Herbert Marshall Movies

Former army pilot Robert Taylor is accused, on the basis of strong circumstantial evidence, of his wife's murder. Suffering from periodic blackouts, Taylor isn't so certain of his innocence himself. When offered a brain operation, Taylor refuses, knowing that if he is proven sane he will be executed for murder. Instead, he opts for confinement in a high-walled veteran's mental institution. A compassionate lady doctor (Audrey Totter) falls in love with Taylor, convincing him to have the operation. Even after emerging from the ether, Taylor cannot remember any of the details concerning his wife's death--but he does recall that the dead woman had recently taken a job with a publisher (Herbert Marshall) of religious books. While the killer's identity is tipped off by this revelation, the audience is never certain that Robert Taylor isn't a murderer--especially since he'd previously appeared as a homicidal maniac in the 1946 film Undercurrent. The best moment in High Wall is the casual disposal of the sole witness to the murder, via a long, dark elevator shaft. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After several years' service with the Marines in World War II, Tyrone Power made his much anticipated return to the screen in The Razor's Edge. Power is appropriately cast as disillusioned World War I vet Larry Darrell, who returns from hostilities questioning his old values. To find himself, Larry joins several other members of the Lost Generation in Paris. He is disillusioned once more when the society deb whom he loves, Isabel Bradley (Gene Tierney), marries another for wealth and position. She returns to Larry's life to break up his romance with unstable, alcoholic Sophie MacDonald (Anne Baxter in a powerhouse Oscar-winning performance). After Sophie's death, Larry determines that the life offered him by Isabel is not to his liking, and continues seeking his true place in the scheme of things. Acting as a respite between the plot's various intrigues is Clifton Webb as a waspish social arbiter, who ends up a lonely, dying man, imperiously dictating arrangements for his own funeral. The Razor's Edge was based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, who appears onscreen in the form of Herbert Marshall. The film would be remade in 1984, with Bill Murray in the Tyrone Power role. This film re-teamed Tierney and Webb two years after their appearance together in Laura. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This romantic fantasy was based on a popular play by Arthur Pinero. Oliver Bradford (Robert Young) is a young man who returned from World War II with severe facial scars; while he was engaged to be married before he left, he believes that no one could love him now, and he lives on the brink of suicide. Oliver meets Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire), a plain young woman who is convinced that her looks will never win her a man. These two lonely people marry, more out of desperation than love, and move into a small cottage which is all that remains of the large estate of Abigail Minnett (Mildred Natwick), who lost the rest of her property in a fire. The cottage has been the site of many happy honeymooners over the years, and inside its walls, Oliver and Laura discover that a magical transformation takes place; he regains the handsome features he once possessed, and she becomes beautiful. The couple find love and happiness with each other, but find that the cottage's magical spell only works as long as they remain at home with each other; the outside world does not recognize the beauty that they have found with each other. The Enchanted Cottage was previously adapted for the silent screen in 1924, with Richard Barthelmess and May McAvoy as the newlyweds. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

College boy Andy continues his studies in this comedy. Well, at least he should be studying. Unfortunately, he seems to be more interested in the pretty co-eds, especially the rambunctious Wilde twins. They cause poor Andy so much trouble that he begins plotting to drop out of school. Fortunately, Judge Hardy arrives at the last minute and gives his boy a good talking-to and sets things to right. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Flight for Freedom was an "a clef" version of the Amelia Earhart story. Rosalind Russell plays the Earhart-like aviatrix Tonie Carter, who spends the early part of the film fighting against the aviation industry's prejudice against woman pilots. Tonie establishes a reputation as "the Lady Lindbergh", setting flight records on a near-weekly basis. Along the way, she falls in love with an agreeable flying ace (Fred MacMurray), much to the dismay of her conservative flight instructor (Herbert Marshall). The film's ending expands on speculation regarding Amelia Earhart's disappearance during a 1937 flight; Tonie Carter flies off on a secret mission to aid the Pacific war effort, then vanishes before completing her task. Flight for Freedom was produced for RKO by Floyd Odlum, whose wife Jacqueline Cochran was herself a renowned aviatrix. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 80-star cast of Forever and a Day would certainly not have been feasible had not most of the actors and production people turned over their salaries to British war relief -- a point driven home during the lengthy opening credits by an unseen narrator. The true star of the film is a stately old manor house in London, built in 1804 by a British admiral (C. Aubrey Smith) and blitzed in 1940 by one Adolf Hitler. Through the portals of this house pass a vast array of Britons, from high-born to low. The earliest scenes involve gay blade Lt. William Trimble (Ray Milland), wronged country-girl Susan (Anna Neagle), and wicked landowner Ambrose Pomfret (Claude Rains). We move on to a comic interlude involving dotty Mr. Simpson (Reginald Owen), eternally drunken butler Bellamy (Charles Laughton), and cockney plumbers Mr. Dabb (Cedric Hardwicke) and Wilkins (Buster Keaton). Maidservant Jenny (Ida Lupino) takes over the plot during the Boer War era, while the World War I sequence finds the house converted into a way-station for soldiers (including Robert Cummings) and anxious families (including Roland Young and Gladys Cooper). Finally we arrive in 1940, with American Gates Pomfret (Kent Smith) and lady-of-the-house Lesley Trimble (Ruth Warrick) surveying the bombed-out manor, and exulting over the fact that the portrait of the home's founder, Adm. Eustace Trimble (Smith), has remained intact -- symbolic proof of England's durability in its darkest hours. The huge cast includes Dame May Whitty, Edward Everett Horton, Wendy Barrie, Merle Oberon, Nigel Bruce, Richard Haydn, Donald Crisp, and a host of others -- some appearing in sizeable roles, others (like Arthur Treacher and Patric Knowles) willingly accepting one-scene bits, simply to participate in the undertaking. Seven directors and 21 writers were also swept up in the project. Forever and a Day was supposed to have been withdrawn from circulation after the war and its prints destroyed so that no one could profit from what was supposed to have been an act of industry charity. Happily for future generations, prints have survived and are now safely preserved. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Playwright Lillian Hellman first wrote of the horrible Hubbard family in her 1939 play The Little Foxes. In this lavish 1941 film version, Bette Davis takes over for Broadway's Tallulah Bankhead in the role of conniving turn-of-the-century Southern aristocrat Regina Hubbard Giddens. Regina's equally odious brothers (Charles Dingle and Carl Benton Reid) want her to lend them 75,000 dollars to help build a cotton mill. To do this, she must make peace with her long-estranged husband, Horace (Herbert Marshall) -- and failing that, she tries to arrange a wealthy marriage between her daughter, Alexandra (Teresa Wright), and her slimy nephew Leo (Dan Duryea). Horace refuses to give Regina the money, whereupon Leo is pressured by his father (Reid) to steal bonds from the family business. Regina uses this information as a means of blackmailing her brothers for a share in the new mill. In retaliation, Horace claims that he gave Leo the bonds as a loan, thereby cutting Regina out of the deal. When Horace suffers a heart attack, Regina makes no effort to give him his medicine, and he dies without revealing his willingness to loan the money to Leo. Regina is thus still able to strongarm her brothers into giving her a piece of the mill -- but the price for her evil machinations is the loss of her daughter's love and respect. The Little Foxes caused a censorship stir in 1941; by refusing to give Horace his medicine, Regina technically gets away with murder. However, the censors decided that Regina was punished enough when her daughter left her to marry an honest newspaperman (Richard Carlson). Given the usual Tiffany treatment by producer Sam Goldwyn, The Little Foxes was a success; several years later, Lillian Hellman wrote a "prequel" to The Little Foxes, titled Another Part of the Forest. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A minor heart-tugger filmed on leftover Mr. Smith Goes to Washington sets, this Columbia production stars the very British Herbert Marshall as US senator John Coleridge. Befriending young Marty Driscoll (Gene Reynolds), a tough kid from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks, Senator Coleridge tries to put Marty on the right track by installing him as a Senate page boy. When Marty sells top-secret information to the press, Coleridge refuses to punish the boy himself: instead, Marty is tried before a jury of his peers-the rest of the pages, who've been anxious to show what they've learned while observing the senators at work. Virginia Bruce does what she can with the thankless role of a DC newspaper sob sister. The link between Adventure in Washington and Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is strengthened by the presence in the cast of Dickie Jones and Pierre Watkin, both of whom had appeared in similar roles in the Capra film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

William Wyler's dark and poisonous melodrama, based on the W. Somerset Maugham novel, features Bette Davis in one of her nastiest roles. The story begins in the shimmering moonlight on a tropical Malayan rubber plantation. Shots ring out and a wounded man, Geoffrey Hammond (David Newell) staggers from a bungalow as Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) coldly follows him, pumping the remaining bullets into his body. She later tells her husband Robert (Herbert Marshall) that she shot Geoffrey, a mutual friend, because he was drunk and tried to take advantage of her. Robert, who owns the plantation, believes her story and hires high-powered lawyer Howard Joyce (James Stephenson) to defend her. But then a letter surfaces in which it is revealed that Leslie had invited Geoffrey to the plantation on the night of his murder. When Howard confronts her with the letter, Leslie admits writing it and implies that she and Geoffrey were lovers. Howard, nevertheless, agrees to continue defending her; he explains to Leslie, "I won't tell you what I personally thought when I read the letter. It's the duty of counsel to defend his client, not to convict her even in his own mind. I don't want you to tell me anything but what is needed to save your neck." Meanwhile, the letter becomes the object of a $10,000 blackmail scheme from Geoffrey's widow (Gale Sondergaard). ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Fourteen scriptwriters spent five years toiling over a movie adaptation of war correspondent Vincent Sheehan's Personal History before producer Walter Wanger brought the property to the screen as Foreign Correspondent. What emerged was approximately 2 parts Sheehan and 8 parts director Alfred Hitchcock--and what's wrong with that? Joel McCrea stars as an American journalist sent by his newspaper to cover the volatile war scene in Europe in the years 1938 to 1940. He has barely arrived in Holland before he witnesses the assassination of Dutch diplomat Albert Basserman: at least, that's what he thinks he sees. McCrea makes the acquaintance of peace-activist Herbert Marshall, his like-minded daughter Laraine Day, and cheeky British secret agent George Sanders. A wild chase through the streets of Amsterdam, with McCrea dodging bullets, leads to the classic "alternating windmills" scene, which tips Our Hero to the existence of a formidable subversive organization. McCrea returns to England, where he nearly falls victim to the machinations of jovial hired-killer Edmund Gwenn. The leader of the spy ring is revealed during the climactic plane-crash sequence--which, like the aforementioned windmill scene, is a cinematic tour de force for director Hitchcock and cinematographer Rudolph Mate. Producer Wanger kept abreast of breaking news events all through the filming of Foreign Correspondent, enabling him to keep the picture as "hot" as possible: the final scene, with McCrea broadcasting to a "sleeping" America from London while Nazi bombs drop all around him, was filmed only a short time after the actual London blitz. The script was co-written by Robert Benchley, who has a wonderful supporting role as an eternally tippling newsman. Foreign Correspondent was Alfred Hitchcock's second American film, and remained one of his (and his fans') personal favorites. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The old David Belasco theatrical warhorse Zaza, which starred Mrs. Leslie Carter way back in 1899, had already been filmed by Pauline Frederick in 1915 and by Gloria Swanson in 1923 when this Claudette Colbert version hit the screens in early 1939. Doing her own singing and dancing, Colbert plays the title character, a saucy fin de siecle Parisian cabaret performer who falls in love with wealthy rogue Dufresne (Herbert Marshall). Quitting show biz to be with Dufresne for all time, Zaza is taken aback to discover that he's already married. Sorrowfully she returns to the stage, singing a farewell to Dufresne before an audience that seems to include everyone in Paris. Bert Lahr steals the show as Zaza's zany but golden-hearted music-hall partner; in fact he's a lot livelier than the near-comatose Herbert Marshall, who seems preoccupied with more important matters throughout the film. Screenwriter Zoe Akins did her best to make the "naughty" Belasco original conform to the stringent censorship standards of 1939. Still, the Hays Office found plenty with which to nitpick: Commenting on Zaza's angry exclamation "Pig! Pig! Pig! Pig! Pig!", the Hays folks demanded "Delete two 'Pigs'." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Former doctor Jim Howard (Herbert Marshall) helps desperate Margot Weston (Barbara Stanwyck), pregnant and unmarried; when her son is born, Jim helps her place the baby with Phil Marshall (Ian Hunter) and his wife, on the condition that neither the Marshalls nor the child ever know Margot is his mother. Five years later, Margot is now a well-paid buyer for the store owned by Harriet Martin (Binnie Barnes); she meets Jim again, and a romance begins to blossom, but she's off to Paris on Harriet's behalf. There, Margot is wooed by the charming but carefree Count Giovanni Corini (Cesar Romero) and she happens to meet her son Roddy (Johnnie Russell), traveling with his aunt, as Mrs. Marshall has died. On the trip back to America, Margot and Roddy become very close, while Corini, on the same ship, continues to pursue Margot. At home, she becomes convinced that Jessica (Lynn Bari), Phil's new fiancee, doesn't love him, and will be a bad mother to Roddy, so she decides to break up the engagement, but Jim, beginning a career as a scientist, reminds her of her earlier promise not to interfere in the boy's life. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide