Vera Lewis Movies

Radio actor Kenny Delmar created the character of bombastic Southern Senator Claghorn for a 1945 installment of The Fred Allen Show. The character immediately caught on with the public, spawning an overabundance of merchandising and thousands of ersatz Claghorn imitators (foremost among these was the Warner Bros. cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn). In 1947, Delmar attempted to parlay Claghorn into film stardom with It's a Joke, Son. From the outset, screenwriters Robert Kent and Paul Gerard Smith were faced with a problem: Senator Claghorn was very funny in small doses on The Fred Allen Show, but could the character sustain a feature-length picture? Their solution to this dilemma was to "humanize" the Senator by removing some of his obnoxious braggadocio and transforming him into a harmless, henpecked small-town windbag. Living in his decaying ancestral Southern mansion with his long-suffering wife Magnolia (Una Merkel), Claghorn has trouble making ends meet financially. Magnolia hopes to resolve their money problems by running for state senator on behalf of the Daughters of Dixie. A band of northern political crooks convince the gullible Claghorn to run against his wife in the senatorial race, thereby splitting the vote so that their own equally crooked candidate can win the election. Complication piles upon complication until Magnolia, realizing that Claghorn is being set up as a patsy, has him kidnapped "for his own good"-a plan which predictably backfires. Future TV star June Lockhart is decorative as Claghorn's daughter, while Kenneth Farrell is adequate as the obligatory romantic lead. It's a Joke Son was the initial Hollywood effort from the Eagle-Lion Productions, a British-based firm which would eventually absorb PRC Pictures, where this film was made on the very cheap. Though moderately successful, the film proved that Senator Claghorn was much funnier heard than seen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first of the Bowery Boys' "haunted house" comedies, Spook Busters casts the boys as recent graduates of Exterminators' School. Setting up headquarters in Louie's Sweet Shop, Slip (Leo Gorcey), Sach (Huntz Hall) and their pals are hired by Mr. Brown (Chester Clute) to rid a forbidden old mansion of its various bugs and insects. Once they arrive on the premises, the Boys must deal with "pests" of a human variety-namely mad scientist Dr. Coslow (Douglass Dumbrille) and his assistants (Vera Lewis, Charles Middleton and Richard Alexander). The fun really begins when Coslow prepares to use Sach as a guinea pig for his latest diabolical experiment. The film's highlight is the obligatory fight scene, lensed on this occasion in ultra-slow motion! Gabe Dell makes his return to the Bowery Boys fold as returning GI Gabe Moreno, here equipped with a French war bride (Tanis Chandler) who would never be seen again after this film. One strongly suspects that Spook Busters was seen several times in childhood by Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and other members of the Ghostbusters cast. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Killers uses Ernest Hemingway's short story as a springboard for a complex film noir. Two mysterious men (William Conrad and Charles McGraw) muscle their way into a small town and kill an aging boxer (Burt Lancaster, making his screen debut), who offers no resistance and seems to be welcoming his death. An insurance investigator (Edmond O'Brien) is hired to locate the beneficiary to Lancaster's policy, and in the course of his investigation reopens a long-dormant robbery case. In a series of flashbacks, O'Brien makes the connection between Lancaster and the robbery and tracks down the "brains" behind the operation. He also comes in contact with Lancaster's former girlfriend (Ava Gardner), whose duplicity played a big part in Lancaster's demise -- and his indifferent reaction to it. Siodmak's hard-edged, moody direction of the Oscar-nominated screenplay by Anthony Veiller, makes The Killers one of the definitive films noirs, including what is considered to be one of the greatest opening sequences in movie history. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

From a novel of the same name by "Elizabeth", the film begins in 1914, with Bette Davis cast as vain, flighty society woman Fanny Trellis. Informed by Jewish-American financier Job Skeffington (Claude Rains) that her brother Trippy (Richard Waring) has stolen money to pay his gambling debts, Fanny marries Job, securing his promise that he won't prosecute her thieving sibling. Angered by Fanny's agreeing to this loveless union, Trippy runs off to join the army, and is killed during World War I. Fanny holds Skeffington responsible for her brother's death, and demands a divorce with a generous cash settlement. Despite Job's oft-repeated belief that "a woman is only beautiful when she is loved," Fanny uses her coquettish beauty to flit indiscriminately from man to man. While on a sailing trip with her latest beau, Fanny comes down with diphtheria. The disease destroys her facial beauty, and before long the shallow Fanny is left completely alone. Her self-centered efforts to reunite all of her old boyfriends for a party is a failure due to her pathetic middle-aged efforts to be kittenish, and the grotesqueness of the mounds of facial makeup she apples. Meanwhile, Skeffington, who has resettled in Europe with his daughter, is captured by the Nazis and placed in a concentration camp. He manages to escape, returning to the US totally blind and utterly penniless. A chastened Fanny comes back to her husband, promising to care for him for the rest of his life. Most TV prints of Mr. Skeffington run 127 minutes; the videocassette and cable TV versions have been restored to the original length. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Long before Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock joined forces in Speed (1994), there was the strikingly similar Warner Bros. B-picture Busses Roar. A gang of Axis spies decide to use a California passenger bus to secretly transport a demolition bomb to a coastal oil field. The bomb is set to go off upon arrival, wiping out the passengers along with the oil deposits. Among those passengers is Army sergeant Ryan, who senses that something's amiss and then races against time to save himself and the others from being blown to smithereens. Another of the hapless commuters is played by Eleanor Parker, making an excellent impression in her first feature film appearance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Forced to flee Paris during the Occupation, the great French leading man Jean Gabin starred in a brace of Hollywood films, the best of which was the first, 20th Century-Fox's Moontide. Cast to type, Gabin plays Bobo, a brooding itinerant dock-worker who gets mixed up in a drunken brawl. Upon awakening, Bobo is convinced that he has killed a man by his mercenary "pal" Tiny (Thomas Mitchell). Despairing at the thought of having committed murder, not to mentioned being blackmailed for the rest of his life by the treacherous Tiny, Bobo is able to find a few fleeting moments of happiness with Anna (Ida Lupino), a suicidal young girl whom he has saved from a watery grave (The intensity of the love scenes may well be due to the allegedly real-life romance between Jean Gabin and Ida Lupino). Novelist John O'Hara adapted the screenplay from a book by actor Willard Robertson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This parody of gangster flicks centers on an incarcerated gangster who decides to reform after he is released from Sing Sing. He and his cell mate have earned a small fortune in investments and are planning to buy a dog track. Unfortunately, another prisoner eavesdrops and attempts to force the fellow to use his savings to buy a luggage store and then dig a tunnel to the bank next door so they can easily rob it. The reformer and his partner refuse. They sing a different tune when they learn that most of their money was lost by their third partner. In desperation, he buys the suitcase outlet. While he tries to deal with his many customers, the other two bumblers attempt to dig, but it's not easy because every time someone comes in, they must stop their noisy operation. More trouble follows when another gangster tries to get in on their operation. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Welcome to Midville, an appropriately named small town that has carried moderation to extremes. Run for over a generation by a bluenose civic league, the town doesn't allow driving faster than 12 mph -- and drivers can get a summons for not having a running-board, a part of a car that went out of style after the 1920s; no movies start after dark, and there are no late nights allowed at the soda shop or in the park. It's so bad that the soldiers from the nearby army base shoot right through the town for parts far away when they go on leave, and there hasn't been a wedding in the town in two years, because it's impossible for anyone under the age of 60 to start a romance, much less consummate one. One young couple (Richard Clayton, Elyse Knox) who would like to marry are thinking of leaving town, and that's the last straw from Miss Pandora Polly (ZaSu Pitts), who likes both of them -- she's as prim and proper a small-town spinster as you'll ever see, but that doesn't mean she wants everyone to be that way. And with unintended help from an intoxicating beverage brewed up by her comically inept gardener (Slim Summerville), she loses enough of her inhibitions to finally take a stand. At the next meeting of the civic league, she shows up ready to throw a few stones back at the bluenoses sitting in judgment of the town, and turn over a few rocks littering their pasts. Pitts and Summerville, who'd previously worked together in the Hal Roach-produced comedy Niagara Falls, prove just as effective here as a comedic elderly couple, and Pitts is at her most charming and beguiling in this gentle satire of small-town living, made on the eve of America's entry into World War II and all the more nostalgia-laden because of it. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Possibly inspired by Universal's The Invisible Woman, Warner Bros.' The Body Disappears is an agreeably daffy comedy with science-fiction undertones. Passing out from overindulgence during his engagement party, young millionaire Peter De Haven is placed on a slab in a college dissecting room by his prankish friends. Before Peter can awaken, he is inadvertently kidnapped by eccentric Professor Shotsbury (Edward Everett Horton), who needs a "dead body" upon which to test his new life-restoring serum. Shotsbury's miracle drug succeeds only in making Peter invisible, leading to all manner of looney complications. Before the film's 72 minutes are over, Peter has discovered that his "loving" fiancee Christine Lunceford (Margerite Chapman) is merely a gold-digger, Prof. Shotsbury has been locked up in the nuthouse, and Shotsbury's perky daughter Joan (Jane Wyman) has become invisible himself, implictly cavorting about naked with no one any the wiser. Still fresh and funny after nearly six decades, The Body Disappears is sometimes shown on TV minus the "scared-rabbit" comedy routines of black actor Willie Best. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Author Hartzell Spence's popular biography of his preacher father was the source for One Foot in Heaven. Fredric March stars as Methodist cleric William Spence, whose calling requires him to move his family from parish to parish on a near-monthly basis. The children resent the fact that they're never able to sustain friendships, while Reverend Spence is equally upset by what he perceives to be encroaching immorality in the early 20th century. Spence's stubbornness loses him as many parishioners as he gains, but he is gradually humanized by a series of random events. In the best of these, the Reverend, who has railed against movies from the pulpit, attends a "scandalous" picture show--and as the picture reaches its climax, he finds himself cheering on the good guys as loudly as everyone else! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Eve Arden played her first bonafide film-starring role in the 1941 Warner Bros. "B"-picture She Couldn't Say No. A brilliant lawyer, Alice Hinsdale (Arden) is obliged to act as secretary to her legal-eagle fiancé Wallace Turnbull (Roger Pryor) because he can't abide the notion that his wife might be smarter than he. Taking on a breach-of-promise suit, Turnbull represents the defendant, only to discover that the attorney for the plaintiff is none other than newly-liberated Alice. Once before a judge and jury, Alice and her female client resort to "women's tricks" to win the case -- proof positive that She Couldn't Say No is a product of its times. The film's basic premise was used to better effect in the 1949 Tracy-Hepburn starrer Adam's Rib. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A nostalgic and patriotic film from director Henry King similar to such later films as The Corn Is Green (1945). Claudette Colbert, stars as Nora Trinell, an aging schoolteacher awaiting a meeting with presidential candidate Dewey Roberts (Shepperd Strudwick). As Nora waits, she reflects on the past. It seems that a young Dewey (Douglas Croft) is Nora's pupil many years earlier in 1916, and has developed a schoolboy crush on his teacher, who encourages him to pursue his dreams. Nora, however, is quietly married to a fellow teacher, Dan Hopkins (John Payne), which inspires Dewey's jealousy when he discovers the truth. Tragedy awaits Dan, however, when he joins with the Canadian forces entering World War I. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide