Charlotte Merriam Movies

Colleen Moore who, later in the year, would become indelibly identified with Flaming Youth, got raves for her performance in this adaptation of a Fannie Hurst novel. Sarah Juke (Moore) works in a department store, as does her sweetheart, Harry Smith (James Morrison). Jimmy Fitzgibbons (Eddie Phillips) temporarily attracts her attention, but she decides to stay with Smith and they marry. The couple live a poor but happy life while Fitzgibbons becomes a successful songwriter. Sarah is dazzled by the antics of stage actress Angine Sprint (Charlotte Merriam), and becomes dissatisfied with her marriage. She has all but decided to go away with Angine when her husband falls seriously ill. The doctor recommends that he go to California before winter falls. The couple are deeply in debt, and Sarah not only has to support them, she also has to come up with 300 dollars to move them West. But she manages to come through, and wins the 300 dollars in a dance contest. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Ellie Byrne ($Colleen Moore) and Don Lane (Ben Lyon) are childhood pals -- their fathers (Charles Murray and Russell Simpson) work together as glass blowers. They hope for better things in life, especially after they land an invitation to a fancy society party, where their shabby outfits look even shabbier next to the latest fashions. They both head for the city where Ellie aspires to stardom on the stage, and Lane works at writing. She's successful and he's not, but when he rewrites a play in which Ellie is starring, he finally makes it. Ellie is ready to marry Preston Dutton (Joseph Striker) when she comes to the realization that he's only after her money; meanwhile Lane has become engaged to Stephanie Parris (Charlotte Merriam), but the relationship breaks up. So Ellie and Lane go back home, disillusioned -- and realize, finally, that they really love each other. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Taking a breather from Westerns and serials, action hero William Desmond starred in this silent comedy-drama about a crook (Desmond) sentenced by a good-natured lawman (Robert E. Homans) to spend a year in a rural town. There, Desmond not only falls in love with pretty Charlotte Merriam but also saves her father's (Alfred Fisher) business from a nasty banker (John Steppling). The star of no less than 12 silent serials and numerous other action pictures, Irish-born William Desmond would turn to supporting roles -- plenty of them -- after the changeover to sound. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Orson Welles wasn't the first one to bring The Magnificent Ambersons to the screen. Vitagraph produced Booth Tarkington's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel during the silent era and slapped on the very 1920s title Pampered Youth. The Ambersons are the wealthiest family of a small Midwestern town. Isabel (Alice Calhoun), the daughter of Major Amberson (Emmett King), loves Eugene Morgan (Allan Forrest), but he disgraces himself in a drunken spree and leaves town. So Isabel marries Wilbur Minfer (Wallace McDonald), even though she doesn't really love him. She lavishes all her affection on her son, George (Ben Alexander), who, as a result, grows up into a spoiled young man (Cullen Landis). George's careless extravagance uses up the Amberson fortune. After Minfer dies, Morgan, now a successful automobile manufacturer, returns and takes up with Isabel once again. George resents the relationship and believes that Morgan is beneath him, even though he loves his daughter, Lucy (Charlotte Merriam). When Major Amberson dies, George is forced to go to work, and he learns to respect his fellow man. Morgan, meanwhile, saves Isabel when her home catches fire, thus cementing their romance. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

In one of his many inexpensive boxing melodramas, Billy Sullivan (the nephew of legendary fight champ John L. Sullivan), played Jimmy O'Day, an amateur boxer who finances the purchase of oil-rich land by staging impromptu fights. In between these endeavors, Jimmy saves the father (William Malan) of his girlfriend (Charlotte Merriam) from a gang of unscrupulous confidence artists. The inexpensive Sullivan films were produced and often directed by Harry J. Brown, who also launched a similar series starring male model Reed Howes. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Blonde Broadway dancer Marie Saxon came to the screen in 1929 courtesy of Columbia Pictures, who starred her opposite popular stage emcee Jack Egan in Broadway Hoofer, a rather leaden musical concoction that played mostly in the hinterlands. Saxon appeared as Broadway dancing star Adele Dorey who, overworked and exhausted, suddenly ups and leaves New York in favor of a country village. But when promoter Bobby Lewis (Egan) of the barnstorming Gay Girlies Burlesque Company arrives in town, he picks an incognito Adele among all the pretty village girls to star in his new show. On a lark, Adele introduces her maid Jane (Louise Fazenda) as her mother and accepts a contract. When Adele's identity is finally revealed, the slumming star apologizes for her deception by offering Bobby a Broadway job. Denouncing Irene for her duplicity at first , Bobby, who has fallen in love, finally agrees to the gig and they are reunited. Filmed back-to-back with the equally pedestrian Broadway Scandals, which also starred Egan, Broadway Hoofer completely wasted the redoubtable Miss Saxon in clumsily staged numbers such as Hawaiian Love Song, a would-be show-stopper featuring rather zoftig-looking chorus girls in grass skirts. Marie took the consequences of this minor disaster and quickly returned to the Great White Way. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

To sophisticated filmgoers of 1929, the designation "queen of the nightclubs" could mean only one person: Colorful Manhattan speakeasy proprietress Texas Guinan, of "Hello, Sucker!" fame. More or less playing herself, the brash, blowsy Guinan is cast as Tex Malone, a New York nightery owner who hires innocent young songstress Bee Wallace (Lila Lee) to perform in Tex's club. This effectively breaks up Bee's vaudeville act with hoofer Eddie Parr (Eddie Foy Jr., the brother of director Bryan Foy). Feeling put-upon, Eddie is the most likely suspect when Tex's close friend Don Holland (John Davidson) is murdered. In the course of the trial, Tex discovers that Eddie is actually her own son. Without ever revealing her relationship with Eddie to the world, Tex manages to prove that the actual killer was rival club owner Andy Quindland (played by veteran movie "drunk" Arthur Housman, in a rare sober characterization). George Raft makes his film debut by re-creating the "hot" Charleston dance solo that first brought him Broadway fame (the details of Raft's move to Hollywood, and his friendships with such gangsters as Owney Madden and Bugsy Siegel, would later be fictionalized in Francis Ford Coppola's 1984 production The Cotton Club). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, the children of a recently deceased firefighter are sent to an orphanage. Two other firefighters offered to take the brother and his older sister in, but the authorities demurred and the children are whisked away. Time passes and one day the orphanage catches fire. The fireman rush to put it out and there find their colleague's children. By this time the girl has grown into a young woman and one of the firemen marries her, while his partner also finds a suitable match at the fire station. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

William Wellman's Night Nurse survives as a potentially interesting but ultimately unsatisfying melodrama about a nurse discovering evildoings in the household where she is caring for a couple of sick children. Based on a 1930 novel by Dora Macy, Wellman's probe into medical corruption is one of the director's more cynical looks on Depression-era America, but most of the characters are weakly drawn and the denouement a cheat, cinematically. Barbara Stanwyck plays Lora Hart, an ambitious student nurse whose first assignment after graduation is tending to a couple of deathly ill little girls, Nanny (Marcia Mae Jones) and Desney (Betty Jane Graham). Despite their posh surroundings, the girls are apparently suffering from malnutrition; their mother, Mrs. Ritchey (Charlotte Merriam), is hopped-up on bootleg booze ("I'm a dipsomaniac! A dipsomaniac I tell ya! And I like it!"), and the girls' physician (Ralf Harolde) is a society quack with a facial tick. Lora soon realizes that the good doctor is deliberately starving the children to death in order to gain access to their trust fund and that Mrs. Ritchey is kept in line by Nick (Clark Gable), a black-clad gangster posing as the family chauffeur. A desperate Lora proposes to contact the authorities, but her medical sponsor (Charles Winninger) deems that unethical and instead suggests that she find a solution from inside the family. Nearly at the end of her ropes -- and having accepted one too many blows to the chin from Nick -- Lora is saved by an admirer, good-natured bootlegger Mortie (Ben Lyon), whose "friends" take the evil chauffeur on a final "ride." None of this makes much sense, and the film appears to have been tampered with along the way. One of the children disappears without any explanation halfway through, and the hospital establishment's reticence is never properly explained. Instead of a coherent plot, Night Nurse, in typical pre-Production Code style, offers quite a few scenes of Barbara Stanwyck and fellow nurse Joan Blondell dressing and undressing and a rather brutal portrayal by a very young Clark Gable on the threshold to fame. Warner Bros. had borrowed Gable from MGM to play the despicable chauffeur when the original choice, James Cagney, suddenly proved too valuable a commodity for what was actually a supporting role. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Howard Hawks directed this fast-paced auto racing drama. Joe Greer (James Cagney) is a top-ranked race car driver; his younger brother Eddie (Eric Linden) wants to follow in Joe's footsteps, but Joe knows his brother's reckless side and tries to keep him away from the racer's life. Eddie, however, can't be dissuaded from a career on the track, and he turns out to like his women as fast as his cars when he gets involved with Ann (Joan Blondell). Joe's best friend Spud (Frank McHugh) tries to keep the feuding brothers apart, but his attempts to do so in the midst of a race leads to Spud's death. Joe is despondent after Spud's passing and gives up his career in racing, while Eddie becomes eligible for the Indianapolis 500. Joe grudgingly comes to the race to see his kid brother in action, but he gets the chance to redeem himself when Eddie is hurt and needs a driver to complete the race in his car. Racing legend Billy Arnold, who won the Indy 500 in 1930, advised the production. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

George S. Kaufman's sturdy stage comedy The Butter and Egg Man was the inspiration for no fewer than four Warner Bros. talkie versions. The first of these was The Tenderfoot, starring Joe E. Brown as a wealthy but naive cowboy alone in the Big Apple. The producers of a down-and-out musical revue hope to convince Brown to put his money in their show, sending out cute chorine Ginger Rogers as the "convincer." After having his heart broken a few times and tangling with gangsters, Joe comes through and the show goes on. Warners followed The Tenderfoot with a 1937 musicalization of Butter and Egg Man, Dance Charlie Dance; this in turn was remade as An Angel From Texas in 1942. The final variation on this theme (so far!) was Three Sailors and a Girl (53). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although venereal disease was considered as delicate a subject then as it is now, this was nonetheless the third filmed version of Eugène Brieux' 1901 play Les Avariés, known in English-speaking lands as Damaged Lives. Don is a shallow, naïve former ship's officer trying to make the transition to an executive position in the shipping company. He breaks a dinner engagement with his longtime fiancée Joan in order to make a night on the town with one of his company's clients. The client ends up drunk, and at the end of the long night Don ends up with Elise, a woman of dubious reputation who nevertheless lives in an impressive, Art Deco-styled apartment. Although he feels guilty about the affair, Don swiftly marries his sweetheart, only to get the phone call from "the other woman" saying she must see him immediately. Elise confronts Don discreetly that she has given him the gift that keeps on giving, which he refuses to believe. Elise then promptly kills herself, but later Don gets another call from a VD clinic which is treating his wife. After a harrowing visit to a series of "too-far-gone" patients, Don sees the light and agrees to get treatment. But the psychological effect on Joan has different results, and Don must rise to the occasion to save them both. Damaged Lives was initially released in Canada and a few cities in the United States but was stopped by censors in most American towns. In 1937 it was re-released as The Shocking Truth with a 29-minute lecture on VD added onto the end of the film to satisfy censors. Most current video releases do not include this extra material. A week after it opened, a competing domestic version of Damaged Lives also appeared, and with its similar storyline it is often confused with this Canadian film. There is no comparison stylistically, as Edgar G. Ulmer put far more into Damaged Lives than the property and its 18,000-dollar budget deserved. ~ David Lewis, All Movie Guide

Three-Cornered Moon is regarded by many film buffs as the first of the genuine "screwball comedies." Claudette Colbert stars as the only level-headed member of a wacky Brooklyn family. Her mother (Mary Boland) loses the family fortune in the stock market, forcing Colbert's knuckleheaded brothers to look for work. Unfortunately the boys seem interested only in jobs for which they're uniquely unsuited. Even Colbert has her weak moments, especially when she falls for a callow writer (Hardie Albright), but she eventually finds happiness with sensible doctor Richard Arlen. Three-Cornered Moon was written by the gloriously named Gertrude Tonkonogy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide