Philo McCullough Movies

Also known as A Rich Man's Daughter, this five-reel drama starred Louise Lovely as the supposed mistress of an aging millionaire (Harry Holden). To avoid a family scandal, the millionaire's son (Philo McCullough) elopes with the heroine, even though he holds her in utter contempt. Only after making a thorough ass of himself does the son realize that the girl is blameless, and that he has fallen in love with her in spite of himself. If the film seemed unexciting and uninvolving, it may have been because its producers feared the censorial wrath of the National Board of Review. So little happened on screen that the audience found itself concentrating on the well-composed background shots. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This highly fictionalized biopic of legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley stars Barbara Stanwyck as "Little Sure Shot" Annie. Coming down from the hills of Ohio, Annie rises to fame with Buffalo Bill's (Moroni Olsen) Wild West Show. Her success as a performer is counterpointed by her stormy romance with fellow performer Toby Foster (Preston S. Foster), whose reputation as the World's Great Marksman is shot to holes by Annie's accomplishments. Walking out on Annie and the show, Toby loses himself in the streets of New York but is discovered and dragged back by Annie's faithful Indian friend Sitting Bull (Chief Thunderbird, whose performance is far from politically correct but undeniably amusing). Melvyn Douglas co-stars as Annie's manager and would-be boyfriend Jeff Hogarth, while an uncredited Dick Elliot delivers a hearty performance as press agent Ned Buntline; others in the cast include such 2-reel comedy favorites as Charlie Hall and Harry Bernard, who like director George Stevens were alumni of the Hal Roach fun factory. The much-later musical version of the Annie Oakley story, Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, bears traces of this 1935 film, but not so much as to constitute plagiarism (Coincidentally, Herbert Fields, one of the writers of Annie Oakley, collaborated with his sister Dorothy on the libretto of Annie Get Your Gun). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A New York society girl becomes a target of land-grabbing bandits when she inherits a Western ranch in this uneasy five-reel feature version of a ten chapter serial. The original chapterplay was based on the novel Janie of the Waning Glories by Raymond Spears and featured veteran Universal star Dorothy Phillips in what was supposed to be a comeback effort. Produced by C. W. Patton, a retired rancher, the serial was not one of Pathé's better efforts, and the subsequent feature version was a distinct failure. Phillips continued in films as a bit player and extra until the early '60s. She was the wife of veteran director Alan Holubar. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Another of the collaborations between actor James Stewart and director Anthony Mann, Bend of the River casts Stewart as a former outlaw, now working as trail guide for a group of Oregon-bound farmers. He is aided in this endeavor by Arthur Kennedy, a far-from-reformed horse thief. Upon arriving in Portland, Stewart gets in the middle of a scam operated by trader Howard Petrie, who has reneged on his promise to ship goods to the settlers. Unable to take action through legal channels, Stewart and farmer Jay C. Flippen steal the provision and scurry back to the settlement by boat. On their return, they discover that Kennedy has sold out to the crooked Petrie and intends to reclaim the supplies, taking Flippen and his daughter Julie Adams as hostages to ensure safe passage. It's up to Stewart to turn the tables on his former friend and save the day. As in the other Stewart-Mann productions, Jimmy breaks away from his usual easygoing screen persona to play a tough, self-serving rugged individual, whose true motives and loyalties remain in doubt until the very end of the film. Bend of the River was adapted by Borden Chase from Bill Gulick's novel Bend of the Snake. Watch for Stepin Fetchit, Rock Hudson, Royal Dano, and Frances Bavier in minor roles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Veteran silent screen actress Anita Stewart starred in this silent comedy-drama based on a 1915 play by Winchell Smith and Victor Mapes. Wanting to get in on what she sees as a racket, clairvoyant Virginia Zelva (Stewart) signs on as a nurse at a new sanitarium founded by idealistic psychologist Dr. Sumner (Bert Lytell). But instead of being a front for nefarious goings-on, the sanitarium proves legitimate, and Virginia falls in love with the good doctor. Handsome Donald Keith and former child starMary McAllister provided added romance, and the sour-faced Ned Sparks supplied comedy relief in this routine offering from producer B. P. Schulberg. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

On his way to claim an inheritance, Tom, aka Cuthbert Chauncey Dale (Buck Jones), and his pal "Swede" (John Oscar) witness a stagecoach hold-up. The lone gunman escapes but leaves the loot behind and Chauncey and "Swede" soon find themselves arrested for the crime. They manage to escape, however, and later befriends the gunman, Starrett (Wallace MacDonald), whom Tom invites to work on his inherited ranch. Along with a dilapidated ranch house, the property also contains a strip of land separating the wealthy Preston spread from an especially rich pasture. After quarreling with supercilious Lou Preston (Ethel Kenyon), Tom chases her off his property, but Joe Moore (Albert J. Smith), the Preston foreman who is in love with Lou, mistakes the scene for a lovers' tiff. When Tom mortgages his ranch in order to buy cattle, Moore has his buddy Bill Saunders (Robert Kortman) "sell" him cattle stolen from the Preston herd. Believing the newcomer to be a common rustler, an angry Lou gives Tom 24 hours to leave or else! Just then, Sheriff Mac (Philo McCullough arrives to arrest Tom for the stagecoach robbery. Everything is ironed out, however, when a witness to the robbery identifies Starrett, who is killed in a gunfight with Moore. A recalcitrant Lou apologizes to Tom and they embrace. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

John Ford's last western film, Cheyenne Autumn was allegedly produced to compensate for the hundreds of Native Americans who had bitten the dust in Ford's earlier films (that was the director's story, anyway). Set in 1887, the film recounts the defiant migration of 300 Cheyennes from their reservation in Oklahoma territory to their original home in Wyoming. They have done this at the behest of chiefs Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland), peaceful souls who have been driven to desperate measures because the US government has ignored their pleas for food and shelter. Since the Cheyennes' trek is in defiance of their treaty, Captain Thomas Archer (Richard Widmark), who agrees with the Indians in principle, reluctantly leads his troops in pursuit of the tribe. While there was never any intention to shed blood, the white press finds it politically expedient to distort the Cheyennes' action into a declaration of war. Thanks to the cruelties of such chauvinistic whites as Captain Oscar Wessels (Karl Malden), the Cheyennes are forced to defend themselves--and whenever Indians take arms against whites in the 1880s, it's usually misrepresented as a massacre. Only the intervention of US secretary of the interior Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson) prevents the hostilities from erupting into wholesale bloodshed. Based on a novel by Mari Sandoz, Cheyenne Autumn is a cinematic elegy--not only for the beleaguered Cheyennes, but for John Ford's fifty years in pictures. It is weakest when arbitrarily throwing in a wearisome romance between Richard Widmark and pacifistic schoolmarm Carroll Baker, who out of sympathy for the Indians has joined them in their 1500-mile westward journey. When the Warner Bros. people decided that the film ran too long, they chopped out the wholly unnecessary but very funny episode involving a poker-obsessed Wyatt Earp (James Stewart). Contrary to popular belief, this episode was included in the earliest non-roadshow prints of Cheyenne Autumn; the scene was excised only when the film went into its second and third runs in 1966 (it has since been restored). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A remake of a 1915 Tom Mix/Selig Western, this film was yet another silent oater (loosely) based on a story by popular pulp fiction writer Peter B. Kyne. Hoot Gibson starred as Chip Bennett, a Flying U ranch hand-turned-cartoonist, who despite being a confirmed misogynist falls in love with Della Whitmore (Virginia Brown Faire), a lady doctor and sister of his employer (DeWitt Jennings). To get the woman's attention, Chip fakes an accident and claims to have injured his ankle. Having submitted several of Chip's accomplished drawings to a receptive publisher, Della learns of the cowboy's deception and determines to give him the cold shoulder. Down but far from out, Chip kidnaps the girl from a dance and carries her off to a minister to be married. Like Mix before him, Gibson played the story entirely as a comedy, eschewing most of the usual Western trappings. The 1939 Johnny Mack Brown Western of the same name, although based on the same source material, substituted the original Battle-of-the-Sexes scenario for a straight sagebrush melodrama. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The audience got two Universal stars for the price of one with this rousing Western: Hoot Gibson and Fred Gilman. The two popular celluloid cowboys played brothers, one a lawman Gibson, the other a rancher Gilman fighting a gang of horse thieves hired by greedy neighbor Captain C.E. Anderson. Arriving from the East, Gibson goes undercover as a ranch hand, deliberately earning a reputation as a coward. Under this convenient guise, the lawman manages to bring the villain and his men to justice, helped in no small way by brother Gilman, Anderson's innocent niece (Dorothy Gulliver) and a local judge (Andrew Waldron). A vivacious WAMPAS Baby Star of 1928, Dorothy Gulliver gave up her screen career in the early 1940s only to make a spectacular comeback as a bored hausfrau picking up young lovers in John Cassavetes' fascinating Faces (1968). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Like many other pictures in the 1920s, Daughters of Today depicted the dangers that could befall those who led a jazz lifestyle -- in graphic detail, of course, which only served to make jazz all the more appealing. Edna Murphy stars as Mabel Vandergrift, a country girl who convinces her old-fashioned parents (George Nichols and Gertrude Claire) that she should attend a fashionable college in the city. There she falls in with a jazz crowd led by Lois Whittall (Patsy Ruth Miller), a motherless rich girl whose father (Phillips Smalley) has his own jazzy sweetheart. In spite of the wild parties she attends, which feature such activities as strip poker and revelers running around in their underwear, Mabel is really a good girl. When Reggy Adams (Philo McCullough) tries to force himself on her, she rebuffs him. But then Adams is found dead and Mabel is accused of his murder. Her friends try to protect her old ma from discovering the trouble she is in, and eventually her name is cleared. The film ends with Mabel, like all good country girls, returning home to marry her country sweetheart, Peter Farnham (Edward Hearn). ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Deception is an operatic rehash of the 1929 film Jealousy. Music teacher Bette Davis--who evidently has a large student pool, judging by the size of her penthouse apartment--is reunited with her cellist lover Paul Henreid, whom she believed to have been killed in the war. Henreid wants to marry Davis, but he is unaware that she has, for the past several years, been the "protege" of composer Claude Rains. Rains agrees to keep quiet about his affair with Davis, but takes sadistic delight in tormenting the woman and working behind the scenes to sabotage Henreid's career. When Rains tells Bette of his plans to publicly humiliate Henreid, she shoots her ex-lover dead. Henreid agrees to stand by Davis no matter what is in store for her. Director Irving Rapper had originally wanted to treat the hoary plot twists of Deception comically, with the three principals walking off together at the end with a "what the hell?" attitude. He was tersely told to stick to the script; after all, people didn't pay to see Bette Davis but to see her suffer. Like the 1929 version of Jealousy, Deception was based on a play by Louis Verneuil. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tom Destry (James Stewart), son of a legendary frontier peacekeeper, doesn't believe in gunplay. Thus he becomes the object of widespread ridicule when he rides into the wide-open town of Bottleneck, the personal fiefdom of the crooked Kent (Brian Donlevy). His detractors laugh even louder when Destry signs on as deputy to drunken sheriff Wash Dimsdale (Charles Winninger). But the laughter subsides when Destry casually proves himself a crack shot, despite his abhorrence of firearms. Later, when saloon chanteuse Frenchy (Marlene Dietrich), Kent's gal, takes umbrage at Destry's indifferent reaction to her charms, she vows to make a fool of the new deputy. A huge moneymaker, Destry Rides Again served as a spectacular comeback for Marlene Dietrich, who two years earlier had been written off as "box office poison." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cowboy ace Tom Mix allowed himself a change of pace with this costume adventure produced by Fox. Mix plays the legendary British highwayman, who after robbing nasty Lord Churlton (Philo McCullough) learns that the nobleman is to be married to innocent Lady Alice Brookfield (Kathleen Myers), a gun-shot wedding, so to speak, as the lady considers Churlton loathsome. With the assistance of Lady Alice's maid Sally (Lucille Hutton), our gallant hero concocts a plan to smuggle the fair maiden to York dressed as a boy. The scheme backfires, though, and Dick Turpin is chased all over creation by the authorities. He arrives in York just in time to save the fair maiden from a fate worse than death and together they find a safe haven in France. A very young Carole Lombard saw most of her footage left on the cutting-room floor but the future star can still be spotted in a crowd scene. And according to at least one report, fellow Fox cowboy Buck Jones joined the ranks of extras in a successful effort to surprise Mix. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide