Patsy Moran Movies
- 1993
- R
Earth is threatened by a super-race of aliens wishing to put humans on a lower link of the food chain. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Blake Pickett, Cherie Scott, (more)
- 1954
When Ricky (Desi Arnaz) discovers that he holds the "bonus buck" sought after in a radio contest, he generously plants the dollar bill (worth 300 dollars) in Lucy's purse, anticipating the thrill when Lucy (Lucille Ball) finds it. Unfortunately, Lucy uses the bill to pay the grocery boy (Don Garner) -- who in turn passes the bonus buck along to Ethel (Vivian Vance) as change. A battle over possession ensues, leading to the bill being torn in half, with the Ricardos and the Mertzes intending to share the prize (or at least that's what the couples tell each other!) One thing leads to another, and by episode's end, Lucy's half of the bill ends up at the local laundry, where in her zeal to retrieve the dollar Lucy is given the "starch treatment" to end all starch treatments. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Frank Jaquet, Patsy Moran, (more)
- 1949
Bride for Sale is an old-fashioned romantic triangle brightened by the star power of Claudette Colbert, George Brent and Robert Young. In search of a "perfect" husband, Nora Shelly (Colbert) decides to comb through the tax records of several eligible males, and to that end takes a job at Paul Martin's (Brent) accounting firm. When Paul learns the real reason behind Nora's diligence, he decides to teach her a lesson. He convinces his wealthy friend Steve Adams (Young) to woo and win Nora, then leave her flat. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Paul and Steve will both fall in love with Nora by reel seven. Produced independently by Jack H. Skirball's Crest Productions, Bride for Sale proved to be a moneyspinner for its distributor, RKO Radio. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claudette Colbert, Robert Young, (more)
- 1948
In this thriller, a young couple gets married while the groom is on a weekend furlough with the Navy. The newlyweds have only thirty-six hours to honeymoon and they have no place to stay. A mysterious stranger on her way to elope, offers them her apartment. Unfortunately, the suite had been let by three show girls who had sent a gang of mobsters to jail. The gangsters are now out and are looking to exact their revenge. They head straight for the apartment. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Audrey Long, Warren Douglas, (more)
- 1948
In this tuneful western, a brave hero endeavors to save the town from the evil villains who are trying to poison its water supply. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1945
The East Side Kids have become so benign in Docks of New York that they actually go out of their way to help the cops! It all begins when Glimpy (Huntz Hall) stumbles across a corpse and a stolen necklace. This brings himself and Muggs (Leo Gorcey) under the scrutiny of mysterious knife-wielding assassins, who are also searching for war refugees Saundra (Gloria Pope) and Mrs. Darcy (Betty Blythe). It turns out that Saundra is the incumbent princess of the duchy of Tuscania, and there are those who would kill her before she can assume the throne. Not unexpectedly, the necklace is vital to Saundra's future, so it's up to Muggs, Glimpy and the rest of the East Side Kids to safeguard both the girl and the royal jewels. Contrary to previously published reports, the "Carlyle Blackwell Jr" who appears in Docks of New York is not famed fashion arbiter Mr. Blackwell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, (more)
- 1945
One of the more remarkable aspects of this "East Side Kids" comedy is that, for the first time, one of the "Kids" is a girl, played by June Carlson. Otherwise, it's standard stuff, with the Kids forming a shaky friendship with police commissioner James Mitchell (Addison Mitchell). Muggs (Leo Gorcey), the Kids' leader, invites Mitchell's wimpy son Gilbert (Johnny Duncan) to join the gang as part of a plan to "toughen up" the boy. Unfortunately, Gilbert gets his new pals in trouble when he links up with gambler Silk Henley (George Meeker). Arrested during a confrontation with Silk, Muggs is disqualified from fighting in an upcoming boxing tournament. The chastened Gilbert takes Muggs' place in the ring, proving that he's a "right guy." Come Out Fighting was the final entry in Monogram's "East Side Kids" series; the following year, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall and the rest would re-emerge as "The Bowery Boys." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, (more)
The East Side Kids were betwixt and between their earlier roughneck characterizations and their later Bowery Boys buffoonery when Million Dollar Kid came out early in 1944. Vowing to rid the East Side of hoods and holdup men, Muggs McGinniss (Leo Gorcey) and his gang rescue wealthy John Cortland (Herbert Heyes) from a band of young thugs. When it turns out that one of Cortland's assailants was his own son Roy (Johnny Duncan), Muggs and his pals set about to reform the boy. Roy resists the gang's efforts until he receives word that his older brother has been killed in the war. Intending to confess all to the cops, Roy is abducted by his hoodlum friends, obliging Muggs, Glimpy (Huntz Hall) and the other East Side Kids to come to the rescue. The more serious aspects of Million Dollar Kid are leavened by moments of earthy humor, with some of the gags dating as far back as the Fatty Arbuckle era. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, (more)
- 1944
MGM's musical extravaganza Meet the People top-bills two future powerful TV executives: Dick Powell and Lucille Ball. Ball plays a popular but stuck-up Broadway star who leaves the bright lights to become a welder in a shipyard. Here she meets and falls in love with coworker Powell. This being a wartime musical, the plotline is periodically abandoned for the guest-star turns of the likes of Virginia O'Brien, Bert Lahr, Spike Jones and His City Slickers, Vaughn Monroe, and Mata and Hari. Buried beneath this cornucopia of corn is a stage play by Louis Lantz, upon which Meet the People was supposedly based. (Note: some sources mistakenly list Edward Dmytrk as the director of this film). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lucille Ball, Dick Powell, (more)
The splashy, star-studded This is the Army is based on the Irving Berlin Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was a reworking of Berlin's WW1 "barracks musical" Yip Yip Yaphank. In both instances, the cast was largely comprised of genuine servicemen, many of them either recently returned from fighting or on the verge of heading off to war. The Hollywood-imposed storyline concerns Jerry Jones (George Murphy), a member of the original 1918 Yip Yip Yaphank cast. His showbiz career curtailed by a leg injury, Jerry becomes a producer during the postwar era. When the US enters WW2, Jerry gathers together several other cast members from the 1918 Berlin musical to help him stage a new all-serviceman show, titled (what else?) This is the Army. The show-within-a-show framework is able to accommodate a romantic subplot, involving Jerry's son Johnny (Ronald Reagan, later a political comrade-in-arms of George Murphy) and Eileen Dibble (Joan Leslie), the daughter of Yip Yip Yaphank alumnus Eddie Dibble (Charles Butterworth). Some of the best moments in This is the Army are from the Broadway production itself, though the lengthy Alfred Lunt-Lynn Fontanne imitation and incessant "gay" jokes may have been too smart for the room in 1943. Guest stars include boxer Joe Louis, Kate Smith (singing "God Bless America", naturally) and Irving Berlin himself, who steals the show with his plaintive rendition of "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning". All profits for the stage and film version of This is the Army went to the Army Emergency Relief Fund, which also controlled the rights to the film. Long withheld from TV distribution, the film finally hit the small screen when it lapsed into Public Domain in the mid-1970s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Murphy, Joan Leslie, (more)
- 1943
The East Side Kids come face to face with High Society in Mr. Muggs Steps Out. Ordered by a judge to get a job, Muggs McGinniss (Leo Gorcey) is hired by wealthy Mrs. Murray (Betty Blythe), who has a penchant for picking up trouble-prone servants. At an engagement party for Mrs. Murray's spoiled daughter Brenda (Joan Marsh), Muggs enlists his pals Glimpy (Huntz Hall), Pinky (Billy Benedict), Speed (Bobby Stone), Skinny (Bud Gorman), Danny (Dave Durand) and Rocky (Jimmy Strand) as extra help. When a valuable necklace is stolen, Muggs and his buddies immediately fall under suspicion, but in a climactic fracas with the real thief, the East Side Kids prove that Mrs. Murray's faith in Muggs was not misplaced. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, (more)
The East Side Kids, featuring Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell and Huntz Hall, star in this spirited blend of action and comedy. The kids come to the rescue of a hysterical young girl who is discovered in the apartment with a murdered man. Convinced she's not the killer, the guys hide her as they comb the neighborhood for the real murderer. However, one of the kids made the mistake of picking up the baseball bat that appears to be the murder weapon, and now the fingerprints could point the police investigation at them. 'Neath The Brooklyn Bridge also features Dave O'Brien (best known for his eccentric performance in Reefer Madness) and Noah Beery Jr.. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 1942
Director William "One Take" Beaudine slapped together Foreign Agent in a week or so, enabling Monogram to ship the picture to theaters before its subject matter grew stale. Set in a Hollywood movie studio (sure looks like the cramped Monogram headquarters), the story concerns a gang of Nazi agents who want to get their filthy mitts on a searchlight filter developed by studio technician Jimmy (John Shelton). Unable to alert the authorities, Jimmy is forced to turn sleuth himself to rout out and round up the villains-all played by such overly obvious types as Hans Schumm and Ivan Lebedeff (a Lithuanian actor, here cast as a Japanese!). Heroine Gale Storm sings two songs, including the deathless "It's Taps for the Japs." Jack Mulhall, who used to star in films of this nature, plays a bit role as a studio film editor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Shelton, Gale Storm, (more)
- 1940
After a couple of Westerns with barely any singing, former radio crooner Tex Ritter was back to form in this his fifth Monogram oater of 1940. Apart from his own and Frank Harbord's Gold Is Where You Find It, Ritter also performed Donohue's Done It Again, by Jack Frost and Johnny Lange and Lew Porter's They're Hanging Pappy in the Morning. Tex and bucolic sidekick Slim Andrews are prospectors in Boom Town, a community terrorized by a band of claim jumpers known as "The Ceegaret Gang" due to their practice of leaving the intended victim with a death threat written on cigarette paper. When Tex and Slim strike pay dirt, the former is falsely accused of being the leader of the gang. The real criminals plan to blow up the jail, but Tex and Slim escape. Seeking shelter in a cave, they discover Rawls (Forrest taylor), the only man alive able to identify the leader of the gang. Returning to town, Tex is reveals that the culprit is Prader (Stanley Price), a particularly unpleasant specimen who is in cahoots with the local county clerk. Little Sugar Dawn, a precocious child actress who had helped ruin Ritter's previous Pals of the Silver Stage with her sugary presence, returned for an encore in The Golden Trail, but her screen time was mercifully brief. (Rival Western hero Tom Keene was not so lucky; the irritating child would appear in no less than five of his Monogram oaters 1941-1942.) ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tex Ritter, Slim Andrews, (more)
- 1940
Hoof and mouth disease reared its ugly head in this unusual Tex Ritter singing Western from Monogram. Ritter played Tex Rocketts, the sheriff of Sundown who is forced to quarantine the valley's cattle to prevent the spread of the disease. The desperate ranchers, all of whom are in debt to banker Cyrus Cuttler (George Pembroke) and his son Nick (Carleton Young), attempt to get their livestock to market anyway. When one of their number, Steve Davis (Dave "Tex" O'Brien), is arrested and jailed by Tex, the ranchers blame the lawman for their plight. Cuttler advises Steve to kill Tex but the latter, with assistance from government agent Bret Stockton (Glenn Strange), is able to prove that Cuttler's crew has been treating the cattle with acid to generate false symptoms of hoof and mouth disease. In between saving Sundown from the nefarious Cuttler gang, Ritter performed his own I've Done the Best I Could, a song reportedly inspired by the work of African-American folk musician Hudie "Leadbelly" Leadbetter. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tex Ritter, Roscoe Ates, (more)
- 1940
W.C. Fields plays Egbert Souse, a bibulous denizen of Lompoc who supports his family by winning radio contests. When a fleeing bank robber is knocked cold upon tripping over the park bench where Egbert sits, Souse is hailed as a hero and offered the job of bank guard. The next day, he is approached by one J. Frothingham Waterbury (Russell Hicks), who offers to sell Egbert shares in the Beefsteak Mines. Souse raises the necessary money by convincing bank clerk Og Oggilby (Grady Sutton), the fiance of Egbert's daughter Myrtle (Una Merkel), to "borrow" some funds from the bank; it isn't really embezzling, explains Egbert, because the mine is bound to pay off. Unfortunately, bank examiner J. Pinkerton Snoopington (Franklin Pangborn) comes calling, spelling possible trouble for Souse. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- W.C. Fields, Cora Witherspoon, (more)
- 1940
- G
In their last film for Hal Roach, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play employees at the Sharp and Pierce Horn Factory, where the workers tend to go beserk at a rate of one per hour. Driven crazy by the cacophonous G-minor horn, poor Ollie begins to tear the factory apart, screaming "Horns to the left of me! Horns to the right of me! Horns, horns, HORNS!" Sent home to recuperate from his nervous breakdown, Ollie is told by his doctor (James Finlayson) that he is suffering from Hornophobia: "In fact, you're on the verge of Hornomania." Advised to take a restful ocean voyage, Ollie nixes the idea, noting that he hates the high sea. Stan suggests that the two of them rent a small boat and keep it tied up on the dock, so that Ollie can get all the fresh sea air he wants without ever leaving port. Alas, the boys' tiny boat is accidentally set adrift, with Stan, Ollie and escaped killer Nick Grainger (Rychard Cramer) on board. Ordered to prepare breakfast for the ill-tempered Nick, the boys hope to subdue their captor by making him a "synthetic meal": String for spaghetti, soap for cheese, sponge for meatball, lampwick for bacon, and so on. Unfortunately, Nick catches on to their scheme and forces Stan and Ollie to eat the ersatz meal themselves. The boys are finally saved from Nick's wrath when Stan remembers that the sound of trombone will transform Ollie into a fighting demon, but don't count on a completely happy ending when Laurel & Hardy are involved. Cowritten by former comedy great Harry Langdon, Saps at Sea looks more like two or three 2-reelers strung together than a coherent feature film; still, it contains some great gags, most of them taking place in Ollie's apartment, where the plumbing and electrical appliances have been bollixed up by cross-eyed janitor Ben Turpin. Though hardly a classic, Saps at Sea earned Laurel & Hardy some of their best-ever reviews, and would turn out to be their last totally worthwhile feature film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, (more)
- 1938
- NR
Twenty years after the Armistice, doughboy Stan Laurel continues guarding a trench in France--simply because no one told him the war was over. His rescue coincides with the first wedding anniversary of his old pal Oliver Hardy. Heading to town to pick up a gift for his wife (Minna Gombell), Ollie discovers that Stan has been located and is now residing at the Veteran's Home. The two buddies share a warm reunion, whereupon Ollie invites Stan home to enjoy a "big thick juicy steak" prepared by Mrs. Hardy. As a result of Ollie's hospitality, Stan inadvertently wrecks Ollie's brand new car; the boys spend half the afternoon trudging up and down 13 flights of stairs; Ollie gets into a fight with belligerent Jimmy Finlayson; Mrs. Hardy angrily walks out on her husband; the boys manage to blow up the kitchen while preparing their own meal; and Hardy's beautiful next-door neighbor (Patricia Ellis) ends up minus her dress in Ollie's steamer trunk, with both Mrs. Hardy and the neighbor's husband, big-game hunter Billy Gilbert, converging upon our bethumped heroes. Essentially a remake of the 1929 Laurel and Hardy two-reeler Unnaccustomed as We Are, Block-Heads is a brilliant parade of virtuoso comedy turns. The best bits of business include the mountain of bean cans representing Stan's two decades in the trenches; the "white magic" gags involving Stan's pulling down the shadow of a window shade, producing a glass of water from his pocket and smoking his thumb like a pipe; and an uproarious "black" joke involving Ollie's mistaken belief than Stan has lost a leg in the war. The film sustains its high level of humor for 56 of its 57 minutes, faltering only in its disappointing closing gag (borrowed from the 1928 short We Faw Down). Among the writers of this chucklefest was former silent comedian Harry Langdon. Erroneously announced in 1938 as Laurel and Hardy's final feature, Block-Heads was indeed the last of the team's genuine classics. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, (more)
- 1937
In this outdoor animal adventure, a pack of dogs attempt to survive life in the rugged Rocky Mountains. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
