Carroll Nye Movies

Gone With the Wind boils down to a story about a spoiled Southern girl's hopeless love for a married man. Producer David O. Selznick managed to expand this concept, and Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel, into nearly four hours' worth of screen time, on a then-astronomical 3.7-million-dollar budget, creating what would become one of the most beloved movies of all time. Gone With the Wind opens in April of 1861, at the palatial Southern estate of Tara, where Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) hears that her casual beau Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) plans to marry "mealy mouthed" Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). Despite warnings from her father (Thomas Mitchell) and her faithful servant Mammy (Hattie McDaniel), Scarlett intends to throw herself at Ashley at an upcoming barbecue at Twelve Oaks. Alone with Ashley, she goes into a fit of histrionics, all of which is witnessed by roguish Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), the black sheep of a wealthy Charleston family, who is instantly fascinated by the feisty, thoroughly self-centered Scarlett: "We're bad lots, both of us." The movie's famous action continues from the burning of Atlanta (actually the destruction of a huge wall left over from King Kong) through the now-classic closing line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Holding its own against stiff competition (many consider 1939 to be the greatest year of the classical Hollywood studios), Gone With the Wind won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), and Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to win an Oscar). The film grossed nearly 192 million dollars, assuring that, just as he predicted, Selznick's epitaph would be "The Man Who Made Gone With the Wind." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Those zany Ritz Brothers are at it again--good news or bad, depending on one's feelings toward the team. This time they're a trio of Manhattan entertainers who can't get anywhere because hillbilly acts are "in" with radio and theatrical producers. Also left out in the cold by the new fad is singer Marjorie Weaver. Weaver and the Ritzes decide to pass themselves off as hillbillies, and to do this head for the Kentucky hills in order to be discovered. They land smack-dab in the middle of one of those mountain feuds so beloved of comedy filmmakers. Radio star Tony Martin, who has been sent southward to find genuine hayseed talent, spots the Ritzes and Weaver and brings them back to New York. The truth comes out at last, but the Ritz boys redeem themselves with a rib tickling "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" radio sketch--easily the highlight of this wildly uneven film. When reminiscing about Kentucky Moonshine in 1978, director David Butler remembered that team member Al Ritz refused to perform a barefoot hillbilly dance unless he was outfitted with rubber feet! The producers should have recreated that true-life bit in the film and gotten rid of the tiresome opening routine in which the Ritzes play poker using hospital progress charts. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This tuneful campus comedy features aging star John Barrymore as a sly, blustery Southern governor with his eye on the Senate (aka Louisiana's Huey Long). He sees opportunity knocking when he learns how desperate his constituents have become to build their miserable state college football team into winners. He figures that if the team wins, so will he. To this end, he surreptitiously recruits a number of burly professional wrestlers to pose as football players. Unfortunately his chief opponent is running a similar racket with a rival university. When the governor's trickery is revealed on the eve of the big game, things look bleak until a quick-thinking coed shows up to save the day. The story is also titled Hold That Girl. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this comedy, a toothpaste magnate's mischievous daughter, tired of her father's traditional ways of conducting business, joins forces with her father's rival and a crazy inventor. Together they create "Cocktail Toothpaste." The new concoction tastes like whiskey in the morning, a martini at suppertime, and champagne at night. The stuff is a big success thanks to radio advertising. This teaches her stodgy old dad a good lesson. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In his first Western for Columbia, Tim McCoy played one of his favorite characters, the reformed professional gambler. Returning home to visit with brother Terry (Carroll Nye), Tim Allen (McCoy) finds Terry mortally wounded by a man he identifies as the supposedly honest gambler George Beck (Charles "Slim" Whitaker). At the Lone Star Saloon, owner Coldeye Carnell (Al Ferguson) offers him a dealer position, which he declines. He does, however, accept a job from George Beck, his brother's presumed killer, whose daughter, Helen (Doris Hill), he earlier rescued from a gang of potential muggers. As it turns out, Terry's killer is not Beck, but Coldeye who had assumed his rival's identity in order to ruin him. Beck forgives Tim for his suspicions and the reformed gambler in turn asks for Helen's hand in marriage. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Though he spent the bulk of the talkie era at mighty MGM, director Richard Thorpe put in three solid years' service on Poverty Row. In Thorpe's Neck and Neck, Glenn Tryon plays Bill Grant, a boastful young chap who claims to be an expert horseman. When he falls in love with wealthy Norma Rickson (Vera Reynolds), Grant is forced to prove his turf prowess by Norma's father Col. Rickson (Lafe McKee). Comic relief is supplied by Walter Brennan -- already playing toothless codgers at age 37 -- and stereotypical Black mirthmaker Stepin Fetchit. Much of Neck and Neck was filmed on location at the racetrack at Aguascalientes, Mexico. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The dashing Ken Maynard, who always warned that he sang loudly rather than well, finished his 1929-1930 stay at Universal with this average early sound western. Maynard sang several heart-felt prairie ballads in the film and even cut a record for Columbia. One of his songs, Down the Home Trail with You, became a minor hit, but the film itself, about a ranch foreman battling an outlaw gang was nothing to write home about despite a good performance by old-timer Francis Ford as the villain. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Nine years before stepping into the role of Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone essayed the character of S.S. Van Dyne's dilettante detective Philo Vance in The Bishop Murder Case. The murderer this time is a mysterious figure known only as "The Bishop." Plotting his killings in the systematic manner of a chess game, the Bishop tips off each of his crimes by sending the police cryptic messages in the form of nursery rhymes (his first victim, felled by an arrow, is referred to as "Cock Robin"). Heroine Belle Dillard (Leila Hyams) fears that the Bishop may be her own sweetheart, Sigurd Arnesson (Roland Young) -- indeed, that's what the police think as well -- but Philo Vance carefully puts the clues together to finger the actual culprit. With surprising foresightedness, several of the characters remark upon Vance's deductive skills by referring to him as "Sherlock." Well-directed, and with an imaginative use of "natural" sound in the exterior scenes, The Bishop Murder Case is ultimately laid low by its molasses-slow pacing, though things become moderately exciting when the heroine is kidnapped in the last reel. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Alexandre Brisson's weepy 1906 play had already been filmed three times when the 1929 talkie Madame X made its debut. Ruth Chatterton stars as a low-born wife of a socialite, whose aristocratic in-laws kick her out when she gives birth to a baby boy of dubious parentage. The boy, who has been led to believe his mother is dead, grows up to become a renowned attorney (Raymond Hackett). Mama Chatterton takes to the streets, but proudly monitors her son's progress from afar. When Chatterton is accused of murder, her defense attorney is none other than her son. She refuses to tell him the truth about their relationship, even though that information may make the difference between execution and exoneration. Madame X would be remade three more times over the next five decades; to avoid confusion with these later versions, the 1929 Madame X has been retitled Absinthe for its TV showings. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

"Light Fingers" is both the name and the physical description of this film's hero, a dapper petty thief played by Ian Keith. Falling in love with virtuous Dorothy Madison (Dorothy Revier), Light Fingers promises to give up his life of crime if only she will marry him. He tries hard to keep his word, but circumstances force him to return to larceny -- all for a good cause, of course. A very minor endeavor, Light Fingers is redeemed by the smooth performance of Ian Keith, an actor usually typecast as seedy con artists and disgraced gentlemen. And here's a bit of esoterica for film trivia buffs: The film's director was Joseph Henaberry, who played Abraham Lincoln in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) -- while Keith, the star, went on to play John Wilkes Booth in Griffith's 1930 talkie Abraham Lincoln! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi