Willie Best Movies

The Saint Strikes Back was the second in the series of films featuring Simon Templay, better known as The Saint, and the first to star George Sanders in the role. Val Travers (Wendy Barrie) is the daughter of a police detective who killed himself after being dishonorably let go from the San Francisco Police Department, due to allegations that he was a member of a gang led by the mysterious criminal mastermind known only as Waldeman. Hoping to clear her father's name, Val has assembled a gang of minor criminal types to track down Waldeman, which puts her in trouble with the police. Templar crosses tracks with Val and, after hearing her story, believes that her father was framed, most likely by someone else working in the police department. Cullis, one of department's chief criminologists, dismisses this suggestion and implies that Templar might be Waldeman. Templar's investigations eventually find the real culprit and exonerates Val's father. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

In this entry in the comedy series the "Higgins Family," the group must cancel a cruise to South America after the check they needed does not arrive. To save face before their neighbors, the family embarks upon a wilderness fishing trip. The family made a wise decision to forego the cruise as the boat sinks and everyone is lost. This creates havoc for the Higgins family neighbors who believe they went down with the ship. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Goddbye Broadway is wrapped up by two stage & screen veterans, Alice Brady and Charles Winninger. The stars play vaudevillians Molly and Pat Malloy, who are suckered into investing $4000 in a ramschackle New England hotel. After a variety of predictable but amusing complications, the Malloys turn the tables on the sharpsters (Jed Prouty and Frank Jenks) who unloaded the property on them. Radio fans will enjoy seeing comedian Tommy Riggs, whose squeaky-voiced "Betty Lou" alter ego was a major airwaves attraction throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Directed by Leo McCarey's brother Raymond, Goodbye Broadway is based on James Gleason's 1927 stage comedy The Shannons of Broadway, previously filmed in 1929. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When Columbia Pictures secured the movie rights to Chic Young's popular comic strip Blondie, the studio executives probably never imagined that the ensuing "Blondie" series would last for 12 years and 28 episodes! Part of the series' charm was Columbia's wisdom in casting the ideal actors for the leading roles. Penny Singleton dyed her hair blonde to step into the role of Blondie Bumstead (after Shirley Deane bowed out due to prior committments); Arthur Lake landed the role of a lifetime as sensible Blondie's bumbling hubby Dagwood (in the original strip, of course, it was Dagwood who was sensible and Blondie who was scatterbrained); and 5-year-old Larry Simms did a masterful job as the Bumstead's son Baby Dumpling (aka Alexander), literally growing up before our eyes over the next dozen years. Not as farcical as later entries, the initial Blondie film is a gentle, even-keeled situation comedy, aiming for chuckles rather than bellylaughs. It doesn't take long for poor Dagwood to get into trouble with his apoplectic boss J. C. Dithers (wonderfully played by Jonathan Hale), who fires our hero halfway through the second reel. Ruminating over his troubles in a hotel lobby, Dagwood strikes up a friendship with affable C. P. Hazlip (Gene Lockhart), never realizing that this is the same Hazlip whose account the Dithers Construction Company has been trying to land for the past several weeks! But before a happy ending can be realized, Blondie and Dagwood undergo a series of misunderstandings, culminating with Blondie tearfully storming out of the house (which has already been stripped of its furniture by the finance company!) Blondie was an immediate hit with filmgoers and fans of the strip alike, convincing Columbia that it had a winning property on its hands and spawning sequel after sequel after sequel. Available for years only in its TV version, which obliterated the opening credits in favor of a jazzier "sitcom" opening and tacked on a few minutes of "coming attractions", Blondie has recently been restored to its original form on videotape and cable TV. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Andrea Leeds, whose career had shifted into hyperdrive after her brilliant performance in Stage Door (1937), stars in the Universal programmer Youth Takes a Fling. Leeds plays Helen Brown, a New York City department-store salesgirl who falls in love with Kansas City truckdriver Joe Meadows (Joel McCrea). Since Joe barely knows that Helen is alive, she resorts to all sorts of feminine trickery to win her man. With Helen's good buddy Jean (Dorothea Kent) and Jean's brash boyfriend Frank (Frank Jenks) helping out, poor Joe doesn't have a chance-not that he's protesting too much by fadeout time. Producer Joe Pasternak lavishes his usual top-drawer production values on Youth Takes a Fling, which might have been more entertaining had it taken a simpler course. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The low-budget football drama Saturday's Heroes is remarkably frank and timely -- at least for the first 4 reels or so. Debunking the squeaky-clean image then enjoyed by college football players, the film shows its amateur athletes betting on games, scalping tickets, and willingly accepting subsidies disguised as scholarships. But they're no worse than the college board of directors, who garner most of the football-victory profits for their own gain, all the while wrapping themselves in the cloak of respectability. When a "washed-up" young footballer who can no longer afford to remain in school commits suicide, gridiron hero Val (Van Heflin) lashes out at the sanctimonious and hypocritical faculty members. To shut Val up, his elders expel him for ticket-scalping, whereupon he teams up with honest sportswriter Red Watson (Richard Lane) to expose their hypocrisy. Enrolling at a small college cursed with a perennially losing football team, Val coaches them to victory against his alma mater. The film's refreshingly honest approach to its material falls apart about 20 minutes toward the end with the inclusion of such stock characters as toothless team trainer Andy Jones (Al St. John) and such ludicrous plot devices as Val's allowing the opposing team to score the first touchdown, just to lull them into a false sense of security. For at least 2/3 of its running time, however, Saturday's Heroes is among the best sports films of the 1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Super Sleuth stars Jack Oakie as an egotistical movie actor who specializes in detective roles. Despite the gentle remonstrations of his girl friend (Ann Sothern), Oakie fancies himself a genuine master sleuth, and in this capacity offers his services to the law in helping to solve a recent series of "poison pen" murders. In truth, Oakie is so dense that he can't figure out that the seemingly benign criminologist (Eduardo Cianelli), who supplies him technical information on his film roles, is the actual murderer. Edgar Kennedy, the real detective on the case, solves the mystery himself, but not before Oakie is nearly bumped off in the criminologist's "chamber of horrors." Super Sleuth was ineptly remade in 1946 as Genius at Work, a vehicle for RKO's prefabricated comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Professional horsewoman Ann Dvorak is the Racing Lady in this hit-and-miss romantic comedy. The story begins breaking into a trot when millionaire auto tycoon Steven Wendel (Smith Ballew) (later a movie "singing cowboy") purchases a thoroughbred horse and engages the services of Ruth Martin (Dvorak) as a trainer. She begins to fall in love with Steven, but renounces him upon discovering that his "affection" for horses is motivated by his desire for publicity. Harry Carey, no stranger to horseflesh himself, co-stars as Dvorak's crusty father. The Ann Dvorak-Smith Ballew combination in Racing Lady proved unsatisfactory, with Dvorak handily out-acting her stiff-necked co-star throughout the picture. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Meet the Missus poked fun at the contest crazes of the 1930s. Helen Broderick stars as a woman who spends every spare moment entering contests, much to the discomfort of her browbeaten hubby Victor Moore, who is left with all the housework. She finally makes the finals in the "Happy Noodles Housewives" championship. The contest rules require that Helen and Victor head for Atlantic City. Helen makes such a nuisance of herself that the judges award her the grand prize just to get rid of her. The totally unnecessary young-lover subplot in Meet the Missus was handled by Anne Shirley (as Helen and Victor's daughter) and Alan Bruce. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Having successful moved his top comedians Laurel & Hardy from short subjects to features, producer Hal Roach endeavored to do the same with the Our Gang Kids in 1936's General Spanky. Set in the South during the Civil War, the story focuses on Spanky (George "Spanky" McFarland), an orphaned shoeshine boy who works his way down the Mississippi by riverboat. After messing up the activities of crooked gambler Simmons (Irving Pichel), Spanky is forced to jump ship, along with his newfound buddy, fugitive slave child Buckwheat (Billy Thomas). The kids find shelter in the home of handsome Marshall Valiant (Phillips Holmes), who just before marching off to war instructs Spanky and Buckwheat to protect Marshall's sweetheart Louella Blanchard (Rosina Lawrence) in his absence. Taking his responsibilities seriously, Spanky forms a "home guard" consisting of Alfalfa (Carl Switzer), Porky (Eugene Lee) and several other local kids. In this capacity, they manage to fend off a clumsy Northern regiment commandeered by Spanky's old nemesis Simmons, thereby earning the lasting friendship of a kindly Yankee general (Ralph Morgan). The Civil War setting is not entirely appropriate to the antics of Our Gang, and as a result General Spanky is more peculiar than funny. The film's lukewarm box-office performance might have spelled the end of "Our Gang" had not Hal Roach's distributor, MGM, demanded that the series continue in short-subject form. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When New York police commissioner Lewis J. Valentine instructed his men that the best way to handle criminals was to "muss 'em up," he probably had no idea that he was supplying the title for this RKO Radio crime drama. It all begins when millionaire Paul Harding's (Alan Mowbray) dog is murdered. This might have merely been a case for the ASPCA, but it soon leads to a kidnapping, an exorbitant ransom demand, and a murder. Turns out that the whole plot was concocted by Nancy Harding (Molly Lamont), who's been posing as the millionaire's long-lost daughter, and by a mysterious mastermind whose identity won't be revealed here. Preston S. Foster, as New York detective Tip O'Neil, solves the case. Based on the novel The Green Shadow, Muss 'Em Up was released in Britain as The House of Fate. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Newlywed Carolyn Martin (Barbara Stanwyck) has been raised to expect the finer things in life, but these are things that can't be provided by her working-stiff husband Michael (Gene Raymond). Hoping to supplement the family coffers, Carolyn offers to take a job, but the chauvinistic Michael won't hear of it, insisting that the couple live on his measly 35 dollars per week, causing no end of trouble when wifey overextends her bank account. When millionaire Hugh McKenzie (Robert Young) enters her life, Carolyn is sorely tempted to walk out on her husband -- and, as indicated by the film's title, she does. Ultimately, however, money flies out the door when love flies back in the window. Counterpointing the marital travails of our hero and heroine is the contentious union between Mattie and Paul Dodson (Helen Broderick and Ned Sparks), who've learned to be happy while miserable. Black comic actor Willie Best is prominently billed in The Bride Walks Out, but his role was cut down to a mere walk-on. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide