Patricia Roc Movies

Alternately titled Captain Black Jack, this Franco-American coproduction stars George Sanders as a sophisticated scoundrel living by his wits on the Riviera. Sanders lets those around him believe that he's a secret agent; actually he's a notorious drug smuggler known as Captain Black Jack. Herbert Marshall plays a doctor who appears to swallow Sanders' story. In truth, Marshall is a detective, sworn to track down and capture Sanders. Filmed in Spain, Black Jack was released in the US three years after its completion--and then only after 15 minutes had been shorn from its running time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dana Andrews -- in one of the best performances of his career -- plays Logan Stuart, a bold, ambitious general store and freight company owner based in the mining settlement of Jacksonville, OR, in 1856. He and his best friend, local banker and express company owner George Camrose (Brian Donlevy), share an attraction for young, beautiful Lucy Overmire (Susan Hayward). However, that's all the two men share -- Stuart sees life in the Oregon territory as a challenge, to be worked out and overcome with thought and time, with the opportunity to build something lasting and significant in the process. Camrose only sees the opportunity to get rich fast and live easy, and he's addicted to gambling at the local saloon. What no one knows is that he's been doing his gambling with the gold dust that the miners have left on deposit in his vault -- and he's been losing. He wants to get out of the territory, to someplace like San Francisco, and plans to take Lucy away. Stuart, by contrast, is as much a frontiersman as a businessman, and so much a part of the community and so trusted and liked that he might even be a potential political leader, if he ever had the time and the willingness to settle down and stay put. He finds consolation over his loss of Lucy in an engagement to Caroline Marsh (Patricia Roc), a daughter of an Englishman who came to Oregon only to see her father killed by Indians, who lives with the homesteading family of Ben Dance (Andy Devine) and his wife (Dorothy Peterson) and their children. Out of friendship, and also a little guilt over the fact that he would love to be engaged to Lucy, Stuart gives Camrose the money to get even, but Camrose can't resist one last card game, and not only loses what Stuart gave him, but the gold dust of one miner -- who shows up unexpectedly in town that night, planning on getting his dust the next day. When the man turns up drowned, Camrose is accused of murder; Stuart stands by his friend, but he's found guilty and the miners, led by hot-headed young Johnny Steele (Lloyd Bridges), plan on hanging him, and shooting anyone who tries to get in the way. But before his fate can be settled, an Indian war starts over the killing of a young Native American woman, and the lives of every white settler in and around Jacksonville are suddenly endangered. There's all of that, plus four songs (including "Old Buttermilk Sky") from Hoagy Carmichael (who does a great acting job), all convincingly woven into the drama along with one of the music legend's best acting performances. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Circle of Danger stars Ray Milland as an American at large in London, Wales and Scotland. During World War 2, Milland's brother had died in a commando raid. The details of his death were somewhat murky, and Milland would like to know the truth. The truth is murder in every sense of the word, though rather disappointingly, Milland himself is never in any peril. While Circle of Danger was produced by longtime Hitchcock associate Joan Harrison, the Master's touch is noticeably absent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Holiday Camp was a British comedy that served the same purpose as Hollywood's The Egg and I--to act as the launching pad for a successful B-movie series. The film takes place at a British summer resort, where various character types interact. A murderer on the loose invades the camp, but the damage he does is slight--and in some instances, his presence is beneficial. Among the secondary characters are the members of the suburban Huggett family, headed by Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison. They proved popular enough to be spun off into a "Hardy Family" style series of their own, with such titles as Here Come the Huggetts, Vote for Huggett and The Huggetts Abroad. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A French-American cooperative film about drug smuggling on the French Riviera. ~ All Movie Guide

Johnny Frenchman uses humor to drive home the point that, despite all previous rivalries and hostilties, the French and English should pull together during WW2. Aldwych farceur Tom Walls plays Nat Pomeroy, harbourmaster of a Cornwall fishing village, who is continually outsmarted by clever French fish poacher Lannec Florrie (Francoise Rosay). Pomeroy is further aggravated by the fact that Florrie's son Yan (played by French-Canadian radio favorite Paul Dupuis) is busily romancing Pomeroy's daughter Sue (Patricia Roc). But when the Nazis rear their ugly heads, the Cornish fisherman and the French miscreants band together to thwart the German menace. Many of the cast members of Johnny Frenchman are actual Cornish villagers and members of the Free French resistance movement. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed in 1939 but not put into general release until 1942, Lady in Distress stars Michael Redgrave as an innocent bystander who thinks he's witnessed a murder. In fact, what he's seen is the rehearsal of an illusion conjured up by stage magician Paul Lukas. Sally Gray, Lukas' wife and assistant, eventually finds herself the victim of her husband's jealousy. This time around, Lukas is certain that Redgrave's suspicions will be laughed off by the police in light of the young man's earlier misapprehensions. Incredibly enough, the central situation of the British Lady in Distress served as the basis for a Columbia 2-reel comedy, Hiss and Yell (1946). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

No relation to the 1970 box-office blockbuster of the same name, the 1944 British film Love Story was originally released in the US as The Lady Surrenders. Margaret Lockwood stars as one of those brilliant but troubled concert pianists, so beloved of British wartime filmgoers. Knowing that she suffers from a potentially fatal heart condition, Margaret has one last fling with RAF pilot Stewart Granger, who is slowly going blind. As in such earlier romantic dramas of the One Way Passage variety, Margaret and Stewart keep their afflictions secret from each other. When the truth comes out, Granger agrees to a dangerous and experimental operation to restore his sight. This sets the stage for a war of wills between Lockwood, who wants Granger to undergo the surgery, and Gragner's fiancee Patricia Roc, who, for reasons of her own, does not. Love Story was cowritten and directed by Leslie Arliss, son of eminent British stage star Sir George Arliss. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Millions Like Us is a fundamentally honest dramatization of the British "home front" during World War II. Patricia Roc plays a worker in a defense plant who lives in an all-female rooming house. Shy and sheltered, Roc loses some of her inhibitions when she falls in love with an airman (Gordon Jackson). After they marry, he is killed in battle. Roc's coworkers and friends rally round her, giving her the strength to persevere. Millions Like Us attempts to show the temporary breakdown of the British class structure during the war, with everyone--highborn to low--pitching in, working together, and bolstering one another's morale. That the old social system would inevitably resume after the war wasn't important to British movie fans, who lined up in droves to see Millions Like Us. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this musical, a renowned tenor meets a lovely woman at a British railway station. When the woman's dog gets in a fight, he saves it. Unfortunately this causes them to miss their train. Later, the tenor discovers that his suitcases by been stolen. The thief, a tramp, is then mistaken for the singer and taken to a Roman studio. Meanwhile, the tenor and the woman must somehow earn enough money to eat supper before the next train arrives. They do it by singing. Later they are arrested for passing a counterfeit bank note. Fortunately they are released in time to make it to Rome and find the tramp. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Four top French filmmakers were involved in the "omnibus" feature Retour a la Vie. The film offers four separate stories, each involving a liberated prisoner of war. The first episode, directed by Andre Cayatte, finds a wealthy old woman (O. Revinsky), unhinged by her prison-camp experiences, trying to cope with greedy relatives who voraciously wait for her to die. The second story, directed by Jean Dreville, stars Francois Perrier as a bartender who goes to work in a hotel for American military women. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot helmed the third episode, in which a crippled, half-crazed ex-inmate (Louis Jouvet) has a tense confrontation with a former Gestapo chief. The last installment, directed by Georges Lampin, is the comic tale of a nebbishy returnee (Noel Noel) who causes an uproar when he brings his German war bride home. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

So Well Remembered was the first of a proposed series of Anglo-American co-productions underwritten by Hollywood's RKO Radio Pictures and England's J. Arthur Rank. In one of his better postwar roles, John Mills stars as George Boswell, the editor of the newspaper in the small English mining town of Bowdley. Tirelessly fighting for fairer treatment and better working conditions for the miners, Boswell is sidetracked by his covetous, ambitious wife Olivia (Martha Scott), who hopes to maneuver her husband into Parliament. Eventually, Boswell gets his priorities in order, neglecting his campaign to help local doctor Whiteside (Trevor Howard) combat a diphtheria epidemic. When he loses his own child to the disease, a tragedy caused in part by his wife's selfishness, Boswell withdraws completely from his campaign -- and from life. Years pass before Boswell can find some purpose in his existence again, this time by preventing the still-unregenerate Olivia from destroying the happiness of her son (Richard Carlson), from a second marriage, and the son's sweetheart Julie (Patricia Roc), Dr. Whiteside's daughter. John Mills' 5-year-old daughter Juliet and infant daughter Hayley appear in bit parts. Though director Edward Dmytryk received plaudits from most critics for his work on So Well Remembered, there were those who insisted upon reading Dmytryk's perceived "pro-Red" sentiments in the screenplay -- which was actually adapted by John Paxton from a novel by James Hilton (who also narrates the picture). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide