Alex Melesh Movies

In this melodrama, a brilliant pianist is struck blind in an accident and stops working on his equally brilliant concerto. A wealthy woman pretends to be poor and blind to help him regain his confidence, and holds a contest with a large prize for the best musical composition. She, as the blind girl, encourages him to finish his work and enter it. He wins the prize, uses the money to have his sight restored, falls in love with the wealthy woman, and is thrilled to find that his two loves are one and the same. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide

Based on Norman Corwin's satirical radio play My Client Curley, Once Upon a Time is an engaging bit of whimsy, completely dominated by the personality of star Cary Grant. It all begins when fly-by-night Broadway producer Jerry Flynn (Grant) learns of a trained caterpillar (!) that dances to the tune of "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby." In short order, Jerry has promoted Curly the Caterpillar to international stardom-and in the process he alienates both Pinky Thompson (Ted Donaldson), the impressionable 9-year-old who owns Curley, and Pinky's attractive older sister Jeanne (Janet Blair). Eventually, Flynn comes to his senses and regains his essential decency-though it's too late to continue capitalizing on Curley, who has turned into a non-dancing butterfly! Full of delightful contemporary references and "cameo appearances" by such celebrities as producer Walt Disney and radio commentator Gabriel Heatter (both played by uncredited impressionists), Once Upon a Time proved an agreeable diversion for wartime audiences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this light romantic comedy, William B. Whitley (William Powell) is an astronomer who is very excited about his latest discovery, a comet that has been named after him. However, Whitley has been so busy tracking the course of his comet as its path leads straight into the moon that he's been ignoring his new wife, Vicky (Hedy Lamarr). Bored and lonely, one day Vicky visits an astrologer who informs her that she will -- on a specific day -- meet a handsome stranger, and they will fall in love. A bit perplexed at this news, Vicky shares the astrologer's report with William; however, he's so appalled that she would waste her time on pseudo-scientific hooey like astrology that he storms out of the house, moving into his observatory for a few days. On the predicted day, Vicky is wondering what happened to her dream man when an air raid warden, Lloyd Hunter (James Craig), shows up to confront Vicky and ends up going inside her house and shutting off her lights. Vicky and Lloyd strike up a conversation, and she begins to realize that he could well be the man the astrologer predicted she would meet; Vicky is interested in him, but just as he's leaving, William returns. William, however, senses that Vicky is infatuated with Lloyd, and he quickly hatches a devious plan to win back her good graces. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The surrealistic opening sequence, featuring a WW2 calendar as written "by A. Hitler", should be indication enough that Once Upon a Honeymoon is no ordinary lighthearted romantic trifle. Ginger Rogers plays Katie, an American chorus girl who seeks to better herself by marrying titled European Baron von Luber (Walter Slezak), despite the warnings of reporter Pat (Cary Grant). Katie thinks Pat is just jealous, but both he and the audience are aware that Von Luber is secretly a high-ranking Nazi, whose "unofficial" visits to Czechoslovakia, Poland and France precipitate the German invasions of those countries. When Katie wises up, she agrees to help counterespionage agent LeBlanc (Albert Dekker) in his efforts to stop Von Luber before he can reach New York-and along the way, she falls in love with the ubiquitous Pat. The bizarre ending, in which one of the main characters is casually murdered, is played for laughs, as if WW2 is merely fodder for a screwball comedy. In the film's most unsettling scene, Katie and Pat, mistaken for Jews, are briefly interred in a Polish concentration camp; their outrage over this treatment seems to be founded not on Germany's crimes against humanity, but over the fact that the Gestapo would have the audacity to incarcerate two non-Jewish Americans! A curious and often tasteless misfire from producer-director Leo McCarey, One Upon a Honeymoon is an undeniably fascinating historical artifact. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lewis Milestone directs the lightweight romantic comedy Lucky Partners, based on a story by Sacha Guitry. David Grant (Ronald Colman) is an artist in New York's Greenwich Village. After he wishes good luck to passing ingenue Jean Newton (Ginger Rogers), she is immediately offered a beautiful dress. Thinking that David is lucky, she agrees to go in with him on a ticket for the Irish Sweepstakes. Their horse wins the race, and he asks her to accompany her to Niagara Falls to celebrate their winnings. Jean's fiancé, Freddie Harper (Jack Carson), is not pleased about the arrangement, so he follows them. Eventually Jean and David fall for each other and they end up in the courthouse, where the judge ($Harry Davenport) sorts everything out in favor of the new couple. Lucky Partners was released in 1940, the same year Rogers gave her Oscar-winning performance in Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Director Rouben Mamoulian often claimed that he'd been inspired to make Golden Boy after reading a newspaper clipping about a recently deceased boxer. While Mamoulian may have genuinely believed that he was the true "auteur" of Golden Boy, he probably wouldn't have made the picture at all had not Clifford Odets started the ball rolling by writing the property for the stage in 1936. In his first starring role, William Holden plays Joe Bonaparte, a promising young boxer. While boxing promoter Tom Moody (Adolphe Menjou) and Menjou's mistress Lorna Moon (Barbara Stanwyck) urge Joe to pursue a ring career, Joe's Italian father (played with a surfeit of Chico Marx by 27-year-old Lee J. Cobb) wants his boy to become a famous violinist. Moody tells Lorna to romance the boy to get him into the ring. She does so, but regrets her callous actions when she genuinely falls in love with Joe. Having already broken his father's heart, Joe is further devastated when he accidentally kills a ring opponent. In the original play, both Joe and Lorna pay for their "sins" by dying in an auto accident. This would never do in Hollywood, so at fadeout time the chastened Joe returns to his forgiving father, with a tearful Lorna by his side. Clifford Odets' overrated purple prose seems to flow naturally from the actors, though it is obvious that William Holden had a long way to go. Still, Holden is pretty good in his first bonafide lead, a fact that he would ever after attribute to the patience and encouragement of his co-star Barbara Stanwyck; each year on the anniversary of Golden Boy's Hollywood premiere, Holden would send Stanwyck flowers as a sign of his eternal gratitude. While much of Golden Boy seems like a cliche-ridden museum piece when seen today, the film comes to life during the boxing sequences, helmed in exciting montage fashion by the always innovative Rouben Mamoulien. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this musical, a composer abandons vaudeville in favor of the legitimate stage. He soon finds himself entangle with a Russian ballet company that contains his old childhood lover, but when the troupe mistake him for a traitor trouble ensues. Perhaps the film is most notable for Balanchine's choreography of "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue." Songs include: "There's a Small Hotel," "Quiet Night," "On Your Toes," "Princess Zenobia Ballet." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

American mousetrap salesmen Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy journey to Switzerland, reasoning that where there's cheese, there's mice. When they innocently try to pay their dinner bill with phony money, Stan and Ollie are put to work in the kitchen of the Alpen Hotel. Their enforced stay coincides with the visit of famed composer Walter Woolf King, who has come to Switzerland to soak up "local color." He also hopes to write an operetta that will succeed on its own merits, without the lovely voice of his lovely actress wife Della Lynd winning over the audience. But Lynd is determined to star in King's latest opus, and to that end she finagles Stan and Ollie into getting her a job as a hotel chambermaid. As the plot rolls along its merry way, Ollie labors under the misapprehension that Lynd is in love with him. Swiss Miss is, on the whole, one of Laurel and Hardy's weaker feature films, with far too much emphasis on the romantic leads and way too many forgettable songs ("Crick Crick Crick Here the Cricket" is a particular low point). But the team's individual scenes save the show, even though Stan Laurel, who'd been ill during production, looks like he's about to fall asleep at any moment. Best bits: Stan hoodwinking a St. Bernard out of a cask of brandy; Ollie serenading Lynd while Stan accompanies him on tube; and the legendary sequence, immortalized by film critic James Agee, wherein Stan and Ollie try to transport a piano across a rope bridge high above an alpine chasm--only to confront a gorilla! One of the screenwriters of Swiss Miss was Jean Negulesco, later the director of such memorable films as Mask of Dmitrios, Three Strangers, Titanic and How to Marry a Millionaire. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on a Damon Runyon story, Three Wise Guys stars Betty Furness as a Broadway golddigger hired by gangster Bruce Cabot to romance playboy Robert Young, then take the sap for every penny he's got. But when Young marries Furness, he is disinherited. Furness decides she's truly in love with Young and leaves town with him. Pursued by Cabot and his henchmen, the couple takes refuge in a deserted farm. Cabot is about to exact vengeance on Furness when he discovers that she's pregnant, and due at any minute. Thus the chastened Cabot and his "wise guy" companions aid Furness in bringing her baby into the world. That's right, it's Christmas...and it's also in a little town called Bethlehem. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on an obscure stage comedy, the Paramount musical Two for Tonight stars Bing Crosby as would-be composer and playwright Gilbert Gordon. Hired by music publisher Alexander Myers (Maurice Cass) to write a musical for temperamental stage star Lilly Bianca (Thelma Todd), Gordon is less than thrilled to discover that he must complete the job in one week. As he toils away at his task, our hero becomes convinced that he's in love with the troublesome Lilly, causing heartache for his erstwhile sweetheart Bobbie Lockwood (Joan Bennett). The magnificent Mary Boland commands the audience's attention as Gordon's much-married mother. Elements of the plot of Two for Tonight were later satirized in the 1979 spoof Movie Movie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a Tennessee lad, enrolled in art school wins a scholarship to paint in Paris. He is thrilled until he arrives and discovers that his style is hopelessly passe and is considered trashy. The enterprising artist immediately changes style and begins painting highly abstract moderns. His masterpiece wins an award and he becomes terribly popular. No one seems to notice that the beloved work is hanging upside down. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based upon a much-filmed play by Michael Morton (which may in turn have been based upon a story by Frank Harris, The Yellow Ticket is also an indirect descendant of the opera La Tosca. In pre-Revolutionary Russia, a Jewish peasant girl named Marya Kalish (played by Elissa Landi) has reason to believe that her poor father is dying in St. Petersburg. She wishes to visit him, but the only way she can obtain passage is through disguising herself and obtaining a yellow ticket -- a pass that will mark her as a woman of low repute. Once in St. Petersburg, she discovers that her father has died. She also encounters the sinister Baron Andrey (Lionel Barrymore), head of the Czar's secret police, who comes to have designs upon her. She, however, develops an interest in British journalist Julian Rolphe (Laurence Olivier). She tells Rolphe the truth about life for most people in Russia, and his stories begin to change in tone, becoming critical and unflattering. This does not escape the attention of the secret police, who attempt to imprison the journalist. Meanwhile, Baron Andrey tells Marya that he will give her his own card with which she may travel, thereby eliminating the stigma and the difficulties that the yellow ticket presents. This is actually just a ploy to lure her into his clutches, and when he makes a move on her, she shoots him. Rescuing Rolphe, the two lovers flee via an airplane as Austria invades the country. Yellow Ticket features Olivier's second U.S. appearance, as well as Boris Karloff in a small role as a drunken orderly. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

This romantic adventure is set in South America and tells the story of a Yankee mining engineer who falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a president whose administration has just been overthrown. His devoted daughter attempts to help her father return to power and the engineer becomes deeply involved in the revolution and risks his life to help her. Eventually they succeed and the grateful girl finally returns the love of the engineer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide