Marjorie Lord Movies

No relation to the 1953 musical film of the same title, About Face is a 43 minute Hal Roach "Streamliner." Sgt. Doubleday (William Tracy), the man with the photographic memory, and his former topkick Sgt. Ames (Joe Sawyer), go on a night on the town. After accidentally sparking a barroom brawl, our heroes crash a society party overseen by perennial Marx Brothers foil Margaret Dumont. The evening is capped by a wild car chase. Marjorie Lord and Veda Ann Borg provide the scenic attractions in this old-fashioned slapsticker. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The upsurge in commercial air travel in the postwar years resulted in several films dealing with the trials and tribulations of airline stewardesses. Gloria Henry, who'd later star as Alice Mitchell in TV's Dennis the Menace, is teamed with Danny Thomas' future TV wife Marjorie Lord and Audrey Long in Air Hostess. The three leading ladies are cast as stewardesses-in-training, and of course each of the girls is pursuing her own agenda. Henry wants to follow in the footsteps of her sister; Lord wants to honor the memory of her late husband, an airline pilot; and Long is on the lookout for a wealthy husband. Way down on the cast list is another TV star-to-be, Barbara "June Cleaver" Billingsley. In addition, Air Hostess represents one of the few talking pictures made by former silent-screen favorite Leatrice Joy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The cattle rustlers in Border Cafe, a modern-day western from the RKO B-unit, are Eastern gangsters headed by none other than that old reprobate J. Carrol Naish. After having landed in jail for drunken driving for the umpteenth time, young Bostonian Keith Whitney (John Beal callously leaves his fiancé (Marjorie Lord) behind and takes off on a whim for Verde, Texas, where he inhales huge amounts of scotch and plays the honky tonk. In the mistaken belief that his son is operating a cattle ranch, Senator Whitney (George Irving) announces his arrival in Verde but Keith is rescued in the nick of time by Tex Stevens (Harry Carey), a leathery cattle baron who has taken a liking to the youngster. Things get dicey when New York gangster Rocky Alton (Naish) arrives to extract protection fees but Keith, who has taken to the wide open spaces like the proverbial fish to water, saves the day for all and sundry. Dumped on the B-Movie market with little fanfare in June of 1937, Border Café marked the screen debut of Marjorie Lord, mother of screen actress Anne Archer. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Columbia's Chain Gang combines biting social commentary with good old-fashioned melodrama. Reporter Cliff Roberts (Douglas Kennedy) intends to expose political corruption by posing as a convict and joining a prison chain gang. While a "guest of the state," Roberts gets the lowdown on how cheap convict labor is being brutally exploited by certain higher-ups. Unfortunately, his ruse is discovered, and soon Roberts is desperately clambering through treacherous hills and dismal swamps, with police bloodhounds hot on his trail. Producer Sam Katzman claimed that Chain Gang was "torn from today's headlines," but he was always saying things like that. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Its "timely" title notwithstanding, Escape From Hong Kong is simply more of the he-man derring-do that Universal had been grinding out since the silent era. The stars are Leo Carrillo, Andy Devine and Don Terry, previously teamed in Unseen Enemy and soon to be costarred in the studio's Top Sergeant and Danger in the Pacific. Our three heroes are first seen operating a sharpshooting concession in a Hong Kong variety show. The act breaks up when Rusty (Terry) falls in love with Valerie Hale (Marjorie Lord), who turns out to be a British Intelligence Agent assigned to plug security leaks in the Orient. Rusty's pals Pancho (Carrillo) and Blimp (Devine) wrongly assume that Valerie is a German spy, and act accordingly, wreaking all sorts of havoc. By the time everything is straightened out, it's December 7th, and the four protagonists are forced to make a hasty exit from Hong Kong before they're blown to bits by Japanese bomber planes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

RKO Radio's "Hildegarde Withers" series, based on the mystery stories by Stuart Palmer, ground to a half with 40 Naughty Girls. ZaSu Pitts is once more miscast as crime-solving schoolmarm Hildegarde Withers, while James Gleason is rather better served as Inspector Oscar Piper. The title refers to a "Follies"-style Broadway revue, which serves as the backdrop for a baffling murder mystery. When the show's leading man is killed in full view of the audience, suspicion immediately falls upon the hapless prop man (Frank M. Thomas). But Hildegarde suspects that someone else was responsible, and, acting upon her impulses, assimilates a dizzying succession of contradictory clues to finger the actual killer. Among the "40 Naughty Girls" is 17-year-old Marjorie Lord, some 20 years before her TV fame as Danny Thomas's "wife." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dick Foran and Harriet Hilliard (aka Harriet Nelson) top the cast of the Universal musical quickie Hi, Buddy. Foran plays GI Dave O'Connor, who comes to the rescue when a boy's club is threatened with foreclosure. Upon learning that the money targetted for the club has been appropriated by a crooked manager, O'Connor calls upon his army buddies to stage a big, fundraising show. Surprisingly, O'Connor doesn't get heroine Gloria Bradley at the end; instead, radio crooner Johnny Blake (Robert Paige) claims Gloria as his bride. But since O'Connor's gal is lissome Mary Parker (Marjorie Lord), who's complaining? 18 songs are squeezed into the 66-minute running time of Hi, Buddy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey's final film is far from their best, but at least it never plunges to the depths reached by their earlier Silly Billies and Mummy's Boys. Adapted from an unproduced stage play called The Kangaroos, High Flyers casts Bert and Bob as Jerry Lane and Pierre Potkins, operators of an amusement park kiddie-airplane concession. Newspaperman Dave Hanlon (Jack Carson) persuades the boys to fly out to sea to pick up a life preserver which purportedly contains precious photos taken by Hanlon of the British Royal Family. What our heroes don't know is that Hanlon is head of a gang of smugglers, and that the preserver contains stolen jewels and a cache of drugs. But what Hanlon doesn't know is that, despite their boasts, Jerry and Pierre have never flown a real plane in their lives. Upon scooping up the preserver, the boys accidentally open a package of cocaine powder, whereupon they become really high flyers (how this scene got past the censors is astonishing). They crash-land in the backyard of wealthy Horace Arlington (Paul Harvey), who fears that there's a sneak thief at large on his property (actually the "crook" is Arlington's pet dog). Assuming that Jerry and Pierre are the private eyes, he's summoned to his estate to protect the priceless Markoff Diamonds. Arlington gives the boys full reign over the household, allowing Jerry to romance Arlington's daughter Arlene (Marjorie Lord) and Pierre to spoon with household maid Maria (Lupe Velez). Things get really hectic when Hanlon and his fellow thieves converge on the Arlington household, demanding that Jerry and Pierre help them steal the Markoff gems -- or else. The whole mess is viewed with alarm by Arlington's eccentric wife Martha (Margaret Dumont), who fancies herself a fortune-teller. There are isolated moments in High Flyers that rank with Wheeler and Woolsey's best, notably Bert Wheeler's imitation of Charlie Chaplin and Bob Woolsey's song-and-dance duet with Lupe Velez. Also fascinating in a bizarre sort of way are Velez's impressions of Simone Simon, Dolores Del Rio, and Shirley Temple! All in all, however, High Flyers is a stilted, mechanical effort, garnering the team some of their worst reviews. Whether or not Wheeler and Woolsey would have been retained by RKO after the lukewarm box-office reception to this film is a moot point: Gravely ill with kidney disease, Robert Woolsey was confined to his bed after the film wrapped, where he remained until his death 14 months later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Texas Rangers Tim Holt and Richard Martin are dispatched to halt a gang of masked outlaws terrorizing the frontier. Infiltrating the gang, Holt and Martin learn that the raiders are operating altruistically, robbing from the rich to give to the poor. The real villain, it seems, is the local banker (Frank Wilcox), who is mortgaging the local ranchers out of existence. Holt convinces masked-raider leader Marjorie Lord that it's best to let the law take his course, then rides out to bring the banker to task for his misdeeds. Masked Raiders moves along with the smooth expertise audiences of 1949 had come to expect from RKO's Tim Holt western series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cult-favorite director Anthony Mann's second filmic effort was the unprepossessing Universal mini-musical Moonlight in Havana. Allan Jones stars as hotshot baseball player Johnny Norton, in Havana for spring training. It turns out that Johnny has a beautiful singing voice, but only when he's suffering from a cold. Enterprising nightclub manager Barney Crane (William Frawley) attempts to inflict poor Johnny with cold germs, resulting in unchecked zaniness whenever our hero recovers sufficiently to lose his voice. The film's 63-minute running time manages to accommodate the drunken comedy relief of Hugh O'Connell and Jack Norton, and an abundance of musical numbers, courtesy of Allan Jones, Jane Frazee, the Horton Dancing Group, the Jivin' Jacks and Jills and Grace & Nicco. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey are atypically cast as bickering "friendly enemies" in On Again-Off Again. Based on the old stage farce A Pair of Sixes (previously filmed in 1930 as Queen High), the film stars the comedians as Hobbs and Horton, co-owners of a profitable pill manufacturing concern. Forever at each other's throats, the partners are in danger of losing their business thanks to their incessant squabbling. In desperation, their attorney George Dilwig (Russell Hicks) suggests that Hobbs and Horton solve everything with a wrestling match: the loser must agree to become the valet of the winner for a period of one year -- and must also pay a hundred-dollar fine every time he refuses to do the winner's bidding. By a fluke, Horton wins the match, whereupon Hobbs is compelled to wait on him hand and foot. Humiliated, Hobbs refuses to tell his fiancee Florence (Marjorie Lord) about the arrangement and ships her off to Florida, whereupon Horton, hoping to force Hobbs to break the agreement and thus forfeit his share of the business, spreads rumors that Hobbs is fooling around with Mrs. Horton (Esther Muir), then invites Florence to a party at his mansion. Hobbs gets even by dismissing all the servants and hiring a passel of low-lifes (Patricia Wilder, Pat Flaherty et.al.) as temporary help. The feud comes to a head when crooked salesman Toler (George Meeker) tries to convince both Horton and Hobbs to invest in a questionable business scheme, leading to a nocturnal slapstick chase through the Horton estate. Never before had Wheeler and Woolsey been involved in so complicated a plotline; indeed, both comedians seem positively winded at the end of the film. Despite all that's going on, there's still time for a couple of engaging musical numbers, including the ironic opener "One Happy Family" and Bert Wheeler's re-creation of his classic "crying while eating" vaudeville routine. Opinions are divided on On Again-Off Again: Some fans consider it the worst of Wheeler and Woolsey's features, while others regard it as a welcome step up from their previous mediocrities Silly Billies and Mummy's Boys. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rebel City is a "B" western with "A" aspirations. Wild Bill Elliot plays gambler Frank Graham, who heads to Kansas in search of his father's murderer. This being 1864, the local military presence is more preoccupied with keeping Southern sympathizers out of the state to worry about Graham's problems. Thus, our hero undertakes the task of exposing the killer himself. As always, the least likely suspect is the guilty party (though sharp-eyed viewers were wise to the villain from the first reel). Marjorie Lord co-stars as Jane Dudley, the comely operator of the local freight line who helps Graham in his task. Producer Thomas M. Fennelly and director Thomas Carr later collaborated on the Richard Diamond TV series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide