Frank Moran Movies

Lively June (Jane Withers), teen-aged daughter of mystery writer Waldo Everett (Jon Qualen), who calls her "Angel," becomes involved in intrigue centering on movie star Pauline Kaye (Sally Blane) and her companion Stivers (Joan Davis). Reporter Nick Moore (Robert Kent), once sweet on Pauline, is convinced that her sudden disappearance is a publicity stunt, which is true -- until gangster Bat Regan (Harold Huber) decides to get involved. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide

This episodic satire of the Machine Age is considered Charles Chaplin's last "silent" film, although Chaplin uses sound, vocal, and musical effects throughout. Chaplin stars as an assembly-line worker driven insane by the monotony of his job. After a long spell in an asylum, he searches for work, only to be mistakenly arrested as a Red agitator. Released after foiling a prison break, Chaplin makes the acquaintance of orphaned gamine (Paulette Goddard) and becomes her friend and protector. He takes on several new jobs for her benefit, but every job ends with a quick dismissal and yet another jail term. During one of his incarcerations, she is hired to dance at a nightclub and arranges for him to be hired there as a singing waiter. He proves an enormous success, but they are both forced to flee their jobs when the orphanage officials show up to claim the girl. Dispirited, she moans, "What's the use of trying?" But the ever-resourceful Chaplin tells her to never say die, and our last image is of Chaplin and The Gamine strolling down a California highway towards new adventures. The plotline of Modern Times is as loosely constructed as any of Chaplin's pre-1915 short subjects, permitting ample space for several of the comedian's most memorable routines: the "automated feeding machine," a nocturnal roller-skating episode, and Chaplin's double-talk song rendition in the nightclub sequence. In addition to producing, directing, writing, and starring in Modern Times, Chaplin also composed its theme song, Smile, which would later be adopted as Jerry Lewis' signature tune. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this emotional but fast-paced comedy, a husband/businessman creates an ingenious cure for his mid-life crisis. He suggest to his wife that they take separate vacations and not discuss them with each other afterward. The wife isn't sure, but being a loving and understanding woman, agrees to the terms. The husband, dreaming of all the luscious young girls to be had, is happy as a kid in a candy store. Unfortunately for him, things don't happen as planned and he gets zippo. His wife, on the other hand, ends up falling for a younger man. When he proposes, the wife is sorely tempted, but then realizes she really does love her husband. The would-be wayward husband also reawakens to love and domestic bliss ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Carnival barker Spencer Tracy befriends elderly concessionaire Henry B. Walthall, who owns a picturesque but stodgy display depicting Dante's Inferno. Walthall is more interested in the spiritual aspects of Man's fascination with Hell, but Tracy uses hoopla and exaggeration to get the suckers into the Inferno. His interest isn't altruistic; Tracy is enamored of Walthall's niece, Claire Trevor. Through his publicity savvy, Tracy builds the Inferno into a major attraction, complete with full orchestra and scantily clad "devil girls". He also buys up the rest of the carnival, using cold-blooded tactics that result in the suicide of a fellow concessionaire. Within five years, Tracy is a millionaire tycoon of the Entertainment industry. While loved by his wife (Trevor) and son (Scotty Beckett), Tracy conducts his business ruthlessly, bribing a city official to look the other way regarding structural defects in his Inferno display. When this duplicity results in a disastrous accident at the exhibit, the bribed official kills himself. Tracy is exonerated thanks to legal chicanery, but his wife is fed up; she walks out on him, taking their son along. Injured in the accident, Inferno creator H. B. Walthall warns Tracy of the pitfalls of success, using an illustrated edition of Dante to make his point. For nearly ten minutes, the movie audience is treated to a lavish depiction of Hell, magnificently photographed by Rudolph Mate. When the plot resumes, Tracy is on hand for his latest venture, a sumptuous gambling ship. Thanks to the drunken negligence of the crew, the ship catches fire, and it is only upon learning that his son has sneaked aboard that Tracy realizes the consequences of his greed. Tracy labors heroically to rescue the passengers--and, incidentally, to atone for his past sins. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This big-budget 1936 RKO Studios picture lost money, perhaps due to a cool box-office reception to the idea of leading lady Katharine Hepburn in drag, and a rare-for-its-day screen kiss between two women. Edmund Gwenn plays the title character's father Henry, who is obsessed with gambling. His daughter Sylvia (Hepburn) has stolen some expensive lace which they hope to smuggle from France to England. To elude police, she cuts her hair short and disguises herself as a man. She and her father board a ship, and a drunken Henry confesses their scheme to Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant), a jewel smuggler. To divert attention away from him, Jimmy snitches on Henry to the customs officials, and Henry has to pay up or be arrested. Later, Sylvia confronts Jimmy on a train and punches him. Jimmy apologizes and cuts them in on a scheme to steal jewels from a wealthy family, using his friend Maudie (Dennie Moore), a maid in the house. But Sylvia, still disguised as a man, talks Maudie out of it, and she responds with a kiss. Maudie and Sylvia's father fall in love and Maudie, an aspiring actress, invests money in a show to open in a seaside resort. There they are invited to the mansion of a wealthy artist, Michael Fane (Brian Aherne), who is unsettled by Sylvia's obvious affections before finally discovering that she's a woman. Jimmy is attracted to Michael's roommate, the Russian-born Lily (Natalie Paley) -- and from there, the romantic entaglements between the aformentioned parties proceed like a Shakespearean comedy. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

High-rolling gambler "Odds" Owen (Warren William) establishes an American insurance agency created along the lines of Lloyd's of London. Owen insures Kentucky colonel Jefferson Davis Youngblood (Guy Kibbee) against the possibility that Youngblood's actress daughter Marilyn (Claire Dodd) might get married, thereby cutting off the Colonel's allowance. After scaring away several prospective suitors, Owen messes things up by falling in love with Marilyn himself. Odds are that the 60-minute Don't Bet on Blondes would be completely forgotten were it not for the presence of new Warner Bros. contractee Errol Flynn, who appears in two brief scenes as one of Marilyn's boyfriends. It was Flynn's first speaking role at Warners, and he carried it off with class if not distinction. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The third of nine very low-budget Bill Cody oaters produced by Gower Gulch company Spectrum, Six Gun Justice told a none too original story of an outlaw who reforms and saves his pursuer from getting killed by the gang. Bill Cody and Wally Wales, both former stars of the silent sage, played the reformed outlaw and gang leader respectively, with Donald Reed as the marshal and starlet Ethel Jackson delivering the necessary feminine appeal as the daughter of a Doc Holliday-like surgeon (Budd Buster). Swedish-born actress Zara Tazil, who wrote several of the Spectrum-Cody oaters, appeared here as a jealous saloon girl. The screenplay was by genre specialist Oliver Drake and the film played smaller venues only. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Despite stiff competition like Poor Little Rich Girl and Heidi, Bright Eyes is arguably the best of Shirley Temple's 1930s vehicles. The little curly-top is cast as Shirley Blake, daughter of Mary Blake (Lois Wilson), the widowed housemaid of snooty J. Wellington and Anita Smythe (Theodore Von Eltz and Dorothy Christy). Though continually terrorized by the Smythe's obnoxious, doll-destroying daughter Joy (Jane Withers), Shirley finds comfort in the fact that she is the darling of the airplane-pilot buddies of her late father. Especially fond of our heroine is flyboy Loop Merritt, who arranges a birthday party for the girl. Alas, even as Shirley sings "On the Good Ship Lollipop" to a gathering of beaming airmen, her mother Mary is run over by a car while shopping for her daughter's birthday cake. It thus becomes Loop's painful duty to tell Shirley that her mother "cracked up," just like her father did (if this scene doesn't move the viewer to tears, the viewer is made of granite). Fortunately, the Smythe's irascible Uncle Ned takes a liking to Shirley, securing her financial future at the expense of his repulsive relatives. But before this happy ending can come about, Shirley must be rescued from an imperiled passenger plane by the resourceful Loop. Though Shirley Temple is inarguably the main drawing card in Bright Eyes, 9-year-old Jane Withers is equally terrific as the pint-sized "villainess"; indeed, some critics felt that Withers stole the show, and it was this as much as anything else that earned Withers her own starring series at 20th Century-Fox. ~ 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 rough-and-tumble action comedy, Chuck Connors (Wallace Beery) and Steve Brodie (George Raft) are friendly rivals on New York's Bowery in the 1890s. Connors owns a fancy tavern and looks after a streetwise kid named Swipes McGurk (Jackie Cooper), while Brodie is a daredevil willing to do nearly anything to get the better of Connors. When both men fall in love with Lucy Calhoun (Fay Wray), who has fallen on hard times, Brodie takes her under his wing and helps get her back on her feet. Connors is furious that his rival has won her heart, so he goads Brodie into doing something spectacular to prove his love for her -- jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, for example. Reckless but not stupid, Brodie has no intention of making the jump and plans to use a dummy instead, but when Connors and his henchmen show up to make sure that Brodie doesn't back down, the dare is turned into a wager, and Brodie emerges the new owner of Connors' bar after successfully making the jump. In real life, George Raft and Wallace Beery were not nearly so friendly as their characters: Raft persuaded director Raoul Walsh to hire a number of his underworld cronies as extras, which irritated Beery no end. When the two actors had a fight scene, Beery refused to hold back, and the staged fistfight quickly turned into a for-real battle royale. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

"I'm the finest woman who walked the streets," declares bejeweled, hip-swishing Lady Lou (Mae West) at the beginning of She Done Him Wrong. Lou works as a singer at the Gay Nineties saloon of Gus Jordan (Noah Beery Sr.), who plies her with diamonds to keep her by his side. She runs afoul of stalwart mission captain Cummings (Cary Grant), who warns her that she's on the road to perdition. Mae West's first starring film, She Done Him Wrong literally saved Paramount Pictures from bankruptcy. It would remain the best of her feature films, most of which were severely watered down by the Production Code (whose renewed stringency of 1933 was brought about in great part by West herself). She Done Him Wrong was based on West's own stage play, Diamond Lil, which ran on Broadway for 97 weeks. West sings "Frankie and Johnny," "I Like a Man Who Takes His Time," and ""I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone."" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this wisecracking comedy, Dan Dolan (Spencer Tracy) is a cop whose beat is the New York waterfront. Dan has a soft spot for Helen Riley (Joan Bennett), a sharp-tongued waitress at a cheap diner, while her scatter-brained sister Kate (Marion Burns) is in love with Duke Castage (George Walsh), a sleazy low-level mobster. While Duke makes a play for Kate, both Helen and Dan know that he's bad news, and Dan wants to put Duke behind bars before he can break Kate's heart. Me and My Gal was directed by Raoul Walsh, one of the great craftsmen of the studio system -- and also the brother of George Walsh, who plays the villain. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide