Janet Martin Movies

An honest football player single-handedly takes on a professional gambler and the crooked publisher of a sports magazine to bust up their game-fixing scheme. Unfortunately, his efforts get him killed. This crime drama chronicles the efforts of a different player and an earnest D.A. to bring the killers to justice. Matters are not helped by the fact that the attorney is publisher's stepson. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Though already established as Roy Rogers' favorite leading lady (offscreen and on), Dale Evans was permitted a rare non-western appearance minus Rogers in the 1947 Republic mystery thriller The Trespasser. Evans is cast as nightclub singer Linda Coleman, the sister of newspaper-book reviewer Bruce Coleman (William Bakewell). Bruce is engaged in a clever fraud, peddling rare-book forgeries to collector/publisher Channing Bliss (Francis Pierlot). This bunco scheme is uncovered by aspiring girl reporter Stevie Carson (Janet Martin), with the grudging help of veteran newshound Danny Butler (Warren Douglas). With all this going on, ostensible star Dale Evans has little to do except sing one sultry musical number and look smashing in low-cut gowns -- and, oh yes, indulge in a bit of romance with Stevie's editor Bill Monroe (Douglas Fowley). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this drama, a print shop owner suffers a blow to the head and wakes up a mind-reader. Meanwhile the president of a publishing firm finds himself involved with a former chorus girl who has secretly teamed up with a phony mind-reader. An ambitious friend of the president aspires to his job; to get it he enlists the help of the chorus girl and her friend to begin blackmailing him. Fortunately, the real mind-reader intervenes and foils their plans. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The standard Roy Rogers musical western Bells of Rosarita is enlivened by a cute last-reel gimmick. Rogers is appropriately cast as a cowboy star who invariably rescues the heroine from the villain in his movie vehicles. But when Sue Farnum (Dale Evans) is cheated out of her inheritance by the duplicitous business partner (Grant Withers) of her deceased father, Roy finds out with startling suddeness that Real Life isn't like the movies. In order to rescue this genuine damsel in distress, Rogers enlists the aid of his fellow Republic sagebrush stars Wild Bill Elliot, Allan Lane, Don "Red" Barry, Robert Livingston, and Sunset Carson-each astride his own "celebrity" horse. So well-received was the climactic "hero rally" in Bells of Rosarita that the device was repeated again and again by Republic, most memorably in the 1950 Rogers starrer Trail of Robin Hood. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Yellow Rose of Texas is, at least in the case of this Roy Rogers vehicle, both the title of a song and the name of a fancy showboat. Rogers plays a frontier insurance investigator who is assigned to locate a company payroll stolen several years earlier. Working undercover, Roy poses as a singer on the aforementioned "Yellow Rose of Texas." The showboat's owner, Betty Weston (Dale Evans), is the daughter of the man who was arrested for the robbery. She's convinced that her dad is innocent, and Roy proves that she's right by capturing the genuine culprit. Running seven reels as opposed to the usual six, The Yellow Rose of Texas was marketed as a "special" by canny Republic Pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Lady and the Monster was the first film version of the classic Curt Siodmak sci-fi/horror tale Donovan's Brain. The plot involves the brain of a famous but unscrupulous financier, recently deceased. The brain is kept alive artificially by overenthusiastic scientist Erich Von Stroheim, with the help of lab assistants Vera Hruba Ralston (the "lady" of the title) and Richard Arlen. Gradually, the dead financier's brain takes over the mind of Arlen, turning him into the helpless conduit for the financier's evil machinations. Lady and the Monster was remade in 1954, using the original Siodmak title Donovan's Brain. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi