Gene Morgan Movies

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

In this crime drama, an evil ex-con makes his living selling cheap booze masked under expensive labels. He runs a drugstore as a front and also sponsors a girl's baseball team. The story is split between the gangster's illegal activities and the action on the baseball field where the lovely players practice. Trouble ensues when one of the dishonest ex-con's prison buddies appears. To protect his scam, the ex-con kills his friend. Later, the team catcher is poisoned during a game. A dullard cop is assigned the case as a brainless rookie reporter. The ex-con ends up attempting to sell his drugstore and illicit booze in order to escape them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Harry Richman was a major stage and radio star of the 1930s, but his overbearing personality never clicked in films. After bombing out in 1930's Puttin' on the Ritz, he tried again six years later in The Music Goes 'Round, with marginally better results. Richman plays Harry Wallace, headliner of a Broadway revue which is just about to open. Tired of the rehearsal grind, he runs off to the South, where he happens upon a third-rate showboat troupe. Susanna Courtney (Rochelle Hudson), daughter of showboat manager Hector Courtney (Walter Connolly), mistakes Harry for an unemployed actor and hires him as a dollar-a-day bit player. Amused by the troupe's ineptitude in presenting a "serious" Civil War drama, Harry arranges for Susanna and her fellow thespians to appear in his Broadway revue as a comedy act. But when Susanna finds out she and her father are being made to look like fools in front of the sophisticated New York audience, she upbraids the roaring crowd, punches Harry in the mouth, and storms offstage. All works out okay in the end when Harry contritely begs Susanna's forgiveness. A remake of the 1928 Frank Capra film The Matinee Idol, The Music Goes 'Round is memorable today only for its catchy title song. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this western, a Spanish-American war veteran cannot find gainful employment. In desperation, he becomes a cattle rustler until he can get back on his feet. Just as he is ready to go straight, his girlfriend's younger brother is shot. The veteran kills the murderer, but is then arrested by the sheriff, who is also his best friend. Unfortunately for the veteran, justice prevails and he must hang. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Tailor-made for the talents of fast-talking James Dunn, Come Closer, Folks stars Dunn as sidewalk pitchman Jim Keene. Our hero manages to wangle a "legitimate" job as a small-town department-store sales clerk, instantly falling in love with boss's daughter Peggy Woods (Marian Marsh). When the store is threatened with bankruptcy, Jim enlists the aid of his fellow street hucksters to drum up business with their patented hard-sell methods, a strategy that gets him promoted to assistant manager. Eventually he runs afoul of the law, but Jim manages to smooth-talk the jury into letting him off the hook. Come Closer, Folks is another of those Columbia "B"-pictures which showed up incessantly on TV in the 1950s and 1960s then suddenly vanished when audiences demanded "newer" pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When a car crash ends the life of a fabulously wealthy patron of the arts, the decedent's $20,000,000 fortune is inherited by one Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. Already a reasonably successful local businessman, Deeds doesn't really feel the need for anything extra in his life: he just wants enough time to practice his tuba and compose greeting-card doggerel. When Deeds is convinced to move to New York, hard-boiled newspaper reporter Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur) is dispatched to get the inside scoop on "The Cinderella Man." Babe's stories of Deeds' eccentricities and no-nonsense dealings with phonies and poseurs provide excellent headline fodder; but she begins to regret her actions, having fallen in love with the big lug. Deeds ultimately sets up a foundation to dispense his fortune to the country's neediest souls, on the proviso that the recipients do their best to get back on their feet, a turn of events that leads his lawyer John Cedar (Douglas Dumbrille) to try to have him declared insane. By the end of the sanity hearing, the judge (H. B. Walker) declares: "Not only are you sane, but you're the sanest man who ever walked in this courtroom!" A joyously unadulterated hunk of Frank Capra-corn, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was adapted by Robert Riskin from Clarence Buddington Kelland's short story "Opera Hat." In addition to the pleasure of watching the country bumpkin outwit city slickers, the movie is a film buff's dream, boasting one of the best character-actor casts ever assembled for a single film. Nominated for four Academy Awards, the film won Frank Capra his second Oscar (out of three) as Best Director. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sometimes referred to as a "baseball picture," Columbia's Panic in the Air is only peripherally involved in the sport. Lew Ayres stars as fast-talking sports radio announcer Jerry, while Florence Rice co-stars as a gorgeous socialite named Mary. Rather full of himself, Jerry delights in one-upping the police while tracking down a gang of crooks who've been fixing sports events. Our hero ultimately outsmarts himself when he offers to act as go-between to ransom Mary's kidnapped father, which serves only to get Mary arrested on a murder charge. The film's tight 54 minutes manages to accommodate a murder during a World Series game and similar skullduggery during a climactic steeplechase. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jim Buchanan (Herbert Marshall) is a wealthy, highly successful automobile company president, who is about to enter into a marriage-of-convenience with a socially-connected young woman (Frieda Inescort). When his board of directors votes down a new, revolutionary line of cars that he wants to adopt, Jim walks out on his company and his social obligations to re-think his future. He meets Joan Hawthorne (Jean Arthur), an unemployed and homeless young woman, in the park; she doesn't recognize him, and mistakes his uncertainty for desperation similar to her own. Joan persuades him to pose as her husband so can apply as the cook and butler in the home of Mike Rossini (Leo Carrillo), who turns out to be a gangster laying low in the wake of Prohibition's end. Rossini loves Joan's cooking and tolerates Jim's butling; but his henchman Flash (Lionel Stander), who is suspicious of everyone, is puzzled by the fact that the couple don't seem to be living as husband and wife, and also by Jim's nocturnal wanderings back to his corporate offices. Still hiding his identity from Joan, he passes himself off as a frustrated engineer (which he is), and impresses her with his ideas and drawings. A case of mistaken identity and mis-directed good intentions briefly lands Joan in jail, while Jim keeps trying to sort out his attraction to her, versus the loveless marriage he's about to enter into. When all seems lost for Joan, Rossini -- who likes her and her cooking -- comes through with his boys, kidnapping Jim out of his own wedding to try to get the couple back together. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

When widower Stephen Blake (Melvyn Douglas) and divorcee Edith Farnham (Mary Astor) are the only guests at a snowed-in mountain resort, sports director Snirley (Romaine Callender) and hostess Alma Peabody (Dorothy Stickney) try to promote a romance between Stephen and Edith. However, Stephen's son Tommy (Jackie Moran) and Edith's daughter Brenda (Edith Fellows) think this is a rotten idea and do what they can to prevent them from getting together. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide

In this action film, a courageous test pilot works with experimental aircraft for the US Armed Forces. When an important airplane manufacturer dies, his daughter is left to run the company. The company seems to be producing dangerous prototypes; many test pilots die during test runs. The woman decides that she will have no more blood on her hands; she decides to close the company. The pilot changes her mind when he successfully flies one of the prototypes. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this lively comedy, a cocky reporter follows a gangster aboard an ocean liner. While on board, the overconfident fellow mentions his purpose to a ship's manicurist with whom he's fallen in love. Later they get married and the reporter loses his job causing a fight between the newlyweds. He then decides to divorce her. Unwillingly to let the marriage die so easily, the manicurist gives a manicure to a gangster who is supposed to be dead. Her husband then reports the news, but more mix-ups occur and he is fired again. Blaming it all on his wife, he continues with his divorce proceedings until she is able to prove once and for all the illusive gangster is very much alive. ~ Sandra Brennan, 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