Walter McGrail Movies

Here Comes the Groom was the second collaboration between director Frank Capra and star Bing Crosby. Though not as "socially relevant" as previous Capra productions, the film is a thoroughly likeable yarn about a happy-go-lucky newspaperman named Pete (Bing Crosby). In order to legally adopt a brace of war orphans, Pete must marry within a week. His plans to wed his longtime sweetheart Emmadel (Jane Wyman) come acropper when she, tired of waiting for him to pop the question, becomes engaged to wealthy Wilbur Stanley (Franchot Tone). Conspiring with Wilbur's cousin Winifred (Alexis Smith), Pete spends the balance of the film trying to win Emmadel back. From all accounts, the set of Here Comes the Groom was a happy one, the conviviality extending to Alexis Smith's willingness to be on the receiving end of several jokes concerning her height (she seems nearly a head taller than Crosby!). The film's best scene is the Bing Crosby-Jane Wyman duet "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening," reportedly filmed in one take without post-dubbing. As a bonus, Here Comes the Groom introduces a bright new singing talent, Anna Maria Alberghetti, and is festooned with uncredited guest stars, ranging from Dorothy Lamour to Louis Armstrong. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ronald Colman won an Academy Award for his portrayal of an off-the-beam actor in A Double Life. A beloved stage star, Anthony John (Colman), has problems with his private life due to his unpredictable outbursts of temper. This trait has already cost him his wife, Brita (Signe Hasso), and threatens to sabotage his career. Nonetheless, Anthony makes his peace with Brita, and the two actors star in a new Broadway staging of Othello. The play is a hit, running over 300 performances, but the pressures of portraying a man moved to murder by jealousy takes its toll on Anthony. In a fit of delirium, he strangles his casual mistress, Pat (Shelley Winters), but retains no memory of the awful crime. Press agent Bill Friend (Edmond O'Brien), unaware that Anthony is the killer, uses Pat's murder as publicity for Othello. Anthony becomes enraged at this cheap ploy, and attacks Friend. At this point, Anthony realizes that he has been living "a double life" and is in fact Pat's murderer. A Double Life was written for the screen by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, who occasionally digress from the melodramatic plotline to include a few backstage inside jokes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Riders of the West is another entry in Monogram's repetitious but profitable "Rough Riders" series. Back in the saddle again are Buck Jones as Buck Roberts, Tim McCoy as Tim McCall, and Raymond Hatton as Sandy Hopkins. The three heroes take on a gang of cattle rustlers, using their standard method of operation: Buck, Tim and Sandy ride into a small town separately, pretending to be strangers to one another until the time is ripe to join forces. Character names like "Ma Turner" and "Duke Mason" should tip the audience off as to who the good and bad guys are. Making her second "Rough Riders" appearance is the lovely Christine McIntyre, still two years away from her tenure with the Three Stooges. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 13-episode Universal serial The Green Hornet is based on the radio series of the same name. Gordon Jones stars as Britt Reid, crusading young publisher of the Daily Sentinel, who matches wits with the underworld by disguising himself as the Green Hornet. So far as police are concerned, the Hornet is himself a criminal; this misunderstanding enables Reid to operate "outside the law" to battle criminals and racketeers. In the course of the serial, Reid and his faithful valet Kato (Keye Luke), the only living person who knows the true identity of the Hornet, take on a crooked insurance racket, an auto-theft ring and a dishonest flying school. Others in the cast include Anne Nagel as Reid's secretary Lenore "Casey" Case, and Wade Boteler as thick-headed detective Michael Axford. A TV version of The Green Hornet appeared in 1966, with Van Williams as Reid and no less than Bruce Lee as Kato. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The once-in-a-lifetime teaming of Mae West and W.C. Fields in My Little Chickadee had the potential for comic greatness: what emerged, though generally entertaining, was, in the words of critic Andrew Sarris, "more funny strange than funny ha-ha." Mae West dominates the film's first reel as Flowerbelle Lee, a self-reliant woman who is abducted by a mysterious masked bandit during a stagecoach holdup. Because she refuses to tell anyone what happened during her nocturnal rendezvous with the bandit, Flowerbelle is invited to leave her prudish hometown and move to Greasewood City. En route by train, Flowerbelle makes the acquaintance of con-artist Cuthbert J. Twillie (W.C. Fields), who carries a suitcase full of what seems to be large-denomination monetary notes. After a lively clash with marauding Indians, Flowerbelle tricks Twillie into a phony marriage; she does this so that she can arrive in Greasewood City with a modicum of respectability, and incidentally to get her hands on Twillie's bankroll. Once she discovers that Twillie's "fortune" consists of nothing but phony oil-well coupons, Flowerbelle refuses to allow Twillie into the bridal chamber (he unwittingly crawls into the marriage bed with a goat, muttering "Darling, have you changed your perfume?") Through a fluke, the cowardly Twillie is appointed sheriff of Greasewood City by town boss Joseph Calleila. The plot is put on hold for two reels while La West does a "schoolroom" routine with a class full of markedly overage students, and while Fields performs a bartender bit wherein he explains how he once knocked down the notorious Chicago Mollie. Jealous over the attentions paid to his "wife" by Calleila and honest newspaper-editor Dick Foran, Twillie decides to gain entry into his wife's boudoir by posing as the still-at-large masked bandit. His ruse is soon discovered by Flowerbelle, but the townsfolk capture Twillie as he makes his escape. They are about to lynch the hapless Twillie when Flowerbelle discovers that Calleia is the genuine masked bandit. She urges Calleia to save Twillie's life by making a surprise appearance at the lynching and by returning the money he's stolen. When all plot lines are ironed out, Flowerbelle and Twillie bid goodbye to one another. Borrowing a device utilized by ZaSu Pitts and Hugh Herbert in 1939's The Lady's From Kentucky, W.C. Fields invites Mae West to "come up and see me sometime," whereupon West appropriates Fields' tagline and calls him "My Little Chickadee." The script for this uneven comedy western was credited to Mae West and W.C. Fields, though in fact West was responsible for most of it. Fields willingly conceded this, noting that West had captured his character better than any other writer he'd ever met. Despite this seeming gallantry, it was no secret that West and Fields disliked each other intensely, a fact that had an injurious effect on their scenes together. My Little Chickadee has assumed legendary status thanks to its stars, and it certainly does deliver the laughs when necessary: still, it is hardly the best-ever vehicle for either Fields or West, two uniquely individual performers who should never have been required to duke it out for the same spotlight. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this patriotic spy adventure, a young gangster joins an enemy espionage agency and agrees to enlist in the Marine Corps so he can pilfer the plans for a newly developed aerial torpedo. To get in, the crook steals an innocent young man's papers and forges them for himself. Later, he gets his chance and nabs the plans. Unfortunately, the man whom he pretends to be finds out and gets the crook tossed into jail. Later the enemy agents help him escape. But by this time, the gangster has decided not to betray his beloved country. He puts up a fight and manages to flee the spies and return to the Marines where he works to bring the enemies to justice. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The first of four Fred Scott singing Westerns produced by C.C. Burr, Code of the Fearless was like all thirteen Scott vehicles released by poverty row company Spectrum Pictures. Scott, a former baritone with the San Francisco Opera, played a Texas Ranger infiltrating the feared Skull Mesa Gang by pretending to be an outlaw himself. Unfortunately, the lawman is so convincing that he even seems to have fooled Ranger Captain Walter McGrail, who accuses him of fraternizing with the enemy. Scott's only defender is pretty Jean Morrison (Claire Rochelle) but even she is dumbfounded when he joins the Skull Mesa bandits at their secret hideout. It is all a ruse, of course, and Captain Rawlins and his Rangers arrive just in time to round up the entire gang. The story had been told many times before (and would be many times again); the only difference here is that Scott took time out to warble such ditties as Here's Romance and Gonna Ride, both by Lew Porter and Johnny Lange. Popular sidekick Al St. John, who had supported Scott in seven previous Westerns, was replaced here by former burlesque comic Harry Harvey. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

West of Rainbow's End was one of two Tim McCoy westerns directed by Monogram Pictures workhorse Alan James. Returning to the screen after a tour with the Ringling Bros. circus, McCoy is cast as a former railroad detective who emerges from retirement to solve a series of suspicious accidents. The villains hope to sabotage the railroad so that they can engineer a big-time land swindle. For our hero, it's personal: the bad guys were responsible for the murder of his foster father. Kathleen Elliot, who spent most of her brief film career in westerns, co-stars as Tim's waitress sweetheart Joan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cheap-looking even by the standards of Grand National Pictures, Held for Ransom appears to have been completed several years before its official 1938 release date. The charmingly untalented Blanche Mehaffey heads the cast as FBI agent Betty Mason. At the risk of her own neck, Betty pursues the kidnappers of a wealthy businessman. She also juggles the affection of her partner Morrison (Jack Mulhall) and the victim's son Scott (Grant Withers). After five yarn-provoking reels, the film finally roars into life with a truly exciting climactic shootout. Though Blanche Mehaffey had been in films since the silent days, she never quite attained stardom, and was still being referred to as an "unknown" by the 1938 trade papers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The poverty-row origins of Special Agent K-7 are made doubly obvious by its all-bit-player cast. Walter McGrail essays perhaps the largest role in his talkie career as police detective Lanny, who resents the ongoing interference of the local FBI branch. Hoping to show up the feds, Lanny tackles a baffling espionage case all by his lonesome. Things heat up when his gal-reporter sweetheart Ollie (Queenie Smith) is framed for murder by the villains. The actual killer is so obvious to the audience that one contemporary suggested that he shone like a beacon on the screen. Leading lady Queenie Smith, best known for her performance of the soubrette Elly in Show Boat (1936), went on to a long career in character roles, and for a while played the landlady in the "Bowery Boys" series of the 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marshall Neilan, a great silent film director on the verge of obscurity, had one last big-studio stand with The Lemon Drop Kid. Lee Tracy plays a racetrack tout who calls himself a "horse medium"--that is, he reads the horse's minds for the gullible bettors. He quits the track for the love of a good woman (Helen Mack) and settles down in a small town, determined to go straight. But when his wife falls ill, Tracy goes back to his old crooked ways to raise money for her treatment. Adapted from a Damon Runyon story, Lemon Drop Kid was refilmed in 1951 with a whole new plot to accommodate Bob Hope, the Christmas season, and the hit song "Silver Bells". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the tradition of Fox Studios' Oscar-winning Cavalcade, The World Moves On covers over one hundred years in the lives of two Louisiana families: The Girards, of French extraction, and the Warburtons, formerly of Manchester. Forming an alliance by marriage in 1825, the families rapidly corner the cotton business in the South. Years later, three of Girard/Warburton sons split up to head business operations in England, France and Germany: as a result, descendants of the original families find themselves fighting on opposite sides during WW I (this episode is similar to a memorable sequence in the 1928 silent Four Sons, which like World Moves On was directed by John Ford). Surviving the war, Richard (Franchot Tone), the last of the descendants becomes a sharkish Wall Street speculator in the 1920s, ultimately losing his fortune in the Wall Street Crash. Bloody but unbowed, Richard and his wife Mary (Madeleine Carroll) cut their losses and return to their ancestral home, to start all over again. Both The World Moves On and the subsequent Fox production Road to Glory rely to a considerable extent upon stock footage from the grim 1931 French antiwar drama Wooden Crosses. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a highway patrolman gives an oil magnate a ticket. He later quits the force to begin working for the tycoon as a guard for the refinery. He is to prevent gangsters from sabotaging the operation for the duration of a price war. In the end he single-handedly defends the refinery from the mobsters. He also finds time to fall in love with the tycoon's lovely daughter. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide