Joan Perry Movies

Perhaps nine lives weren't enough, but 63 minutes was plenty of time to relate the plot of this Ronald Reagan vehicle. Reagan plays a newspaper reporter who has a story "that'll break this town wide open!" The story involves a mysterious, unsolved boarding house murder. The suspects include the seductive Faye Emerson, wide-eyed Joan Perry, and brainless Peter Whitney. Wanna bet none of them did it? Reagan solves the case, wins the girl, and doesn't retire to politics...yet. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A remake of Ceiling Zero (1936), International Squadron stars Ronald W. Reagan (in the old James Cagney role) as a hotshot flying who joins the Royal Air Force in England. Reagan refuses to mend his barnstorming ways, and thanks to his recklessness two pilots are killed. The headstrong young flyer redeems himself by going on a suicide bombing mission, from which he never returns. International Squadron costars James Stephenson, a veteran character actor who'd recently achieved prominence thanks to a strong role in the 1940 Bette Davis vehicle The Letter. Unfortunately, Stephenson died shortly afterward, cutting short what might have been a stellar film career. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Strange Alibi offered young Warner Bros. contractee Arthur Kennedy to carry a picture all by himself. The star is cast as detective Joe Geary, who is suddenly and unexpectedly fired from the police force. Appararently embittered, Geary joins a criminal gang. Actually, it's all part of a scheme cooked up between Geary and police chief Sprague (Jonathan Hale) to infiltrate the mob. But the crooks get wise, bump off Sprague, and frame Geary for murder. It takes a jail break and a wild chase before Geary is able to clear himself. Critics in 1941 noted that a Warner Bros. B picture would have seemed incomplete without at least one prison scene. And isn't that a young Jackie Gleason as one of the bad guys? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Spunky Joan Blondell is practically the whole show in the diverting comedy Good Girls Go to Paris. Blondell is cast as ambitious college-campus waitress Jenny Swanson, who yearns to see the sights in Gay Paree. She gets her chance by latching onto British exchange professor Ronald Brooke (Melvyn Douglas), who is en route to the City of Light. Once she sets foot on French soil, Jenny proves the veracity of the film's title by straightening out the wayward family of dyspeptic millionaire Olaf Brand (Walter Connolly)-though for a while it looks as though she's a "bad girl", merely out to take the Brands for every penny they've got. In later years, Joan Blondell ruefully recalled that the film's original title was Good Girls Go to Paris Too, but the Hays Office nixed that harmlessly suggestive monicker. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Start Cheering is Columbia Pictures' idea of a college musical: Practically everyone in the cast is past the age of 30. Charles Starrett plays a movie star who wearies of Hollywood and decides to get a college education. He enrolls incognito in a small university, much to the discomfort of his managers Walter Connolly and Jimmy Durante. Durante heads for college himself, hoping to sabotage Starrett's plans and bring him back before the cameras. While Jimmy Durante is saddled with inferior material, the film gives full head to such guest stars as bandleader Louis Prima, vaudevillian Chaz Chase (who had a cigar-eating act), radio's Professor Quiz (Dr. Craig E. Earle), and Columbia's short-subject headliners The Three Stooges (with Curly!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Joan Perry plays the title role in Columbia's Counterfeit Lady. She is cast as Phyllis, a country lass with a rare talent for larceny. Managing to steal a $37,000 diamond from a swank New York jewelry shop, Phyllis is pursued by private detective Johnny (Ralph Bellamy), and by a gang of professional thieves who play for keeps. Johnny rescues the heroine from the villains, whereupon she instantly reforms in order to permit a climactic romantic clinch. So well does Joan Perry pull off the leading role in Counterfeit Lady that it seems a shame she retired from acting after becoming the wife of Columbia prexy Harry Cohn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his second of an unprecedented 131 Westerns for Columbia Pictures, handsome Charles Starrett donned his trademark white Stetson to portray Ranny Maitland, a Texas Ranger whose father (Lafe Mckee) is feuding with his neighbor, Lockhart (Edward Le Saint. Pretending to be on Lockhart's side in the feud, Ranny goes to investigate. Old man Maitland, meanwhile, is murdered and Lockhart arrested. Evidence found in Maitland's safe points to ranch foremen Brophy (Wheeler Oakman and Gilman (Dick Botiller), foremen of the respective ranches, as the culprits but the documents also incriminates Lockhart's son Lafe (Charles Locher). Believing Lafe to be innocent, Ranny organizes a posse to capture the foremen and the film concludes in a gigantic (for Columbia Pictures) battle at Blockade Canyon. Handsome young Charles Locher, in one of his earliest featured roles, later changed his name to Jon Hall and starred in escapist melodramas at Universal. As she had in Starrett's first Western for Columbia, brunette Joan Perry once again played the heroine, this time the daughter of the opposing rancher. Perry later married her boss, feared (and foul-mouthed) Columbia studio czar Harry Cohn. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Young engineer Bob Sanderson (Lew Ayres) is in love with wealthy socialite Edith Stuart (Joan Perry), and the feeling is mutual. But Bob refuses to marry Edith until he can support her in the manner to which she is accustomed. He takes a job as a messenger boy with her father's telegraph service, only to get mixed up in a murder case. By the time Bob has deduced that the "murder" is a fraud, staged to cover up a bigger crime, he's forced to go to the rescue of Edith, who's been kidnapped by the villains. Considering that most of her screen roles were along the same lines as the helpless Edith Stuart, it's no wonder that actress Joan Perry retired from the screen when she married Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Making his debut as Columbia Pictures' new cowboy hero -- replacing, incidentally, the aging Tim McCoy -- handsome Charles Starrett played Johnny Flagg, a roving cowboy who arrives in Oro Grande in the midst of a feud between ranchers and homesteader. Lead by the disreputable Bar Munro (Harry Woods), the ranchers are attempting to scare the settlers off valuable land leased from the government. Lovely Barbara McGrail, meanwhile, suspects Munro of murdering her father and enlists Johnny's help. When Cattlemen's Association foreman Harvey Campbell (Edward le saint) switches sides to support the settlers, Munro has him killed, framing Johnny for the crime.The latter, however, carries proof of his innocence and instead challenges Munro to a shootout. Munro draws but is too slow for Johnny who, victorious, asks for Barbara's hand in marriage. At 6"2' and sporting a white Steson, black shirt and flowing scarf -- a piece of silk reportedly "borrowed" from a nightgown Rita Hayworth had used in a film -- Starrett was an instant hit as a cowboy star and would go on to make an unprecedented 131 Westerns for Columbia, ending his long run with the studio with The Kid from Broken Gun in 1952. Starrett's first leading lady, Joan Perry, later married studio mogul Harry Cohn. Ostensibly based on a story by Peter B. Kyne, The Gallant Defender including two musical numbers -- Blue Skies Above and Covered Wagons -- written and performed by the Western music group The Sons of the Pioneers who, like Starrett, had recently signed with Columbia. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide