Elaine Riley Movies

Reporters Clark (George Reeves), Lois (Noel Neill) and Jimmy (Jack Larson) venture onto a Nevada atomic testing site in hopes of interviewing scientist Dr. Latislav (Raskin Ben-Ari), who has exiled himself from the rest of humanity after being exposed to radioactivity. Meanwhile, a pair of enemy spies are planning to kidnap Latislav and liquidate the reporters. Worse still: The Army has scheduled an atomic blast on the very site when Latislav, the spies and our heroes are squirreled away. Can Superman rescue everyone from annihilation before it is--shudder--too late? ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this thriller, a mentally unstable ex-GI escapes from the mental ward and goes searching for his ex-wife who only recently divorced him. The man is not dangerous; he just wants to talk to her. Meanwhile the woman is murdered by her lover, a married man, because she is pregnant with his child. The fugitive soldier is framed for the murder. He escapes, finds the real killer and gets his revenge. Fortunately, a clever police lieutenant also figures out the murderer's identity and gets there in time to save the soldier from killing him. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Wayne Morris' B-western series was the last of its kind to be produced in Hollywood. Texas Bad Man casts Morris as a sheriff who happens to be the son of inveterate thief Frank Ferguson. Knowing full well that Ferguson's gang intends to steal a shipment of gold, Morris must stay up nights trying to second-guess his crafty dad. While there's no shortage of action, the resolution to the story relies more on brawn than brain. Western "regulars" Sheb Wooley, Myron Healey and Denver Pyle do their usual in secondary roles, as does Elaine Riley as the requisite (but hardly crucial) heroine. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Steel Town top-bills Ann Sheridan, but the bulk of the story is carried by John Lund. Cast as Steve Kostane, the nephew of a steel-plant proprietor, Lund must prove his value to by learning the business from the ground up as a steelworker. It isn't easy: throughout the film, Kostane is weighed down by personal problems that threaten to overwhelm him -- and to financially ruin the little steel town where he works. Sheridan does her usual competent job as "Red" McNamera, the down-to-earth restaurant cashier who ends up the romantic bone of contention between Kostane and veteran open-hearth worker Jim Denko (Howard Duff). A heart-pounding climax finds Kostane rescuing Red 's father (William Harrigan) from a horrible fate. Steel Town was lensed on location at California's Kaiser-Fontana steel plant. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Hills of Utah casts Gene Autry as a frontier doctor with a predilection for singing. A recent med-school graduate, Autry sets up practice in the midst of a long-standing feud between cattlemen and miners. While patching up the participants of the feud, Gene searches every nook and cranny for the man who murdered his father. Along the way, our hero is himself wrongly accused of murder, but of course the actual culprit is the same villain he's been looking for. Autry's usual leading lady Gail Davis must have been busy elsewhere, inasmuch as Elaine Riley fulfills the heroine duties this time out. For no real reason other than to satiate the demands of his fans, Gene Autry renders his top 10 hit "Peter Cottontail" halfway through the proceedings. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Faith Domergue, the latest of Howard Hughes' protegees, made her film debut in 1950's Where Danger Lives. Domergue plays Margo Lannington the wife of Frederick Lannington (Claude Rains), an elderly millionaire possessed of a sadistic streak. Robert Mitchum co-stars as Jeff Cameron, a poor soul who falls in love with Margo without knowing that she's married. During a violent confrontation with the jealous Frederick, Cameron knocks the older man out and stumbles out of the room. Upon his return, he discovers that Frederick is dead. Margo had smothered her husband during Cameron's absence, but she insists that Cameron is the killer. The desperate lovers flee to Mexico, where Cameron at long last discovers that his travelling companion is more than a little unhinged. Masterfully directed by John Farrow, Where Danger Lives might have been one of the classic "film noirs," were it not for the acting deficiencies of Faith Domergue, who flounders in a role that Jane Greer could have played blindfolded. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

"This town ain't big enough to hold both of us," saloon owner Dink Davis (Cliff Clark) tells his new rival Steve Mawson (John Phillips) in the opening of this lighthearted Hopalong Cassidy Western. Schoolmarm Lucy Abbott (Anne O'Neal) couldn't agree more; in fact, the spinsterish teacher is outraged that Mawson is establishing his den of inequity more or less in her own backyard and decides to take matters into her own hands. But before she can do much more than hurl a couple of apples through the barroom window, Miss Abbott finds herself the victim of a gang of kidnapping thugs. "I'll box your ears," the aggrieved school mistress promises her abductors, all of whom used to be her pupils. Back in town, Mawson appears the most likely suspect of this newest outrage, but Hoppy (William Boyd) has his doubts. With California Carlson (Andy Clyde) left behind as a substitute teacher, Cassidy and sidekick Lucky Jenkins (Rand Brooks) do a little digging and come up with a most surprising result. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

John Farrow's movie adaptation of Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, based on a screenplay by Jonathan Latimer (and produced by future James Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum), is a near-perfect match for the book, telling in generally superb visual style a tale set against the backdrop of upscale 1940s New York and offering an early (but accurate) depiction of the modern media industry. Told in the back-to-front fashion typical of film noir, it opens with George Stroud (Ray Milland) trapped, his life in danger, his survival measured in the minute-by-minute movements of the huge central clock of the office building where he's hiding. In flashback we learn that Stroud works for media baron Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), loosely based on Henry Luce, as the editor of Crimeways magazine. Janoth is a manipulative, self-centered megalomaniac with various obsessions, including clocks; among other manifestations of the latter fixation, the skyscraper housing his empire's headquarters has as one of its central features a huge clock that reads out the time around the world down to the second.

Twenty-four hours earlier, on the eve of a combined honeymoon/vacation with his wife, Georgia (Maureen O'Sullivan), that has been put off for seven years, Stroud was ordered by Janoth to cancel the trip in order to work on a special project, and he resigned. As the narrative picks up speed, in his depression, Stroud misses the train his wife is on and crosses paths with Pauline York (Rita Johnson), a former model for Janoth's Styleways magazine, who is also Janoth's very unhappy mistress, and the two commiserate by getting drunk together in a night on the town. While hurriedly leaving Pauline's apartment, he glimpses Janoth entering. Janoth and York quarrel, and the publisher kills her in a jealous rage, using a sundial that she and Stroud picked up the night before while wandering around in their revels. Janoth and his general manager, Steve Hagen (George Macready), contrive to pin the murder on the man that Janoth glimpsed leaving York's apartment, whom he thinks was named Jefferson Randolph -- the name Stroud was drunkenly bandying about the night before. He gets Stroud back to Crimeways to lead the magazine's investigators in hunting down "Jefferson Randolph," never realizing that this was Stroud. And Stroud has no choice but to return, desperately trying to gather evidence against Janoth and, in turn, prevent the clues gathered by the Crimeways staff from leading back to him. The two play this clever, disjointed game of cat-and-mouse, Janoth and Hagen planting evidence that will hang "Randolph" (and justify his being shot while trying to escape), while Stroud, knowing what they don't about how close the man they seek to destroy is, arranges to obscure those clues and, in a comical twist, sends the least capable reporters and investigators to follow up on the most substantial clues.

Janoth sometimes seems to be unraveling at the frustrating pace and lack of conclusion to the hunt, but Stroud can't escape the inevitable, or the moments of weakness caused by fear and his own guilt over his near-unfaithfulness to his wife or the inscrutable gaze of Janoth's mute bodyguard Bill Womack (Harry Morgan), a stone-cold killer dedicated to protecting his employer. The trail of proof and guilt winds ever tighter around both men, taking some odd twists courtesy of the eccentric artist (Elsa Lanchester) who has seen the suspect. Milland is perfect in the role of the hapless Stroud, and Laughton is brilliant as the vain, self-centered Janoth, but George Macready is equally good as Hagen, his smooth, upper-crust Waspy smarminess making one's skin crawl. Also worth noting is Harry Morgan's sinister, silent performance as Womack, and sharp-eyed viewers will also recognize such performers as Douglas Spencer, Noel Neill (especially memorable as a tart-tongued elevator operator), Margaret Field (Sally's mother), Ruth Roman, and Lane Chandler in small roles. Additionally, the Janoth Publications building where most of the action takes place is almost a cast member in itself, an art deco wonder, especially the room housing the clock mechanism and the lobby and vestibules, all loosely inspired by such structures as the Empire State Building and the real-life Daily News headquarters on East 42nd Street. This film was later remade as No Way Out. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Cary Grant met his future wife Betsy Drake on the set of the appropriately titled Every Girl Should be Married. Grant plays well-known baby specialist Madison Brown, who is Dr. Spock in everything but name. After a chance meeting with headstrong young Anabel Sins (Drake), poor Brown finds his every move and thought monitored by Anabel, who intends to become his wife come heck or high water. Upset that Brown steadfastly resists her charms, Anabel decides to make him jealous by playing up to her boss Roger Sanford (Franchot Tone). When Brown still won't bite, our plucky heroine mounts a campaign enlisting everybody in town to wear down the doctor's resistance. Nowadays, this is called "stalking"; in 1948, it was called "funny." Produced, directed and written by Don Hartman, Every Girl Should be Married was a box-office winner to the tune of $775,000. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This story of two young hopefuls who come to Hollywood is merely a thin device to feature almost every star working for Paramount Studios in 1947. Mary Hatcher plays Catherine Brown, a woman of humble origins who arrives in Hollywood, where she meets another wanna-be movie star, Amber La Vonne (Olga San Juan). They work their way through the Paramount studios, trying to impress every important person. Mostly, the film is a cavalcade of songs by various stars that take place at several studio and Hollywood locations, including the famous Brown Derby restaurant. Many of the film's songs were written by Frank Loesser. Dorothy Lamour and Alan Ladd sing "Tallahassee"; Bing Crosby and Bob Hope play golf and sing a duet, "Harmony"; the Original Dixieland Jazz Band plays "Tiger Rag"; and a host of other top performers of the era appear in brief cameos. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

After a two-year absence, the "Hopalong Cassidy" western series returned with The Devil's Playground. William Boyd, now executive-producer of the series, returns as Hoppy, with Andy Clyde as California Carson and Rand Brooks as Lucky Jenkins. More plot-oriented than earlier Cassidy efforts, Devil's Playground finds our three heroes coming to the rescue of widowed Mrs. Evans (Elaine Riley). The villain of the piece is Judge Morton (Robert Elliot), who hopes to force the heroine off her property for reasons unknown. Hoppy uncovers Morton's motivations and saves the day, but not without putting up one whale of a good fight. While Devil's Playground upheld the standard set by the previous "Hopalong Cassidy" films, the quality of the series would gradually deteriorate during the next eleven installments. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A journalist for a popular travel magazine goes looking for interesting stories in Latin America and finds love instead in this colorful musical. The love angle comes from her fiance who lives there, and from the dashing photographer who accompanies her. Included are many South American acts including flamenco dancers Rosario and Antonio. Songs include: "Ba-Ba-Lu" (Bob Russell, Marguerita Lecuna), "Stars in Your Eyes", "La Morine de Mi Copla" (Gabriel Ruiz, Mort Greene), "Rhumba Matumba" (Bobby Collazo, Greene), "Guadalajara" (Pepe Guizar, Greene), "Negra Leona" (A. Fernandez, Greene), and "Baramba" (Margarita Lecuona, Greene). ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

What a Blonde gets under way when wealthy lingerie manufacturer Fowler (Leon Errol) runs out of valuable gas-ration coupons. Knowing that he can secure additional coupons if he forms a car pool, Fowler orders his butler Pomeroy (Richard Lane) to seek out a few "riders." Pomeroy returns with a group of brassy showgirls, headed by boisterous blonde Pat (Veda Ann Borg). In the fine tradition of RKO Radio's Leon Errol 2-reelers, Fowler is saddled with a jealous wife (Lydia Bilbrook) who looks askance when her husband piles into his car with a bevy of gorgeous girls. Hardly the "mirthquake" advertised by the studio, What a Blonde is still an enjoyable time-killer. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi