Ron Randell Movies

A Son is Born was the maiden directorial effort of Australian producer Eric Porter. Future international star Peter Finch heads the cast of this sprawling drama, dealing with the rivalry between a headstrong father and his rebellious son. Ron Randell and Muriel Steinbeck, who like Finch were big favorites "down under" in 1946, also appear. Distribution of A Son is Born throughout the rest of the British empire was handled by Ealing Studios, long before the company began specializing in domestic comedies. American audiences were denied an opportunity to see A Son is Born until it began making the TV "Late Show" rounds in the mid-1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A precursor of sorts to the 1999 Julia Roberts vehicle The Runaway Bride, It Had to Be You stars Ginger Rogers as Victoria Stafford, a wealthy girl who has been engaged three times, and has three times chickened out at the altar just before saying "I do." Determined to wed her fourth fiancé, Oliver H.P. Harrington (Ron Randell), Victoria is on the verge of saying those two little words, when suddenly she sees the vision of her "dream lover," George (Cornel Wilde), whom she has envisioned since childhood. Ultimately our heroine meets an in-the-flesh lookalike for her imaginary sweetheart: a no-nonsense fireman named Johnny Blaine, who indeed was a childhood friend of Victoria's. So, do wedding bells finally ring? Not on your life. Though Victoria is ga-ga over Johnny, the feeling is far from mutual -- and besides, there are several reels to go before the end title. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bulldog Drummond at Bay was the title of two entries in the long-running "Bulldog Drummond" series. The later film, lensed in 1947, introduces Australian Ron Randell in the title role. Soldier of fortune Drummond is obliged to find a jewel thief, lest he himself be accused of the crime. Of interest is the presence in the cast of former child star Terence Kilburn. The first "Drummond" flick in eight years, Bulldog Drummond at Bay was the vanguard of a failed two-picture attempt by Columbia Pictures to revive the once-thriving series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Perhaps it's just as well that Columbia elected to film Prosper Merimee's Carmen without Georges Bizet's music: after all, Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford weren't exactly Leontyne Price and Robert Merrill. The Loves of Carmen is a reasonably faithful rehash of Merimee's story of the tempestuous gypsy cigarette-factory worker Carmen (Hayworth) and the devastating effect she has on the men in her life. Assigned to arrest Carmen after a street brawl, handsome military officer Don Jose (Ford) falls in love with her instead, renouncing his virginal sweetheart and falling in with Carmen's smuggler cronies. So smitten is Don Jose that he doesn't realize until it's too late that the amoral Carmen is foredoomed to destroy herself and her lovers. Highlights include a knife duel between Don Jose and Carmen's common-law husband Garcia (Victor Jory) and the fatal final confrontation stemming from Carmen's flirtation with bullfighter Lucas (John Baragrey). Dazzling Technicolor photography is the principal asset of this entertaining but uneven star vehicle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When a priceless diamond is stolen from a museum exhibition all suspicion falls upon the notorious Lone Wolf, a former jewel thief who became a reporter. It doesn't help that he was in the museum to write a story on the gem at the time of its theft. Now he and his gal pal must play amateur detectives in order to ring the real crooks to justice. This was the final entry in the "Lone Wolf" series. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Make Believe Ballroom is a feature-length derivation of the popular LA-based radio series of the same name. Hosted by Martin Block and then by Al Jarvis, the original Ballroom was a combination disc-jockey program and quiz show. Jarvis plays himself in the film version, introducing such musical artists as Frankie Laine, the King Cole Trio,Jack Smith, Kay Starr, Charlie Barnet, Jimmy Dorsey, Jan Garber, Gene Krupa and Pee Wee Hunt. The barely relevant plot concerns two carhops, Gene Thomas (Jerome Courtland) and Josie Marlow (Virginia Welles), who participate in the question-and-answer portion of the radio series. Though competitors on the air, Gene and Josie eventually fall in love. The supporting cast is filled with such stock Columbia players as Sid Tomack, Adele Jergens, and Vernon Dent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Counterspy Meets Scotland Yard was the second entry in Columbia's "David Harding, Counterspy" series. Howard St. John stars as Harding, who, per the film's title, travels to England in this one. Joining forces with Scotland Yard operative Simon Langton (Ron Randell), Harding attempts to break up a spy ring that uses hypnosis as one of its "weapons." Future Gunsmoke heroine Amanda Blake co-stars as an alluring femme fatale. The Counterspy series was based on the radio series created by Philips H. Lord, which ran from 1942 to 1957. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this exciting actioner a daring Eurasian woman gets involved with a shipwrecked engineer whom she rescues from a remote island. Together, they have many romantic and exciting adventures as they try to keep a crook from selling her uncle's priceless collection of antique jade. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

After Columbia's 1951 biopic Valentino laid an egg, leading man Anthony Dexter was persona non grata at the studio. Still, Columbia couldn't very well pay Dexter his weekly salary for doing nothing, and that's why The Brigand was born. Dexter does his best in the dual role of King Lorenzo, monarch of a mythical Latino country, and adventurer Carlos DeLargo. When Lorenzo is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt, DeLargo is coerced into posing as the ailing King. Scheming would-be usurper Prince Ramon (Anthony Quinn), sensing that something's fishy, plots to do in both the King and his look-alike. Meanwhile, DeLargo discovers the fringe benefits of royal life as he woos the King's betrothed Princess Teresa (Jody Lawrance) and Lorenzo's mistress Countess Flora (Gale Robbins). The story is supposedly based on an Alexandre Dumas novel, though it more closely resembles Prisoner of Zenda. It is fun to watch Anthony Quinn, clearly contemptuous of his role, pulling all sorts of thespic tricks to add variety to the proceedings: during one dungeon scene, Quinn delivers all his lines with a cigar clenched firmly between his teeth! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate is a musical within a musical -- altogether appropriate, since its source material, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, was a play within a play. Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson star as famous Broadway singing team who haven't worked together since their acrimonious divorce. Keel, collaborating with Cole Porter (played by Ron Randell), plans to star in a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew titled "Kiss Me Kate." Both he and Porter agree that only one actress should play the tempestuous Katherine, and that's Grayson. But she isn't buying, especially after discovering that Keel's latest paramour, Ann Miller, is going to be playing Bianca. Besides, Grayson is about to retire from showbiz to marry the "Ralph Bellamy character," played not by Bellamy, but by Willard Parker. A couple of gangsters (James Whitmore and Keenan Wynn) arrive on the scene, convinced Keel is heavily in debt to their boss; actually, a young hoofer in the chorus (Tommy Rall) owes the money, but signed Keel's name to an IOU. But since Grayson is having second thoughts about going on-stage, Keel plays along with the hoods, who force Grayson at gunpoint to co-star with her ex-husband so that they'll get paid off. Later the roles are reversed, and the gangsters are themselves finagled into appearing on-stage, Elizabethan costumes and all, though that scene is less of a comic success. This aside, Kiss Me Kate is a well-appointed (if bowdlerized) film adaptation of the Porter musical. Virtually all of the play's songs are retained for the screen version, notably "So in Love," "Wunderbar," "Faithful in My Fashion," "Too Darn Hot," "Why Can't You Behave?," "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" (a delightful duet delivered delightfully by Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore), and the title song. Additionally, Porter lifted a song from another play, Out of This World, and incorporated it in the movie version of Kiss Me Kate; as a result, "From This Moment On" has been included in all subsequent stagings of Kate. This MGM musical has the distinction of being filmed in 3-D, which is why Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson throw so many chairs, dishes, and pieces of fruit at the camera in their domestic battle scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This crime drama contains two stories. In the first, a luckless fellow has even worse luck when he is suspected of murder because the victim carried information that would have kept the man from inheriting a fortune. Fortunately, another person had an even greater motive for the killing and justice ensues. In the second, a widow gets revenge upon the two who killed her husband for money. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Although the French Foreign Legion became increasingly anachronistic in the 1950s, films like Desert Sands helped to perpetuate the glamorous legend of this mercenary aggregation. Ralph Meeker heads the cast as a bold legionnaire who falls in love with gorgeous Arab girl Marla English. Alas, Marla is the daughter of shiek John Carradine and the sister of vengeful Keith Larsen, both of whom have vowed to kill all Legionnaires within shouting distance. Larsen eventually discovers that his real enemy is not Meeker, but the duplicitous Carradine. Director Lesley Selander staged most of the action scenes in the manner of his western films, with excellent results. One of the scriptwriters of Desert Sands was Danny Arnold, later the prime mover of TV's Barney Miller. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hollywood's Danziger brothers dashed off the British The Count of Twelve in approximately two weeks. With only 51 minutes' worth of running time, the storytelling has to be quick and to the point, and it is. The film is divided into two separate but tenuously connected plotlines. In the first, a man tries to avoid being murdered at the stroke of midnight, only to expire from a heart attack. In the second, a doctor's intended adulterous affair comes to an ironic-and tragic-sudden conclusion. One suspects that Count of Twelve was the pilot for a never-produced TV anthology series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide