Gene Morgan Movies

In this rollicking adaptation of Ring Lardner's short story, Joe E. Brown plays an ace baseball player whose insistence upon making up excuses earns him the nickname "Alibi Ike." In the course of his first season with the Chicago Cubs, Brown also falls in love with Olivia De Havilland, sister-in-law of the team's manager. Brown's "alibi" habit prompts De Havilland to walk out on him, whereupon he goes into a slump-- which coincides with attempts by gamblers to get Brown to throw the World Series. The plot weaves its way towards a climax in which Brown escapes the gamblers by commandeering an ambulance and driving onto the ball field during the final Series game. Alibi Ike was the most successful of Joe E. Brown's "baseball trilogy" (which included Elmer the Great and Fireman Save My Child), and one the best baseball comedies of all time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

While Rita Hayworth was one of many starlets signed to one-year contracts at Columbia in 1936-37, she was one of the few who made the "cut" when option time rolled around. One of those who didn't was Patricia Farr, who starred in All-American Sweetheart before the Columbia execs showed her the door. Farr's top billing is perplexing, since the film's main characters are all male, all members of a college rowing team (an athletic endeavor utilized in no fewer than four 1930s films). The storyline of All-American Sweetheart involved the compromising of certain student rowers, courtesy of bribe-dispensing gangsters. One gets the impression that Columbia would have inserted gangsters into a movie about ping-pong. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The title character is played by Dorothy Revier in this lower-case melodrama. She plays a gossip columnist whose brother, a prizefighter, is murdered. To uncover the killer, Revier (whose photograph has evidently never been published by her newspaper) goes undercover, posing as a hard-boiled nightclub hoofer. The single new aspect of this predictable effort is finding Dorothy Revier, normally cast as a scheming Other Woman, playing the heroine for a change. Anybody's Blonde was produced by a poverty-row studio bearing the name of Artclass. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This is the celebrated Blondie episode that costars Rita Hayworth, who in 1940 was still just another Columbia contract actress. Hayworth plays an old flame of Dagwood Bumstead's (Arthur Lake), who moves into the Bumstead household when wife Blondie (Penny Singleton) advertises for a boarder. Blondie (Penny Singleton) tries to be civil when she meets Rita, but her true feelings are manifested in a superimposed montage of explosions and gunshots. Innocently caught in a compromising position with Hayworth at a local movie house, Dagwood is shown the door by the heartbroken Blondie. All misunderstandings are swept away by fadeout time in this fifth installment in Columbia's Blondie series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Otto Kruger once again plays a dynamic, bombastic attorney in Columbia's Counsel for Crime. Kruger plays William Mellon, a shifty shyster whose underhanded methods loses him the love of his sweetheart Anne (Nana Bryant), who subsequently marries a powerful senator (Thurston Hall). What Mellon doesn't know is that Anne has borne him a son, whom the senator has adopted. Reaching adulthood, Paul (Douglass Montgomery) opts for a legal career himself, taking a clerical job with his own father's firm. In typical "B"-picture, Mellon is charged with murdering one of his more odious clients -- and Paul is appointed prosecuting attorney in the case. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Joan Perry plays the title role in Columbia's Counterfeit Lady. She is cast as Phyllis, a country lass with a rare talent for larceny. Managing to steal a $37,000 diamond from a swank New York jewelry shop, Phyllis is pursued by private detective Johnny (Ralph Bellamy), and by a gang of professional thieves who play for keeps. Johnny rescues the heroine from the villains, whereupon she instantly reforms in order to permit a climactic romantic clinch. So well does Joan Perry pull off the leading role in Counterfeit Lady that it seems a shame she retired from acting after becoming the wife of Columbia prexy Harry Cohn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A remake of Frank Capra's Submarine (1928), Devil's Playground is a snappy Columbia "B plus" picture starring Richard Dix and Chester Morris. Submarine officers Dorgan (Dix) and Mason (Morris) battle on land for the affections of dance-hall girl Carmen (Dolores del Rio). She marries Dorgan but makes a play for Mason when her husband is on duty. The romantic rivalry is forgotten when Dorgan must rescue
Mason and his crew from a sunken sub. Devil's Playground was one of Columbia's bigger moneymakers of 1937. Excerpts from the underwater scenes later found their way into the Three Stooges two-reeler Three Little Sew and Sews (1939). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paul Muni is a prominent physician who is kidnapped by gangsters and forced to tend the needs of head crook Barton MacLaine. MacLaine takes a liking to the intellectual doctor and allows him to go home after his job is done. Muni finds himself the reluctant "staff physician" for the gangster, thus is periodically spirited away from his practice to look after the criminal. He has given his word not to "rat" on the crooks, but he can't sit idly by while the gangsters loot the city. Muni foils the crooks by injecting them with a drug which induces temporary blindness. Dr. Socrates was remade in 1939 as King of the Underworld, with Humphrey Bogart as the gangster boss and actress Kay Francis in Paul Muni's role (with surprisingly few dialogue alterations to accommodate the gender switch!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Joe E. Brown plays Elmer Kane, a rookie ballplayer with the Chicago Cubs whose ego is matched only by his appetite. Because he is not only vain but naive, Elmer's teammates take great delight in pulling practical jokes on him. Still, he is so valuable a player that the Cubs management hides the letters from his hometown sweetheart Nellie (Patricia Ellis), so that Elmer won't bolt the team and head for home. When Nellie comes to visit Elmer, she finds him in an innocent but compromising situation with a glamorous actress (Claire Dodd). She turns her back on him, and disconsolate Elmer tries to forget his troubles at a crooked gambling house. Elmer incurs an enormous gambling debt, which the casino's owner is willing to forget if Elmer will only throw the deciding World Series game. Elmer brawls with the gambler and lands in jail, where he learns of a particularly cruel practical joke that had previously been played on him. Out of spite, he refuses to play in the Big Game, and thanks to a jailhouse visit by the gamblers, it looks as though Elmer has taken a bribe. But when he shows up to play (after patching things up with Nellie), Elmer proves that he's been true-blue all along. Based on the Broadway play by Ring Lardner and George M. Cohan, Elmer the Great betrays its stage origins in its static early scenes, but builds confidently to a terrific climax during a rain-soaked ball game. This enjoyable film was the second in Joe E. Brown's "baseball trilogy" (see also Fireman Save My Child and Alibi Ike). Elmer the Great was remade in 1939 as Cowboy Quarterback, with Bert Wheeler in Joe E. Brown's part and with football substituting for baseball. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Extortion was designed as a sort of trial balloon for Columbia's new contractees Scott Colton and Mary Russell. The story takes place on a college campus, where a distinctively unpopular professor is murdered. When her physics-teacher father (Thurston Hall) falls under suspicion, co-ed Betty Tisdale (Mary Russell) turns to campus newspaper editor Larry Campbell (Scott Colton). Dissatisfied with the slowness of police procedure, Betty, Larry and their fellow students conduct their own investigation, unearthing a hotbed of scholastic intrigue and double-crossing. The much-hated victim is played by Albert Von Dekker, who'd later streamline his professional monicker as Albert Dekker and go on to a distinguished film career; ironically, Dekker would himself be the victim of a spectacular demise in 1968, which may or may not have been a sex murder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In G Men, Warner Bros. "bad boy" James Cagney plays James "Brick" Davis, a young lawyer whose education has been financed by soft-hearted racketeer McKay (William Harrigan). When Cagney's best pal, detective Eddie Buchanan (Regis Toomey), is killed in a gangland shooting, James decides to become a G-Man. Though scrupulously honest, Davis is looked upon with suspicion by his fellow agents because of his association with the crooked McKay. He proves he's a "good guy" when his former girlfriend, Jean Ann Dvorak, now the wife of mobster Brad Collins (Barton MacLane), tips him off to a "Little Bohemia"-style gangster hideaway. Jean later sacrifices her own life to help James rescue his new girl, nurse Kay McCord (Margaret Lindsay), from the vengeful Collins. Based on Gregory Miller's book Public Enemy No. 1, G-Men was reissued in 1949, with an added prologue featuring David Brian as an FBI trainer who advises his students not to laugh at the old-fashioned costumes and slang in the 1935 film; seen today, it is Brian's superfluous opening comments that seem hopelessly dated, while the film itself is as exciting and entertaining as ever. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a devoted, caring physician leaves his home and moves to Alaska to escape arrest after he performs euthanasia upon his terminally ill father. In the ever-snowy reaches of northernmost Alaska, the doctor begins administering to the poverty-stricken Inuit. While he has willingly exiled himself there and cares about the people, his new nurse is another story. She hates the outpost and holds the people there in contempt. She does not try to understand their lifestyle and therefore, considers them disgusting. Unbeknownst to the good doctor, he is being hunted by a detective determined to return him to the lower 48 to stand trial for the mercy killing of his father. Unfortunately, the gumshoe is caught in a blizzard and is blinded by the snow. The doctor saves his life. The grateful detective, seeing the doctor's good work, decides that he never saw him and returns home empty handed. Meanwhile, the nurse gets a grip on her ethnocentrism and decides to stay to be with the doctor. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Originally released on January 10, 1926, Good Cheer was Our Gang's Yuletide present to the series' legions of fans. 'Tis the day before Christmas, and all through the snowy streets, the Our Gang kids are confronted not by Christmas cheer, but by the crass commercialism of the holiday. Happily, the Spirit of Christmas -- who looks a lot like Santa Claus -- pays a surprise visit to Gang members Mickey Daniels and Johnny Downs, inspiring the boys to earn enough money to buy presents for the rest of their friends. With their usual business acumen, the youngsters come up with a sure-fire moneymaking scheme -- selling heated bricks to keep the last-minute shoppers' feet warm. As a bonus, the gang captures a bunch of bootleggers, thereby earning a huge reward. The film's most memorable sequence, in which a gathering of wind-up toys dance and cavort in a department store window, is unfortunately missing from most TV prints of Good Cheer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide