Anne Nagel Movies

Some auteur critics feel that director Richard O. Fleischer did his best work while laboring in the "B" mills of RKO Radio. Fleischer's minimalist noir exercise Armored Car Robbery stars William Talman as the chief crook and Charles McGraw as the detective dogging his trail. A shade smarter than his gang underlings, Talman manages to elude capture, and even travels freely about in the company of his flashy lady friend Adele Jergens. But McGraw's persistence eventually pays off. Don McGuire, later a prolific TV producer/director, provides a welcome touch of comic relief as McGraw's rookie-cop assistant. A powerful (and slightly gruesome) climax caps this low-budget gem. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Both Van Johnson and Gregory Peck were considered for the role of baseball star Monty Stratton in the 1949 biopic The Stratton Story before settling upon the real Stratton's own first choice, James Stewart. The film covers several years in the 1930s, as Texas farm boy Stratton rises from the minors to the Chicago White Sox. Along the way, Monty marries an Omaha gal named Ethel (June Allyson), who gives him a son. In November 1938, Monty accidentally shoots himself in the leg while on a hunting excursion. When the leg has to be amputated, it looks as though Stratton's pitching career is over. He broods over his bad luck for months before snapping out of his self-pity and learning to walk with his new prosthesis. To prove to himself that he's overcome his handicap, Monty takes a job pitching with the Southern All-Stars. His return to baseball is rough sledding (the other team persistently bunts balls out of his reach), but Monty Stratton is finally able to make a successful comeback. Only occasionally playing fast and loose with the facts (the time-frame of Stratton's real-life return to baseball is telescoped by several years), The Stratton Story was one of the best and most profitable baseball pictures ever turned out by Hollywood. Fans of the game will get an extra kick from the presence in the cast of big-leaguers Bill Dickey and Jimmy Dykes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cary Grant met his future wife Betsy Drake on the set of the appropriately titled Every Girl Should be Married. Grant plays well-known baby specialist Madison Brown, who is Dr. Spock in everything but name. After a chance meeting with headstrong young Anabel Sins (Drake), poor Brown finds his every move and thought monitored by Anabel, who intends to become his wife come heck or high water. Upset that Brown steadfastly resists her charms, Anabel decides to make him jealous by playing up to her boss Roger Sanford (Franchot Tone). When Brown still won't bite, our plucky heroine mounts a campaign enlisting everybody in town to wear down the doctor's resistance. Nowadays, this is called "stalking"; in 1948, it was called "funny." Produced, directed and written by Don Hartman, Every Girl Should be Married was a box-office winner to the tune of $775,000. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this family farce, an older couple falls in love and decide to marry and embark upon a peaceful honeymoon without the bride's three bratty children. Unfortunately, the way things work out, the whole family ends up tagging along. The little darlings are less than pleased that their widowed mother has remarried and behave as monstrously as possible. Eventually their frustrated step-daddy has his fill and gives each of the brats a well-deserved licking. After a major quarrel, they each return home alone. Meanwhile a sly seductress who has her eye on the husband for a while, and who just happened to be staying at the same hotel, rushes back home and plans a little party designed to further humiliate the bride. Fortunately, a change of heart scuttle's the vixen's plans and happiness ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

When he was first offered the film version of the best-selling Frederick Wakeman novel The Hucksters, Clark Gable turned it down, characterizing the book as "filthy and not entertainment." He finally agreed to star in the film after screenwriter Luther Davis' extensive laundering job. Gable plays Vic Norman, a radio advertising executive just returned from World War II. His wartime experiences have soured him on the phony aspects of his profession; nonetheless, he takes a job with the biggest and phoniest agency in town, headed by the glad-handing Kimberly (Adolphe Menjou). At Kimberly's recommendation, Vic takes over the Beautee Soap account, which brings him in close quarter's with Beautee's boorish head man Evans (Sidney Greenstreet). At their first meeting, Evans unexpectedly spits on his highly polished conference table. "Gentlemen," he growls, summing up his philosophy on advertising, "You have just seen me do a disgusting thing. But you will always remember it!" (Evans was based on George Washington Hill, the colorfully crude president of the American Tobacco Company). Vic's first assignment for Evans is to round up 25 high society women to sign testimonials for Beautee Soap. The least cooperative of the bunch is young widow Mrs. Dorrance (Deborah Kerr, in her American film debut), the stepdaughter of an American war hero. Attracted to Vic, Mrs. Dorrance signs the agreement, but breaks off her personal relationship with Vic when it appears as though he's making unsolicited advances towards her. The ever-demanding Evans then insists that Vic sign up two-bit comedian Buddy Hare (Keenan Wynn) for a radio program. Becoming more and more corrupt with each passing day, Vic obtains Hare's service at a rock-bottom price by blackmailing the comedian's agent (Edward Arnold), Vic's onetime close friend. A demo record is made of Hare and of nightclub singer Jean Ogilvie (Ava Gardner), who is in love with Vic but who eventually gives him up because of his apparent lack of scruples. Returning to the Beautee Soap headquarters, Vic watches dumbstruck as Evans smashes the demo record--then laughs uproariously, telling Vic that the contract is his, along with a $25,000 bonus. By this time, Vic is so disgusted with himself and with Evans' childish baiting tactics that he tells off the soap mogul in no uncertain terms, ending his tirade by dousing Evans with a pitcher of water. Having regained his integrity, Vic is now worthy of the love of Mrs. Dorrance, who has forgiven him his earlier misdeeds. As the film ends, she encourages Vic to use his advertising talents for something clean and honest (and, undoubtedly, starve to death in the process!) To mollify Madison Avenue, screenwriter Davis narrowed the attack on advertisers to one single radio sponsor; to please Gable, Mrs. Dorrance was changed from a still-married woman to a widow, while Vic Rodman is transformed from a "huckster" to an idealist who Does the Right Thing at the end. The Hucksters is one of Clark Gable's best postwar films, as well as one of the finest Hollywood satires of the rarefied world of advertising. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this mystery, Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) helps out an actress justly terrified for her own life after her fellow actors slowly begin to die horrible deaths. The homicides transpire at a Malibu beach house; Chan gathers all of the clues into one location and hones in on the killer. This marked Toler's last film appearance; Roland Winters inherited the role from him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Lesley Selander directs the urban goings-on in Traffic in Crime with the same breeziness he brought to his Republic westerns. Kane Richmond stars as police undercover agent Sam Wire, who charms his way into the confidence of two rival gambling rings. Playing one group against the other, Wire manages to undermine both operations, but in the Eleventh Hour he is nearly caught in his own trap. In one of her final leading roles, Anne Nagel is charming as heroine Ann Marlowe, though she is handily upstaged by resident "bad girl" Adele Mara. As head villain Tip Hogan, Roy Barcroft once again proves himself one of the most indipensable stock players on the Republic lot. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The luridly titled Women in Bondage was Monogram's "answer" to RKO Radio's wartime melodrama Hitler's Children. The plot concerns the nationalization and subjugation of Germany's women during the Third Reich. Expected to devote their every waking moment to the cause of Nazism -- and this includes bearing strong Aryan children for Der Fatherland -- several women, notably Margot Bracken (Gail Patrick), begin to rebel. When she finally determines that Hitler has gone to far in his regimentation of the populace, Margot casts her lot with the Allies, becoming a martyr to the cause of freedom. Unusually well-acted for a Monogram film, Women in Bondage boasts an especially strong cast, including Nancy Kelly, Gertrude Michael, Anne Nagel, Tala Birell and H.B. Warner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Considering the fact that it was the only Universal horror film directed by cult favorite Joseph H. Lewis, it's a shame that Mad Doctor of Market Street isn't better than it is. Lionel Atwill dominates the proceedings as Dr. Benson, an addlepated medico obsessed with the notion of restoring the dead to life. After his experiment on the unfortunate William Saunders (Hardie Albright) goes awry, Benson escapes from the authorities by boarding a passenger ship. When the vessel sinks during a storm at sea, Benson and several survivors manage to pull ashore on a remote tropical island. Here the mad doctor wows the natives with his scientific knowhow, and before long he is appointed king of the tribe. In this capacity, he hopes to marry helpless heroine Patricia (Claire Dodd) and to use the rest of the shipwreck survivors as guinea pigs for his experiments. The main problem with Mad Doctor of Market Street is the inclusion of youthful Una Merkel as the heroine's aunt, a role obviously intended for an older, less prominent actress. Obliged to radically alter and "beef up" Merkel's part, the screenwriters were forced to shortchange the rest of the picture, and as a result Mad Doctor of Market Street is nowhere near as frightening or atmospheric as it should have been. Still, the film is worth the price of admission for its chilling closing sequence alone. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Stagecoach Buckaroo was Johnny Mack Brown's final Universal western of the 1941-42 season. A gang of holdup men has been plaguing the stagecoach line run by Denton (Henry Hall), the father of heroine Molly (Nell O'Day). Hoping to flush out the crooks, hero Steve (Johnny Mack Brown) rides shotgun on the next stage run, with his sidekick Clem (Fuzzy Knight) sitting inside the coach disguised as a female passenger! Clem's "drag" routine is played for as many laughs as it can get, then the film hunkers down to the business at hand-namely, gunfire and fisticuffs. Despite a short 58-minute running time, Stagecoach Buckaroo is able to accommodate four song numbers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

W.C. Fields heads to Esoteric studios to pitch a story idea to producer Franklin Pangborn. The producer wants to make a conventional romantic musical starring Fields' niece, teen-aged soprano Gloria Jean, but "The Great Man" has other ideas. As Pangborn sits in dumbfounded silence, Fields unravels an incoherent farrago which begins with him travelling to a Russian colony in Mexico--by way of an airliner with an open observation platform. Fields dives from the plane when his precious flask of gin falls overboard; he lands safely at the mountaintop mansion of the formidable Mrs. Hemoglobin (Margaret Dumont). Playing a kissing game with Hemoglobin's beauteous daughter (Susan Miller), who has never seen a man before, Fields decides to make a quick exit when Mama wants to get in on the game too. Reunited with Gloria Jean in the Russian colony, Fields learns that Mrs. Hemoglobin is worth millions, so he climbs back up the mountain, ignoring such obstacles as a displaced African gorilla. Disposing of his rival Leon Errol, Fields is about to wed Mrs. Hemoglobin, but is talked out of it at the last moment by Gloria Jean. At this point in the narrative, producer Pangborn can stand no more. He tells Fields to take his nonsensical screenplay and vacate the premises. After a brief episode at a soda fountain ("This scene was supposed to be in a saloon, but the censors made us cut it out"), Fields drives off to new adventures with his niece--but not before a zany slapstick car-chase finale, prompted by Fields' mistaken belief that he's rushing a corpulent middle-aged lady to the maternity hospital. W. C. Fields' original screenplay for Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (written under the fanciful pseudonym of Otis Criblecoblis) made a lot more sense than what ended up on screen, but Fields' extended absences from the studio, coupled with Universal's desire to reshape the film into a vehicle for their new star Gloria Jean, necessitated a complete restructuring of the plot. While hardly Fields' best or most representative film, Sucker is an excellent example of the sort of nonsensical "nut" humor in vogue in 1941 thanks to Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin'. And, occasionally, the film stands still long enough to allow W. C. Fields to mutter a priceless aside or toss off a perfectly timed double-take. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide