Wilson Benge Movies

Legendary stage actress Pauline Lord made but a few films, but was always worth watching whenever she took command of the screen. In Feather in Her Hat, Lord plays cockney storekeeper Clarissa Phipps, who worries that her son Richard will grow up being ashamed of her humble vocation. Thus, she loftily pretends that she's not Richard's mother, and that the boy is actually the offspring of a prominent theatrical family. Upon reaching adulthood, Richard (Louis Hayward) becomes a prominent playwright, confident that the stage is in his blood, while Clarissa secretly sells her store at a loss to finance Richard's first production. Only on her deathbed does Clarissa reveal the truth -- and happily, Richard isn't ashamed of her in the least, and indeed is prouder of her than ever. Basil Rathbone contributes a fascinating characterization as a gin-swilling, unshaven remittance man. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Piccadilly Charlie (Gladden James) and his female associate (Evelyn Brent) are on the run from the police after a jewel heist, and the girl hides out in a car belonging to John Reagan (William C. Mong). Reagan -- who had a wayward past as a young man -- takes her in and influences her to reform. Under the name Mary Flynn, she starts a new life and becomes engaged to Reagan's son, Tim (Malcolm McGregor), a district attorney who is not aware of her background. Jason Forbes (Lou Payne) steals some jewels and threatens to expose Reagan's dark past if he will not help him. Mary recovers the jewels and hides them. Piccadilly Charlie kills Forbes in his own attempt to get the jewels, and Reagan is accused of the crime. He admits his past, and Mary's, to his son and together they figure out how to catch the real killer. Charlie is rounded up, and Mary and Tim wed. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Bank Alarm was one of four low-budget but high-entertainment crime melodramas starring Conrad Nagel and Eleanor Hunt as Federal agents Alan O'Connor and Bobbie Reynolds. On this occasion, the two G-people are on the trail of a gang of desperate bank robbers. Making their job slightly easier is the fact that the crooks are leaving behind a trail of counterfeit money. Unfortunately, they're also leaving a trail of corpses, meaning that Alan and Bobbie had better get a move on before someone else gets bumped off. Bank Alarm was the last of the Nagel-Hunt crime series, all of which were produced by the financially canny George A. Hirliman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tired of his sedentary postwar existence, Col. Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond (Ronald Colman) offers his services as adventurer for hire. This gets him mixed up with lovely Joan Bennett, whose wealthy father is being held against his will in a gloomy sanitarium. Armed with little more than bravado, Drummond, his pal Algy (Claud Allister) and faithful butler Danny (Wilson Benge) walk right into the villain's lair--said villain being the evil Dr. Lakington. Drummond is overpowered by Lakington's henchpersons, played by Lilyan Tashman and Montague Love. Our Hero is willing to accept the inevitability of his own death, but when the unspeakable Lakington fondles the unconscious Ms. Bennett, that's too much! Drummond escapes, and in a jaw-dropping sequence kills Lakington in cold blood. He then becomes his old charming self and allows secondary villains Love and Tashman to escape, since he's not really mad at them. Drummond saves the millionaire and wins the girl, though later "Bulldog Drummond" films bear out the fact that he doesn't marry her immediately as he should (virtually every subsequent "Drummond" flick would open with an interrupted wedding). Filmed in the earliest days of the talkie era, Bulldog Drummond is a remarkably sophisticated film for its time, directed with assurance by former Mack Sennett associate F. Richard Jones (who unfortunately died shortly after the film's release). Its only concessions to the "all talking/all singing" mania of 1929 are the unnecessary Irish songs performed by tenor Donald Novis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When a patient dies of heart failure, society doctor Michael Travers (Lew Cody), takes an interest in her 14-year-old daughter Judy (Sally O'Neil), whom he makes his ward. Against the wishes of his fiancée, socialite Diane Manners (Aileen Pringle), Michael leaves for an extended business trip to Europe. Upon his return three years later, the good doctor falls desperately in love with his now fetching teenage ward, and is angered by the news that she is engaged to young Dick Manners (Edward Morgan, Diane's brother. When Judy agrees to delay her upcoming wedding, a furious Dick crashes his car. Badly hurt in the accident, Judy is saved on the operation table by Michael, who begs her forgiveness. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Chesterfield's City Park is dominated by the strong performances of venerable character actors Henry B. Walthall, Wilson Benge and Lafe McKee. When impoverished Rose Wentworth (Sally Blane) poses as a streetwalker in order to get arrested and secure herself food and shelter, she is paroled in the custody of eccentric-but-lovable Colonel Ransome (Walthall). The Colonel brings Rose into his own home as part of her reformation process, which displeases his wife (Judith Voselli) and son Raymond (Matty Kemp). The Ransome family responds to this "outrage" by cutting off the Colonel's funds and throwing him out of the house. Undaunted, the Colonel and his two park-bench chums (Benge and McKee) move into a boarding house, bringing Rose along as housekeeper. Having at long last proven her worthiness and virtue (which the Colonel never doubted for a minute), Rose finds happiness in the arms of handsome Charlie Hooper (Johnny Harron). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dancing Feet stars Joan Marsh as Judy, a society deb who lands a job as a dime-a-dance girl to spite her wealthy grandfather (Purnell Pratt). While her fiancé Peyton (Ben Lyon) stews, Judy strikes up a friendship with Jimmy (Eddie Nugent), a bellhop who aspires to become a vaudeville dancer. Judy and Jimmy enjoy success as a dance team, falling in love as an afterthought. As for Peyton, he finds consolation with Judy's brassy friend Mabel (Isabel Jewell). The musical highlights in Dancing Feet include a specialty number by Nick Condos of the Condos Brothers (and future husband of comedienne Martha Raye). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Financier J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) -- known in the press as "the Bull of Broad Street" -- may be one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the country, but he also knows the value of a dollar. And when his wife (Mary Nash) spends 50,000 of them on a sable coat, he is driven into such a fury in the ensuing argument on the roof of their Fifth Avenue townhouse, that he throws the coat into the street -- where it promptly lands on the head of Mary Smith (Jean Arthur), a clerk-typist on her way to work, riding on the upper deck of a double-decker bus, ruining her hat in the process. She jumps off the bus to try to return the coat, but Ball insists that she keep it. What she really needs, however, is not a 50,000-dollar sable coat so much as a ride to work -- as she doesn't even have a dime for bus fare -- and perhaps a new hat. Ball obliges, taking her to one of the top clothing stores in New York, buying her an expensive fur hat to go with the coat, and then dropping her at work in his limo. Her superiors, seeing her decked out in a sable coat and a new hat, and getting out of the chauffeured car, conclude that Mary is a kept woman, and, therefore, unfit to work for the boys magazine where she is employed, and they fire her. Now out of work and virtually broke, she seems to have become a victim of random fate, but suddenly the scales start to tip the other way from the very same misunderstanding that got her fired. Having been seen in the company of J.B. Ball -- whose name she didn't even get -- she is rumored to be his mistress; the prissy clothing store proprietor (Franklin Pangborn) spreads this story, and that turns Mary into the object of attention for Mr. Louis Louis (Luis Alberni), the owner of a failed luxury hotel on which Ball's bank holds the mortgage, and is about to foreclose. For reasons that she can't begin to understand, since there is nothing going on between her and J.B. Ball (whose name she doesn't even know), or between her and anyone, Louis moves her into the most luxurious suite in his hotel for a dollar a day, asking her only to inform "that certain someone" of how she loves living there. Mary has no idea of who "that certain someone" is, or what Louis is talking about, but she needs a place to live, and Louis is insistent. She still needs to eat, and, while trying to get a meal at the automat, she crosses paths with a handsome, well-meaning, but inept waiter (Ray Milland), who gets fired for helping her. She takes him into her suite so he has a place to stay, and the two fall in love in the course of finding out about each other. She knows that he is John Ball Jr., but doesn't realize that he is the son of J.B. Ball, trying to make it on his own, nor does she yet realize who J.B. Ball is, in terms of being the man who gave her the coat and the new hat, or one of the wealthiest men in the country. But after the elder Ball spends an innocent night at the Hotel Louis, a gossip columnist named "Wallace Whistling" (William Demarest) prints that he is keeping a woman at the hotel, and suddenly the Hotel Louis, perceived as a fashionable playground for the upper-crust, is filled with guests. This multiple case of mistaken identity plunges through two or three new layers, eventually bringing about an impending stock market crash to rival 1929, before Mary discovers who her would-be benefactor and her would-be fiancé are. She bails them out of the jam that they're in, also restoring the Ball's marriage, her own reputation, and her romance with Ball's son in the process. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Former Miss America Irene Ware stars in the standard Chestefield Pictures social drama False Pretenses. Ware is cast as lunch-counter waitress Mary Beekman, who intends to crash society and land a wealthy husband. She is helped along by affable millionaire Kenneth Alden (Sidney Blackmer), who loves Mary but won't admit it. Our heroine winds up with retired bootlegger Pat Brennan (Russell Hopton), who mistakenly believes that Mary is a bonafide member of the "The 400." What starts out dramatically ends comically, with everyone -- even the unsympathetic characters -- getting what he or she really wants out of life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lewis Stone, best known to modern viewers as kindly Judge Hardy from the "Andy Hardy" series, was on occasion not so kindly in films. In Freedom of the Press, Stone plays a thoroughly corrupt politician named Daniel Steele. Embarking upon a mayoral campaign, Steele sets about to destroy his enemies, starting with newspaper publisher John Ballard (H.B. Warner). He goes so far as to order Ballard's assassination. The publisher's son Bill (Malcolm McGregor), previously an aimless wastrel, takes over the newspaper and mounts an expose of Steele's dirty political machine. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ingrid Bergman won her first of three Oscars for this suspense thriller, crafted with surprising tautness by normally genteel "women's picture" director George Cukor. Bergman stars as Paula Alquist, a late 19th century English singer studying music in Italy. However, Paula abandons her studies because she's fallen in love with dapper, handsome Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer). The couple marries and returns to the U.K. and a home inherited by Paula from her aunt, herself a famous singer, who was mysteriously murdered in the house ten years before. Once they have moved in, Gregory, who is in reality a jewel thief and the murderer of Paula's aunt, launches a campaign of terror designed to drive his new bride insane. Though Paula is certain that she sees the house's gaslights dim every evening and that there are strange noises coming from the attic, Gregory convinces Paula that she's imagining things. Gregory's efforts to make Paula unstable are aided by an impertinent maid, Nancy (teenager Angela Lansbury in her feature film debut). Meanwhile, a Scotland Yard inspector, Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotten), becomes suspicious of Gregory and sympathetic to Paula's plight. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Angry natives or a beautiful widow -- which poses the greater threat? Keith Brandon (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is an archeologist leading a team of researchers -- Richardson (Vincent Price), Loren (Alan Hale), Forrester (George Sanders), and Scott (John Howard) -- who are exploring the jungles of South America in search of Inca artifacts. The scientists discover they are not welcome when Richardson is felled by a poisoned dart, and a difficult situation is made all the more complicated when Stephanie (Joan Bennett), Richardson's wife, appears unannounced to pay her husband a visit. Stephanie must join Brandon's party as they make their way through the wilderness, with angry and armed natives surrounding them on all sides, and in the midst of the tension and danger, both Brandon and Forrester discover they're attracted to to Stephanie, leading to a dangerous rivalry among the crew. Green Hell would turn out to be the last feature film completed by the noted and idiosyncratic horror director James Whale; while he was credited with another film, They Dare Not Love, Whale in fact backed out of the project before shooting was finished. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Unable to rely upon Oscar Wilde's epigrammatic dialogue to carry the day (this was, after all, the silent-film era), director Ernst Lubitsch substitutes verbal wit for the visual variety in his 1925 filmization of Lady Windermere's Fan. Ronald Colman has one of his first important screen roles as the slightly caddish Lord Darlington, who is in love with the very pretty--and very married--Lady Windermere (May McAvoy). The lady is rescued from disgrace at the hands of Darlington by the notorious Mrs. Erlynne (Irene Rich), who unbeknownst to everyone is Lady Windemere's long-lost mother. Filmed at the still young-and-hungry Warner Bros. studio, Lady Windermere's Fan was an enormous hit, and an instant candidate for the many "Ten Best" lists tabulated by the fan magazines of the era. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide