Dorothy Neumann Movies
American character actress Dorothy Neumann was long a stage performer before making her film bow in 1948's Sorry, Wrong Number. She spent the next two decades in small roles, usually playing clerks, domestics, ladies' club chairpersons and grandmothers. One of Ms. Neumann's best remembered assignments was her uncredited role in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), as the suspicious housekeeper of Einstein-like scientist Sam Jaffe, who is confronted in Jaffe's den by benevolent space alien Michael Rennie. Frequently on television, Dorothy Neumann was seen in the regular role of Miss Mittelman on the now-forgotten 1965 sitcom Hank. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1948
A semi-fantasy with sociological overtones, The Luck of the Irish stars Tyrone Power as an American journalist named Stephen Fitzgerald visiting the home of his ancestors in Ireland. Power encounters a jolly old man (Cecil Kellaway) who claims to be a leprechaun -- and proves it to the journalist's satisfaction. The leprechaun trails Stephen to New York, smooths the path of romance between Stephen and lovely Nora (Anne Baxter), and watches in dismay as Stephen becomes the tool of a quasi-fascistic publisher. The journalist comes to his senses thanks to the leprechaun's intervention and goes to work for a more liberal publication. He heads back to Ireland with new wife, Nora, and the beneficent leprechaun. The Luck of the Irish was based on a novel by Guy and Constance Jones, who probably would have been blacklisted when the political winds of Hollywood shifted a few years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter, (more)
- 1948
Barbara Stanwyck plays Polly Fulton, rebellious daughter of a wealthy industrialist (Charles Coburn). Polly marries a conservative economist professor (Richard Hart), but she chafes at his values and leaves him for socialist professor Van Heflin. Polly nearly ruins both her father's reputation and her own by embracing Heflin's radicalism. Based on a novel by J. P. Marquand, B.F.'s Daughter emerges as an unsubtle swipe at the policies of the late president Franklin Roosevelt; perhaps this was at the behest of MGM's arch-Republican head man Louis B. Mayer. In England, where the letters "B. F." comprise a euphemism for "bloody fool", the film was retitled Polly Fulton. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, (more)
When Lucille Fletcher took on the challenge of expanding her classic 30-minute radio suspenser Sorry, Wrong Number into an 89-minute feature film, she opted on the Citizen Kane approach, filling the plotline to the brim with revelatory flashbacks. Barbara Stanwyck stars as bedridden hypochondriac Leona Stevenson, who while trying to make a call from her bedroom telephone gets her wires crossed and inadvertently overhears two men plotting a murder. Anxiously, Leona wades through telephone-company bureaucracy to trace the call, never catching on -- until it's too late -- that the murder being planned is hers. A series of flashbacks details the disintegrating marriage between the wealthy Leona and her weakling husband Henry (Burt Lancaster), and Henry's subsequent disastrous get-rich-quick schemes involving chemist Waldo Evans (Harold Vermilyea) and a surly gangster (William Conrad). It would have been a near-sacrilege to alter the radio play's ironic ending, which fortunately remains intact on film. Sorry Wrong Number was first heard on radio's Suspense series in 1943, with Agnes Moorehead as the harried Mrs. Stevenson (a role she'd repeat several times on radio and on stage). Though disappointed that she wasn't chosen to star in the film version, Moorehead took some satisfaction in the fact that a recording of the original radio program was played constantly on the set to help keep Barbara Stanwyck "in the mood". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, (more)
- 1947
Former army pilot Robert Taylor is accused, on the basis of strong circumstantial evidence, of his wife's murder. Suffering from periodic blackouts, Taylor isn't so certain of his innocence himself. When offered a brain operation, Taylor refuses, knowing that if he is proven sane he will be executed for murder. Instead, he opts for confinement in a high-walled veteran's mental institution. A compassionate lady doctor (Audrey Totter) falls in love with Taylor, convincing him to have the operation. Even after emerging from the ether, Taylor cannot remember any of the details concerning his wife's death--but he does recall that the dead woman had recently taken a job with a publisher (Herbert Marshall) of religious books. While the killer's identity is tipped off by this revelation, the audience is never certain that Robert Taylor isn't a murderer--especially since he'd previously appeared as a homicidal maniac in the 1946 film Undercurrent. The best moment in High Wall is the casual disposal of the sole witness to the murder, via a long, dark elevator shaft. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Taylor, Audrey Totter, (more)
- 1944
MGM's Our Gang series had fallen into such disrepute by 1944 that the studio released the series' valedictory offering, Tale of a Dog, as an "MGM Miniature." This one begins as black youngsters Buckwheat (Billie Thomas) and Big Shot (Cordell Hickman) decide to give their dog Smallpox to the Our Gang kids as a present. Overhearing this, the gang misunderstands, thinking that "smallpox" is the dreaded contagious disease rather than a pooch. Within minutes, the kids manage to spread rumors about an impending smallpox epidemic, and before long the entire city -- and the Board of Health -- is in a state of panic. It is hard to determine which scene in this film is worse: the "Loose Lips Sink Ships" curtain speech delivered by the mayor or the appalling racial humor when Buckwheat's mom (Willa Pearl Curtis) misinterprets the doctor's instructions to "isolate" her son. Then there's the closing gag, in which Smallpox the dog speaks in an exaggerated Negro dialect. First shown on April 15, 1944, Tale of a Dog was the final Our Gang one-reeler to be filmed, but not the last to be released; that dubious honor went to the equally unfunny Dancing Romeo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bobby Blake, Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas, (more)
