Walter Long Movies

Based on Lea David Freeman's play Ruby, Lazy River takes place somewhere in the Mississippi River Valley. Jean Parker plays Sarah, a young Bayou girl who tries to guide three ex-convicts to moral redemption. Two of Sarah's charges, Gabby (Ted Healy) and Tiny (Nat Pendleton), seem to be beyond help, but there's still hope for Bill Drexel (Robert Young) a wealthy young man who's taken the wrong path in life. All three men prove that their hearts are in the right place by robbing the safe of crooked riverboat owner Sam Kee (C. Henry Gordon) then turn the money over to a needy widow. Producer Lucien Hubbard's screenplay manages to work in an alien-smuggling angle which jars with the rest of the picture -- and also artificially bloats the film's running time to 75 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed on what MGM considered a B-picture budget and schedule (14 days, which at Universal or Columbia would have been considered extravagant), The Thin Man proved to be "sleeper," spawning a popular film, radio, and television series. Contrary to popular belief, the title does not refer to star William Powell, but to Edward Ellis, playing the mean-spirited inventor who sets the plot in motion. The recently divorced Clyde Wynant (Ellis) discovers that his new girlfriend, Julia Wolf (Natalie Moorhead), has stolen 50,000 dollars and is carrying on with other men. Not long afterward, he disappears. Anxious to locate her father, Wynant' daughter, Dorothy (Maureen O'Sullivan), goes to private detective Nick Charles (William Powell) for help. Having just married the lovely and wealthy Nora (Myrna Loy), Nick has no desire to return to sleuthing, but the thrill-seeking Nora eagerly talks him into taking Dorothy's case. Shortly thereafter, Wynant's lady friend is murdered; so far as police detective John Guild (Nat Pendleton) is concerned, the still-missing Wynant is the guilty party. Nick is unsatisfied with this deduction, and with the help of his wire fox terrier, Asta, he manages to uncover several vital clues -- including a decomposed corpse. At a fancy dinner party, between cocktails and the first course, Nick solves the mystery and exposes a hidden murderer. The story itself, lifted almost verbatim by scenarists Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich from the Dashiell Hammett novel on which The Thin Man is based, hardly matters. The film's strong suit is the witty repartee between Nick and Nora Charles, who manage to behave like saucily illicit lovers throughout the film even though they're married. The chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy would be adroitly exploited by MGM in several subsequent films, including five additional Thin Man mysteries produced between 1936 and 1948. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

If you can accept blonde, blue-eyed Marion Davies disguising herself in blackface, chances are you'll swallow the rest of Operator 13. Davies plays a Belle Boyd-like actress who agrees to become a Northern spy during the Civil War. She assumes the identity of an octoroon servant and heads into Southern territory. Marion meets dashing Confederate captain Gary Cooper, and instantly falls in love with him. Later, she assumes the disguise of a Southern belle to prevent Cooper from recruiting Southern sympathizers in the north. This time Cooper falls for Davies, which makes it hard for her to carry out her mission. After several more reels of espionage and romantic interludes, including a gently kinky sequence in which Cooper and Davies are handcuffed together, the lovers part company, promising to meet again when the war is over. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Warner Bros.' hard-hitting chain-gang movie was a faithful adaptation of the similarly titled autobiography of Robert Elliot Burns. Paul Muni plays World War I veteran James Allen, whose plans of becoming a master architect evaporate in the cold light of economic realities. Flat broke, Allen is forced to pawn his war medals, which have become a glut on the market. When Allen is innocently involved in a restaurant holdup, the police don't buy his story that the robber (Preston S. Foster) had forced him to clean out the cash register, and Allen is sentenced to ten years on a chain gang. The brutal scenes that follow make the later chain-gang movie Cool Hand Luke (1967) look like a picnic in the country. Unable to stand any more, Allen escapes and heads to Chicago. Using an alias, he builds a new life for himself and within five years is the respected president of a bridge-building firm. His landlady (Glenda Farrell), learning about his past, forces Allen to marry her. When he falls in love with another girl (Helen Vinson) and asks for a divorce, his wife turns him over to the authorities. The real-life Robert Elliot Burns was still a fugitive when he wrote his exposé of the chain-gang system; the publication of Burns' book led to the abolishment of that system and an erasure of Burns' sentence. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The factual story of H.A.W. Tabor and "Baby Doe" was the inspiration of Silver Dollar. Edward G. Robinson plays the Tabor counterpart, a prospector who strikes it rich with a silver mine. Robinson establishes the city of Denver, strongarms his way into political power, buys every creature comfort he can get his hands on, and deserts his faithful wife (Aline McMahon) for a flashy younger woman (Bebe Daniels, playing the character based on Tabor's mistress "Baby Doe"). Robinson is ruined by the decline of the silver market, spending his last days in near-madness planning and dreaming for a return to his glory days. In real life, it was Baby Doe who went insane, living (and dying) in a tiny shack near the once-prosperous silver mine. Stodgily directed, Silver Dollar isn't nearly as surrealistic as the true story it's based on. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have just returned from a whaling trek. They check into a run-down hotel, the Mariner's Rest, whose owner, Mugsy Long (the intimidating Walter Long), is forcing a girl (Jacqueline Wells) into marriage. The girl manages to reveal her dilemma to Stan and Ollie before being locked in a closet. They try to intervene, and when the justice of the peace (Bobby Burns) comes by to perform the ceremony, they refuse to act as witnesses. There is a fracas over the closet key, but Stan manages to get it and release the girl. The chase continues, however, until Long is dumped in the water. Stan and Ollie now have a dilemma of their own -- they left their money in their hotel room. They are saved when an old friend (Harry Bernard sees them and, as a boxing promoter, offers Ollie fifty dollars to fight that evening. Ollie accepts the money and the gig -- as Stan's manager. When they get to the ring, Stan is his usual inept self, but what's worse for him is that his opponent is Mugsy Long! Long grimly insists that his assistant add some weight to his glove. In the course of the fight, "Battling" Laurel somehow manages to get his hands on (or in) Long's loaded glove and when Long tries to get it back, he is knocked cold. Ollie tells Stan he had a bet going -- against him. Stan goes to punch Ollie, but knocks out a boxing official instead, and the boys are on the run again. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

A couple of silent screen "names," Edmund Burns and Molly O'Day flounder badly in this penny-ante shipboard melodrama from Poverty Row producer Larry Darmour. Second-billed Burns plays Richard Charters, a young man imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit. Escaping, Richard dons a beard and while hiding out in a dockside dive overhears a plot to steal a sunken treasure after it had been salvaged by Captain McCall (James Donnelly). After a chance meeting with the captain's flirtatious daughter, Ann (star-billed O'Day), and her pet monkey, Richard stows away on McCall's ship. His presence, however, is revealed when he comes to the rescue of Ann, who is being mauled by Johnson (Walter Long), the villainous first mate. Although cornered by the crooks, Richard manages not only to save the day for Captain McCall and Ann but also catch the villain, Killer Lundgren (William F. Moran), who sent him to prison in the first place. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Two-reel comedy favorites Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made their feature-film debut (excluding their guest appearances in Hollywood Revue of 1929 and Rogue Song) in the prison comedy Pardon Us. A spoof of MGM's The Big House, the story begins when erstwhile bootleggers Laurel and Hardy sell a bottle of beer to a Prohibition agent. Shipped off to the pen, our heroes are escorted to the cell occupied by "The Tiger" (Walter Long), the toughest con in the joint. The Tiger immediately becomes the boys' best friend when he mistakes Laurel's loose-tooth "buzz" as an act of defiance! Swept up in one of The Tiger's escape attempts, Laurel and Hardy disguise themselves in blackface and lose themselves among the cotton-pickers in the Deep South, but Stan's buzzing tooth gives the game away when the warden's (Wilfred Lucas) car breaks down near the cotton fields. Carted back to jail, Stan and Ollie become heroes when they inadvertently foul up The Tiger's next prison break. Pardon Us was previewed in late 1930 in a 70-minute version titled The Rap, which included several sequences (including an elaborate prison fire) which never made it to the final, 56-minute release version. More recently, the film has been reissued to TV in the 65-minute print prepared for Great Britain; the "new" footage includes a handful of previously discarded gag punchlines and several outtakes. In its 56-minute state, Pardon Us is not bad for a first feature-length attempt, even though the best Laurel & Hardy features were still to come. Highlights include an "Our Gang"-style schoolroom routine with perennial Laurel & Hardy foil James Finlayson as the teacher (incidentally, June Marlowe, who played Miss Crabtree in the real Our Gang comedies, shows up as the warden's daughter), a pleasant song-and-dance number in blackface, and a hilarious dentist-office routine "borrowed" from the team's 1928 silent comedy Leave 'Em Laughing. Pardon Us was simultaneously filmed in several foreign languages -- one of which, the Spanish-language De Bote en Bote, has popped up from time to time on American cable television. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A dedicated priest sets up a mission in the slums of a great metropolitan city, hoping to clean up the community by cleansing the souls of its denizens. The plot concentrates on one of these unfortunates, a falsely accused convict played by William Collier Jr. Released from jail, Collier returns to his tenement neighborhood, seeking revenge on the man who framed him. But upon meeting mission worker Blanche Mehaffey, the ex-girlfriend of his would-be victim, Collier vows to change his ways. He also sees to it that his two ex-cellmates (Murray Smith and James Bradbury Jr., a sort of poor man's Laurel and Hardy) will likewise follow the straight and narrow. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Herman Melville's classic novel gets a major revision in this screen adaptation of his seafaring novel - Hollywood's first talkie adaptation of the work. (A silent version, The Sea Beast, had been produced four years earlier). Captain Ahab Ceely (John Barrymore), a crusty and hard-drinking sailor, falls in love with Faith Mapple (Joan Bennett), the daughter of a man of the cloth. Ahab has a rival for Faith's affections in Derek (Lloyd Hughes), his wicked brother, but as Ahab sets sail, Faith pledges to him that she'll remain loyal to him while he's out to sea. While hunting for whales, Ahab is thrown overboard, and he loses his leg to a mammoth creature known to seamen as Moby Dick. When Ahab returns, he tells Faith that he won't hold her to her pledge to marry him before showing her the wooden peg that has replaced his limb. Faith shrieks in horror, and Ahab is crestfallen to realize that his romance is over. Returning to the sea, Ahab spends the next seven years searching for the great white whale Moby Dick, obsessed with getting revenge on the creature that took his leg and ruined his life. In addition to rewriting the famous first lines of the novel, in this version of Moby Dick, Ishmael doesn't even appear. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this early talkie from director John Ford, a Scottish captain and his regiment are sent to India during WW I and assigned to quell a native uprising in the Northern mountains. Unfortunately, soon after arriving, he gets drunk and seemingly kills another officer during a barroom fight. He escapes capture and disappears into the crowd. Now wanted as a renegade, he involves himself with a beautiful but sadistic native princess, a direct descendant of Alexander the Great. He cozies up to her and learns that she is planning to send her troops to attack the British through Khyber pass. Though she correctly suspects that the fugitive soldier is really a spy, she cannot help but fall in love with him, thereby sparing him the usual torture and castration she forces upon other captured British soldiers. Unfortunately her love causes her downfall in the exciting conclusion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gang War stars Jack Pickford as speakeasy musician Clyde Baxter and Olive Borden as Flowers, a dime-a-dance girl. When Clyde falls in love with Flowers, he finds he has a deadly rival in the form of gangster Blackjack (Eddie Gribbon). During an all-out war between two rival gangs, Blackjack proves he's a "right" guy by sacrificing himself to save Clyde and Flowers. The brutish Walter Long is right in his element as the film's "bad" gangster. Completed as a silent film, Gang War was converted into a part-talkie with an irrelevant prologue sequence involving reporters Lorin Raker and David McKee; appearing in this sequence is a young Mabel Albertson, long before she became everybody's meddling mother-in-law on TV. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide