Jack Murphy Movies
A change of pace for both director Vincente Minnelli and star Katharine Hepburn, this taut drama features the latter as Ann Hamilton, the daughter of a scientist (Edmund Gwenn), who after a whirlwind romance marries handsome but slightly mysterious inventor turned businessman Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor). But wedded bliss proves short-lived when Garroway refuses to discuss his brother Michael, whose presence is felt constantly despite the mystery surrounding his whereabouts. The missing Michael becomes an obsession for Ann, whose curiosity is piqued even more after a chance encounter with Sylvia Burton (Jayne Meadows), a young woman who figures in the lives of both brothers and who displays a strange resemblance to Ann herself. Despite Alan's dire misgivings, Ann feels compelled to solve the mystery of Michael, until, that is, she discovers that Alan may very well have murdered his own brother. Undercurrent marked the screen debut of Jayne Meadows and a breakthrough of sorts for Robert Mitchum, whom M-G-M borrowed from David O. Selznick for a reputed $25,000. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Katharine Hepburn, Robert Taylor, (more)
- 1938
Though not the first Dr. Kildare film ever made, this is the first entry in MGM's long-running series set at Blair General Hospital. With the ink still wet on his diploma, Dr. Kildare is faced with a difficult decision: should he return home to work in his father's quiet country practice, or work at exciting, New York-set Blair General Hospital? Though his parents and his girlfriend are against it, Kildare chooses the latter and promptly gets into trouble after one of his first patients, a prominent politician dies. All kinds of turmoil follows as Kildare tries to clear his name and treat his other patients. Just as it seems like the strong-willed Kildare's career is to die on the vine, curmudgeonly but always capable Dr. Gillespie becomes his mentor. For trivia buffs, the first Dr. Kildare film was Interns Can't Take Money made in 1937 for Paramount. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lew Ayres, Lionel Barrymore, (more)
- 1938
The second motion picture version of a Saturday Evening Post story by Dana Burnet, this romantic melodrama was also the second pairing of actors James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Stewart plays Private Bill Pettigrew, a naïve young Texan in New York for basic training prior to being shipped overseas to fight in WWI. When he is nearly run over by an automobile, he meets its owner, Daisy Heath (Sullavan). A sophisticated entertainer, Daisy is taken with Bill's sweet, uncomplicated nature, and she agrees to a ruse when Bill asks her to pose has his girl in order to impress his Army bunkmates. Daisy's real boyfriend, Sam Bailey (Walter Pidgeon), is at first amused by Daisy's new friendship, but he soon becomes jealous of Bill's growing affection for Daisy. When Bill receives his orders, he begs Daisy to marry him, and although she doesn't really love him, Daisy can't reject a soldier who may be about to meet his maker, so a quickie ceremony is arranged. When word later comes that Bill has been killed on the front lines, a heartbroken Daisy realizes that she and Sam are taking each other for granted. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, (more)
The first of 20th Century-Fox's college musicals, Pigskin Parade is also close to the best of them in musical terms -- though they were all at least pretty good on that level -- principally thanks to the presence of 13-year-old Judy Garland, playing an Arkansas farm girl with surprising sincerity and success (in addition to belting out a couple of numbers with the depth and sincerity of a performer at least twice that age). The plot starts rolling when the Yale University football team, looking for a credible but not too tough opponent for a charity game, accidentally invites the team from tiny Tesax State University (enrollment 700) instead of the University of Texas (enrollment 7500). Texas State has also just gotten a new football coach, Slug Winters (Jack Haley), who's had a lot of success coaching high school back in Flushing, New York but still has to prove himself with college players -- he arrives with his brassy, outspoken wife (Patsy Kelly) just ahead of the invitation from Yale, which nearly sends them running back to New York. Through sheer luck and Mrs. Winters' brainstorm, however, they figure out a way they can meet the Yale team on the field and not get steamrollered -- they come up with a fast, highly mobile brand of football that makes them contenders, but then they lose their star-player. Mrs. Winters manages to stumble onto Amos Dodd (Stuart Erwin), an Arkansas farm boy who developed his arm by tossing watermelons around, and brings him and his sister (Judy Garland) to the college. But now they have to make Amos -- who never finished high school -- eligible, and keep him interested enough in the team and the college to get him to the game. It's all a lot of fun, with lots of comic antics and a song spicing up the pace every few minutes, and Haley and Kelly are a delight to watch together. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patsy Kelly, Jack Haley, (more)
- 1936
Actual footage of the 1936 Rose Bowl game is cleverly (if not seamlessly) integrated into the action of this sports-oriented comedy. Longtime chums Paddy O'Reilly (Tom Brown) and Dutch Schultz (Benny Baker) may be heroes of the high-school gridiron, but they're persona non grata with the girls, thanks to campus lothario Ossie Merrill (Larry "Buster" Crabbe). Managing to get on the college football team in time for the Rose Bowl competition, Paddy and Dutch finally win out over Ossie by scoring the winning touchdown. Of interest in the cast as one of the campus cuties is curvaceous Priscilla Lawson, who'd previously starred as Princess Aura opposite Buster Crabbe in the Universal serial Flash Gordon. Also on hand is William Frawley, as-what else? -- a college football coach. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eleanore Whitney, Tom Brown, (more)
- 1936
It's a Great Life served as a vehicle for once-popular radio singer Joe Morrison (who can also be seen in W.C. Fields' It's the Old Fashioned Way). Morrison plays a young unemployed fellow who joins the Civilian Conservation Corps. Enjoying the twin euphoria of steady work and fresh air, Morrison and his new pal, hobo Paul Kelly, burst into song at the slightest provocation. A rift comes between Morrison and Kelly when Morrison's girl Rosalind Keith falls in love with the tramp, but all differences are swept away during a climactic bursting-dam sequence. It's a Great Life was co-written by future "Dagwood Bumstead" Arthur Lake, who in 1943 would star in a Blondie entry titled...It's a Great Life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joe Morrison, Paul Kelly, (more)
One of the funniest, most sharply paced comedies of the 1930s, and perhaps the best of all of Harold Lloyd's talkies, The Milky Way was based on the Broadway play by Lynn Root and Harry Clork. Lloyd plays Burleigh Sullivan, a mild-mannered milkman who intercedes one night when his sister Mae (Helen Mack) is being accosted on the street by two obnoxious drunks -- they turn their wrath on him, his sister runs for help, and when she returns less than a minute later, both men are out cold on the pavement, with Burleigh standing over them. As one of them, Speed MacFarland (William Gargan), is the world's middleweight boxing champion, and the other, Spider Schultz (Lionel Stander), is his sparring partner, Burleigh makes the front page of every newspaper in New York. McFarland's manager, Gabby Sloan (Adolphe Menjou), has to figure out how to salvage the champ's career, but first he has to figure out exactly what happened, since both fighters were too drunk to remember anything about it. It turns out that Sullivan couldn't beat an egg, but he is good at one thing -- ducking. He can dodge any punch, and the two fighters knocked each other out in the process of trying to pummel him. What's more, on hearing this, they're so angry that Schultz accidentally knocks MacFarland out again, just ahead of the press' arrival, and the little milkman is given credit once more by the reporters for decking the champ. Burleigh loves the attention, even though he never claims to have hit anyone. Meanwhile, Sloan comes up with a way of salvaging his fighter's career, and convinces Burleigh to go along with it for a promised cash sum -- all Burleigh has to do is get in the ring in six fights, to build up his standing and reputation, and finish his "career" in a fight with MacFarland, who will win. In the meantime, complications arise when MacFarland falls in love with Burleigh's sister, while Burleigh himself meets and falls in love with Polly Pringle (Dorothy Wilson), a helpful neighbor. Gabby, Spider, and Speed also discover that turning tiny, wiry Burleigh Sullivan into something that even looks like a fighter is easier said than done -- all of his fights have to be fixed (and then some) behind his back to make his victories look remotely genuine. Finally, after starting to believe his own publicity, and then discovering that the fights were fixed, Burleigh goes through with the final match-up against MacFarland, the culmination of a comedy of errors involving horses, foals, and a wild chase to the arena. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harold Lloyd, Adolphe Menjou, (more)
- 1929
Completed as a silent film, Cecil B. DeMille's The Godless Girl was quickly converted into a part-talkie by the simple expedient of tacking on a 10-minute coda, wherein the characters discuss the weather. The film begins as a condemnation of the atheistic movement then prevalent on high-school and college campuses. Heroine Judith Craig (Lina Basquette) and hero Bob Hathaway (George Duryea, later known as western star Tom Keene) hold secret anti-religious meetings with their friends. During one such meeting, the police stage a raid, whereupon a stairway collapses and a young girl is killed. Arrested for complicity in the girl's death, Judith and Bob are sent to reform school, where they suffer mightily at the hands of their sadistic jailers. Likewise brutalized is hard-boiled Mame (Marie Prevost), who in one of the film's most notorious scenes is strung up by her wrists and beaten (DeMille claimed that he was only mirroring "real life," but he was always saying things like that). Somehow, their horrible experiences serve to renew Judith and Bob's faith in God. In a harrowing climax, Bob rescues Judith from a fire, a scene so realistically staged that, for the rest of her life, the actress retained vivid memories of how close she came to being genuinely incinerated. Featured in the cast are Noah Beery Sr. as "The Brute" and Eddie Quillan as "The Goat." The Godless Girl represented Cecil B. DeMille's final production for Pathe; shortly afterward, he moved to MGM, thence to Paramount. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lina Basquette, Marie Prevost, (more)
Tumbleweeds marked silent-screen cowboy legend William S. Hart's return to the screen after a long absence, and it was also his swan song, as Hart's brand of individualism and moody morality gave way to the more action-oriented films of Tom Mix and the epic westerns of The Covered Wagon and The Iron Horse. Tumbleweeds takes place in 1899 when the Cherokee Strip was opened up to homesteaders. When that happens, Don Carver (Hart), the range boss for the Box K Ranch, finds himself out of work. Carver falls in love with Molly Lassiter (Barbara Bedford), the daughter of one of the families of homesteaders who have gathered in Caldwell, Kansas, preparing for the big land rush. Carver joins up with the homesteaders in the hope that he can get a piece of land and claim the site of the Box K ranchhouse, which controls the water for the strip. But he is falsely arrested and has to break free to take part in the land rush. Although King Baggot is credited as the sole director, Hart co-directed the film. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William S. Hart, Barbara Bedford, (more)
When Paramount bought the rights to the delightful James M. Barrie story, every actress in Hollywood wanted the role of Peter Pan, made famous on the stage by Maude Adams. Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and even Gloria Swanson thought they were perfect for the role, but Barrie's own choice was Betty Bronson, a virtual unknown. The story is familiar to nearly everyone. When Mr. and Mrs. Darling (Cyril Chadwick and Esther Ralston) go to a party, they leave their children -- Wendy (Mary Brian), Michael (Philippe de Lacey), and John (Jack Murphy) -- in the care of their dog, Nana. But Peter (Bronson) shows up with the fairy, Tinker Bell (Virginia Brown Faire), and they take the children to Never Never Land. They have a series of adventures with the Lost Boys and defeat Captain Hook (Ernest Torrence) and his band of pirates. Finally, the children return home to Mrs. Darling, who is overjoyed to have them back. She adopts the Lost Boys and offers to take Peter in too, but he refuses to grow up and flies away after promising to visit Wendy every year. An interesting side note -- although she had no involvement in casting Brian as Wendy, Ralston had discovered her a couple of years earlier while judging a beauty contest. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Betty Bronson, Ernest Torrence, (more)
