Helen Parrish Movies

Tormented by the neighborhood bully, Beaver (Jerry Mathers) and Wally (Tony Dow) are fascinated with the story woven by dad Ward (Hugh Beaumont) about the practical joke he pulled on the kid who was bullying him back in school. Without telling Ward, the boys set up the same practical joke (involving trash-cans and trip-wires) to get even with their tormentor -- only to accidentally target the bully's father, who happens to be Ward's business partner Fred Rutherford (Richard Deacon). That's right, TV fans -- the big bad bully in this episode is none other than Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford (Frank Bank), in his first series appearance. It wouldn't be until the second season that Lumpy would develop into the harmless oaf that we'd come to know and love. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Compared to his later "A" westerns, director Oscar "Budd" Boetticher's The Wolf Hunters is often exasperatingly slow. This was the second of producer Lindsley Parson's efforts to create a series based on the Great White North yarns of James Oliver Curwood. Kirby Grant plays a Canadian Mountie who follows a fugitive to a small fur-trapping community. Most of the action is handled by Chinook, a handsome German Shepherd. Jan Clayton handles the leading-lady responsibilities, while the supporting cast includes Charles Lang and Helen Parrish, who were then husband and wife (Parrish later married TV producer John Guedel, of People are Funny and Best of Groucho fame). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Monogram melodrama is a remake of the 1932 thriller The 13th Guest, which starred Ginger Rogers and Lyle Talbot. In the remake, Ginger's role, that of a woman who is both murder victim and murder suspect (honest!), is played by Helen Parrish. Talbot's character, a womanizing private eye, is essayed by Dick Purcell. The plot concerns a an anniversary dinner, a mysterious legacy, and a hooded villain who utilizes electricity to dispose of the heirs. While Mystery of the 13th Guest falls short of the original, it is in its own way quite a treat. Both films were based on a novel by Armitage Trail, better known as the author of Scarface. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

X Marks the Spot was the first of eight brisk wartime-oriented melodramas, each running slightly under an hour, produced and directed in rapid succession by George Sherman. Private detective Eddie Delaney (Damian O'Flynn) swings into action when his father (Robert E. Homans), a police sergeant, is gunned down by rubber racketeers (please recall that rubber was a valuable commodity during WW2). With the help of heroine Linda Ward (Helen Parrish) and police lieutenant Decker (Dick Purcell), Delaney chases after the villains, experiencing all sorts of serial-like dangers along the way. Numbered among the bad guys are the typecast Jack LaRue and the cast-against-type Neil Hamilton (later Batman's Commissioner Gordon). Though the script covers familiar ground, X Marks the Spot is exhilarating entertainment in the true Republic Pictures tradition. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cinderella Swings It was the last in a series of RKO programmers based on the popular radio series Scattergood Baines (its original title, Scattergood Swings It, was changed in the light of the poor reception afforded the earlier series entries). Guy Kibbee stars as small-town busybody Baines, who in this outing tries to make a big star out of local songstress Betty Palmer (Gloria Warren). One of his strategies is to spotlight the girl in a USO benefit show, which takes up most of the film's 70-minute running time. The supporting cast include juvenile actors Butch and Buddy (Bill Lenhart and Kenneth Brown), who'd previously bedevilled W. C. Fields and Abbott &Costello over at Universal, and future 3 Stooges straight woman Christine McIntyre. Cinderella Swings It was packaged by Pyramid Productions, the same concern responsible for RKO's radio-inspired "Lum and Abner" series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With its slight resemblance to Destry Rides Again (1939) -- probably not entirely coincidental -- this rousing Western from Republic Pictures remains a joy throughout. John Wayne plays Tom Craig, a mild-mannered druggist from Boston who opens a shop in wild and woolly Sacramento shortly before the Gold Rush. The town is "owned" by the Dawson brothers, Britt (Albert Dekker) and Joe (Dick Purcell), who poison Craig's tonic when saloon hostess Lacey Miller (Binnie Barnes) takes too much of an interest in the handsome newcomer. Town drunk Whitey (Emmett Lynn) has one drink too many, and all of Sacramento is soon in a lynching mood. The news of "gold in them thar hills" saves the druggist in the nick of time, but his business is destroyed. While everyone is heading for the gold fields, Craig prepares to leave town with snobbish debutante Ellen Sanford (Helen Parrish), whom he intends to marry. News of typhoid fever among the prospectors changes his mind, however, and the man once referred to as "a human hitchin' post instead of a two-legged man," risks his own life to save the suffering populace. The Dawson brothers, meanwhile, plan to hijack the medical supplies and sell them to the highest bidder, but when Britt Dawson learns that Lacey is helping the sick and may be stricken with the disease herself, he has a change of heart and eventually confesses to spiking Craig's medicine. Cast against type for most of the film, John Wayne fails to make his amiable druggist entirely believable but remains simply John Wayne throughout -- which is as it should be. Binnie Barnes is rowdy and fun whether leading a chorus of "California Joe" by Johnny Marvin and Fred Rose, or jealously interrupting a tête-à-tête between Wayne and 19-year-old Helen Parrish. Usually cast as glacial "other women" in Hollywood films, the British-born Barnes had actually begun her professional career touring Europe and South Africa with bucolic American headliner Tex McLeod, which was as good a preparation as any to play In Old California's saloon belle. Patsy Kelly, who shoots down her laundry with a Winchester, and Edgar Kennedy, as Wayne's tooth-ache plagued sidekick, add to the general fun. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In this musical comedy, a motley band of musicians have only their extreme poverty in common. They end up writing a hit and getting a recording contract. The trouble is, the composer's works are never played without another band member doctoring them up to make them swingier. Fortunately, the composer isn't too averse to the changes as he has just won the heart of the beauty who sings his revamped songs. Songs include: "Where Did You Get That Girl?" (Harry Puck, Bert Kalmar, sung by Helen Parrish), "Sergeant Swing," "Rug-Cuttin' Romeo" (Milton Rosen, Everett Carter). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Frontier marshall Jim Lane (Lon Chaney) is investigating a local Indian tribe that he believes to be responsible for a series of recent attacks on Pony Express riders. The task may appear straightforward, but Jim has a feeling that there is another force at work behind the scenes. With bodies piling up and time running out, Jim must prevent both the Overland Mail and his own life from being snuffed out into the violent frontier dust. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide

In this low-budget musical, two sets of politically ambitious parents attempt to pair up their youngsters who unfortunately despise each other and only pretend to like each other to please their parents. On the nights they are to go out, they sneak out with their respective true loves. It all works well until the unwilling couple find themselves falling in love for real. songs include: "I'm Nobody's Sweetheart Now", and "Got Romance". ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this sequel to 1936's Three Smart Girls, Deanna Durbin is back as the most precocious of a sister trio: the other girls are Nan Grey and Helen Parrish (replacing the first film's Barbara Read. Three Smart Girls dealt with the girls' efforts to reunite their parents. In the sequel, Durbin pokes her turned-up nose into the affairs of her older sisters, hoping to find suitable husbands for them. The musical highlight is Durbin's rendition of the old wedding-day standard "Because," which resulted in a bestselling record. In 1939, Deanna Durbin could have appeared in a film version of a seed catalogue and still make scads of money for Universal Studios. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this socially conscious drama a sextet of juvenile delinquents flee a crime screen in their seedy ghetto and wind up getting invited to a posh mansion by a wealthy criminal. Their attempts to accustom themselves to the opulent surroundings nearly results in the destruction of the manse. Eventually they boys decide that they must return to the city and pay for their crime. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The first of the "splinter" groups to emerge from the Dead End Kids was the Little Tough Guys, consisting of veteran Dead-Enders Billy Halop, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, Bernard Punsly and David Gorcey (Hally Chester and Billy Benedict would also appear in this new grouping from time to time). Though most of the "Little Tough Guy" vehicles were played for laugh, the initial entry was not. When labor activist Jim Boylan (Edward Pawley) is executed for a murder he didn't commit, his son Johnny (Billy Halop) decides to become a crook. He and his pals Pig (Huntz Hall), String (Gabe Dell), Sniper (David Gorcey) and Dopey (Hally Chester), embark upon a crime spree, aided and abetted by thrill-seeking rich kid Cyril (Jackie Searl), who happens to be the son of the district attorney. While committing a robbery orchestrated by Cyril, Johnny and Pig are trapped by the police. Pig makes a break for it, only to be killed in a hail of bullets. This startling turn of events convinces Johnny to mend his ways, but not before an obligatory stretch in reform school with his fellow Little Tough Guys-including Cyril! Beyond the spectacle of Huntz Hall dying in agony, Little Tough Guy offers very little that is new and innovational: still, the film made money, prompting a whole series of "Little Tough Guy" quickies from the Universal assembly line. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Anne Shirley is the teenaged "lady" in this filmization of Elizabeth Jordan's novel My Daddy and I. Shirley plays the daughter of widowed Herbert Marshall, who suffers in silence as his daughter tries to "match" him with every eligible woman in sight. Misinterpreting a delicate situation, Shirley attempts to link up Marshall with a woman (Margot Grahame) he actively dislikes. The highlight of the film is a ramshackle staging of "Romeo and Juliet" at Anne's high school, with the unflappable young girl contending with an adenoidal Romeo (Frank Coghlan Jr.) whose tights keep slipping as he struggles through his Shakespearian dialogue. The protagonist of Make Way for Lady was one of several teen ingenues played by former child actress Dawn O'Day under her new screen name of Anne Shirley. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide