Sig Rumann Movies

Father is a Bachelor is a pleasant throwback to the "rural" comedies of the 1930s. William Holden plays Johnny Rutledge, a philosophical hobo to whom fishing is the only reason for living. Rutledge is forced to take a few jolts of responsibility when he crosses the path of five orphans. The kids decide to "adopt" Johnny and find him a bride--preferably small-town girl Prudence Millett (Colleen Gray). Charles Winninger steals the film from everyone--even those five urchins--as a medicine-show charlatan named Professor Mordecai Ford. One of the children is played by Billy Gray, of Father Knows Best fame. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charles Winninger plays the head of a vaudevillian family who, when jobs become scarce, takes a humble factory job. He dreams of sustaining a show-biz dynasty with his grown children, but none of them show any real interest in trodding the boards. Realizing that the golden days are past, Winninger allows his children to follow their own desires. Give My Regards to Broadway is a regulation 20th Century-Fox Technicolor musical, with all the story elements falling into place precisely when the audience expects them to. The film comes to life during the song and dance sequences featuring Winninger and top-billed Dan Dailey. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hoping for a success commensurate with his previous Show Business (1945), comedian Eddie Cantor poured a lot of his own money into the RKO Radio musical If You Knew Susie. Cantor and his Show Business co-star Joan Davis are reteamed herein as ex-vaudevillians Sam and Susie Parker, who retire to a small and rather cloistered New England town. Faced with the snobbery of the local "aristocracy," Sam and Susie come to believe that they aren't worthy of their new neighbors, nor of their own children. All this changes when the Parkers find a document signed by George Washington bestowing $50,000 on one of Sam's forebears! According to the government, Sam and Susie are now owed several billion dollars interest. Sam patriotically refuses to accept the money, thereby becoming a national hero -- but not before a plenitude of comic plot twists involving gangsters Sheldon Leonard and Joe Sawyer. Cast as the Parkers' daughter Marjorie is "newcomer" Margaret Kerry, who'd actually been in films since 1936 as child actress Peggy Lynch. One of the musical highlights in If You Knew Susie is a clip from Show Business, featuring Cantor, Davis, George Murphy and Constance Moore. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After a five-year absence, the Marx Brothers returned to the screen in the independently-produced effort A Night in Casablanca. Originally conceived as a parody of Casablanca (with character names like "Humphrey Bogus" and "Lowen Behold"), the film emerged as a spoof of wartime melodramas in general. Someone has been methodically murdering the managers of the Hotel Casablanca, and that someone is escaped Nazi war criminal Heinrich Stubel (Sig Ruman). Disguised as a Count Pfefferman, Stubel intends to reclaim the stolen art treasures that he's hidden in a secret room somewhere in the hotel, and the only way he can do this undetected is by bumping off the managers and taking over the hotel himself. The newest manager of Hotel Casablanca is former motel proprietor Ronald Kornblow (Groucho Marx), who, blissfully unaware that he's been hired only because no one else will take the job, immediately takes charge in his own inimitably inept fashion. Corbacchio (Chico Marx), owner of the Yellow Camel company, appoints himself as Kornblow's bodyguard, aided and abetted by Stubel's mute valet Rusty (Harpo Marx). In his efforts to kill Kornblow, Stubel dispatches femme fatale Beatrice Reiner (Lisette Verea) to romance the lecherous manager, leading to a hilarious recreation of a key comedy sequence in the Marxes' earlier A Day at the Races. Arrested on a trumped-up charge, Kornblow, Corbacchio and Rusty escape in time to foil Stubel and his stooges. As in most Marx Brothers epics, A Night in Casablanca includes a tiresome romantic subplot, this time involving disgraced French flyer (Pierre) and his faithful sweetheart Annette (Lois Collier). Though hampered by listless direction and witless one-liners, A Night in Casablanca contains enough hilarity to compensate for its many flaws; some of the best visual gags were conceived by an uncredited Frank Tashlin, including Harpo's legendary "holding up the building" bit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Faced with the challenge of writing a screenplay based on the life of fabulously wealthy, fabulously successful composer Cole Porter, one Hollywood wag came up with a potential story angle: "How does the S.O.B. make his second million dollars?" By the time the Porter biopic Night and Day was released, the three-person scriptwriting team still hadn't come up with a compelling storyline, though the film had the decided advantages of star Cary Grant and all that great Porter music. Roughly covering the years 1912 to 1946, the story begins during Porter's undergraduate days at Yale University, where he participated in amateur theatricals under the tutelage of waspish professor Monty Woolley (who plays himself). Though Porter's inherited wealth could have kept him out of WWI, he insists upon signing up as an ambulance driver. While serving in France, he meets nurse Linda Lee (Alexis Smith), who will later become his wife. Focusing his attentions on Broadway and the London stage in the postwar years, Porter pens an unbroken string of hit songs, including "Just One of Those Things," "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Begin the Beguine," and the title number. The composition of this last-named song is one of the film's giddy highlights, as Porter, inspired by the "drip drip drip" of an outsized rainstorm, runs to the piano and cries "I think I've got it!" The film's dramatic conflict arises when Porter is crippled for life in a polo accident. Refusing to have his legs amputated, he makes an inspiring comeback, even prompting a WWI amputee to remark upon his courage! Corny and unreliable as biography, Night and Day is redeemed by the guest appearances of musical luminaries Mary Martin (doing a spirited if disappointingly demure version of her striptease number "My Heart Belongs to Daddy") and Ginny Simms, the latter cast as an ersatz Ethel Merman named Carole Hill. Jane Wyman, seen as Porter's pre-nuptial sweetheart Gracie Harris, also gets to sing and dance, and quite well indeed. Beset with production problems, not least of which was the ongoing animosity between star Grant and director Michael Curtiz, Night and Day managed to finish filming on schedule, and proved to be an audience favorite -- except for those "in the know" Broadwayites who were bemused over the fact that Cole Porter's well-known homosexuality was necessarily weaned from the screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Dolly Sisters is the heavily Hollywoodized biopic of Jennie and Rosie Dolly, Hungarian-born entertainers who took Broadway by storm in the early 1900s. Betty Grable plays Jennie and June Haver plays Rosie; their uncle is the inevitable "funny foreigner" S.Z. Sakall, who manages their career from childhood. Passing an important audition for Oscar Hammerstein, the Dolly girls become international stage headliners, but in so doing they find that their private life is strained. Jennie in particular is perplexed by the dilemma of devoting herself to a career while still finding time to romance handsome composer John Payne. The Dolly girls are separated permanently when Rosie is fatally injured in an auto accident, but Jennie finds lasting happiness with her composer. Despite the pre-World War I ambience of the film, both Grable and Haver show off a lot more skin than would have been permissible in earlier times. But Dolly Sisters producer George Jessel knew what he was doing, and the Technicolor film was a major hit in 1945. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ernst Lubitsch was the original director for A Royal Scandal, but illness forced him to bow out; his replacement was Otto Preminger, who did his utmost to retain the "Lubitsch touch." Based on a play by Lajos Biro and Melchior Lengyel, the film dwells upon a fictional incident in the life of Russia's Catherine the Great, here played with blue-blooded bawdiness by Tallulah Bankhead. Catherine falls in love with a handsome young army officer (William Eythe), who turns out to be an insurrectionist planning her downfall. At the last moment, Catherine relents, allowing the officer to escape with his true love, lady-in-waiting Anne Baxter. A bit too cute for its own good, Royal Scandal has some choice moments: Most notable are Tallulah Bankhead's pained reaction upon being hailed as "The Mother of All Russias," and supporting actor Grady Sutton's southern-accented reference to the "U-ral Mountains". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though it takes several liberties with facts and motivations, The Hitler Gang is a reasonably absorbing chronicle of Hitler's rise to power. An obscure German corporal in WW1, Adolf Hitler (played by Robert Watson, better known for his comic portrayals of Der Fuhrer), embittered by the Versailles treaty, joins a minor-league politcal party called the National Socialists. With the help of some clever "spin doctors" like Joseph Goebbels (Martin Kosleck) and Heinrich Himmler (Luis van Rooten), Hitler takes the Nazis over from the ineffectual Captain Roehm (Roman Bohnen). Arrested for such political imbroglios as the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler is sentenced to a short prison term, during which he writes his manifesto "Mein Kampf." Quickly enlisting the support of other disenfranchised losers, Hitler becomes a force to conjure with, finally winning political respectability when a senile General Von Hindenburg (Sig Ruman) appoints him to a choice political post. With the death of Hindenburg in 1933, Hitler is able to completely dominate the German government, whereupon he immediately embarks upon indoctrinating Germany's youth in the "glories" of Nazism, slaughtering his political enemies, and fomenting the second World War. Though the film was made in 1944, it ends on a note of hope, assuring the audience that Hitler and his minions could not long endure the Allied counterrattack (the filmmakers were far less certain of this than they would be some six months later). Understandably propagandistic, The Hitler Gang cannot be termed 100 percent accurate: For example, Hitler's persecution of the Jews is depicted as a cynical political tactic rather than the end result of deep-set European anti-semitism, while the death of his niece Geli Raubal (Pobly Dur) is misrepresented as a murder rather than a suicide. But considering the lies that were being spewed forth by the Nazis on a daily basis, the few factual gaffes in The Hitler Gang are eminently forgivable. The film's only real drawback is Robert Watson's two-dimensional portrayal of the title character, though even such accomplished actors as Alec Guinness and Derek Jacobi have found Hitler a virtually unplayable part. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In many ways the most endearing of Universal's B-grade "monster rallies" of the 1940s, House of Frankenstein manages within its 70-minute time span to make room for Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange), Dracula (John Carradine) the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.), and a couple of new recruits, mad scientist Boris Karloff and demented hunchback J. Carroll Naish. Escaping from prison, Karloff vows to continue his diabolical efforts to emulate Dr. Frankenstein's "eternal life" experiments; he also swears vengeance on the three men (Sig Ruman, Frank Reicher and Michael Mark) who were responsible for sending him to prison. With the help of fellow escapee Naish, Karloff murders a travelling-carnival impresario (George Zucco) and assumes his identity. He travels first to the village where Ruman is burgomaster. Since his carnival is a "chamber of horrors", Karloff utilizes one of those horrors--Count Dracula--to settle his account with Ruman. Dracula does so, but dies when the first rays of sunlight stream across his body. En route to the next village, Naish gives shelter to runaway gypsy girl Elena Verdugo, who joins the caravan (though she remains incredibly naive concerning Karloff's intentions!) Coming to the village when the Frankenstein monster and the Wolfman were presumably drowned at the end of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1944), Karloff revives the latter, who when he's not baying at the moon is the comparatively good-looking Lawrence Talbot. Karloff secures Talbot's cooperation by promising to perform some brain surgery that will relieve him of his lycanthropy. Later on, Karloff kidnaps and kills his other enemies Mark and Reicher, intending to use their brains to cure Talbot and to reactivate the Frankenstein monster. Jealous of Verdugo's attentions towards Talbot, Naish rebels against Karloff, and is killed for his troubles. Talbot turns into the Wolfman, whereupon Verdugo kills him before expiring herself. And Karloff, rendered immobile by the requisite attack of angry villagers, is dragged by the lumbering Monster into a pit of quicksand. Thus House of Frankenstein has something in common with Hamlet: No one is left alive at fade-out time. It's to scenarist Robert Siodmak's credit that he was able to fashion a coherent screenplay out of the crazy-quilt of copyrighted horror characters handed to him by Universal Pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this semi-remake of Love is News (37), Betty Grable stars as a Gay-Nineties Bowery saloon singer. Ever seeking an opportunity for advancement, Grable heads to London, becomes a highbrow musical comedy "artiste", and concocts a scheme to land a wealth duke (Reginald Gardiner). Her plan is foiled by a snoopy reporter (Robert Young) from the Police Gazette who has long been a thorn in Grable's side. Young's motive has nothing to do with dishing out gossip; he's in love with Betty and wants her for his own. Tuneful frolics like Sweet Rosie O'Grady seem to be the collective reason that Technicolor was invented. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Song of Bernadette is a reverent recounting of the life of St. Bernadette of Lourdes. As a teen-aged peasant girl growing up in the tiny French village of Lourdes in the 19th century, Bernadette (Jennifer Jones) experiences a vision of the Virgin Mary in a nearby grotto. At least, she believes that she did. The religious and political "experts" of the region cannot accept the word of a silly little girl, and do their best to get her to renounce her claims. Bernadette's vision becomes a political hot potato for many years, with the authorities alternately permitting and denying the true believers' access to the grotto. No matter what the higher-ups may think of Bernadette, there is little denying that the springs of Lourdes hold some sort of recuperative powers for the sick and lame. Eventually, Bernadette dies, never faltering in her conviction that she saw the Blessed Virgin; years later, she is canonized as a saint, and the Grotto of Lourdes remains standing as a permanent shrine. The 20th Century-Fox people knew that The Song of Bernadette would whip up controversy from both the religious and the agnostic. The company took some of the "curse" off the project with a now-famous opening title: "To those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary. To those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible." Jennifer Jones' performance in The Song of Bernadette won her the Best Actress Oscar in 1943. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Strange but true: Norma Shearer turned down the title role in Mrs. Miniver to star instead in the insignificant trifle We Were Dancing. Loosely based on two Noel Coward playlets originally presented as part of the omnibus production Tonight at 8:30, the story concerns the romance between socialite Vicki Wilomirsky (Norma Shearer) and Nicki Prax (Melvyn Douglas), an impoverished baron who supports himself as a "professional guest." Nicki steals Vicki away from her stuffy attorney fiance Hubert Tyler (Lee Bowman), but their subsequent marriage comes to an end when Vicki spots Nicki in the arms of his ex-lover Linda Wayne (Gail Patrick). Returning to Tyler, Vicki is on the verge of a second marriage, when Nicki once again waltzes into her life?.and on and on it goes, where it will stop, nobody knows. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide