May Robson Movies

The indomitable May Robson is firmly in the driver's seat of this Runyonesque comedy-drama. While riding through Central Park, peppery millionairess Mary Jane Baxter (Robson) is thrown from her carriage and rescued by three scruffy orphans (Frankie Darro, Billy Benedict, Billy Burrud). The kids take her to the home of their guardian, Italian barber Tony (Henry Armetta), with the intention of letting her recuperate. Upon awakening, Mary Jane assumes that she's been kidnapped and imperiously demands to be released. Eventually won over by her lovable young "abductors," Mary Jane is able to rise to the occasion magnificently when a real kidnapping occurs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This drama chronicles the emotionally distant relationship between a mother and her four grown children. Though they live in the same house they could not be more different. One of her sons is a conscientious provider who keeps them afloat. A different brother believes himself the greatest thespian since Barrymore. The third brother is a budding revolutionary determined to overthrow the capitalist empire. Meanwhile, the mother's daughter goes to college and returns a married woman. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Like the contemporaneous Columbia feature Party Wire, RKO Radio's Grand Old Girl paints a surprisingly bleak and cynical portrait of "respectable" small-town America. After 38 years of faithful service as a schoolteacher, Laura Bayles (May Robson) is unceremoniously fired when she challenges local gambling interests in a heated political campaign. Evidently, virtually everybody in town knows that the gamblers are corrupting their youth in the back room of the local drug store, but nobody cares. In fact, many are hostile toward Laura for blowing the whistle. Refusing to give up on her campaign, Laura ultimately brings the sordid situation to the attention of the President of the United States (Gavin Gordon), who, as luck would have it, was one of Mrs. Bayles' former pupils. Although Fred MacMurray and Mary Carlisle were borrowed from Paramount and MGM (respectively) for box office insurance, Grand Old Girl is May Robson's show all the way. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Reckless is a delightfully breezy screwball comedy from the same director (Victor Fleming) and star (Jean Harlow) responsible for the celebratedBombshell (itself a film à clef loosely based on Clara Bow) -- with the added appeal of William Powell. One can readily see the chemistry between the two stars at work, which would lead to their impending marriage at the time of Harlow's death a year later. The sets for the Broadway number that Harlow's Mona Leslie performs in are also extraordinary. Mona Leslie (Jean Harlow) is an up-and-coming Broadway actress, dancer, and singer, who leads a happy-go-lucky, freewheeling lifestyle; bailed out of jail by family friend Ned Riley (William Powell), a sports promoter who loves Mona but won't slow down his lifestyle long enough to give her the satisfaction of admitting it, she performs in a bizarre "benefit" show, only to discover that she has an audience of one, wealthy admirer Bob Harrison (Franchot Tone). He declares his love for her and a romance does develop, but when he proposes marriage, he discovers that his upper-crust set won't accept a showgirl as one of their blue-blood crowd.

Their romance leads to a marriage and desperate unhappiness for all concerned, most of all Harrison, whose basic neurotic nature gets worse as the marriage deteriorates. When Harrison takes his own life, Riley and Mona find themselves accused of every foul deed possible, and when Mona gives birth to a son, a legal battle ensues over custody of the child, with Harrison's family claiming that she is unfit. Finally, Mona decides to fight back -- she gets Harrison's family to stand down by giving up any claim to her late husband's money, but she must now contend with the nation's self-appointed moral guardians. No producer will take the risk of backing a show with Mona in it, but she finally gets a helping hand from Ned Riley. The movie has a few too many changes in tone, which detracts from the verisimilitude. The whole story is a film à clef based on the tragic romance between torch singer Libby Holman and tobacco heir Smith Reynolds (which also provided fodder for such à clef films as Brief Moment, Sing, Sinner, Sing, and Written on the Wind) -- and Harlow's singing is obviously dubbed, just as her dancing is doubled. Also, the songs -- except for the final two numbers -- don't quite fit with the melodrama, and the Damon Runyon-esque comic antics feel completely out of left field at times. But when she and Powell are onscreen together, the film just lofts into the air, past all of those flaws. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Based on John Golden's stage play Four Walls, MGM's Straight is the Way offers the monumentally miscast Franchot Tone as tough ex-convict Benny Horowitz, who announces his plans to go straight. This warms the heart of Benny's Jewish mama (May Robson), but his ex-moll Shirley (Gladys George) is unable to join in the happiness, since she is now the mistress of Italian gang boss Monk (Jack LaRue). Despite his efforts to stay out of trouble, Benny is required to bump off Monk before he can lead a clean life. Meanwhile, nominal heroine Bertha (Karen Morley), Benny's stepsister, pines away of unrequited love. The original Four Walls had starred Paul Muni, who was certainly better suited to the ethnicity of the piece than the markedly WASPish Franchot Tone. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, Dinner at Eight is a near-flawless comedy/drama with an all-star cast at the peak of their talents. Social butterfly Mrs. Oliver Jordan (Billie Burke) arranges a dinner party that will benefit the busines of her husband (Lionel Barrymore). Among the invited are a crooked executive (Wallace Beery), who is in the process of ruining Jordan; his wife (Jean Harlow), who is carrying on an affair with a doctor (Edmund Lowe); a fading matinee idol (John Barrymore), who has squandered his fortune on liquor and is romantically involved with the Jordan daughter (Madge Evans); and a venerable stage actress (Marie Dressler), who since losing all her money has become a "professional guest." Nothing goes as planned, due to various suicides, double-crosses, compromises, fatal illness, and servant problems. But dinner is served precisely at eight. The script by Herman Mankiewicz, Frances Marion, and Donald Ogden Stewart is a virtual enclyopedia of witty lines and scenes, right down to the unforgettable closing gag. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

May Robson plays Apple Annie, a slatternly Broadway apple peddler. Annie has a curious setup whereby she is able to finagle other street merchants and beggars to pony up part of their weekly earnings to her--yet she never seems to spend any of the money on herself. This is because Annie has a daughter named Louise (Jean Parker), who has been supported in luxury all her life by her mother. Louise has no idea who Annie really is; so far as she knows, her mother is Mrs. E. Worthington Manville, a Manhattan society matron. When Louise sends Annie a letter telling her that she's become engaged to a young Spanish nobleman named Carlos (Barry Norton), Annie is aghast: once Louise brings her fiance to New York, the jig will be up. Coming to the rescue is high-rolling gambler Dave the Dude (Warren William), who considers Annie his good-luck charm. With the help of his nightclub-thrush girlfriend Missouri Martin (Glenda Farrell), Dave arranges a huge society reception for Louise -- and a complete fashion makeover for Annie. To do this, a few strong-arm methods are required, notably the kidnaping of several society reporters; also, it's necessary to pass off down-and-out Judge Blake (Guy Kibbee) as Annie's well-connected husband. Lady for a Day is the film with which Frank Capra hoped to enter the Big Leagues by taking home a shelf-full of Academy Awards. His subsequent embarrassment at the 1934 Oscar ceremonies has now passed into Hollywood legend, but he made up for this debacle with his Oscars sweep for It Happened One Night. Lady for a Day was remade by Capra as 1961's Pocketful of Miracles, with Bette Davis as Apple Annie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Broadway to Hollywood is a through-the-years saga about a show business family. Frank Morgan and Alice Brady play vaudeville headliners of the 1880s whose fame is eclipsed by their son (played as a youth by Jackie Cooper, then as an adult by Russell Hardie). Morgan and Brady are reduced to bit roles in a musical starring their son and his wife (Madge Evans). Alas, Sonny spoils it all by drinking and philandering, while his wife dies in a freak accident. After Hardie is killed in World War One, Morgan and Brady raise Hardie's son, who grows from Mickey Rooney to Eddie Quillan and becomes a temperamental movie star. Grandpa Morgan gives Quillan a remonstrative on-set speech about professionalism, then drops dead as his chastened grandson goes back to work. Broadway to Hollywood is principally a showcase for several elaborate musical numbers originally filmed for MGM's abandoned 1930 extravaganza The March of Time. While the plotline veers towards the ridiculous, comedy buffs are advised to stick with the film for an uncredited appearance by Moe and Curly of the Three Stooges, both dressed in bizarre clown makeup and speaking in weird German accents. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Virtually everybody except President Roosevelt was in the lavish MGM backstage musical Dancing Lady. Joan Crawford stars as Janie Barlow, an impoverished dancer reduced to working in a seedy Manhattan burlesque house. While on a slumming party with his society friend, wealthy young Tod Newton (Franchot Tone) spots Janie in the burleycue chorus line and immediately falls in love with her. When the joint is raided, Tod pays Janie's bail, but she resists his entreaties to become his mistress, promising instead to pay back every cent she owes him "honestly." With Tod's help, Janie is able to secure work in a big-time Broadway musical being staged by Patch Gallegher (Clark Gable), who is certain that the girl is an untalented opportunist and does everything he can to sabotage her audition. When he realizes that the girl "has something," he refuses to admit it but does, grudgingly, hire her for the show. Through a combination of skill and damned hard work, Janie ends up as the star of the show, whereupon Tod, worried that he'll lose the girl to the Great White Way, buys the show and promptly closes it. But Janie, who's fallen in love with Patch, teams with her new sweetheart to restage the show with their own meager savings -- and surprise of surprises, it's a smash hit. Truly an embarrassment of riches, Dancing Lady introduced Fred Astaire to the movie-going public, solidified the popularity of MGM's new tenor Nelson Eddy, and offered a wide berth for the comedy antics of Ted Healy and his Three Stooges -- Moe Howard, Curly Howard and Larry Fine (Larry, performing his role in a Jewish dialect, has a wonderful double-take bit with a jigsaw puzzle which turns out to be a portrait of Adolf Hitler). As a bonus, the film offers spectacular musical production numbers, not to mention the enduring song hit "Everything I Have is Yours." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Reunion in Vienna is a trapped-in-amber adaptation of Robert Sherwood's popular stage play. John Barrymore brings virtually the only life to the proceedings as an amorous Austrian archduke, long exiled from his homeland. Returning to Vienna after twelve years, Barrymore tries to take up where he left off with his former mistress Diana Wynyard, who has since married likeable Freudian psychiatrist Frank Morgan. Since Morgan feels that the best way to dispel past "ghosts" is to confront them, Wynyard is permitted a reunion with Barrymore. Much of the risque comic thrust of Sherwood's stage play is blunted in the filmization of Reunion of Vienna--though those art-deco sets are a joy to behold. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The beauty-parlor craze of the early 1930s was given a good going-over in MGM's Beauty for Sale. Madge Evans, Florine McKinney and Una Merkel star as Letty, Jane and Carol, three employees of a swank Manhattan beauty salon. While Carol wisecracks her way through life, Letty takes things more seriously -- too seriously, in fact, when it comes to matters of the heart. She falls in love with wealthy Mr. Sherwood (Otto Kruger), who unfortunately is already married to Mrs. Sherwood (Alice Brady). Surprisingly, Letty is permitted a happy ending, which is more than can be said for the equally romantically reckless Jane. Based on a novel by Faith Baldwin, the film boasts some exceptional "glamour" photography by James Wong Howe. In a reversal of the usual chronology, Beauty for Sale hit the screens after a "B"-movie variation of the same basic material, 1932's Beauty Parlor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jack Conway complained about being assigned to direct this comedy, claiming that a woman like the title character had almost ruined his own marriage. In a way he had a point , but only Jean Harlow could have made gold digger Lil Andrews a sympathetic protagonist. And Katherine Brush's racy novel (which first appeared, serial-fashion, in the Saturday Evening Post) could only have been filmed in the pre-Code days of the early 1930s. Helping both star and story is the snappy dialogue written by Anita Loos. Lil is the classic girl "from the wrong side of the tracks" -- she's a secretary with a bootlegger boyfriend and a wisecracking roommate named Sal (Una Merkel, who was a delightful foil to Harlow in several films). But Lil has ambitions -- she's "strictly on the level, like a flight of stairs," as one character says. She plans to snag Bill Legendre (Chester Morris), son of the venerable company head (Lewis Stone) -- no matter that he's happily married to his childhood sweetheart, Irene (Leila Hyams). Lil throws herself at Legendre until he can resist no longer and she snares him. But things don't work out as planned. Instead of making a big splash in society, she bombs -- so she casts her attention ever upwards to Gaersate, a coal king (Henry Stephenson). But a wrench is thrown into her scheme when she goes mad for his French chauffeur (Charles Boyer). "I've fallen in love and I'm going to be married!" she gleefully tells Sal, before explaining that it's the chauffeur she loves and Gaersate whom she will marry. However, Legendre Sr. has put a detective on Lil's trail and he shows Gaersate a handful of compromising photos. It looks like her game is up, but the last we see of the mercenary miss, she's leaving a fashionable Paris racetrack with a bearded old sugar daddy -- and her beloved chauffeur driving them away. In spite of all her blatant manipulations, Harlow gives Lil a childlike appeal, which makes her actions nearly forgivable (it also helps that the men are such dolts). But not everyone was able to accept a movie bad-girl who did not pay for her sins and, in fact, actually benefited from them -- the film was banned in Germany and England. It may not have gotten much play in France either, but certainly not because of Lil's wantonness. Charles Boyer, who was a star in his native country, was embarrassed at his failure to make a splash in America and didn't want his fellow Frenchmen to see him play a tiny bit-part. Depending on the source, he reportedly convinced MGM to either 1) release the film in France with his parts edited out (which would have made it quite confusing) or 2) not release the film there at all. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Based upon the phenomenally successful Harold Gray comic strip, Little Orphan Annie covers a lot of ground in its short 60 minutes. Annie (played by 12-year-old Mitzi Green) is a spunky and spirited child who runs away from the orphanage where she is mistreated and manages to come under the watchful eye of Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks (Edgar Kennedy), one of the wealthiest men in the world -- or he is until the stock market crash ruins him. Having plenty of spunk and determination himself, Warbucks leaves Annie to go out West and search for gold. Annie helps another young orphan get adopted, goes through an animated dream sequence, and is eventually reunited with Warbucks, who has succeeded in rebuilding his fortune. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide