Arthur Loft Movies

Action specialist B. Reeves Eason cools his jets as director of Behind Jury Doors. William Collier Jr. plays a hotshot reporter assigned to cover the murder trial of a prominent doctor. Once he meets the doc's pretty daughter Helen Chandler, Collier vows to prove the defendant's innocence. Problem is, someone on the jury has been bribed...maybe. Behind Jury Doors was one of the more polished productions to emerge from poverty-row Mayfair Studios. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of several poverty-row films which vanished from sight during the 1935-36 movie season, Beacon Productions did its best to stay afloat as long as possible with such potboilers as What Price Crime? Future cowboy hero Charles Starrett is cast as G-Man Allan Grey, hot on the trail of a gang of firearms smugglers. Going undercover, Grey poses as an aspiring prizefighter in order to gain the confidence of gang leader Douglas Worthington (Noel Madison). The plot becomes as thick as pea soup when our hero falls in love with Worthington's sister Sondra (played by Virginia Cherrill, previously the blind flower girl in Chaplin's City Lights). Despite its urban setting, much of What Price Crime was economically filmed out-of-doors. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Released in the wake of the bizarre Big Calibre (1935), this below-average Bob Steele Western directed by his father Robert North Bradbury stayed mainly on the straight and narrow. Thrown out of the family mining business by his stern father (Lafe McKee), ne'er-do-well Bob Bannister (Steele) jumps a freight train heading West. Forced at gun-point to change clothes with Apache Joe (Bill Patton), a fleeing criminal, Bob discovers that Apache is the member of a gang holding Bannister employee Jake Gibbons (Barney Furey) hostage in a cave. The mastermind behind the scheme is Bannister foreman Kincaid (Jack Cowell), who hires boxing promoter Spike Grogan (Kit Guard) as a bodyguard, unaware that Grogan is Bob's pal. When Kincaid kidnaps Theresa Mendoza (Renee Borden), Bob and Grogan take matters into their own hands and chase them down. The villain gets his just dessert and Bob is restored to his father's good graces. Kid Courageous was filmed simultaneous with the previous Steele effort, the aforementioned Western Justice and was the sixth of thirty-two Steele Westerns produced by A.W. Hackel's Supreme Pictures Corp. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, 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

Loosely based on a story by frontier writer Bret Harte, this romantic western drama tells the story of an innocent, carefree mountain-raised girl who causes quite a stir every time she comes to town to bring her boozy father home from the bar. One day, the flirtatious gal is kissed by the town schoolmaster. Utterly confused as to the gesture's significance, she goes to the town brothel for professional advice. The film was made twice before in 1918 and 1922. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Ostensibly based on the life of World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, whose smiling visage opened each of the 13 chapters, this fanciful serial depicted the travails of a globe trotting airline company. It seems that a villain known only as The Dragon (Arthur Loft) is determined to sabotage the company, who in desperation hires daredevil pilot Ace Drummond (John King) to investigate. By the time of the serial's 13th and final chapter -- "The World Akin" -- Drummond has not only managed to destroy The Dragon but also reunited lovely Peggy Trainor (Jean Rogers) with her long lost father (Montagu Shaw) and discovered a hidden mountain containing a fortune in jade. A former band singer with Ben Bernie, the rather bland John King later became "Dusty" King and enjoyed a minor career in B-Westerns. A legendary serial queen, blonde Jean Rogers gained her lasting reputation that same year when Universal cast her as Dale Arden in Flash Gordon. An edited feature version of Ace Drummond was released later in 1936 as Squadron of Doom. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Warner Baxter plays Dr. Samuel Mudd, American history's most famous victim of circumstance. In 1865, Dr. Mudd, a known Confederate sympathizer, sets the broken leg of a mud-caked stranger who stumbles into his home. The injured man turns out to be John Wilkes Booth, and Mudd is accused of conspiring to murder President Lincoln. Sentenced to hang with the genuine conspirators, Mudd finds his sentence commuted to life imprisonment at the very last moment. He is shipped to Shark Island, a brutal penal colony. Subject to the cruelties of a guard (John Carradine) who hates Mudd because of his "complicity" in Lincoln's death, the doctor suffers the torments of the damned, while outside Shark Island his wife (Gloria Stuart) campaigns desperately to get her husband pardoned. During a Yellow Fever breakout on Shark Island, Dr. Mudd performs heroically to save the survivors. For his humanitarian efforts, Mudd is finally released and reunited with his wife. While the script glosses over the fact that Dr. Mudd had never been officially pardoned by the US government (the pardon wouldn't be granted until years after this film was made), Prisoner of Shark Island strives long and hard to exonerate the man for whom the phrase "your name is mud!" was coined. Dr. Samuel Mudd's story was retold in the 1952 feature Hellgate, with Sterling Hayden as a (fictional) doctor, and in the 1980 TV movie The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd, starring Dennis Weaver in the title role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A lesser but still effective entry in the mid-1930s "prison" cycle, Parole catalogues the many problems facing prisoners who've served their debt to society. The story concentrates on Russ Whalen (Henry Hunter), one of several parolees trying to find work on the outside. The "ex-con" onus forces some of these men to return to crime, but Russ keeps his nose clean and finally finds success. Also given attention are the many abuses in the parole system, which in 1936 frequently favored those with the right connections. Of historical significance, Parole represents the film debut of Anthony Quinn, in a 45-second bit as a prisoner named Zingo Browning. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Legion of Terror was the first in a cycle of "exposé" films inspired by the upsurge in such hate groups as the KKK, the Silver Shirts and the Black Legion. The titular vigilante organization, which cloaks its extortionist motivations in the guise of patriotism, has a habit of sending mail bombs to its enemies -- and that's how Postal Inspector Frank Marshall (Bruce Cabot) becomes involved in the story. Before Marshall is able to expose the Legion of Terror for the cowards that they are, the group has murdered Don Foster (Ward Bond), the brother of Marshall's sweetheart Nancy (Marguerite Churchill). The film closes with an admonition to the audience to avoid getting suckered in by similar phony "All American" organizations. Legion of Terror was released just before Warner Bros. similar (and superior) The Black Legion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Maxwell Anderson combined the Sacco-Vanzetti story with elements of the still-unsolved disappearance of Judge Crater, and the result was the blank-verse theatrical piece Winterset. Burgess Meredith, Margo and Eduardo Cianelli repeat their Broadway roles, respectively playing the grown son of an executed political radical, the woman who loves and stands by Meredith, and a menacing gangster with plenty to hide. 15 years after the execution, Meredith endeavors to clear his father's name, and to that end seeks out the judge (Edward Ellis) who presided over the trial, now a drunken, guilt-ridden derelict. Screenwriter Anthony Veiller remove most of Anderson's flowery dialogue and substituted a happy ending for the original play's cynically tragic denouement. Neither of these changes hurt the property, and in fact were heartily endorsed by Maxwell Anderson himself. But depression-era audiences, too wrapped in their own current problems to shed tears over the long-dead Sacco and Vanzetti, stayed away from Winterset in droves. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Wallace Ford and Barbara Pepper have a field day playing Poverty Row versions of William Powell and Myrna Loy in this amusingly silly whodunit. Honeymooners Jimmy and Marjorie Flavin find that their Red Rock Tavern hostelry is not only home to a jewel smuggling gang but the site of a double murder. Since both the victims were seemingly bitten to death, the most obvious suspect is Silver Wolf, the part-wolf police dog owner by wheelchair-bound hotel proprietor Jamison (John Elliott) and his wife (Clara Kimball Young). But nothing is quite as it appears at first and the Flavins are quickly enmeshed in a conundrum worthy of -- well, Nick and Nora Charles. Produced by Mercury Pictures for release by Sam Katzman's Puritan Pictures Corp., Rogue's Tavern was filmed on standing sets at the former RKO Pathé studios. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Paradise Express is Grand Hotel out of Twentieth Century, fresh from the Republic Studio breeding farms. The titular express is a small-time freight service, struggling for survival against a larger, more streamlined rail company. Faced with bankruptcy, the owners of the underdog railroad challenge their competitors to a race, winner take all. Handsome Larry Doyle (Grant Withers) mans the controls of the Paradise Express, bearing a collection of familiar movie stereotypes. Featured in the cast is harmonica virtuoso Bob McClung, who earlier in 1937 provided off-screen assistance to Laurel and Hardy's "harmonica challenge" scene in Hal Roach's Pick a Star. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marked Woman was the most famous of the late-1930s films based on New York DA Thomas Dewey's attack on vice lord Lucky Luciano; Paid to Dance was among the least famous. All-purpose Columbia leading lady Jacqueline Wells plays Joan Bradley, a long-suffering hoofer in the seedy dime-a-dance joint controlled by racketeer Jack Miranda (Arthur Loft). Like her fellow "hostesses," Joan is expected to clip the customers for their bankrolls -- and, it is implied, offer their bodies as well as their terpsichorean skills (though we're assured that Joan is still pure of heart and every other portion of her anatomy). Crusading detective William Dennis (Don Terry) vows to save Joan and her ilk from Miranda's clutches, but it takes plenty of brains and muscle to topple the villain's criminal empire. Billed last, Ralph "Dick Tracy" Byrd has a marvelous moment when he takes on two hoodlums at once -- and wins! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide