Wilson Benge Movies

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

In the tradition of the classic scare piece Banquo's Chair, The Ghost Walks features one phony spectre and one supposedly real wraith. An actor is hired for a high-society gathering to pose as a ghost. It's all part of a plan by a struggling playwright to stir up interest in his latest production. But just as the "faux" phantom is putting on his sheet, he's scared off by a genuine spook. A murder plot is at the bottom of these weird occurrences, as we discover in reel seven. The Ghost Walks was another one-set wonder from pinchpenny Chesterfield Studios. ~ 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

The Big Executive is Ricardo Cortez, to whom success is less important than the pursuit of success. Having lost as many fortunes as he's gained, Cortez again teeters on the verge of bankruptcy. His principal business rival, who'd like nothing better than to see Cortez standing on a street corner selling apples, is Richard Bennett. Complicating matters is the fact that Cortez is in love with Bennett's daughter, Elizabeth Young. Paramount Pictures dressed up the low-budget proceedings of The Big Executive with high-class art direction; the film was scripted by Laurence Stallings, best known for such war dramas as The Big Parade. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It's a rainy night and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are faced with a particularly ill-tempered judge Rychard Cramer. He'd love to throw them in the clink for vagrancy, but since the jail is full, he gives them just one hour...to leave town. Out on the street, they encounter a drunk (perennial screen inebriate Arthur Housman) who has lost his car keys. He finds them with Stan and Ollie's help, and out of gratitude invites them to spend the night at his house. Once there, the drunk discovers that he has apparently forgotten his house keys. The three of them manage to get in anyway -- the only problem is that it's the wrong house! The drunk has just poured his bootleg gin into a water pitcher when a butler tells him to leave. This wakes up the lady of the house (Vivian Oakland). She's glad the man is gone -- her husband, who isn't home yet, abhors drunks. Stan and Ollie are still around, however, making themselves comfortable and completely unaware of the mix up. Dressed in the husband's silk pajamas and robes, they encounter the wife in the hallway and she faints dead away. To revive her they give her a glass of "water" from the pitcher containing the bootleg gin. This brings her back to consciousness -- and then some! The boys are having a time keeping her antics under control but finally they just relax. The three of them are laughing it up and having a grand old time when her husband finally comes home. It's the judge and he slowly approaches Laurel and Hardy, the menace on his face a frightening sight. Stan goes for the light switch and the screen goes dark. The soundtrack, however, gives a cacophonous idea of the mayhem that is being wreaked. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a woman with dubious past finds herself blackmailed when she makes plans to marry a senator's son. She finds salvation with a bootlegger who offers to take care of the excursionist. Unfortunately, he chooses to kill the fellow, gets caught, and is put on trial. Now the woman must choose to risk reputation, and good marriage or tell the truth and save him from the electric chair. Eventually, she chooses the honorable path and happiness ensues all around. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Magnificently restored by UCLA to its original "Grandeur" wide-screen format The Bat Whispers may not be a cinematic masterpiece but is certainly worth a second look. Opening with a series of flamboyant tracking shots, director Roland West soon enough settles down to the usual "Old House" shenanigans of sliding panels, mysterious bumps in the night, crawling hands, thunder and lightning (sounding more like an earthquake, incidentally, than a storm), etc. An official remake of the 1926 The Bat (which was itself based on an Avery Hopwood play), The Bat Whispers owed just as much to The Cat and the Canary (1927), the true grand-daddy of all haunted house mysteries. After taunting the New York City police a final time, the notorious criminal "The Bat" announces his retirement to the country. Meanwhile, in said country wealthy spinster Cornelia Van Gorder (Grayce Hampton is leasing the Courtleigh Fleming estate. The news of "The Bat" and the simultaneous disappearance of cashier Brooks Bailey (William Bakewell) shortly after a robbery at the Fleming bank set in motion a series of troubling events -- troubling especially for Miss Van Gorder's eternally frightened maid Lizzie (Maude Eburne). The missing Brooks Bailey shows up soon enough courtesy of Van Gorder's pretty niece Dale (Una Merkel), who persuades the young man to impersonate a gardener -- a disguise that fools no one. There is a mysterious doctor who speaks with an accent (Gustav von Seyffertitz); an equally alarming caretaker (Spencer Charters),; a piece of missing blueprint that leads to a secret room; and, of course, "The Bat," who appears to be prowling the estate as well. Enter into all this Detective Anderson (Chester Morris), who in his unique gritty way gets to the bottom of things. The "Grandeur" wide-screen format was lost on most movie-goers when the film premiered in late November of 1930. Exhibitors who had just spent fortunes rigging their theaters for sound were of course loath to spend even more on yet another "newfangled" invention. Of course, some of cinematographer Robert H. Planck's more breathtaking shots of "The Bat" climbing towering skyscrapers were lost in the standard 35mm prints. But cartoonist Bob Kane reportedly had this film in mind when he nine years later created his eternally popular comic-strip hero Batman. A sadly neglected craftsman, Roland West directed only 11 films before he retired at the age of 44. West (who also directed the 1926 The Bat co-starring his then-wife Jewel Carmen as the imperiled niece) left films to run a Santa Monica café with girlfriend Thelma Todd. He was questioned by the authorities but was apparently never a suspect in Todd's mysterious death in December of 1935. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

This first talkie version of the evergreen Brandon Thomas stage farce Charley's Aunt stars Charlie Ruggles, obviously having the time of his life in the leading role. Though updated to 1930, the film adheres to the familiar plot as set down by Thomas back in 1895. Two Oxford undergraduates, Charley Wickeham (Hugh Williams) and Jack Chesney (Rodney McLennon), anxiously await the visit of their respective girlfriends Amy Spettigue (June Collyer) and Kitty Verdun (Flora Sheffield). Trouble is, the ladies have no chaperone, and this will never do in the hallowed halls of Oxford. Anxiously, Charley and Jack persuade their twittish school chum Fancourt Babberly (Ruggles) to pose as Charley's aunt Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez (Doris Lloyd) -- "from Brazil, where the nuts come from." Poor Babbs is forced to remain in drag as both Jack's father Sir Francis Chesney (Phillips Smalley, repeating his role from the 1925 version of Charley's Aunt) and Amy's uncle Stephen Spettigue (Halliwell Hobbes) unexpectedly show up. The scenes in which Chesney and Spettigue ardently court the "Aunt" are hilarious, as is the inevitable moment when the disguised Babbs comes face to face with the real Donna Lucia (Doris Lloyd), whose ward Ella Delahay (Flora le Breton) had previously been our hero's shipboard sweetheart! A revised ending allows Charlie Ruggles to perform a farcical death scene that's every bit as funny as what has gone before. Charley's Aunt would be remade several times in the future, most memorably by Jack Benny in 1941 and by Ray Bolger in the 1952 musical adaptation Where's Charley? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Untamed was touted by MGM as Joan Crawford's talking-picture debut, even though she'd already been heard as well as seen in Hollywood Revue of 1929. Best described as Somerset Maugham on toast, the film casts Crawford as Bingo, an oil heiress who has been raised in the tropics. When her rough-and-tumble guardians Murchison (Ernest Torrence) and Presley (Holmes Herbert) decide it is time to "civilize" the girl, they take her to New York, intending to indoctrinate her in the proper social graces. En route to Manhattan, Bingo falls in love with Andy (Robert Montgomery), whose lack of money and breeding means nothing to her. But when Andy finds out that Bingo is worth millions, he avoids her like the plague, refusing to live off the girl's riches. At her first high-society party, Bingo shocks the New York elite with her crude behavior, going so far as to punch out snooty debutante Marjory (Gwen Lee). Later on, Andy breaks Bingo's heart by again refusing to marry her and running off with Marjory. In desperation, Bingo grabs a gun and pumps Andy full of lead -- which has the curious effect of convincing him that she'll make the perfect bride! Aside from Joan Crawford's scintillating performance, Untamed is difficult to swallow when seen today. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a lonesome fellow returns from Peru with a fortune and begins looking for a wife. While still single, he has a real estate agent show him a home or two. The agent invites him to dinner. During the meal the agent and his wife bicker constantly, causing the poor fellow to rethink the idea of matrimony. He decides that he still wants to share his new home with someone and so ends up having the agent's sister-in-law move in. She performs all the wifely duties but one... The two go on dating other people until they both realize that they have fallen in love with each other. Look carefully for brand new starlet Jean Harlow in a bit part. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Though filmmaker Erich Von Stroheim's notorious profligacy had made him virtually unhirable in the US by 1929, screen-star Gloria Swanson still had faith in him. She poured a great deal of her own money in Von Stroheim's last silent film, Queen Kelly, and agreed to play the leading role to insure box-office success. When production began, Stroheim had not quite completed his script: all he had was the premise of a young Irish convent girl named Kitty Kelly (Gloria Swanson) being seduced by a German nobleman (Walter Byron) who was slated to marry the mad Queen (Seena Owen) of a tiny European principality. Brandishing a whip, the loony Queen drives the hapless Kitty from the palace. It was after shooting had started that Von Stroheim filled Swanson in on the rest of the plot: Kitty was to inherit all the worldly possessions of her aunt in German East Africa. Arriving to take charge of the estate, Kitty would learn that she was proud possessor of a string of brothels. Realizing that such a plot device would never get past the American censors, Swanson reacted in horror; she frantically called her money men in America and screamed "There's a madman in charge!" In the final release version of Queen Kelly, hastily completed by Swanson to recoup her losses and ultimately released in Europe, Kitty Kelly was forced into a marriage with brothel manager Tully Marshall, a tobacco-juiced stained degenerate. She ultimately returns to the nobleman who'd seduced her, is driven from the palace by Queen Owen, and commits suicide. This version contained dialogue sequences, and one musical interlude, sung by star Swanson. Despite its tawdry plot, Queen Kelly was beautifully photographed; its most famous shot, of Swanson praying in church, her face framed by flickering candles, was excerpted in the actress' much-later talkie Sunset Boulevard. The currently available restored version of Queen Kelly uses still pictures and explanatory titles to fill in the footage that has decomposed over the years. ~ 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