more like a radio show than a movie--at least until the exciting climax, inventively staged by director William Castle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Joe Palooka, comic strip artist Ham Fisher's golden-hearted pugilist, heads South of the Border in The Counterpunch. Actually, Joe (Joe Kirkwood Jr.) goes no further than Monogram's cramped "ocean liner" standing set, but the audience doesn't really mind. The plot concerns a gang of counterfeiters, one of whom is murdered en route to Latin America. Everyone is a suspect, including Joe and his manager Knobby Walsh (played by comedian Leon Errol, who certainly deserves his top billing). When the treasury agent in charge of the case has trouble determining the culprit's identity, Joe uses his pugilistic prowess to solve the mystery. Elyse Knox, the real-life wife of football player Tom Harmon, is cast as Joe's sweetheart Ann Howe. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The most memorable aspect of Winter Meeting, and the one that stirred up the most publicity, was its teaming of two Davises: Bette Davis and Jim Davis (whose only "A"-picture starring role this was). Bette D. plays disenchanted poetess Susan Grieve, while Jim D. is cast as disillusioned war hero Slick Novak. Inexorably drawn to one another, these two lost souls fall in love while discussing their inner demons. Ultimately, both Susan and Slick decide to go their separate ways, though both have grown and matured during their brief affair. Adapted from a novel by Ethel Vance, Winter Meeting falls short of being the "important" picture Warner Bros. hoped it would be: even so, Bette and Jim Davis work quite well together, making one wonder why Jim D. didn't go farther in films (though he did become a star of sorts late in life as Jock Ewing on TV's Dallas). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Richard Brooks and John Huston's screenplay for Huston's Key Largo eschews the lofty blank verse of Maxwell Anderson's original play, concentrating instead on the simmering tensions among the many characters. Humphrey Bogart plays Frank McCloud, an embittered war veteran who travels to Key Largo in Florida, there to meet Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall), the wife of his deceased war buddy. Arriving at a tumbledown hotel managed by Nora's father-in-law James Temple (Lionel Barrymore), McCloud discovers that the establishment has been taken over by exiled gangster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) and what's left of his mob. Also in attendance is Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor), Rocco's alcoholic girlfriend. While the others bristle at the thought of being held at bay by the gangsters, the disillusioned McCloud refuses to get involved: "One Rocco more or less isn't worth dying for." As he awaits a contact who is bringing him enough money to skip the country, Rocco is responsible for the deaths of a deputy sheriff and two local Indian youth. Unwilling to take a stand before these tragedies, McCloud finally comes to realize that Rocco is a beast who must be destroyed. To save the others from harm, McCloud agrees to pilot Rocco's boat to Cuba through the storm-tossed waters. Just before McCloud leaves, Gaye Dawn slips him a gun -- which leads to the deadly final confrontation between McCloud and Rocco. His resolve to go on living renewed by this cathartic experience, McCloud heads back to Nora, with whom he's fallen in love. Claire Trevor's virtuoso performance as a besotted ex-nightclub singer won her an Academy Award -- as predicted by her admiring fellow actors, who watched her go through several very difficult scenes in long, uninterrupted takes. While Key Largo sags a bit during its more verbose passages, on a visual level the film is one of the best and most evocative examples of the "film noir" school. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Michael Curtiz masterfully tells the fictional story of radio host Alexander Grandison (Claude Rains) as derived from a novel by Charlotte Armstrong. Grandison spookily recites murder mysteries on his radio show, with intimate and excruciating details. The reason he's so good and popular is that some of the murders he presents really are his own. He kills one of his female workers, but her fiancée, Steven Francis Howard (Michael North), threatens to take revenge for her death. Howard tries to convince Grandison's niece, Matilda Frazier (Joan Caulfield), that he is her long-lost husband. Much mystery and intrigue follows. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Moss Hart's hit Broadway play Winged Victory was brought to the screen in 1944, with most of its original cast intact. The story, concerning regular Joes from all walks of life joining the Army Air Force, is secondary to such theatrical setpieces as a camp show wherein several virile Hollywood leading men cavort about in drag. As a break from the all-male atmosphere, Hart adds a scene in which several wives and sweethearts discuss their fighting men; among these ladies is 23-year-old Judy Holliday. Reflecting the fact that most of the cast was actually serving in the Armed Forces at the time of filming, many of the actors are billed with their rank included: Pvt. Lon McAllister, Sgt. Edmond O'Brien, Cpl. Lee J. Cobb, and so on. While the patriotic elements of Winged Victory have faded in the intervening five decades, the film is worth a glance for its heady cast lineup of celebrities-to-be, including Peter Lynd Hayes, Red Buttons, Barry Nelson, and future director Martin Ritt. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A real four-hanky picture, Always in My Heart was loosely adapted from the stage play by Dorothy Bennett and Irving White. Walter Huston is a tower of strength as MacKenzie Scott, a brilliant musician falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to Life. While Scott languishes in prison, his long-suffering ex-wife Marjorie (Kay Francis) raises their two children to adulthood. Out of respect for Scott, whom she still loves, Marjorie never reveals to the kids that their father is in jail, insisting instead that Scott has long since died. Enter Philip Ames (Sidney Blackmer), who falls in love with Marjorie and lavish expensive gifts on the children. It must needs be that Scott is proven innocent and pardoned, whereupon he journeys home to visit his grown daughter Victoria (Gloria Warren), now a promising singer. At first hesitant to reveal his identity, Scott is finally urged to do so by Marjorie, who has never really given up hope that her family will one day be reunited. In the midst of all these soap-operaish intrigues, some welcome comedy relief is provided by Borrah Minevitch and his Harmonica Rascals. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made in 1942 but released early in 1943, Secret Enemies is a Warner Bros. espionage quickie, putting the studio's second-echelon contractees to good use. Craig Stevens, Faye Emerson and John Ridgely are the leads in this hour-long meller about a Nazi spy ring operating covertly in America. The FBI sniffs out the "secret enemies," striking another blow against Uncle Adolf. Secret Enemies enabled Faye Emerson to step up into "A" pictures and secured a contract extension for reliable utility player John Ridgely. But Craig Stevens was drafted almost immediately after the film's release; unable to regain his lost footing after the war, it would take Stevens until 1958 to establish himself as a full-fledged star on the TV series Peter Gunn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the wake of Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates, every studio in Hollywood began cranking out service comedies. Warner Bros.' contribution to this trend was You're in the Army Now, featuring the unlikely but undeniably chucklesome duo of Jimmy Durante and Phil Silvers. The stars are cast as Jeeper and Breezy, erstwhile vacuum-cleaner salesman who stage a demonstration at a local army camp, only to end up in uniform themselves. Thanks to their ineptitude and chronic inability to follow orders, our heroes spend most of their training period in the guardhouse. They try to atone for past misdeeds during maneuvers, only to end up trapped in a remote cabin which teeters perilously on a mountain ledge (the whole routine was borrowed-actually, stolen-from Chaplin's The Gold Rush). Not teamed in the traditional sense, Durante and Silvers are permitted to perform their solo specialties, with both comedians coming out fairly even in terms of laugh delivery. As a bonus, this is the film in which nominal romantic leads Regis Toomey and Jane Wyman performed the longest screen kiss in movie history (Leonard Maltin clocked it at three minutes, five seconds)-a feat that reportedly led Wyman's then-husband Ronald Reagan to wonder aloud why he couldn't keep his wife's interest that long! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide