Charlie Murray Movies

Boy soprano Bobby Breen dons a pair of skates in the oddball musical Breaking the Ice. Escaping his super-strict Mennonite relatives, our hero gets a job singing at a Philadelphia ice-skating rink. Here he tries to earn enough money to help his beloved widowed mother (Dolores Costello) wrest herself free of those selfsame relatives. The plot requires canary-voiced Breen to share the spotlight with six-year-old skating sensation Irene Dare. Within a year, Breaking the Ice producer Sol Lesser attempted to launch another series of family musicals built around the talents of little Ms. Dare, but the first entry in this project--Everything's on Ice--was also the last. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A jockey is thrown off the track after it is discovered that gangsters drugged his horse. This drama follows his attempts to redeem himself. First he and his buddy get jobs working on a horse-breeding farm. There he finds himself attracted to the farmer's pretty daughter. The farmer is unhappy with this, but is even more unhappy when he learns that the rider has secretly been training a promising young horse and has entered him in the Big Race without permission. Just before the start of the race, the gangsters try to drug the horse again, but this time the jockey is ready for them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This comedy is last entry in the five-movie series "The Cohens and Kellys." In this episode, Sidney and Murray are competing tugboat captains. They fight over the ownership of the waterways. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This was the next-to-last entry of the Cohens and Kellys series, which were becoming increasingly more tiresome with each picture. Once again, Charlie Murray and George Sidney reprise their roles as Kelly and Cohen, respectively, but instead of Kate Price and Vera Gordon as their wives, they have Esther Howard and Emma Dunn. The story centers around the Cohen and Kelly kids, Melville Cohen (Norman Foster) and Kitty Kelly (June Clyde). Melville enters Kitty's picture in a movie contest and she wins a Hollywood contract. The Kellys dump their diner and move from the little town of Hillsboro to the glamour of Tinsletown. Kitty's subsequent success goes to the Kelly's heads (in fact, Clyde puts on airs not unlike the Marion Davies character in Show People). When the earthy (and proud of it) Cohens come to visit, it creates an embarrassing situation for everyone all around. Then talkies come in, Kitty's acting career fails, and Melville's songwriting takes off. Eventually Melville's career also goes belly-up and both the Cohens and Kellys head back for the safer confines of Hillsboro, friends once again. The one really bright note in this film is its cameos -- most of them take place in a scene at the Cocoanut Grove, back then Hollywood's place to be seen. That's where you can see Boris Karloff, Tom Mix, Lew Ayres, and Gloria Stuart, among others. One additional surprise is former silent star Eileen Percy, who plays a writer interviewing Kitty Kelly -- in real life, Percy was in the midst of giving up her acting career in favor of writing a newspaper society column. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

The Cohens and Kellys in Africa is the fourth in the seemingly endless movie series based on characters created in the 1925 stage play Two Blocks Away. Back again are George Sidney and Charlie Murray as Cohen and Kelly, those two eternally bickering business partners and reluctant in-laws. This time, the Hebraic-Hibernian duo are in the piano-manufacturing business. When a shortage in ivory threatens to close down their operation, our heroes pack up their families and head to Africa in hopes of locating the legendary Elephant's Graveyard. To the surprise of no one, Cohen and Kelly find themselves mixed up with a sheik's harem and a cannibal tribe, with time left over for a miniature-golf game (reprising gags previously seen in The Cohens and Kellys in Scotland). The level of humor can be gauged by the scene in which a swarthy tribal chieftain (Eddie Kane) turns out to be a lower-east-side Jewish merchant in disguise. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Clancy (Charles Murray) is a pugnacious Irish-American plumber in partnership with parsimonious Scotsman Andy MacIntosh (Lucien Littlefield). Though tight with a dollar himself, Clancy accidentally begins playing the stock market, and before he knows what's happening he's become a millionaire. His efforts to entertain the cream of high society are both disastrous and hilarious, and by the time he's lost all his money in the Wall Street crash, Clancy is more than happy to team up with MacIntosh again. The obligatory romantic subplot is handled as unobtrusively as possible by Miriam Seeger and Edward Nugent. Clancy in Wall Street represented little more than an extension of Charlie Murray's standard Hibernian characterizations in the "Cohens and Kellys" series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A businessman and his partner rush off to Paris in hopes of stopping their children from getting married. Unfortunately, the two are married before their father's arrive. This romantic comedy follows what happens when the businessmen find themselves having to act as marriage counselors to the unhappy couple. The marital upheaval stems from the bride's jealousy over her artist husband's newest model. She feels that he is paying far too much attention to the lovely lass. The model's husband finds out and flies into a jealous rage in a cafe. He nearly destroys the place and the businessmen and their children are in trouble deep until their own wives show up to rescue them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this silent police drama, a New York cop struggles to clear his name after he is convicted of tippling on the job. After the judgement, the poor fellow is demoted and humiliated in front of his peers. He feels so badly that he refuses to attend his daughter's wedding. She is marrying another officer and he doesn't want to embarrass them with his disgrace. Fortunately, before that happens, he is able to prove his innocence, bring the real culprits to justice, get promoted and give his daughter away at the ceremony. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Masked Woman was one of the last screenwriting efforts by June Mathis, who died in 1927. Filmed on location in France, the story concerns a Turkish nobleman, played by Holbrook Blinn, who wants to add Anna Q. Nilsson to his harem. But Nilsson is already married and refuses all of Blinn's seductive entreaties. When Blinn dies, he leaves his vast fortune to Nilsson, but she will not accept it, certain that he is merely trying to besmirch her reputation from the grave. But after her husband has been convinced that his wife remained faithful to him, Nilsson accepts her inheritance, intending to establish a fund for war orphans. The film was directed by June Mathis' then-husband, Italian moviemaker Silvano Balboni. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

George Sidney and Charles Murray, the combative co-stars of the Cohens and Kellys series, do their usual in the First National comedy The Life of Riley. Riley (Murray) is the local fire chief and general-store proprietor; Meyer (Sidney) is the police chief and rival store-owner. Both Riley and Meyer vie for the attentions of the Widow Jones (Myrtle Steadman), who is partial to both men. The plot centers upon a revolutionary fire extinguisher invented by Riley, an essential factor in the outcome of the romantic rivalry. Life of Riley was partially remade (and considerably abbreviated) as the 1936 Andy Clyde 2-reeler Love Comes to Mooneyville. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Poor Nut was based on a stage comedy by the father-and-son team of J. C. and Elliot Nugent. Jack Mulhall assumes the role played by Elliot Nugent on Broadway, that of wimpish college student John Miller. Suffering from an inferiority complex, Miller worships beauty-contest winner Julia (Jane Winton) from afar, writing letters boasting of his imaginary athletic prowess but never having the nerve to mail them to her. When one of his letters is sent to Julia by mistake, she shows up on campus to meet her "hero" John Miller -- who is now obliged to prove that he is, indeed, the super-athlete he claims to be by participating in a track meet. Through a series of flukes and coincidences, Miller ends up the hero of the hour, but in the fadeout it is local soda-shop clerk Margie (Jean Arthur), and not the vampish Julia, who is the beneficiary of our hero's hugs and kisses. The Poor Nut was remade in 1931 as the Joe E. Brown vehicle Local Boy Makes Good. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Even minus the original musical score, this silent-film adaptation of the Broadway hit Irene is a delight. Colleen Moore stars as Irene O'Dare, an Irish colleen who comes to New York in search of a job. She lands a position at the fancy fashion salon owned by one Mme. Lucy, a male couturier campily portrayed by George K. Arthur. Becoming the establishment's top fashion model, Irene is a huge success, though it takes her a bit longer to find romantic happiness in the arms of wealthy Donald Marshall (Lloyd Hughes), thanks to the strenuous efforts by Donald's snooty mother (Ida Darling) to break up the relationship. The highlight of the film is a Technicolor fashion sequence, which remains a visual feast even though the colors have faded in most available prints. Irene was remade in 1940 with Anna Neagle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide