Robert E. O'Connor Movies

In this romantic drama, set at the turn of the century, a womanizing Irish motorman ignores his marital vows, but only to a point. Though he has many affairs, he will not leave his wife. As the years pass, he holds many jobs, and many different women before he retires in Atlantic City where he becomes a moralistic fortune teller for women. He actually helps some of his clients and dies knowing he was not a total lout. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Mystery of the Wax Museum begins in London in the 1920s. Lionel Atwill plays Ivan Igor, a brilliant sculptor who manages a wax museum. Regarding his historical creations as his friends, Igor refuses the entreaties of his business partner, Joe Worth (Edwin Maxwell), to turn his labor-of-love museum into a more profitable "house of horror." Worth responds by setting fire to the museum, hoping to collect the insurance; as Igor looks on in horror, his effigies of Marie Antoinette, Queen Victoria, et al. grotesquely melt to the floor. Flash-forward to 1933: New York City is plagued by several disappearances -- not only of live people, but of recently deceased corpses from the morgue. Hard-boiled girl reporter Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell) browbeats her long-suffering editor Jim(Frank McHugh) into investigating these disappearances. Florence rooms with Charlotte Duncan (Fay Wray), the girlfriend of Ralph Burton (Allen Vincent), who works as a technician at a new midtown wax museum. This about-to-open attraction is run by Igor, who had survived the London fire but is now confined to a wheelchair. Igor's old enemy Worth is also in New York, his fingers in several crooked pies. It appears to Florence (and the audience) that somehow Worth is involved in the recent rash of disappearances; the guilty party could also be playboy George Winton (Gavin Gordon), Florence's boyfriend, who is deeply in debt to Worth. But once Igor decides that Charlotte is the living image of Marie Antoinette, the audience becomes uncomfortably suspicious that all those incredibly life-like statues in his museum are actually the paraffin-coated bodies of the missing people. Igor tips his hand when a terrified Charlotte, promised "eternal life" by being "transformed" into an Antoinette effigy, begins punching and clawing at his face -- revealing his countenance to be a mask, covering his hideously burned and gnarled features. Thus, the stage is set for the climactic race to prevent the strapped-down Charlotte from being permanently encased in wax. Long thought lost, The Mystery of the Wax Museum was rediscovered in Jack Warner's personal film collection in 1970. Its two-color Technicolor had faded to the point of monochrome, but fortunately its original hues were preserved by dedicated AFI technicians. The film was remade (and considerably simplified) as the 1953 3-D extravaganza House of Wax, with Vincent Price in the Atwill role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

May Robson plays Apple Annie, a slatternly Broadway apple peddler. Annie has a curious setup whereby she is able to finagle other street merchants and beggars to pony up part of their weekly earnings to her--yet she never seems to spend any of the money on herself. This is because Annie has a daughter named Louise (Jean Parker), who has been supported in luxury all her life by her mother. Louise has no idea who Annie really is; so far as she knows, her mother is Mrs. E. Worthington Manville, a Manhattan society matron. When Louise sends Annie a letter telling her that she's become engaged to a young Spanish nobleman named Carlos (Barry Norton), Annie is aghast: once Louise brings her fiance to New York, the jig will be up. Coming to the rescue is high-rolling gambler Dave the Dude (Warren William), who considers Annie his good-luck charm. With the help of his nightclub-thrush girlfriend Missouri Martin (Glenda Farrell), Dave arranges a huge society reception for Louise -- and a complete fashion makeover for Annie. To do this, a few strong-arm methods are required, notably the kidnaping of several society reporters; also, it's necessary to pass off down-and-out Judge Blake (Guy Kibbee) as Annie's well-connected husband. Lady for a Day is the film with which Frank Capra hoped to enter the Big Leagues by taking home a shelf-full of Academy Awards. His subsequent embarrassment at the 1934 Oscar ceremonies has now passed into Hollywood legend, but he made up for this debacle with his Oscars sweep for It Happened One Night. Lady for a Day was remade by Capra as 1961's Pocketful of Miracles, with Bette Davis as Apple Annie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jenny (Ruth Chatterton) becomes pregnant by a young man who is killed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Bearing her child in secret, Jenny gives up custody to a wealthy couple. The years pass, and through the auspices of a crooked politician (Louis Calhern), Jenny becomes the number one "madame" of San Francisco, with interests in several other illicit activities. Crusading district attorney Dan Reynolds Donald Cook decides to rid the city of Jenny's operations -- little suspecting that the notorious woman is actually his own mother. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A man's addiction to betting on the horses severely disrupts his love life in this comedy. He, a plumber, and his fiancee, a manicurist, are getting ready for their nuptials when she learns that he is planning a honeymoon at the racetrack. She immediately calls off the wedding. The man is a gambling addict. He finds it doubly hard to quit since he started on a winning streak following his break-up with the girl. His father advises him to stop before it's too late, but his son doesn't listen until he loses everything. The humbled young man awakens and returns to his true-love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In director Leo McCarey's film The Kid From Spain, actor Eddie Cantor plays mischievious college boy Eddie Williams, who, with his buddy Ricardo (Robert Young), is kicked out of college for sneaking into the women's dormitory. Ricardo (Young), on his way back to Mexico, suggests Eddie (Cantor) come along. First, however, Ricardo must stop at the local bank for some cash. Unfortunately, the bank is robbed as the two boys are leaving, and the fleeing thieves mistake Eddie for their getaway driver. In a panic, Eddie races off towards the Mexican border in hopes of getting way from them. Realizing that the bank robbers will go after him--Eddie, after all, is the only one who saw their faces--he convinces a skeptical border guard that he, too, is a Mexican. Once in Mexico, he's mistaken for a renowed bullfighter, and plays along with his newly assigned identity in order to avoid the American detective on his trail. Mayhem ensues, and Eddie eventually falls in love with Rosalie (yda Roberti), a young Mexican woman with an over-protective father. The musical numbers in The Kid From Spain were staged by a young Busby Berkeley and feature the oldwyn Girls, whose ranks in this film include Betty Grable, Paulette Goddard, and Jane Wyman. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Alfred E. Green directs the political satire The Dark Horse, starring Bette Davis early in her career. The progressive party nominates moronic candidate Zachary Hicks (Guy Kibbee) for governor. Party secretary Kay Russell (Davis) wants to hire her sweetheart, Hal Blake (Warren William), for campaign manager, even though he is in jail for not paying his alimony. Impressed with his slick behavior, the campaign committee bails him out of jail and he goes to work. He teaches Hicks to give cryptic answers to journalists and makes him memorize a speech by Abraham Lincoln. During the big debate, conservative opponent William A. Underwood (Berton Churchill) quotes Lincoln and Hicks calls him a plagiarist. Eventually, Blake's ex-wife, Maybelle (Vivienne Osborne) shows up demanding her alimony payments. The climactic scene involves a set-up at a rural mountain cabin and confusing marital arrangements. Also starring Frank McHugh as aide Joe and Sam Hardy as the conservative manager Mr. Black. Hollywood mogul Darryl F. Zanuck received co-writing credits for the screenplay under the pseudonymn Melville Crossman. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

A huge box office success and a key film in James Cagney's rise to stardom, this drama stars Cagney as Matt Nolan, a gritty New York City cab driver who is being squeezed by a monopolistic taxi trust which uses force to run him and other independent cabbies away from the most profitable locations. Nolan joins forces with Pop Riley (George Kibbee), whose cab is smashed by a truck when he refuses to cooperate with the syndicate. Kibbee is sent to prison for shooting at the truck driver. Nolan is dating his daughter, Sue (Loretta Young), and they enter a Peabody dance contest at a local nightclub. Cagney dances on screen for the first time, and so does George Raft as Willie Kenny, another dancing tough guy who was a friend of Cagney's, who pushed Warner Bros. to give Cagney the role. Nolan marries Sue Riley, and she tries to get him to cool down. But the taxi trust goons kill his brother Danny (Ray Cooke), and Nolan goes on a rampage. In several filmed gun battles, live machine-gun bullets are used, as they were in Cagney's famed The Public Enemy. This is the last time Cagney allowed that. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Night World is an astonishingly compact 57-minute extravaganza, all of which takes place at the upscale (but somewhat less-than-swank) nightclub owned by good-natured racketeer Happy MacDonald (Boris Karloff) (complete with a winning, grinning smile). In a story arc of no more than a couple of hours, MacDonald is betrayed by his faithless wife (Doris Revier), who has been cavorting with the club's stage producer (Russell Hopton), and who sets her husband up to be killed by a rival; the gentle, articulate African-American doorman (Clarence Muse) learns the fate of his beloved wife, whose stay in the hospital has been a source of worry for him all night; despondent socialite Michael Rand (Lew Ayres), the son of an acquitted murderess, meets chorus girl Ruth Taylor (Mae Clarke), who turns out to have a heart-of-gold; and gets to confront his mother (Hedda Hopper), a viciously self-centered and venal woman. But Michael and Ruth soon find themselves caught in the midst of the mob's attempt on Happy's life, and facing a pair of assassins who would just as soon kill them as look at them. All of these story threads are interspersed between a good deal of backstage banter -- including a tense pair of vignette with tough-guy Ed Powell (George Raft, about as scary as he ever looked on screen) -- and a Busby Berkeley-choreographed dance number that, despite the low-budget and obviously fast shooting schedule of this picture, manages to work in the latter's celebrated overhead camera angles and other requisite visual touches. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a lady-bootlegger does her 90 days in jail, gets released and becomes the secretary for a prominent millionaire. The magnate falls madly in love with his new secretary and they marry. Unfortunately, she has not revealed her shady past to him, and when friends from her smuggling days suddenly show up as employees, mayhem ensues. The marriage almost ends when she gets illicitly tipsy one night. Fortunately, it all works out in the end and they live happily henceforth. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a married couple who own a speakeasy aspire to go legitimate and open a gas station; unfortunately, they are perennially broke because the husband is addicted to gambling on the horses. Their situation makes them easy marks for a racketeer who uses the couple as a front. Fortunately, the couple overcome their weaknesses, save the needed money, and achieve their humble dream. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Made to exploit the panic caused by Black Tuesday, this thriller centers on the attempts of a broker to prove that a prominent banker is not responsible for the sudden closure of his financial institution. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Silent star Betty Compson takes on a Swedish accent in this romantic melodrama based on a story by Martin Flavin. She is immigrant Helga Larson, arriving in New York to marry John Hanson (Conrad Nagel), a bank teller rooming with her aunt (Bodil Rosing). But while good dependable John slaves away studying to become a lawyer, Helga dallies with his carefree colleague Phil (Robert Ames). When John, who has been speculating in the market, learns that he will lose all his savings if unable to come up with $10,000 that very night, he surrenders to temptation and steals the funds from Phil's cash drawer. Our hero is soon wrecked with guilt -- that is, until Helga announces that she has accepted Phil's proposal. Phil is imprisoned, John marries Helga and becomes successful and five years go by. But the past has a way of catching up with even with the best of folks. Three Who Loved proved one of the final films of Robert Ames, who tragically committed suicide later that same year. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide