Mel Ruick Movies

Taxi stars Dan Dailey as Ed Nielson, a been-there-done-that Manhattan cabbie. Nagged by his mother (Blanche Yurka) to find himself a wife, Ed must also contend with a blood-sucking loan company, demanding huge payments for his cab. His life is further complicated when he falls in love with one of his fares: Mary, a young Irish immigrant (Constance Smith), freshly arrived in New York in search of her husband. The girl discovers that her hubby is a louse, but she's forced to stay with him lest she face deportation. Despite his own problems -- not to mention the huge cab fare that Mary's running up while searching for her husband -- Ed vows to rescue his new love from an ungovernable fate. Though running only 77 minutes, Taxi boasts no fewer than six screenwriting credits. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Monogram "special" stars Frank Albertson as the title character, a police reporter named Larry Doyle. Our hero solves a murder case in Chicago, then moves on to St. Louis-but not voluntarily, since he has been kidnapped by the minions of the Windy City gang leader (Max Hoffman Jr.) against whom he is scheduled to testify. Eluding his captors, Doyle befriends another "lost soul" named Ann (Joan Woodbury). Together, Doyle and Ann manage to make their way back to Chicago, but not before the imprisoned mobster has arranged to frame our hero on a robbery rap. One of the lesser gangsters is played by future movie and TV favorite Arthur O'Connell, while perennial "3 Stooges" foil Christine McIntyre shows up as a telegraph girl. Rollo Lloyd, nearly always enlisted as an actor, authored the script in 1935; it was produced in 1942, four years after his death. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Rouben Mamoulian completed a three-picture 20th Century Fox deal with this airy comic romance that attempted to ape the story and style of the previous year's The Lady Eve (1941) but without that film's success. While vacationing in Southern California, accountant John Wheeler (Henry Fonda) intends to purchase a boat, a luxury for which he's saved long and hard on his limited income. Maybelle (Spring Byington) and Warren (Laird Cregar), a pair of grifters on the prowl for a mark, overhear John discussing the upcoming transaction and mistake him for a millionaire. They persuade pretty sales clerk Susan Miller (Gene Tierney) to help them dupe John by pretending to be their daughter and fall in love with him. As the couple spends time together, however, Susan really does fall in love with John. She backs out of her agreement with the con artists, tells John the truth, and learns that he's not a man of means. The truth does nothing to diminish their feelings for each other, and the happy couple marries, but Warren and Maybelle are not quite done with Susan yet, and they embark on a scheme to find her a real millionaire. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Long underappreciated by film buffs, The Lady Has Plans is a screwball comedy disguised as an espionage melodrama. The title character is not star Paulette Goddard, as one might assume, but Nazi agent Rita Lenox (Margaret Hayes), who sneaks into Lisbon with a secret message written on her bare back in invisible ink. Through a case of mistaken identity, perky Sidney Royce (Paulette Goddard), the assistant to globetrotting radio correspondent Kenneth Harper (Ray Milland) is presumed to be Rita Lenox. At the behest of British Intelligence chieftan Ronald Dean (Roland Young), who hopes to extract the vital information supposedly scribbled on Sidney's back, our nonplussed heroine is treated like royalty in a posh Lisbon hotel. Meanwhile, Rita, having summed up the situation, simultaneously poses as Sidney. Once he's figured out what's what, Harper manages to waylay Rita and intercept the message, but neither he nor Sidney are out of the woods yet-not if German spy chief Baron Von Kemp (Albert Dekker) has anything to say about it. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though based on a stage play by Laurence Gross and Edward Childs Carpenter (previously filmed as an Ernest Truex vehicle in 1933), MGM's Whistling in the Dark was clearly inspired by the success of Paramount's Bob Hope comedy-mystery The Ghost Breakers. In his first film starring role, Red Skelton plays radio actor Wally Benton, better known to his fans as that intrepid crime-solver "The Fox". On the eve of his wedding to perennial fiancee Carol Lambert (Ann Rutherford), Wally is summoned to the mansion of cult leader Joseph Jones (Conrad Veidt). Though he preaches a message of "radiant contentment" to his followers, Jones is actually a racketeer who hopes to get his hands on a $1,000,000 inheritance. The only person standing in the way of Jones' windfall is the sole heir, mild-mannered Mr. Upshaw (Lloyd Corrigan), who is about to take a business trip by plane. Impressed by "The Fox"'s encyclopedic knowledge of crime, Jones wants Wally to plan a "perfect murder", one which will put Upshaw out of the way without detection. Naturally, Wally balks at this, but he is persuaded to go along with Jones when the latter kidnaps both Carol and Fran Post (Virginia Grey), the daughter of Wally's sponsor (Henry O'Neill). Considerately, Jones gives Wally till 11 o'clock to come up with his plan, leaving our hapless hero in the "care" of hulking henchman Sylvester (Rags Ragland). Fully aware that neither his life nor those of Carol and Fran will be worth five cents once Upshaw is murdered, Wally spends most of the evening trying to concoct a way out of his jam. Full of hilarious one-liners and sidesplitting slapstick, Whistling in the Dark is also quite suspenseful--especially in the final reel, wherein the best line is delivered by the pop-eyed potential murder victim. So well received was Whistling in the Dark that MGM rushed out two sequels, also starring Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford and a "reformed" Rags Ragland. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Two Latins From Manhattan was Columbia's 1941 contribution to the "Good Neighbor Policy" towards South America. Joan Davis heads the cast as pushy nightclub press agent Joan Daley, while Jinx Falkenberg and Joan Woodbury are costarred as Joan's roommates, aspiring showgirls Jinx Terry and Lois Morgan. Having heavily promoted the upcoming nightclub appearance of a famous Cuban singing-sister team, Joan is left in the lurch when the sisters fail to show up. But not to worry: our heroine gives Jinx and Lois a crash course in Cuban dialects, and in a twinkling the two Manhattanites are successfully posing as the Cubanos. The fun begins when the real Cubans show up unannounced. Evidently, Columbia was so enamored with this plotline that the studio used it again, with only minimal changes, as Two Senoritas From Chicago (1942), which also featured Joan Davis and Jinx Falkenberg. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though Ginger Rogers' starring vehicles always turned a profit for RKO Radio, many filmgoers thought of Rogers only in terms of "Fred Astaire's partner." Others considered her a delightful comedienne, but no great shakes as a dramatic actress. Thus it was both a personal and professional triumph when Ms. Rogers walked home with an Oscar for her performance in Kitty Foyle. Based on Christopher Morley's Story of an American Girl, the film, told in flashback, relates the progress of working-girl Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers) as she pursues her Cinderella dreams. While employed at a department store, Kitty is wooed by Dennis Morgan, scion of a wealthy Philadelphia family. She flirts with the notion of marrying Morgan for his money, but decides that he's a bit too weak-willed for her tastes. Kitty enters into a romance with poor-but-dedicated doctor James Craig, then does an about-face by accepting Morgan's proposal. She quickly runs afoul of Morgan's snobbish family, who are so tightly bound by centuries-old tradition that Kitty is moved to exclaim "You mean to say you let all those dead people tell you what do?" She walks out on Morgan, then discovers that she's pregnant. Even after the trauma of delivering a stillborn child, Kitty is too proud to go back to Morgan. When true-blue Craig comes back into her life, Kitty, repeating her favorite phrase "By Judas Priest!", decides to forego money for love. Though successful to the tune of an $860,000 profit in 1940, Kitty Foyle seems stilted and over-rehearsed when seen today, save for the refreshing spontaneity of Ginger Rogers' performance. The film's best scene is the opening montage of the American Woman's "progress" once she enters the workplace (an uncredited Heather Angel is the central character in this delightful pantomimic vignette). Featured in the cast of Kitty Foyle is director Sam Wood's daughter Katherine Stevens, better known as K.T. Stevens. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jean Harlow offers her final screen performance in this witty and -- in retrospect -- quite moving racetrack comedy-drama co-starring Clark Gable and Walter Pidgeon. When her father dies shortly after losing his horse farm to Duke Bradley (Gable), Carol Clayton (Harlow) refuses the handsome bookmaker's offer to forget the debt and instead vows to pay him back in full. She even forbids her stockbroker fiancé, Harley Madison (Pidgeon), to make wagers that may benefit Duke, but promises to marry him once her champion horse wins at Saratoga. But against all the odds, Carol falls in love with Duke and when he appears in danger of ruination, she finds herself rooting for the competitor to win the all-important race. Saratoga, which was finished using both onscreen and voice doubles for Jean Harlow, was partially filmed on-location at Lexington and Louisville, KY, and in Saratoga Springs, NY. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

One of the funniest, most sharply paced comedies of the 1930s, and perhaps the best of all of Harold Lloyd's talkies, The Milky Way was based on the Broadway play by Lynn Root and Harry Clork. Lloyd plays Burleigh Sullivan, a mild-mannered milkman who intercedes one night when his sister Mae (Helen Mack) is being accosted on the street by two obnoxious drunks -- they turn their wrath on him, his sister runs for help, and when she returns less than a minute later, both men are out cold on the pavement, with Burleigh standing over them. As one of them, Speed MacFarland (William Gargan), is the world's middleweight boxing champion, and the other, Spider Schultz (Lionel Stander), is his sparring partner, Burleigh makes the front page of every newspaper in New York. McFarland's manager, Gabby Sloan (Adolphe Menjou), has to figure out how to salvage the champ's career, but first he has to figure out exactly what happened, since both fighters were too drunk to remember anything about it. It turns out that Sullivan couldn't beat an egg, but he is good at one thing -- ducking. He can dodge any punch, and the two fighters knocked each other out in the process of trying to pummel him. What's more, on hearing this, they're so angry that Schultz accidentally knocks MacFarland out again, just ahead of the press' arrival, and the little milkman is given credit once more by the reporters for decking the champ. Burleigh loves the attention, even though he never claims to have hit anyone. Meanwhile, Sloan comes up with a way of salvaging his fighter's career, and convinces Burleigh to go along with it for a promised cash sum -- all Burleigh has to do is get in the ring in six fights, to build up his standing and reputation, and finish his "career" in a fight with MacFarland, who will win. In the meantime, complications arise when MacFarland falls in love with Burleigh's sister, while Burleigh himself meets and falls in love with Polly Pringle (Dorothy Wilson), a helpful neighbor. Gabby, Spider, and Speed also discover that turning tiny, wiry Burleigh Sullivan into something that even looks like a fighter is easier said than done -- all of his fights have to be fixed (and then some) behind his back to make his victories look remotely genuine. Finally, after starting to believe his own publicity, and then discovering that the fights were fixed, Burleigh goes through with the final match-up against MacFarland, the culmination of a comedy of errors involving horses, foals, and a wild chase to the arena. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide