Ruth Robinson Movies

Damon Runyon's story "Little Miss Marker" gets a mid-'60s update in this comedy. Steve McCluskey (Tony Curtis) is the manager of a nightspot in Lake Tahoe owned by Bernie Friedman (Phil Silvers). Steve is the kind of guy who has heard every sob story in the book and is not easily impressed, but his hard heart begins to soften a bit when he meets Penny Piper (Claire Wilcox), a young orphan girl with no one to turn to and nowhere to go. Steve grudgingly takes her in and soon grows fond of the tyke. Penny thinks that Steve needs to get married and settle down, so she starts playing Cupid, trying to set him up with pretty Chris Lockwood (Suzanne Pleshette). However, Steve is still reeling from his failed first marriage and isn't so sure that another trip to the altar would be good for him. The film's finale sends Steve on a wild chase through Disneyland. Forty Pounds of Trouble marked the feature directorial debut of Norman Jewison, who would go on to make In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof, and Jesus Christ Superstar. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The Search for Bridey Murphy was inspired by the purportedly true story of a Colorado housewife named Virginia Tighe, who while under hypnosis insisted that she'd lived a previous life as an 18th century Irish housemaid named Bridey Murphy. The hypnosis sessions were conducted under the supervision of Dr. Morey Bernstein, who later wrote a book on the subject. This hastily assembled filmization of Dr. Bernstein's book stars Teresa Wright as Ruth Simmons (Ms. Tighe's pseudonym) and Louis Hayward as Bernstein. Except for the "astral world" sequences, Search for Bridey Murphy adopts a semi-documentary approach, often to the point of tedium. Bridey Murphy herself is portrayed at various ages by Teresa Wright, Ruth Robinson, Denise Freeborn and Hallene Hill. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Secret Fury works best if one is willing to suspend one's disbelief from the outset. Claudette Colbert stars as Ellen, a famed concert pianist who, on the day of her wedding, is accosted by a stranger who insists that she's already married to someone else. Ellen is willing to laugh this off, until the stranger produces witnesses, records and the justice of the piece. Has Ellen lost her mind, or is she merely the victim of an elaborate scam. With the help of fiancé David (Robert Ryan), Our Heroine begins her own investigation -- and ends up accused of murder and shunted off to a mental institution. And the story isn't over yet! Featured in a pivotal role is future I Love Lucy co-star Vivian Vance, who'd previously worked in an L.A. theatre company with Secret Fury-director Mel Ferrer. For reasons best known to himself, Willard Parker, a fairly well-known film actor in 1950, appears unbilled. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Though he doesn't know it at first, industrialist Walter Williams (Brian Donlevy) shouldn't trust his wife Irene (Helen Walker) any farther than he can throw her. Irene schemes with her lover Jim Torrance (Tony Barrett) to kill Walter in an "accidental" car crash. The plan fails, and it is Jim who is killed. When it develops that he is assumed to have also died in the accident, Walter changes his name and heads to a small town where no one knows him. Here he starts life all over again as a humble garage mechanic, falling in love with his boss Marsha Peters (Ella Raines) in the process. Disaster looms when detective Quincy (Charles Coburn) comes sniffing around; it seems that Lt. Quincy suspects the incognito Williams of murdering Torrance. To reveal any more would be giving the game away. Impact co-stars longtime favorite Anna May Wong, making her first screen appearance since 1942. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The "He" of the title is Richard Basehart, a clever but psychopathic burglar (based on real-life criminal Erwin Walker) Basehart stays one step ahead of the law by listening in to the police band on his radio. To avoid detection, he changes his M.O. on each crime, making it seem that the string of burglaries is the work of several thieves. But Basehart trips himself up when he kills a cop. His own personal Waterloo occurs in the Los Angeles sewer system--a stylish predecessor to the similar (and more widely praised) climax in Sir Carol Reed's The Third Man. Though the direction is credited to Hollywood old-timer Alfred Werker, most of He Walked By Night is the handiwork of an uncredited Anthony Mann. Featured in the film's cast is Jack Webb in the small role of a police lab technician. Impressed by first-hand experience with police procedure and by the semi-documentary quality of He Walked By Night Webb expanded on these elements for his own radio and TV project, Dragnet. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this murder mystery, a man goes into a bar and begins telling his story to the bartender. His tale is depicted in flashback. It all began while he was romancing a young woman. The trouble began when her twin sister was killed and stuffed into an incinerator. The three prime suspects were the girl's boyfriend, a spurned lover, and the storyteller. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

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, Rovi

In this comedy, a bookish kid sister reads a psychology book and comes to believe that, according to the book, she is finally "grown up." To demonstrate her new maturity she begins chasing her big sister's fiance. She then winds up locked in her room during a party held in the fiance's honor. She manages to escape and begins impersonating a maid. She soon meets a handsome burglar who mistakenly believes that she is a moll. They end up attempting to burgle the fiance's home. Mayhem ensues until the young girl finally manages to steal the fiance's heart for herself. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Yankee Doodle Dandy is no more the true-life story of George M. Cohan than The Jolson Story was the unvarnished truth about Al Jolson -- but who the heck cares? Dandy has song, dance, pathos, pageantry, uproarious comedy, and, best of all, James Cagney at his Oscar-winning best. After several failed attempts to bring the life of legendary, flag-waving song-and-dance man Cohan to the screen, Warners scenarist Robert Buckner opted for the anecdotal approach, unifying the film's largely unrelated episodes with a flashback framework. Summoned to the White House by President Roosevelt, the aging Cohan is encouraged to relate the events leading up to this momentous occasion. He recalls his birth on the Fourth of July, 1878; his early years as a cocky child performer in his family's vaudeville act; his decision to go out as a "single"; his sealed-with-a-handshake partnership with writer/producer Sam Harris (Richard Whorf); his first Broadway success, 1903's Little Johnny Jones; his blissful marriage to winsome wife Mary (a fictional amalgam of Cohan's two wives, played by Joan Leslie -- who, incredibly, was only 17 at the time); his patriotic civilian activities during World War I, culminating with his writing of that conflict's unofficial anthem "Over There" (performed by Nora Bayes, as played by Frances Langford); the deaths of his sister, Josie (played by Cagney's real-life sister Jeanne), his mother, Nellie (Rosemary DeCamp), and his father, Jerry (Walter Huston); his abortive attempt to retire; and his triumphant return to Broadway in Rodgers & Hart's I'd Rather Be Right.

His story told, Cohan is surprised -- and profoundly moved -- when FDR presents him with the Congressional Medal of Honor, the first such honor bestowed upon an entertainer. His eyes welling up with tears, Cohan expresses his gratitude by invoking his old vaudeville curtain speech: "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you." Glossing over such unsavory moments in Cohan's life as his bitter opposition of the formation of Actor's Equity -- not to mention George M.'s intense hatred of FDR! -- Yankee Doodle Dandy offers the George M. Cohan that people in 1942 wanted to see (proof of the pudding was the film's five-million-dollar gross). And besides, the plot and its fabrications were secondary to those marvelous Cohan melodies -- "Give My Regards to Broadway," "Harrigan," "Mary," "You're a Grand Old Flag," "45 Minutes from Broadway," and the title tune -- performed with brio by Cagney (who modifies his own loose-limbed dancing style in order to imitate Cohan's inimitable stiff-legged technique) and the rest of the spirited cast. Beyond its leading players, movie buffs will have a ball spotting the myriad of familiar character actors parading before the screen: S.Z. Sakall, George Tobias, Walter Catlett, George Barbier, Eddie Foy Jr. (playing his own father), Frank Faylen, Minor Watson, Tom Dugan, John Hamilton, and on and on and on. In addition to Cagney, music directors Ray Heindorf and Heinz Roemheld also won Oscars for their efforts. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

With its slight resemblance to Destry Rides Again (1939) -- probably not entirely coincidental -- this rousing Western from Republic Pictures remains a joy throughout. John Wayne plays Tom Craig, a mild-mannered druggist from Boston who opens a shop in wild and woolly Sacramento shortly before the Gold Rush. The town is "owned" by the Dawson brothers, Britt (Albert Dekker) and Joe (Dick Purcell), who poison Craig's tonic when saloon hostess Lacey Miller (Binnie Barnes) takes too much of an interest in the handsome newcomer. Town drunk Whitey (Emmett Lynn) has one drink too many, and all of Sacramento is soon in a lynching mood. The news of "gold in them thar hills" saves the druggist in the nick of time, but his business is destroyed. While everyone is heading for the gold fields, Craig prepares to leave town with snobbish debutante Ellen Sanford (Helen Parrish), whom he intends to marry. News of typhoid fever among the prospectors changes his mind, however, and the man once referred to as "a human hitchin' post instead of a two-legged man," risks his own life to save the suffering populace. The Dawson brothers, meanwhile, plan to hijack the medical supplies and sell them to the highest bidder, but when Britt Dawson learns that Lacey is helping the sick and may be stricken with the disease herself, he has a change of heart and eventually confesses to spiking Craig's medicine. Cast against type for most of the film, John Wayne fails to make his amiable druggist entirely believable but remains simply John Wayne throughout -- which is as it should be. Binnie Barnes is rowdy and fun whether leading a chorus of "California Joe" by Johnny Marvin and Fred Rose, or jealously interrupting a tête-à-tête between Wayne and 19-year-old Helen Parrish. Usually cast as glacial "other women" in Hollywood films, the British-born Barnes had actually begun her professional career touring Europe and South Africa with bucolic American headliner Tex McLeod, which was as good a preparation as any to play In Old California's saloon belle. Patsy Kelly, who shoots down her laundry with a Winchester, and Edgar Kennedy, as Wayne's tooth-ache plagued sidekick, add to the general fun. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

The illustrious National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan provides the backdrop for this musical that chronicles the ups and downs of overseeing such an establishment. The story centers on a young burlesque singer who is discovered and taken to the camp. At first the uncultured girl rebels against the many rules of the camp, but eventually she settles down and sets to work. Trouble for the camp ensues when a negative newspaper article is published and the backers for the camp withdraw their support. To save the place, the young singer stages a benefit performance. She has by then become an opera diva and succeeds in saving the day. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Like 1940's Melody Ranch, the 1941 Gene Autry vehicle Down Mexico Way was designed as a "special", to be promoted separately from Autry's regular B-western series as an A-picture attraction. The story gets under way when a pair of con artists, Gibson (Sidney Blackmer) and Allen (Joe Sawyer), breeze into the town of Sage City claiming to be movie producers. The two scoundrels promise to film a movie in the little burg on the condition that the townsfolk pony up the necessary production fees. When Gene Autry and his sidekick Frog (Smiley Burnette) catch up with Gibson and Allen, the two huckster head across the border into Mexico-a big mistake, since reformed bandit Pancho Grande (Harold Huber) and his amigos don't cotton to being swindled. In addition to the expected musical interludes from Gene Autry, Down Mexico Way includes several Latino numbers, courtesy of the Herrera Sisters. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Corsican Brothers is based on theDumas novel about "psychic" twins--one feels the pain and experiences the thoughts of the other. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays both Mario and Lucien, siblings separated at birth because of a long-standing feud between various factions of their family. One twin is raised to be evil, the other to be good. In adulthood, the brothers become bitter enemies, not only because of family and political pressures but also because they both fall in love with the beautiful Isabelle (Ruth Warrick). Eventually, however, one twin gives up his life for the sake of the other during a climactic battle with tyrannical Corsican ruler Colonna (Akim Tamiroff). Produced on a virtual shoestring by Edward Small, The Corsican Brothers cannot rely on clever optical effects to convey the idea that Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is two people (some of the process work is embarrassing); instead, Fairbanks carries the story on the strength of his acting, subtly differentiating the two characters so that the audience is seldom confused as to which is which. Incidentally, the actor doubling for Fairbanks in the two-shots, his face averted from the camera, is Peter Cushing. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi