Jack Mower Movies

The creator of the famous jungle lord, Edgar Rice Burrough's and his production company are behind this Tarzan serial. For added realism, he had it filmed on location in the Guatemalan jungles where the cast and crew really suffered for their art amidst the heat, humidity, poisonous snakes and voracious insects. This is the first, and maybe the only film in which Tarzan speaks fluent English, the kind he spoke in the original book. His latest adventure begins when he is searching for an old friend. Eventually, the great ape-man ends up in the fabulous temple of the Lost Goddess where he finds unimaginable treasure and horror. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The most enjoyable of the Warner Bros.-Dick Foran singing Westerns, this film pitches lawyer Foran against unscrupulous land swindler Edmund Cobb. A "sooner" who cheated the starting gun in the Oklahoma Land Rush (shown via stock footage from William S. Hart's Tumbleweeds), Cobb becomes the de facto owner of the town of Big Rock while doing a bit of cattle rustlings on the side. The town's acting mayor (Tom Brower) soon has had enough of Cobb's schemes and finds an ally in Foran. With the assistance of Brower's pretty daughter, Jane Bryan, and young son, Tommy Bupp, Foran succeeds in bringing the villain and his gang to their knees, not by using his fists or gun but by his superior courtroom dexterity. Foran's introduction in the film is only one of many highlights: Warbling "Along the Old Frontier," he is shot at, not by a music critic, but by a target practicing Tommy Bupp. One of the more palatable of screen kids, the then 12-year old Bupp later performs an engaging duet with Foran and is given some of the film's better lines, basically functioning as the comic relief. One of the studio's best young actresses, Jane Bryan never lives up to her potential here, but she is certainly an improvement over such former Foran heroines as Anne Nagel and Alma Lloyd. A veteran silent Western star, the tight-lipped Edmund Cobb makes a formidable villain this time around, but future leading man Robert Paige (billed as David Carlyle) is wasted as a friend of Foran's. All in all, The Cherokee Strip remains one of the more entertaining horse operas of the era. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In this drama, Pat O'Brien plays James O'Malley, a tough, by-the-book policeman who is so unbending on any minor infraction of the law that he even gives his own mother a ticket for jaywalking. When newspaper reporter Pinky Holden (Hobart Cavanaugh) writes an article making fun of O'Malley's obsession with order, Capt. Cromwell (Donald Crisp), the Chief of Police, demotes the officer to a crossing guard. In his first day on the job, O'Malley, true to form, gives John Phillips (Humphrey Bogart) a ticket for the broken muffler on his rattletrap car. Phillips is in dire financial straits; he's been out of work for some time, and has both a wife (Frieda Inescort) and a handicapped daughter, Barbara (Sybil Jason), to support. O'Malley takes so long writing out his ticket for Phillips that when he finally arrives at work, he's fired. Desperate for cash, Phillips tries to hock his war medals, but a disagreement with the pawnbroker leads to a fight, and after knocking him out, Phillips takes all his money. Phillips is arrested by O'Malley for his faulty muffler around the same time that Barbara wanders into traffic and is seriously injured by a motorist. Eventually, O'Malley puts the pieces together and realizes the terrible toll his unwillingness to compromise has taken on Phillips and his family. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this lighthearted musical comedy from legendary director Busby Berkeley, Henry Bowers (Dick Powell) is a saxophonist in a jazz band who wins a talent contest. His prize is a ten-week contract with a movie studio, Miracle Pictures (whose slogan is "If it's a good picture, it's a Miracle"). One of his first "assignments" is to escort lovely starlet Virginia Stanton (Rosemary Lane) to a movie premiere, but while Henry is looking forward to his date with a movie star, he's disappointed to discover that Virginia has opted not to go at the last minute, instead sending her lookalike stand-in, Mona Marshall (Lola Lane). Henry is more than a bit miffed at this, but when he appears on Louella Parsons' radio show, he's a big hit and rockets to stardom. Ronald Reagan has a bit part as a radio announcer (which he did full time before acting and politics began paying the rent for him), and keep an eye peeled for Susan Hayward and Carole Landis in minor roles. By the way, Rosemary Lane and Lola Lane look a great deal alike for a good reason -- they're sisters. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Bette Davis' famous walk-out from her home studio of Warner Bros. may have hurt her financially, but in the long run it paid off with bigger parts in better films. Like many Warners films of the period, Marked Woman was "torn from today's headlines." Specifically, it was inspired by the recent downfall of gangster Lucky Luciano, who at one time controlled all prostitution activities in New York. The ladies herein are euphemistically characterized as "night club hostesses," but when Luciano look-alike Johnny Vanning (Eduardo Cianelli) shows up at a fancy clip-joint to give the girls their marching orders, the audience can tell exactly what's going on. Been-there-done-that hostess Mary (Davis) is no better than she ought to be, though she has a definite code of honor; she stands up to the dictatorial Vanning at every opportunity, fending of his amorous attentions and seeing to it that her "over the hill"colleague Estelle (Mayo Methot) is retained on the gangster's payroll. At the same time, Mary tries to shield her seedy profession from her virginal sister Betty (Jane Bryan), but the girl discovers the truth and becomes a "B"-girl herself, a rash move that results in her death. Previously frightened into silence by periodic beatings from Vanning's goons, Mary and four of her girlfriends become state's witnesses, providing testimony to crusading District Attorney David Graham (Humphrey Bogart, playing a character clearly patterned after Thomas E. Dewey). A last-ditch effort to permanently stifle Mary and her friends fails, and the ladies show up in court to put the noose around Vanning's neck. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The racket-busting activities of New York DA Thomas E. Dewey was the inspiration for several late-1930s crime films, including Warner Bros.' Missing Witnesses. The Dewey counterpart this time out is Inspector Lane (John Litel), assigned to drive all organized crime out of his community. But Lane needs good, strong evidence -- and gangland witnesses have a nasty habit of refusing to testify in court, or disappearing altogether from the face of the earth. When Mary Norton (Jean Dale) courageously comes forth with evidence against protection racketeer Ward Turgis (Harland Tucker), detective Bull Regan (Richard Purcell) is ordered to keep Mary from ending up sleeping with the fishes. Is it any surprise that Mary and Bull fall in love halfway through the picture? Missing Witnesses was written by Kenneth Gamet and Don Ryan, two ex-reporters who were intimately familiar with the doings of Dewey and his enemies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Despite the claim of "an original screenplay by Edward Earl Repp," this entry in Warner Bros.' Dick Foran "singing cowboy" series was a virtual remake of the studio's earlier The Telegraph Trail, whose 1932 screenplay was credited to Kurt Kempler. Prairie Thunder in fact opens with the same montage as its predecessor, and Yakima Canutt and Albert J. Smith play identical characters in both films. Foran and rotund, eternally fatigued Frank Orth replace John Wayne and rotund, eternally fatigued Frank McHugh but that is really the only difference between the films. That, and Foran's lusty renditions of Over the Trail Again, The Prairie is My Home and a few other selections. Foran and Orth are assigned by the army to investigate a series of Indian attacks on the railroad. They quickly discover that the Kiowas have been mislead by unscrupulous trader Smith, who views the coming of the railroad as a threat to his trade monopoly. The Indians capture Foran and heroine Ellen Clancy, but Orth helps the former escape. The cavalry arrives just in time to save the railroad construction site from yet another attack by the Kiowas and Foran personally chases down the villainous Smith. The least expensive entry in the Dick Foran series, Prairie Thunder lifted entire sequences from the earlier John Wayne vehicle, including dialogue scenes between Canutt and Smith and the killing of a telegraph repairman. The film's pieces de resistance, Indian attacks on both a white settlement and the construction site, are lifted almost in toto from a silent Ken Maynard Western with Maynard himself plainly visible in several shots. Foran's blonde leading lady, Ellen Clancy, later signed with Universal and changed her name to Janet Shaw. Paul Panzer, the German-born villain of the 1914 serial The Perils of Pauline, appears unbilled as a medicine man.. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The first of three remakes of the 1933 Paul Muni picture Hi, Nellie, Love is on the Air is historically important as the screen debut of Ronald Reagan. In the original Hi, Nellie, a Winchellesque newspaper reporter is demoted to writing the "advice to the lovelorn" column when he steps on too many important toes. In the remake, reckless radio commentator Andy McLeod (Reagan) gets into hot water when he attacks a corrupt city government (a portent for the future, perhaps?), whereupon his boss disciplines McLeod by forcing him to host an innocuous kiddie program. While advising his youthful audience to eat their spinach and drink their milk, our hero manages to dig up enough dirt to expose the crooks once and for all. In his maiden film effort, Ronald Reagan is pretty good, though some distance removed from The Great Communicator. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hollywood Boulevard is a trenchant look at the underside of Tinseltown. Though the nominal hero is a disillusioned screenwriter played by Robert Cummings (whose dialogue anticipates the lines spoken by William Holden in 1950's Sunset Boulevard), the focus of the story is John Halliday as a washed-up film star. Desperately, Halliday accepts the offer from a sleazy "tell all" magazine to write his memoirs. The actor's estranged family is devastated by the resultant scandal, and out love for his daughter (Marsha Hunt), Halliday tries to break his contract. But the publisher (C. Henry Gordon) threatens to ruin Halliday's comeback attempt if he refuses to write the rest of his memoirs. In a scuffle, the publisher kills Halliday, and the blame falls on the actor's daughter. But wise guy screenwriter Cummings gets to the truth of the mystery. A slick B-plus crime melodrama, Hollywood Boulevard has the added bonus of several well-known silent film personalities (Charles Ray, Francis X. Bushman, Maurice Costello, Mae Marsh etc.) in cameo roles, as well as a guest appearance by Gary Cooper. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Margaret Lindsay stars in the title role, playing a young woman imprisoned for a crime which she didn't commit. The real culprit is her jailbird husband (Cesar Romero), a smooth jewel thief with a jealous streak. Margaret hopes to put her past behind her by taking up with a society man (Dick Foran), keeping the affair secret lest her fugitive husband kill her lover. Released in England as G-Man's Wife (Lindsay ends up with government agent Pat O'Brien), Public Enemy's Wife was based on a story co-written by none other than David O. Selznick. The film was remade as a 50-minute "B," Bullets for O'Hara (41), with a young Anthony Quinn as the criminal and Joan Perry (later the wife of Columbia chieftain Harry Cohn) as his wife. ~ 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

An innocent but admittedly none-too-bright victim of circumstance, Mary Burns (played by perennial movie victim Sylvia Sidney) is inexorably sucked into the vortex of organized crime. She tries to escape her murderer husband Babe Wilson (Alan Baxter), but it's a losing proposition, especially since the newspapers have already branded her a gun moll. Making matters worse, she is thrown into prison for crimes committed by her husband (understandably, since her behavior at her trial was self-defeating to say the least). Though believing her guilty, detective Harper (Wallace Ford) allows Mary to escape from jail, hoping in this way to track down Wilson. Nominal hero Alec MacDonald (Melvyn Douglas) isn't much help; not introduced until the film's halfway point, he spends most of his time in a hospital bed, recuperating from an injury. In fact, the story is wrapped up only after MacDonald is rescued by the heroine! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

More a whodunit than a straight Western, this Tim McCoy series entry from Columbia featured a cowboy returning to his homestead to find his brother, the sheriff, killed and the family of his girl somehow involved. Dissatisfied with the investigation by newly appointed Sheriff Ludlow (Jack Clifford), Tim O'Neil (McCoy) discovers that Jed Harmon (Frank Sheridan), the father of Myra (Billie Seward), Tim's sweetheart, is being blackmailed by Kramer (Edward Earle). Ludlow, who is in cahoots with Kramer, arrests Jed but Tim helps the old man escape. Confessing in writing to an old crime, Jed is left alone when Tim is called out on an errand. Kramer enters the room and shoots Jed, making it look like a suicide. But Tim later demonstrates how Kramer could have left the body in a room bolted from the inside. There is a final confrontation between Tim and Kramer, which leaves the villain dead and Tim with a final resolution to avenge his brother's murder. As it turns out, Jed is still alive and proven innocent in the old charge of murder to which he earlier confessed. Tim McCoy's handsome sidekick in this and two subsequent Westerns, Robert Allen, would later star in his own B-Western series for Columbia. The Revenge Rider was remade by Columbia in 1938 as Riders of the Black River, a vehicle for McCoy's successor at the studio, Charles Starrett. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide