Purnell Pratt Movies

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

Joan Crawford and William Bakewell play the spoiled-rotten grown children of stockbroker William Holden. When Wall Street lays its famous egg in 1929, Crawford and Bakewell find that they can no longer pursue their flamboyant lifestyle (for example, they'll have to put a moratorium on the sort of "lingerie parties" with which this film opens). Crawford gets a newspaper job, while Bakewell ties up with vicious bootlegger Clark Gable. When Gable is implicated in the murder of seven gangsters (a transparent reenactment of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre), Crawford's fellow reporter Cliff Edwards gets proof of Gable's complicity. Bakewell is ordered to kill Edwards; Crawford, not knowing of her brother's actions, takes Edwards' place, wooing Gable in hopes of getting a scoop. When Gable finds out that Crawford's working undercover (so to speak), he prepares to rub her out, but her life is saved by Bakewell at the cost of his own. Compared to the rest of the stick-figure leading men in Dance Fools Dance, Clark Gable stood out like a testosterone-soaked thumb, and it wouldn't be long before he'd be promoted from villains to heroes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This second of four film versions of Ralph Spence's stage comedy-melodrama The Gorilla stars legendary Broadway comedian Joe Frisco, he of the eternal cigar and funny stammer. Frisco and former Keystone Kop Harry Gribbon play Garrity and Mulligan, a pair of dumb detectives who are summoned to an old dark house to protect heiress Alice Denby (Lila Lee) and zoologist Cyrus Stevens (Edwin Maxwell) from harm. Several killings have taken place in the vicinity, and the most likely suspect is a huge gorilla, recently escaped from its trainer. But in their own inimitable, bumbling fashion, Frisco and Gribbon prove that the murderer is actually a human being in gorilla guise -- but not before dressing up in monkey suits themselves. Fourth-billed Walter Pidgeon plays his role as if longing for his agent to tell him that his Warner Bros. contract has expired. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the play Penny Arcade, Sinner's Holiday marked the film debut of James Cagney. After seeing the performance on Broadway, Al Jolson bought the rights to the play and sold it to Warner Bros. under the agreement that both Cagney and co-star Joan Blondell reprise their stage roles for the screen. The story concerns an overprotective mother, Ma Delano (Lucille LaVerne), who runs a penny arcade in Coney Island and lives with her children: Harry (James Cagney), Joe (Ray Gallagher), and Jennie (Evelyn Knapp). Harry works for a sideshow ran by liquor-dealing gangster Mitch McKane (Warren B. Hymer), who wants to date ennie. Grant Withers plays Angel, Harry's co-worker and the hero that saves Jennie from Mitch's advances. When Mitch goes to jail, Harry takes over his shady liquor business and keeps the extra money for himself, leading to a deadly gunfight. When he's accused of murder, Harry begs his mother for protection and she frames Angel with the weapon out of a bizarrely obsessive love for her son. agney would go on to play other tough-guy characters with overly loving mothers in his next film, The Public Enemy ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Ellen Neal (Constance Bennett) is a "nice" girl -- just turned 18 -- who's been picked up in a raid on a speakeasy where she just started working. She pleads guilty to vagrancy, but gets a lecture and warning from the judge to steer clear of places like that, and to try and find honest work. She tries to do precisely that and is hired a year later as a maid in the household of the Fullertons, a wealthy family with roots going back to the English aristocracy. She's very aware of the opportunity she's been given, and tries to lead an honorable life, despite the lecherous inclinations of the household's major domo (Charles McNaughton) and the less obnoxious but equally fervent impulses of their college-age son, Hugh (Lew Ayres), and his friends. Ellen soon finds, however, that for all of their pretensions to greatness, the Fullertons and their friends enjoy exactly the same leisure activities -- including drinking illegal liquor (this is in the middle of the Prohibition era), bought from the same gangsters, dancing the same dances, and singing the same songs that the customers did in the speakeasy where she worked; and that at least one of the close family friends, Bud Coakley (Matty Kemp), was a customer at that same place and remembers her. He tells Hugh what he thinks he knows about Ellen's "past" and soon Hugh is putting moves on her, which she resists anew. When he realizes the kind of woman she really is, Hugh ultimately comes to genuinely love her, and those attentions she is willing to accept and return in kind. He returns to college in September -- before Ellen discovers that she is pregnant -- and when she writes to tell him, he doesn't answer.

Ellen leaves her job and returns to live with her mother (Beryl Mercer), and she has the baby, a boy. Hugh never does reply to her letters, and she is forced to hire an attorney, Yates (Tully Marshall). The Fullerton family, led by the blustery patriarch Richard (Purnell Pratt), wants this case settled quietly, out of court, and so instructs his lawyer, Judge Filson (Hale Hamilton). Filson expects to encounter a cheap gold digger, but when he meets Ellen, he's pleasantly surprised and comes to believe her story about the baby's paternity. Meanwhile, it turns out that Hugh would like to do the right thing by Ellen, but his best impulses have been diverted by his father's advice (always focused on preserving the family's reputation) and Bud, who still thinks of Ellen as the girl from the speakeasy. Complicating matters even further is that Ellen doesn't even want money and never did -- all she wanted is the acknowledgement from Hugh about who she was to him and who the baby's father is. When she's confronted by her "past," it looks as though she may never get a chance to press her case, until her attorney uncovers a fact that gets Bud and Hugh hauled into court. It still looks like the Fullertons will get their way, with a trumped-up session prejudiced in favor of them, when suddenly some truths come out that turn the reputations of all concerned completely on their heads. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

A somewhat primitive early talkie version of Rex Beach's lusty 1909 novel of Alaska salmon fishers, RKO's The Silver Horde was one of Joel McCrea's earliest breaks. Although third-billed to the more established Evelyn Brent and character star Louis Wolheim, McCrea played the leading role of Boyd Emerson, an adventurer finding himself stranded in the Alaskan wilderness along with sidekick Fraser (Raymond Hatton). Saloon hostess turned copper mine proprietress Cherry Malotte (Brent) falls in love with the newcomer and persuades business associate Tom Hilliard (William Davidson) to bankroll a salmon fishing operation for Emerson and the brutish-looking but lovable Balt (Wolheim). Emerson, however, is in love with Seattle debutante Mildred Wayland (Jean Arthur), whose snobbish father (Purnell Pratt) schemes with salmon industry magnate Frederick Marsh (Gavin Gordon) to sabotage the new endeavor. The rival fishing fleets meet in hand-to-hand battle for superiority with the Emerson-Balt crew emerging the winners. In retaliation, Marsh attempts to slander Cherry Malotte, but is killed by an out-of-control Balt. A major star of the late silent era, Evelyn Brent is struggling to convey her trademark toughness before the microphone, but McCrea makes a stalwart hero and Louis Wolheim is watchable doing almost anything. Jean Arthur is merely window dressing this early in her career, but Blanche Sweet, an icon of the early silent era, is completely wasted in a bit part as the villain's former girlfriend. It became her final screen appearance. The Silver Horde had been filmed once before, by Goldwyn in 1916 starring Myrtle Steadman as Cherry and Curtis Cooksey as Emerson. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

After several musicals and light comedies, Bebe Daniels went dramatic in this adaptation of Samuel Shipman's play Lawful Larceny. When Marion Dorsey's (Daniels) gullible husband Andrew (Kenneth Thompson) loses a great deal of money to seductress Vivian Hepburn (Olive Tell), our heroine adopts Vivian's crooked tactics to get it back. Before long, Marion has Viv's partner-in-crime Guy Tarlow (Lowell Sherman), who also directed, eating out of her hand. Interestingly enough, villainess Olive Tell was the wife of Henry Hobart, the film's associate producer, who evidently didn't mind that his missus was cast in a thoroughly unsympathetic role. Hope Hampton and Conrad Nagel were the stars when Lawful Larceny was first filmed in 1925. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This early talkie antique is a backstage musical from Warner Bros. The plot involves the out-of-town tryout of a new musical comedy, and the people who perform therein: a bitchy leading lady (Betty Compson), an arrogant comedy lead (Joe E. Brown), and a starstruck chorus kid (Sally O'Neil). At the very last moment, the leading lady refuses to go on, forcing the producer to put the chorus girl in her place. It turns out that the star's seemingly rotten behavior was deliberately designed to give the chorine her big break. In between several Technicolor musical numbers (now only existing in black-and-white), we hear a lot of pedantic talk about "the show business." On with the Show's sole virtue is the exquisite Ethel Waters, who introduces her hit song "Am I Blue?" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Trespasser was Gloria Swanson's first all-talking picture. All talk is right. Swanson plays a humble secretary who marries the son (Robert Ames) of a domineering millionaire (William Holden--no, not that William Holden). The father-in-law bullies Swanson into giving up his son; she agrees to step out of his life, proudly withholding the fact that she's about to become a mother. Later, Swanson enters her ex-husband's social class via an inheritance. Unfortunately, he's remarried to Kay Hammond, who is crippled and thus more needful of the man's love and comfort than self-reliant Swanson. Tearfully, Swanson gives up the man she loves, left only with her child and a bulging bank account. When Trespasser was remade by director Edmund Goulding as That Certain Woman with Bette Davis in 1937, a last-minute happy ending was tacked on--if one can call the death of wife number two a joyous event. As for the original film, Gloria Swanson proved (contrary to the popular belief engendered by Sunset Boulevard) that she could have been just as big a star in talkies as she'd been in silents (she even sings well); unfortunately her subsequent judgment in screenplay selection resulted in a string of flops. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this courtroom drama, a man is sentenced to death for jealously murdering the man who flirted with his wife. Unfortunately, the condemned man is innocent. He is saved from the chair by the revelation that the real murderer is the governor's son. The innocent man and his wife are soon reunited. Unfortunately for the killer, his father is so devastated by his son's action that he kills him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A murder trial provides the setting of this drama that presents, via flashback, three very different versions and motives of the killing. According to the prosecution, the deceased's sexy (and very much married) mistress is behind the murder. The defense asserts that the woman's lover killed himself because she would not give into his demands. Unfortunately, neither side is correct. Fortunately, the real culprit confesses in court at the very last minute. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

During a carnival in Venice, Horace Pierpont, a wealthy American (Lewis Stone), falls in love with Fay Kennion (Virgina Valli). Their romance is derailed when she goes over to his apartment and finds the vampy Fifi (Nita Naldi) there. Fay goes down to Algiers, where she marries a former sweetheart, Dr. Alan Mortimer (Edward Earle). Pierpont goes after Fay and when he discovers she has wed, takes a trip with the Mortimers over the desert. Dr. Mortimer is suspicious of the relationship between his wife and the newcomer, and when Pierpont is bitten by a viper, he refuses to treat him if there is a relationship going on. Fay lies so that Mortimer will take care of the wound. Later, she confesses the truth and sends Pierpont away. Eventually Mortimer is killed by an Arab attack, and when Fay runs into Pierpont, he reveals that Fifi was at his apartment that long-ago day to exact revenge. Now that nothing at all stands in their way, the pair reunite. This drama was based on the novel Snake Bite by Robert Hichens, a popular writer of the day. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Though not his motion picture debut as has often been claimed, Seven Keys to Baldpate was George M. Cohan's most popular silent-film effort. Based on the eternally popular play by Cohan and Earl Derr Biggers, the film stars "George M." as George Washington Magee, a mystery novelist suffering from writer's block. Hoping to recharge his creative batteries, Magee accepts a wager from his literary agent and vows to complete a novel within 24 hours. For this purpose, he squirrels himself away in a gloomy old country house called Baldpate, for which (he is told) he owns the only key. As the night progresses, however, it becomes obvious that six other people possess keys to Baldpate -- including a damsel in distress, a couple of crooks, a corrupt sheriff and a "woman of mystery" who is bumped off before Magee's astonished eyes! The "double-trick" ending of the play is perhaps one of the best-known denouements in theatrical history, but out of respect for those who have never seen Seven Keys to Baldpate -- nor any of its five remakes -- we will not divulge the climactic surprise (or surprises). Fortunately, the original Seven Keys to Baldpate still exists, permitting contemporary viewers the rare opportunity of seeing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" Cohan at the height of his powers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide