Margaret Moffat Movies

Aircraft plant worker Robert Cummings is accused of sabotaging his factory and causing the death of a co-worker. Actually, Cummings is the fall guy for a clever ring of Nazi spies, headed by above-suspicion American philanthropist Otto Kruger. Our hero goes on a cross-country chase after genuine saboteur Norman Lloyd, all the while pursued himself by the police. Along the way, he acquires a reluctant "travelling companion" in the form of Priscilla Lane, who at first despises Cummings and intends to turn him over to the authorities at the first opportunity, but who gradually comes to realize that the boy is innocent. Alfred Hitchcock intended Saboteur to be the American equivalent to his British The 39 Steps, employing such details as the solid-citizen villain, the handcuffed hero, the unwilling blonde heroine, and any number of stopovers with a variety of offbeat characters (a travelling "freak" show, a compassionate blind man, a grizzled old prospector who turns out to be one of the spies, etc.) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A pregnant Alice Faye was forced to bow out of this colorful Fox musical, which instead went to Rita Hayworth, whom the studio borrowed from Columbia. Hayworth plays the highly fictitious Sally Elliott of the title, a musical star teaming up with Indiana boy Paul Dresser (Victor Mature), a runaway who after a brief stopover in a tank town medicine show arrives in Gay Nineties New York full of verve and vigor. There he composes the title tune for the fair lady and becomes the toast of Tin Pan Alley. There are the obligatory bumps on the road along the way, of course, but everything ends, as any Fox musical should, with a grand and glorious finale. Although Fox publicity claimed that My Gal Sal was based on a My Brother Paul, a biography by the composer's brother, Theodore Dreiser, it was actually concocted from an unpublished manuscript by Dreiser and his wife Helen Richardson. The film earned Oscars™ for art and set decoration and included such Dresser songs as "On the Banks of the Wabash", "I'se Your Honey, If You Wants Me, Liza", "Come Tell Me What's Your Answer (Yes or No)" and "Mr. Volunteer. House songwriters Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger contributed "Me and My Fella" and "On the Great White Way. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The Spy In Black is the story of a German World War I submarine captain (Conrad Veidt) who is given a mission to discover British intelligence secrets. Once he arrives in the Orkney Islands, he meets up with a female schoolteacher (Valerie Hobson), who happens to be a German agent. Veidt falls in love with Hobson before discovering she's actually a double agent for the British. In America, Spy in Black was originally released under the title U-Boat 29. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Legendary Scots entertainer Harry Lauder makes one of his rare screen appearances in End of the Road. Lauder plays John Macgregor, a travelling song-and-dance man who manages to remain chipper and upbeat despite the worst that life has to offer. Among the woes and travails facing Macgregor in the course of the film is the death of his beloved daughter and stage partner Jean (Ethel Glendinning). Some of the characters in the film are afforded a happy ending through Macgregor's intervention, but he himself must walk off into the horizon alone, a la Chaplin. Patchily produced, End of the Road at least affords an opportunity to watch one of the world's most beloved entertainers in action. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tom Walls, one of the most famous of the Aldwych Theater farceurs, was both star and director of Leave It to Smith. Based on a Frederick Lonsdale play, the story concerns a thief named Smith (Walls) who uses his left-handed pilfering skills to rescue damsel-in-distress Mary Linkley (Carol Goodner). Because of this one good deed, poor Smith finds himself up to his unwashed neck in trouble. Lonsdale cleverly contrasts the essential decency of Smith with the hypocritical pretensions of the upper-class Londoners who comprise the rest of the cast of characters. American critics tended to dismiss Leave It to Smith on the grounds that the English accents were unintelligible, but this may have been due to bad laboratory work. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide