Arthur Rankin Movies

In this romance, a young woman journeys from Syracuse to New York to see her sweetheart, a prominent architect. She is bitterly disappointed to discover that he has lost interest in her. The residents of the women's hotel at which she stays offer the heartbroken lass words of encouragement. They tell her to take a stand and to show him what he is missing. She takes their advice and becomes a renowned fashion model. Naturally this piques the designer's interest and he wishes to court her anew. Of course, she by then has many suitors, so he must really work to win her back. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Sonja Henie is the "lucky star" in this enjoyable 20th Century-Fox musical. Henie plays Kristina Nelson a humble department store sales clerk who is spotted while skating by George Cabot Jr. (Cesar Romero_, son of the store's owner. George is so taken by Kristina that he gets her an athletic scholarship in a major university. It is hoped that our heroine will serve as a living advertisement for the store by strolling around in an expensive sports wardrobe; instead, she incurs the jealousy of her fellow students, causing a slump in sales. George also loses out romantically when Kristina falls in love with handsome teacher Larry Taylor (Richard Greene). Expelled from college, Kristina recovers from the blow when she's hired by a popular ice capades-style extavaganza. The film's highlight is Sonja Henie's "Alice in Wonderland" ice ballet, originally released in Sepiatone. Those not interesting in skating will be compensated by the lunatic comedy of supporting actress Joan Davis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It took British author James Hilton six weeks to write his visionary novel Lost Horizon. It took director Frank Capra two years-and half of his home studio Columbia's annual budget-to bring it to the screen. After a lengthy preamble, inviting audiences to imagine their own ideas of Utopia, the film opens on a chaotic scene at a Chinese airfield. As hordes of bandits approach, hundreds of refugees scramble to board the last plane out. Only five people make it: Mildly disenchanted Far Eastern diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), his hotheaded younger brother George (John Howard), embezzler Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), dithery fossil expert Lovett (Edward Everett Horton) and consumptive prostitute Gloria Stone (Isabel Jewell). As the plane flies off towards the Himalayas, Robert realizes that he and his fellow passengers are heading in the wrong direction. They are, in fact, being kidnapped-but why? And where to? The plane crash-lands in the snowy Tibetan interior. The pilot is killed, but the passengers are safe. By and by, a strange caravan approaches, led by an enigmatic Chinese named Chang (H. B. Warner). Joining the caravan, Conway and his party are led through a treacherous mountain pass and into a land of temperate weather and dazzling beauty. This is Shangri-La, the idyllic lamasery presided over by the aged, wizened High Lama (Sam Jaffe). In this fertile valley, people are not encumbered by such exigencies as crime, dictators and hatred; instead, everyone is devoted to the pursuit of wisdom and self-improvement-and best of all, the aging process has been slowed to a walk, allowing people to live well past the two-century mark. Though he still does not know why he was brought here, Conway is quicker to adapt to Shangri-La than his wary fellow passengers. He even falls in love with Sondra (Jane Wyatt), an attractive, intelligent young woman. Finally granted an audience with the High Lama, Conway discovers that the old man is actually Father Perrault, the Belgian missionary who founded Shangri-La-over two hundred years earlier. Dying, the High Lama has selected Conway, whose idealism and even-handedness is world famous, to succeed him-and hopefully spread the "love thy neighbor" edict of Shangri-La to the rest of the war-torn world. Conway is willing to assume leadership, but younger brother George, his mind poisoned by spiteful Shangri-La resident Maria (Margo), insists upon escaping to the outside world. The older Conway warns that, despite her youthful appearance, Maria is well past sixty and will surely perish once she leaves Shangri-La; but Maria retorts that the high lama is insane, and that everything he has told Conway is a lie. Disillusioned, Conway agrees to leave with Jack and Maria. The trek back to civilization is a grueling one, especially for Maria, who-true to Conway's prediction-shrivels from age and dies. Appalled that he has been misled, George kills himself. Weeks later, and amnesiac Conway stumbles into a Tibetan mission, where he is rescued and brought back to England. When his memory is restored, however, Conway runs back to Shangri-La, and into the arms of Sondra. When Lost Horizon was shown to preview audiences, it ran nearly three hours-and it was a disaster. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have rescued his pet project by merely burning the first two reels and opening the film with the evacuation scene; In fact, while Capra did remove the film's "flashback" framework, he made most of his cuts in the body of the picture. The release length of Lost Horizon was 132 minutes, pared down to 119 when it when into general distribution. When it was reissued in the 1940s and 1950s, it was rather clumsily pared down to anywhere from 95 to 100 minutes. Only in the mid-1980s was Lost Horizon restored to its original length, with stills used to illustrate certain scenes for which only the soundtrack existed. While not the enormous hit Capra and Columbia had hoped it would be, Lost Horizon was popular enough to allow the name "Shangri-La" enter the household-word category. In 1973, producer Ross Hunter felt the urge to inflict a wretched musical remake onto an unsuspecting public. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A strong-willed young man creates a rift with his father when turns down a safe position in the family business and becomes a traveling musician. Eventually he returns to his father's ad agency to settle down, but he proves to be a trouble maker. When he falls in love with the daughter of his father's biggest professional rival and both companies start fighting over a lucrative pickle account, things really turn topsy-turvy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Lone Wolf Returns stars Melvyn Douglas as Louis Joseph Vance's reformed criminal Michael Lanyard, a.k.a. The Lone Wolf. Lanyard lapses back into his old ways when he attempts to steal an emerald pendant belonging to Gail Patrick, but he falls in love with the girl and remains on the straight and narrow. A pair of less sentimental crooks frame Lanyard and force him to participate in a high-stakes heist. The Lone Wolf turns the tables on the crooks and wins his lady love. Previously filmed in 1926, The Lone Wolf Returns was the first of Columbia's "B" series featuring the gentleman thief. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this adventure, a wealthy socialite falls in love and decides to stow away on her would-be lover's airplane as it takes off for China where he has been sent on a mission by his father. Unfortunately, the two are captured by revolutionaries; in order to gain their freedom, the man must promise to fly for the Chinese rebels. He does so--most acrobatically. Later he takes care of them for good. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this lively comedy, a cocky reporter follows a gangster aboard an ocean liner. While on board, the overconfident fellow mentions his purpose to a ship's manicurist with whom he's fallen in love. Later they get married and the reporter loses his job causing a fight between the newlyweds. He then decides to divorce her. Unwillingly to let the marriage die so easily, the manicurist gives a manicure to a gangster who is supposed to be dead. Her husband then reports the news, but more mix-ups occur and he is fired again. Blaming it all on his wife, he continues with his divorce proceedings until she is able to prove once and for all the illusive gangster is very much alive. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Insurance investigator Tom Fletcher (Edmund Lowe) is hot on the trail of an arsonist (please excuse the pun). He is helped along by his dedicated assistant John Grayson (Onslow Stevens), and to a lesser extent by Fire Chief Mulligan (Robert Middlemass). Because Fletcher always demands a huge fee for his services, he finds himself one of the suspects in this latest rash of deliberate fires. A surprise plot-twist puts Fletcher and heroine Adrienne Martin (Ann Sothern) on the scent of the real firebug. This modest Columbia production was distinguished by several spectacular conflagrations, all of which quickly found their way into the studio's stock-footage files. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Taking a break from westerns during the 1933-34 season, Colonel Tim McCoy was starred in such Columbia "easterners" as Straightaway. McCoy is cast as a daring racecar driver, hell-bound for the Indy 500. The villains contrive to frame our hero from murder, going so far as to fix the "guilty" verdict should McCoy's brother win the Big Race. Suffice to say that our hero manages to extricate himself from this dilemma and drive to victory, with heroine Sue Carol cheering him on. None of Tim McCoy's modern-dress actioners were terribly successful, which is why he was back in the saddle by the fall of 1934. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A rather weak entry in Tim McCoy's Columbia oeuvre, this Western was released to smaller venues in December of 1934, but not widely shown until 1936. McCoy, a rather stolid type of cowboy hero, is rather miscast as a rodeo performer competing for the affection of Juanita Barnes (Marion Shilling) with Bob Lockhart (Joe Sawyer). Juanita chooses the latter, but comes to regret her decision when she discovers that she really loves Tim. Meanwhile, Tim's father, Zack (Edward J. LeSaint), is killed by the rodeo rider's horse, Midnight. With his inheritance, Tim buys the ranch next to Senator Lockhart (John H. Dilson), Bob's father, and has a run-in with Lockhart's crooked foreman, Wallace (Hooper Atchley). There is a fight during which Bob is badly injured. Tim is arrested but escapes with the assistance of Uncle Ben, an old family retainer (Harry Todd). Together, they learn that Zack's death was no accident, and that the sheriff (Albert J. Smith) may be implicated. After the climactic shootout, Bob's name is cleared, the villains apprehended, and Tim free to pursue a future with Juanita. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

This third entry in Columbia's "Inspector Trent" series is cleverly (and economically) set in a movie studio. A malevolent leading lady (Gail Patrick) is murdered while filming a scene, whereupon the nervous studio head calls in Inspector Trent (Ralph Bellamy). Since everybody on the lot despised the victim, there's a surplus of suspects -- among them nominal romantic leads Shirley Grey and Kane Richmond and future director Vincent Sherman. The key to the solution is a booby-trapped camera, a gimmick that strains the audience's credulity but which works well within the film's framework. Among the film's highlights is a nightclub scene in which a bit player, who later became famous as mentalist Norvelle, predicts Trent's future (and he's right!) Crime of Helen Stanley was remade four years later as Who Killed Gail Preston, with Rita Hayworth as the unfortunate title character. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tom Mix goes up against a ruthless gang of rustlers headed by a crooked army colonel in this, his penultimate Western for Universal. When a vigilante group assembled by Colonel Charles Ormsby (John St. Polis) fails to make a dent in the rustlings -- primarily because Ormsby and the local sheriff (Frank Brownlee) are the secret leaders of the gang -- rancher Tom Munroe (Mix) is assigned by the governor of Arizona to look into things. With the help of local cowboy Lucky Dawson (Raymond Hatton), Tom discovers that young rancher Bernie "Little Casino" Laird (Arthur Rankin), the weakling brother of Norma Laird (Naomi Judge), is secretly a member of the gang. When the rustlers turn to robbing the stage, Mix manages to arrest Bernie and two henchmen (Francis McDonald and Robert Kortman), but all three are freed from jail by Ormsby. During a climactic shootout at the Laird ranch, young Bernie reveals that Ormsby and the sheriff are crooked and the entire gang is rounded up and arrested. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide