Bessie Love Movies

Touch and Go stars Jack Hawkins as the head of a British family who decides to kick over the traces and emigrate to Australia. No one in the family, least of all wife Margaret Johnston, is enthused over this move, but they prepare themselves with dignity. As the technical and legal obstacles preventing their move begin to mount, even Hawkins has second thoughts about hitching his star Down Under. Since no one behaves very believably in the film, Touch and Go rises and falls on its individual comic sequences, some of which are quite good. The title Touch and Go has been used so often that when the film was released in the US, it was retitled The Light Touch. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Had the women-behind-bars drama The Weak and the Wicked been made in Hollywood, the cast would probably have included the likes of Ida Lupino, Marie Windsor, Peggie Castle and Hope Emerson. Instead, the film was lensed in Britain, with Glynis Johns and Diana Dors heading the cast. Framed on a charge of fraud, "good girl" Glynis is tossed into prison. Her cellmates include hard-boiled Ms. Dors, murder suspect Jane Hylton, blackmailer-poisoner Dame Sybil Thorndyke and shoplifter Olive Sloane. Each of their stories is detailed in a series of flashbacks. Downplay the potential sensational elments of the storyline, The Weak and the Wicked takes great pains to point out the positive values of a special rehabilitation program, wherein the main characters are given the opportunity to make themselves useful members of society. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Magic Box was the English film industry's contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain. Its all-star cast generously forsook their usual salaries for the privilege of paying tribute to that unsung pioneer of cinema, William Friese-Greene, here played by Robert Donat. Adapted by Eric Ambler from the controversial biography by Ray Allister, Magic Box contends that Friese-Greene was the true father of motion pictures, and not such upstarts as W. K. L. Dickson and Thomas Edison. Told in flashback, the film details Friese-Greene's tireless experiments with the "moving image," leading inexorably to a series of failures and disappoints, as others hog the credit for the protagonist's discoveries. The huge cast includes such British film luminaries as Joyce Grenfell, Miles Malleson, Michael Redgrave, Eric Portman, Emlyn Williams, Richard Attenborough, Peter Ustinov, Cecil Parker, Kay Walsh, and, best of all, Laurence Olivier as the confused bobby who witnesses Friese-Greene's first motion picture demonstration. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed in 1945 and released in the US the following year, the Anglo-American Journey Together is a tribute to the Royal Air Force, with several members of the RAF (and the acting profession) in prominent roles. The story follows the progress of two aspiring RAF pilots, cockney David Wilton (Sgt. Richard Attenborough) and college graduate John Aynesworth (Aircraftsman Jack Watling), from basic training to bombing mission. David and John are briefly sent off to America, where they are trained for aerial combat by no-nonsense Dean MacWilliams (Edward G. Robinson). The two flyboys then separate, with David going to Canadian Navigational School while John earns his wings and is shipped back to England. It's a tougher road to hoe for the combative, fiercely independent David than it is for the calmly resilient John, by by film's end the two comrades in arms are together again, flying their first hazardous mission over Berlin. Bessie Love, an American actress then living in London, plays Edward G. Robinson's wife; other roles are filled by members of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the US Army Air Corps. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The "conspiracy" of the title refers not only to a deadly narcotics ring, but also the combined efforts by the good guys to capture the villains. Margaret Holt (Bessie Love) and her brother Victor (Bert Morehouse) team up to destroy the drug peddlers responsible for their father's death. They are aided in this endeavor by cub reporter John Howell (Hugh Trevor), and by sourpuss mystery writer Winthrop Clavering (Ned Sparks). In the film's tension-packed climax, avenging-angel Margaret slowly sneaks up on gang leader James Morton (Otto Matiesen), dagger in hand. A remake of a Paramount silent film, Conspiracy barely made back its cost, precluding any future remakes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The DeSylva-Brown-Henderson Broadway musical Good News was first brought to the screen by MGM in 1930. The scene is Tait College, where everyone is in a blue funk over the dilemma of gridiron star Tom (Stanley Smith). Since the only thing he's ever passed is a football, Tom is in danger of flunking out before the Big Game. Plain-looking Connie (Mary Lawlor) is enlisted to tutor Tom through his final exams, and in the process the two students fall in love -- much to the dismay of campus vamp Patricia (Lola Lane). Managing to finagle a marriage proposal out of Tom, it looks as though Patricia will emerge triumphant, but all is set aright during the lavish Technicolor finale. Good News is an instructive example of how Hollywood perceived the movie musical during this period: While much of the film is shot in the static, nailed-down-camera technique so common to early talkies, several isolated sequences -- most of them featuring comedy-relief characters Bessie Love and Gus Shy -- are cleverly and inventively photographed (as Love shoots dice with the football team, the camera records her reactions from the dice's point of view!) Many of the original play's songs are retained in the film, including the title number, "The Best Things in Life are Free" and the lively "Varsity Drag," performed con brio by soubrette Dorothy McNulty (later known as Penny Singleton) and including such esoterica as animated wall paintings and a superimposed thermometer which boils over as the dancing gets "hotter. Future writer-director Delmer Daves has a good supporting role as surly campus jock "Beef." Existing prints of Good News are minus the final Technicolor reel, but Turner Films has provided a videotaped synopsis, complete with production stills, for television showings. Good News was remade -- and vastly improved upon -- by MGM producer Arthur Freed in 1947. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This landmark MGM backstage musical of the early sound era about broken dreams on the Great White Way features a bevy of standards by the songwriting team of Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. Freed later became unit producer of the legendary Freed Unit at MGM, which is the reason many of the tunes from Broadway Melody --""You Were Meant For Me"", "Broadway Melody", ""The Wedding of the Painted Doll""-- later appeared in Freed's seminal MGM musical Singin' in the Rain. The nominal story concerns midwestern sister act The Mahoney Sisters --Queenie (Anita Page) and Hank (Bessie Love)-- who come to New York to try to make it big on Broadway. Hank's song-and-dance man boyfriend Eddie (Charles King) has promised the gals a part in the new Broadway revue in which he is soon to appear. When Hank and Queenie come to see him, Hank is pleasantly surprised at the way Queenie has filled out. Soon enough, Eddie is making advances to Queenie. Queenie is attracted to Eddie too, but she doesn't want to steal her sister's boyfriend. So she Queenie takes up with a lecherous playboy, leaving it to Hank to put all the confused love relationships in perspective. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a traveling troupe of actors find themselves in danger of becoming unemployed when their manager up and leaves. Two of the actors decide to marry and settle down. The lead actor helps set up the rest of the troupe with some performances. He then destroys the new marriage. Later the woman and the head actor fall in love. He then gives her the lead role in his newest show. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

For many years considered a "lost" Frank Capra silent, The Matinee Idol was restored in the mid-1990s to very nearly its entire 60-minute length. Johnnie Walker is cast as brash Broadway star Don Wilson, who out of boredom takes a leave of absence from his latest show and heads to the boonies. Here he stumbles across a threadbare theatrical stock company run by Ginger Bolivar (Bessie Love) and her father, Col. Jaspar Bolivar (Lionel Belmore). Smitten by Ginger, Don assumes a phony name and takes a job as a bit player in the Bolivar Stock Company's latest production, a dreadful Civil War drama. Amused by the sincerity of the provincial actors, Don secretly arranges for the troupe to be hired to perform in his own Broadway revue. On the night of their New York debut, the troupe's "high drama" is greeted with hoots of derisive laughter and celebrated as the comedy hit of the year. But Ginger, understandably humiliated, walks off the stage -- and upon finding out Don's true identity and his complicity in the proceedings, she walks out on him as well. Realizing that he's carried the joke too far, the now-contrite Don breaks his Broadway contract and seeks out Ginger's forgiveness, which of course she provides in abundance during the climactic clinch. Frank Capra later claimed that Matinee Idol represented the first time he was able to successfully combine broad comedy with a tender romance, though the film works far better on a comic level than it does as a love story (especially amusing are the close-ups of the Bolivar Stock Company's hayseed audience). Matinee Idol was remade in 1936 as The Music Goes 'Round and 'Round. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A Harp in Hock proved to be a felicitous reteaming of veteran Austrian stage star Rudolph Schildkraut and juvenile favorite Junior Coghlan, who'd previously co-starred in The Country Doctor. Upon arriving in New York, Irish lad Coghlan discovers that his mother has just died. Coghlan is unofficially adopted by May Robson, his mom's tenement neighbor, but when the feisty orphan takes a poke at Robson's bullying son, he is turned over to the cops. Likeable Jewish pawnbroker Schildkraut assumes custody of Coghlan during the boy's probation, but after a second confrontation with Robson's son, the kid is shipped off to an orphanage. Escaping, Coghlan makes a beeline to Schildkraut's hockshop, where in a tearful conclusion the old man decides to permanently adopt the boy. In recalling A Harp in Hock in his autobiography, Frank "Junior" Coghlan noted that director Renaud Hoffman insisted that the young actor speak in an Irish brogue while on the set -- even though the film was silent! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide