Georges Renavent Movies

Republic's Secrets of Monte Carlo stars Warren Douglas as vacationing American businessman Bill Whitfield. In a twinkling, Whitfield finds himself in the middle of a search for an Arab potentate's missing jewels. In two twinklings, he is accused of stealing the gems. Susan Reeves (Lois Hall), the sister of detective Charles Reeves (Robin Hughes), comes to Whitfield's defense. Though inexpensively produced, Secrets of Monte Carlo is an effective suspenser, with Republic's back lot standing in admirably as Southern Europe. Another plus: a formidable array of villains, headed by the glamorous June Vincent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Producer Hal Wallis evidently hoped to recapture the magic of his earlier Casablanca with 1949's Rope of Sand. To that end, he hired three of Casablanca's supporting players: Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, and Peter Lorre. This time, Henreid is the villain, a sadistic police inspector named Paul Vogel. Stationed somewhere in Africa, Vogel hopes to find a legendary lost diamond field. His principal rival in this endeavor is jewel thief Mike Davis (Burt Lancaster), who continues bouncing back from every death trap lain for him by the ill-tempered Vogel. The scenes in which Davis is subjected to various physical tortures is pretty raw for a 1940s film. Claude Rains co-stars as a diamond syndicate head misleadingly named Toady, while Peter Lorre does his shifty-mercenary act. Billed ninth as the nominal heroine is Hal Wallis' latest discovery, French actress/singer Corinne Calvet. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Horror films were not Republic Pictures' forte, as one can see while watching the stylish but pedestrian Catman of Paris. Carl Esmond stars as Charles Reigner, an amnesia victim who may or may not be fiendish "Catman" who has been cutting a homicial swath throughout Gay Paree. Essentially a Jeckyll-Hyde story, the film borrows a page from Oscar Wilde's anco 7 Argentina's first 1946 release, Christina stars screen favorite Zully Moreno as the title character. It's the old saw about the country lass who finds herself cast adrift in the Big City. She finds brief happiness in the arms of wealthy Esteban Serador, but he turns out to be a cad and a bounder. To no one's surprise, Moreno is rescued by hometown sweetheart Alberto Closas, who has remained faithful through it all. Very standard stuff, Christina coasts by on the appeal of Zully Moreno, who seems much too intelligent to be mouthing the inane dialogue she is given. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

William Powell plays a cynical con man who graduates from penny-ante operations to a big-time charity racket. The scam involves collecting money on behalf of St. Dismas, bringing Powell in close contact with several men of the cloth. As the racket rolls on, Powell is touched by the sincerity of the religious men and the plights of the charity's rightful recipients. He has a change of heart, confessing his original criminal intentions but seeing to it that the money goes to the right people. Hoodlum Saint was typical of the facile religiosity often found in MGM pictures of the period. The film is best remembered as the first non-aquatic performance of MGM swimming star Esther Williams. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Johnny Weissmuller's ninth Tarzan film is based on an interesting script by Carroll Young. Tarzan, Jane (Brenda Joyce), their son Boy (Johnny Sheffield), and faithful sidekick Cheta the Chimp stumble upon an entire village in which a peaceful tribe has been wiped out by what looks like murderous leopards. Investigating further, Tarzan confronts Lea (Acquanetta), the queen of a ruthless secret cult of cat people who wear iron claws. It is she who was responsible for the murders, and her followers capture Tarzan, Jane and Boy, and prepare to offer them as sacrifices to their feline dieties. Cheta is their only hope for escape. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Doctor Charles Korvin walks out on his musician wife Merle Oberon when he suspects her of infidelity. Twelve years later their paths cross again; Oberon is now saddled with an abusive husband. Possessed of a protective instinct that he hadn't evinced in the first part of the film, Korvin rescues his ex-wife from her miserable marriage, and the two fall in love all over again. Based on a play by Luigi Pirandello (no, it wasn't called Two Characters in Search of a Movie, This Love is Ours is worth watching only when supporting player Claude Rains is on the scene. The 1956 remake Never Say Goodbye was no improvement, not even with Rock Hudson taking over from the stolid Charles Korvin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay was based on the lighthearted joint autobiography of actress Cornelia Otis Skinner and humorist Emily Kimbrough. Gail Russell and Diana Lynn star respectively as Cornelia and Emily, two innocent but fun-loving young girls at loose in the Roaring 20s. The story concerns the girls' first trip abroad to London and Paris, and the various misadventures encountered therein. The more amusing moments involve a pair of rabbit-skin capes that begin shedding at the most inopportune moments, and a lengthy episode in which the girls are stranded atop Notre Dame Cathedral at midnight. And of course there's romance, in the form of handsome young doctor Tom Newhall (Bill Edwards) and college "Lothario" Avery Moore (James Brown). Also appearing are Charlie Ruggles as Cornelia's actor-father Otis Skinner and Dorothy Gish (whose talkie film appearances were sadly infrequent) as Mrs. Skinner. So well-received was Our Hearts Were Young and Gay that Paramount commissioned a 1946 sequel, Our Hearts Were Growing Up . ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of Hollywood's favorite film titles (next to Never a Dull Moment and The Man Who Dared) is given another go-round with 1944's Till We Meet Again. Ray Milland stars as an American combat pilot forced to crash-land in occupied France. He is sheltered by nun Barbara Britton, who finds herself attracted to the brash flyboy. Britton poses as Milland's wife when the twosome becomes involved with the activities of the French underground. This being a 1944 film, it wouldn't do for Britton to renounce her vows in favor of connubial bliss, so someone (guess who?) has to conveniently die before the climax of Till We Meet Again. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The popular operetta by Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II enjoyed its second screen adaptation with this film, which added four new songs and updated the story to World War II. Paul Hudson (Dennis Morgan), an American veteran of the Spanish Civil War, makes his living playing piano in a Morocco nightclub; in his spare time, he romances Margot (Irene Manning), the club's featured singer. Caid Yousseff (Victor Francen) is a Moroccan in cahoots with the Nazis who is trying to win the support of a local gang called the Riffs, even though they're under the control of the French. The Riffs are led by El Khobar, a masked do-gooder who wants to persuade Col. Fontaine (Bruce Cabot) that the Riffs deserve their independence; if it is granted, he promises that they will gladly fight against the Nazis. What Fontaine doesn't know is that El Khobar and Paul Hudson are actually the same person. The Desert Song received an Oscar for Art Direction and was much praised for its beautiful color cinematography. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

More so than most wartime films, Mission to Moscow must be viewed within the context of its times. Requested by President Roosevelt to make a film supportive of America's Russian allies, Warner Bros. turned to the memoirs of Ambassador Joseph H. Davies, who spent several years prior to WWII in the Soviet Union. As played by Walter Huston, Davies is a pillar of incorruptable integrity, reporting the facts "as I saw them" (only in later years was Davies revealed to be something less than a paragon of virtue who was willing to alter opinions for political, personal and financial expedience). Sent to Moscow by FDR as a means of finding out if Russia is a potentially trustworthy ally in case of war, Davies and his family are given the royal treatment by the Commissars, who display the social, technological, agricultural and artistic advances made under the Stalin regime. Invariably, the Russian citizens are shown to be singing, smiling, freedom-loving rugged individuals-in contrast to the Nazis, who are depicted as humorless automatons. In its efforts to present the USSR in the best possible light, the film glosses over the notorious Purge Trials of 1937, presenting the trials as scrupulously fair and the defendants as unabashed traitors to the Soviet cause. At one point, Russia's annexation of Finland in 1939 is "justified" by Davies' explanation that the Soviets merely wanted to protect their tiny neighbor from Nazi domination! It is unfair to label Mission to Moscow as Communistic or even left-wing, since it was merely parroting the official party line vis-a-vis US/Soviet relations in 1943. Even so, screenwriter Howard Koch found it very difficult to get film work after the war because of his contributions to this "Pinko" project (conversely, Jack Warner pulled a Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of the matter by insisting that he was strongarmed into making the film). Seen objectively, Mission to Moscow is top-rank entertainment, superbly and excitingly assembled in the manner typical of Warners and director Michael Curtiz. The huge cast includes Gene Lockhart as Molotov, attorney Dudley Field Malone as Winston Churchill, Maynart Kippen as a benign, pipe-smoking Stalin, Charles Trowbridge as Secretary Cordell Hull, Leigh Whipper as Hailie Selassie, Georges Renavent as Anthony Eden and Alex Chirva as Pierre Laval, along with the more familiar faces of Ann Harding (as Mrs. Davies), George Tobias, Eleanor Parker, Moroni Olsen, Minor Watson, Jerome Cowan, Duncan Renaldo, Mike Mazurki, Frank Faylen, Edward van Sloan, Louis-Jean Heydt, Monte Blue, Robert Shayne and even Sid (sic) Charisse. Original prints of Mission to Moscow include a 6-minute prologue delivered by the real Joseph Davies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The final pairing of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, an adaptation of a Rodgers & Hart musical, stars Eddy as a playboy who fantasizes that he is romancing an angel (MacDonald). ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

One of the best serials ever made, Spy Smasher has managed to find favor even among non-serial aficionados. Like his fellow masked avenger, Batman, Spy Smasher possessed no super-human powers but was a mere mortal of flesh and blood. In brief, Spy Smasher, alias Alan Armstrong (Kane Richmond, and his twin brother Jack (also Richmond) pursue a nefarious German agent known only as The Mask (Hans Schumm). Witney and screenwriters Ronald Davidson, Norman S. Hall, Joseph Poland, William Lively and Joseph O'Donnell imbued their hero with a dark uniform very similar to the one he wore in the comics, but added a fancy belt decorated with a large "V" for "Victory" and the morse code symbol for the letter, three dots and a dash. The coup de grace, so to speak, was Mort Glickman's signature score adapted from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Leading man Richmond managed to make his identical twins a little less identical than the usual routine split-screen characterizations and the character of Jack Armstrong, the All-American boy, was actively mourned when killed off in chapter eleven, "Hero's Death," in perhaps the most unique chapter ending in the history of serialdom. Kane Richmond, who had been around Hollywood's action studios since 1930 and had even appeared as a Martian in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938), became a major genre icon on account of his stellar performance as the Spy Smasher. Borrowed from Columbia Pictures, flaxen-haired Howard Hughes discovery Marguerite Chapman proved one of the best purveyor's of serial pulchritude thus far as Jack Armstrong's imperiled fiancee Eve Corby, and Tristram Coffin, later a serial hero himself, was capital as Drake, The Mask's chief henchman who manage to insinuate himself as Jack's friend. The subsequent feature release Spy Smasher Returns constituted not a sequel but an edited-down version of this serial. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide