John Miltern Movies

It took British author James Hilton six weeks to write his visionary novel Lost Horizon. It took director Frank Capra two years-and half of his home studio Columbia's annual budget-to bring it to the screen. After a lengthy preamble, inviting audiences to imagine their own ideas of Utopia, the film opens on a chaotic scene at a Chinese airfield. As hordes of bandits approach, hundreds of refugees scramble to board the last plane out. Only five people make it: Mildly disenchanted Far Eastern diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), his hotheaded younger brother George (John Howard), embezzler Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), dithery fossil expert Lovett (Edward Everett Horton) and consumptive prostitute Gloria Stone (Isabel Jewell). As the plane flies off towards the Himalayas, Robert realizes that he and his fellow passengers are heading in the wrong direction. They are, in fact, being kidnapped-but why? And where to? The plane crash-lands in the snowy Tibetan interior. The pilot is killed, but the passengers are safe. By and by, a strange caravan approaches, led by an enigmatic Chinese named Chang (H. B. Warner). Joining the caravan, Conway and his party are led through a treacherous mountain pass and into a land of temperate weather and dazzling beauty. This is Shangri-La, the idyllic lamasery presided over by the aged, wizened High Lama (Sam Jaffe). In this fertile valley, people are not encumbered by such exigencies as crime, dictators and hatred; instead, everyone is devoted to the pursuit of wisdom and self-improvement-and best of all, the aging process has been slowed to a walk, allowing people to live well past the two-century mark. Though he still does not know why he was brought here, Conway is quicker to adapt to Shangri-La than his wary fellow passengers. He even falls in love with Sondra (Jane Wyatt), an attractive, intelligent young woman. Finally granted an audience with the High Lama, Conway discovers that the old man is actually Father Perrault, the Belgian missionary who founded Shangri-La-over two hundred years earlier. Dying, the High Lama has selected Conway, whose idealism and even-handedness is world famous, to succeed him-and hopefully spread the "love thy neighbor" edict of Shangri-La to the rest of the war-torn world. Conway is willing to assume leadership, but younger brother George, his mind poisoned by spiteful Shangri-La resident Maria (Margo), insists upon escaping to the outside world. The older Conway warns that, despite her youthful appearance, Maria is well past sixty and will surely perish once she leaves Shangri-La; but Maria retorts that the high lama is insane, and that everything he has told Conway is a lie. Disillusioned, Conway agrees to leave with Jack and Maria. The trek back to civilization is a grueling one, especially for Maria, who-true to Conway's prediction-shrivels from age and dies. Appalled that he has been misled, George kills himself. Weeks later, and amnesiac Conway stumbles into a Tibetan mission, where he is rescued and brought back to England. When his memory is restored, however, Conway runs back to Shangri-La, and into the arms of Sondra. When Lost Horizon was shown to preview audiences, it ran nearly three hours-and it was a disaster. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have rescued his pet project by merely burning the first two reels and opening the film with the evacuation scene; In fact, while Capra did remove the film's "flashback" framework, he made most of his cuts in the body of the picture. The release length of Lost Horizon was 132 minutes, pared down to 119 when it when into general distribution. When it was reissued in the 1940s and 1950s, it was rather clumsily pared down to anywhere from 95 to 100 minutes. Only in the mid-1980s was Lost Horizon restored to its original length, with stills used to illustrate certain scenes for which only the soundtrack existed. While not the enormous hit Capra and Columbia had hoped it would be, Lost Horizon was popular enough to allow the name "Shangri-La" enter the household-word category. In 1973, producer Ross Hunter felt the urge to inflict a wretched musical remake onto an unsuspecting public. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charismatic Polish opera singer Jan Kiepura made his Hollywood debut in Give Us This Night. His thick Slavic accent notwithstanding, Kiepura is cast as Italian fisherman Antonio. In the habit of singing as he fishes, Antonio catches the attention of opera diva Maria (played by real-life operatic soprano Gladys Swarthout, in her second film appearance). Our hero ends up replacing Maria's burned-out leading man Forcellini (Alan Mowbray), leading to a series of duets and, naturally, romance. It was the same formula that MGM would later deploy for their Mario Lanza pictures of the 1950s, except that Lanza was a more persuasive screen presence than Kiepura. The highlight of Give Us This Night is the climactic operatic adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When Edna May Oliver decided to leave RKO Radio's "Hildegarde Withers" series, the studio came up with an unorthodox replacement in the form of the dry-witted Helen Broderick. Murder on a Bridle Path turned out to be Broderick's only appearance in the series, after which she was succeeded by ZaSu Pitts. The plot begins to thicken when flirtatious society bride Violet (Sheila Terry) is killed early one morn while riding her horse in New York's Central Park. Investigating the case is Inspector Piper (James Gleason), who once more is flustered by the well-intentioned interference of crime-solving schoolmarm Hildegarde Withers. The clues this time include a sinister ex-husband, a broken bicycle, and a phony prison pardon. As always, Hildegarde arrives at the solution before Piper does -- and, as always, nearly loses her own life in the process. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ring Around the Moon was based on the once-popular novel by Vera Hobart. The story endeavors to invite comparisons between the high-toned romantic adventures of wealthy Gloria Endicott (Erin O'Brien-Moore) and more earthy amours of low-born Kay Duncan (Ann Doran). Caught between both ladies is confused hero Ross Graham (Donald Cook). In her first major feature-film role, Ann Doran was drubbed by the critics, but she survived to become one of Hollywood's busiest character actresses (best remembered as James Dean's mother in Rebel Without a Cause). Produced by failing Chesterfield Pictures, Ring Around the Moon was released by up-and-coming Grand National. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The old British musical-hall ditty "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo" provides the title for this lightweight Ronald Colman vehicle. Colman, playing a refugee Russian prince, is the "man" in question, and the owners of the "broken bank"--that is, the proprietors of the Monte Carlo casino where Colman scored the big win--are anxious to get their money back. They dispatch the beautiful Joan Bennett to lure Colman back into the casino. He falls for her and loses his winnings in the process, but she has pangs of remorse when she learns that Colman had been gambling on behalf of his impoverished countrymen. Bennett joins Colman as he merrily heads off to chase another rainbow. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though she certainly didn't need the money, silent film favorite Colleen Moore made a comeback bid during the 1933-34 film season, appearing prominently in four productions. The least prepossessing of these was Columbia's Social Register, in which Moore is cast as good-natured chorus girl Patsy Shaw. Our heroine falls in love with wealthy Charlie Breene (Alexander Kirkland), but his snobbish parents oppose the relationship. To prove Patsy's unworthiness, Charlie's parents invite her to a high-society party. Turning the tables, Patsy wins over the hoity-toity crowd with her down-to-earth ebullience. As a last-ditch effort, Charlie's mother (Pauline Frederick) tries to frame the girl in a compromising position, but at the last moment the old lady relents and accepts the girl as her daughter-in-law. The whole thing was remarkably similar to MGM's The Girl From Missouri, but not so similar as to constitute plagiarism. Humorist Robert Benchley makes a brief but hilarious appearance as "himself." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Not a remake of the 1923 film of the same name, East Side, West Side stars George O'Brien as John Breen, who is orphaned early on when his mother and stepfather are killed in a barge accident. With nothing holding him back, John heads to the Big City he's always dreamed about. Here he becomes a champion boxer under the patronage of wealthy architect Gilbert Van Horn (Holmes Herbert). What Breen doesn't know is that Van Horn is his real father, who was forced by his wealthy family to give up custody of the boy years earlier. After accumulating enough money in the ring to start a new career, Breen develops into a brilliant architect, again with Van Horn's help. Only when both Breen and Van Horn fall in love with the same girl (Virginia Valli) does the true relationship between father and son come to surface. Based on a novel by Felix Reisenberg, East Side West Side was remade in 1931 as Skyscraper, with Thomas Meighan and Hardie Albright. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With Fine Manners, silent-screen superstar Gloria Swanson ended her association with Paramount Pictures; her subsequent star-vehicle productions would be made independently through Swanson's off-screen romantic interest, financier Joseph P. Kennedy. Scripted by James Ashmore Creelman (of King Kong fame), Fine Manners casts Swanson as Orchid Murphy, a chorus girl who falls in love with waiter Brian Alden (Eugene O'Brien). Only Alden isn't really a waiter, but an incognito millionaire. Once the artifice is revealed, Alden sets about to make Murphy more "acceptable" for his upper-crust family. She goes through a grueling series of lessons in the social graces, emerging as the perfect lady--too perfect for Murphy's tastes! He begs her to be "herself" again, which, of course, she does. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An attorney (Thomas Meighan) becomes the intermediary between an Indian tribe and the territory's settlers in this fine silent western based on a novel by Peter Clark MacFarlane. Meighan, however, gets in hot water when, upon his advice, the Indians sell their land to an outright crook (Berton Churchill). One of the great stars of the silent era, Thomas Meighan died relatively young in 1936 and has been unfairly forgotten. Following on the heels of The Alaskan, this was Meighan's second action adventure in a row, but the classically trained actor was more popular in society dramas such as DeMille's Male and Female (1919) and Why Change Your Wife?) (1920). Directed by Joseph Henaberry, who had played Abraham Lincoln in The Birth of a Nation, Tongues of Flame became the screen debut of corpulent Berton Churchill, a fine character actor best known for portraying blustery men of means. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

This comedy-melodrama was based on the hit Broadway play by Frederick S. Isham, and Cyril Chadwick repeats his stage performance. Director George Fitzmaurice shot much of the picture on location in London. Near the end of World War I, three friends escape from a German prison camp -- Billy Foster, an American (Norman Kerry), Jimmy Gubbins, a Cockney lad (Edmund Goulding), and a shell-shocked Englishman who has lost his memory and who his friends merely call "Spoofy" (Chadwick). When they show up in London, Foster and Gubbins find they have been declared dead, and they decide to keep it that way -- Foster has had trouble in the States and Gubbins' mother (Clare Greet) has already spent all the insurance money she received. The cheerful Spoofy turns out to be a kleptomaniac, and he steals clothing, jewelry -- and a baby -- from a nobleman's home. While the three men are staying at the Gubbins' Whitechapel home, it is discovered that someone is looking for Foster. Mrs. Gubbins wants to turn him in and collect the reward, but is stopped by her son. The police show up anyhow and find Spoofy's loot. Everything is cleared up in the end -- Ivis, the girl who is looking for Foster (Anna Q. Nilsson), wants to tell him he's been cleared of his supposed wrongdoing, and Spoofy actually plundered his own home -- his memory returns and he recalls that he is the nobleman. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Not every film John S. Robertson directed could be Sentimental Tommy or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He also did his share of meat-and-potatoes films, and this comedy-drama starring some of Paramount's lesser lights was one of them. After the death of her mother (Sara Sample), artist Brian McCree (David Powell) adopts a little girl, Perpetua (Bunty Fosse). While visiting France, they hook up with a circus and travel with it until the girl is a teen. After that she is placed in a convent and when she returns to England as a young lady (played by Ann Forrest), McCree falls in love with her. But Perpetua weds a wealthy young man, Saville Mender (Geoffrey Kerr), hoping to save him from his addiction to alcohol. It turns out that her real father -- a nasty fellow by the name of Russell Fenton (John Miltern) -- is familiar with Mender. He poisons the young man and plans to let Perpetua take the blame. But his conscience gets the better of him and finally the truth is revealed. McCree has a revelation of his own -- he loves Perpetua as more than a daughter. Perpetua, as fate has it, returns his romantic feelings. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

This Cecil B. DeMille morality play came at just the right time -- the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle scandal and William Desmond Taylor murder were both still fresh in the public's mind. Leatrice Joy plays Lydia Thorne, a rich society girl who is addicted to thrills. Because of her reckless driving, she is responsible for the death of a motorcycle cop and is brought to trial. The prosecutor is none other than her fiancé, Daniel O'Bannon (Thomas Meighan). Feeling that prison is her only means of mending her ways, he guarantees her conviction by making a speech in which he depicts the decadence and downfall of Rome (this gave DeMille the opportunity for one of his historical fantasy sequences). After Lydia is found guilty, the miserable O'Bannon becomes an alcoholic, but Lydia does learn from the experience and when she is released she searches out O'Bannon. Her new outlook on life brings him around, and they are together once again. This film is, perhaps, the epitome of the DeMille formula of the '20s -- as long as the characters paid for their sins by the last reel, DeMille could show all the debauchery he wanted. This pleased both the Hayes office's need for censorship and filmgoers' hunger for sensation. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Leatrice Joy was just starting her association with Paramount and was not yet a star when she played Thomas Meighan's love interest in this South Seas romance. New York society man Burke Hammond (Meighan) travels to the South Sea Islands and falls in love with Rita (Joy), the daughter of Morgan Pring, the captain of a contraband ship (Theodore Roberts). Hammond decides to stay on the islands, but his plan is interrupted by the appearance of Lady Helen Deene (June Elvidge), who has designs on him. Since Burke has political aspirations, and Helen would make a proper mate for him, his resolve wavers. But the eminent Professor Jansen (John Miltern) comes to Hammond and shows him a vision of what his life would be like with each woman: his loveless marriage with Helen, and his life on the island with Rita. Still, he is undecided until he sees Rita, who has tracked him down. The couple is happily united. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide