Basil Ruysdael Movies

Based on an actual Civil War mission, Colonel Marlowe (John Wayne) and Major Kendall (William Holden) are ordered by General Grant to take three regiments 300 miles into enemy territory. They must destroy the railroad line between Newton Station and Vicksburg in hopes of choking off supplies to the South. Marlowe encounters a Southern belle loyal to the enemy, and keeps her in sight throughout the journey so she can't warn the Confederates. Kendall, a Northern surgeon, and the crusty Marlowe have their differences along the way. Action, romance and gory battlefield surgery accompany the army as the mission is completed. John Ford directed this film based on a novel by Harold Sinclair. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Spencer Tracy stars in John Ford's sentimental adaptation of Edwin O'Connor's novel about the final campaign of a big city mayor, loosely based upon the life of Boston politician James Curley. Tracy is Frank Skeffington, the political boss of an Eastern city dominated by Irish-Americans. Skeffington tries to assist the people of the city and avoids cutting political deals with the power elite. But despite his concern for the people, Skeffington has no friends, just flunkies. The Mayor is greatly admired by his idealistic nephew Adam Caulfield (Jeffrey Hunter), who writes for an opposition newspaper run by Amos Force (John Carradine). When Skeffington needs money for a loan, he asks the powerful banker Norman Cass (Basil Rathbone), but Cass steadfastly refuses. In retaliation, Skeffington appoints Cass's retarded son as an interim fire commissioner. To prevent his son from disgracing the family, Cass agrees to the bank loan. But Cass uses his deep pockets to finance the opposition's candidate for mayor. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

The MGM melodrama These Wilder Years marked the first onscreen pairing of Hollywood stars James Cagney and Barbara Stanwyck. Lonely middle-aged businessman Steve Bradford (Cagney) returns to his old town in hopes of finding the son he fathered 20 years earlier. Choosing his career over marriage and family, he got a girl pregnant and she gave the baby up for adoption. He goes to an orphanage ran by Ann Dempster (Barbara Stanwyck) to find out information about his son. They are attracted to each other, but she refuses to release the confidential files that could help him. He hires a lawyer, James Rayburn (Walter Pigeon), and proceeds to sue the adoption agency. Though he loses the case in the climactic courtroom scene, Steve ends up finding his son on his own, but he decides it's too late to forge a relationship. Instead, Ann introduces him to pregnant teenager Suzie (Betty Lou Keim), who needs his help. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Cashing in on the surprise success of his 1954 Davy Crockett TV miniseries (first presented on the weekly anthology Disneyland), Walt Disney assembled the three hour-long "Crockett" episodes into a 93 minute theatrical feature. While the re-editing process has created a few noticeable continuity gaps, the results are by and large satisfying: certainly audiences in 1955 were satisfied, if box office returns are any indication (and, of course, they are). Fess Parker plays Davy Crockett, Tennessee-born frontiersman, while Buddy Ebsen (Disney's original choice for Crockett) co-stars as Davy's sidekick George Russell. The film is divided into three long episodes, each separated by a title card. Part one shows Crockett the Indian fighter (politically correct? Of course not!); part two finds Davy winning a seat in the Nashville legislature, where his heroism is rather cynically exploited by presidential candidate Andrew Jackson (Basil Ruysdael); and part three concludes at the Alamo, with a discreet cutaway just before Davy meets his doom at the hands of Mexican general Santa Anna. Also appearing in this jerry-built film are Hans Conried as Thimblerig and Helene Stanley as Davy's wife Polly. And who could forget "The Ballad of Davy Crockett"--not to mention those neato coonskin caps? Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier was followed in 1956 by a "prequel" (likewise cobbled together from three Disneyland episodes), Davy Crockett and the River Pirates. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Lana Turner stars as Diane in this opulent costume drama. Set in 16th century France, the film finds the gorgeous Diane de Pottiers rising to a position of absolute power through her manipulation of the men in her life. Those men include King Francis I (Pedro Armendariz), Prince Henri (Roger Moore) and Diane's husband, the Count de Breze (Torin Thatcher). Diane's principal foe is the scheming Catherine de Medici (Marisa Pavan), who for the first time in her life has met her match in Our Heroine. Christopher Isherwood's screenplay is literate to a fault, though the film could have used a few more action highlights. The tepid box-office receipts of Diane hastened the end of Lana Turner's long association with MGM. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The jewel in the crown of the TV anthology Disneyland's first season was the phenominally successful three-part miniseries Davy Crockett, an entertaining mixture of fact and legend surrounding fabled frontiersman Davy Crockett (Fess Parker). All three episodes were originally introduced with series host-producer Walt Disney reading a chapter from Davy Crockett's Journal, whereupon a series of semi-animated tableaux faded into the live-action portion of the program. In Episode One, civilian Indian Fighter Davy Crockett proves indispensible to both British and American armed forces with his unorthodox but effective methods of lessening the threat of Indian attack. Eventually, Davy and his pal George Russel (Buddy Ebsen) are assigned to track down the fearsome Chief Red Stick (Pat Hogan), in hopes of bring peace to the territory once and for all. Captured by Red Stick's warriors, Davy earns the Chief's respect by beating him in hand-to-hand combat, thereby proving himself as effective a man of peace as a man of war. Among other achievements, this episode introduced one of the biggest hit songs of the 1950s, "The Ballad of Davy Crockett"--and also transformed Davy's coonskin cap into a national status symbol. In 1955, the three Emmy-winning Davy Crockett episodes were re-edited and released as the theatrical feature Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Hal Foster's Sunday-comics saga of a young Viking prince in the service of King Arthur is brought to the screen in CinemaScope and Technicolor in Prince Valiant. Despite the fact that he sports a dutch bob that makes him look like actress Phyllis Kirk, Robert Wagner is quite virile and convincing as the title character. Trained for the Round Table by Sir Gawain (Sterling Hayden), Valiant takes time out to fall in love with the beautiful Princess Aleta (Janet Leigh). The villain of the piece is The Black Knight, aka Sir Brack (top-billed James Mason), who intends to topple King Arthur (Brian Aherne) from his throne, then conquer Valiant's people in Scandia. But Prince Valiant proves a fearsome opponent to the usurping Sir Brack. Sadly, most currently available prints of Prince Valiant have been panned-and-scanned, denying viewers the opportunity to revel in Henry Hathaway's creative utilization of the CinemaScope format. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Carrie is based on Sister Carrie, a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser's clumsy, unwieldy prose is streamlined into a neat and precise screenplay by Ruth and Augustus Goetz. Jennifer Jones stars as Carrie, who leaves her go-nowhere small town for the wicked metropolis of Chicago. Here she becomes the mistress of brash traveling salesman Charles Drouet (Eddie Albert), then throws him over in favor of erudite restaurant manager George Hurstwood (Laurence Olivier). Obsessed by Carrie, George steals money from his boss to support her in the manner to which he thinks she is accustomed. Left broke and disgraced by the ensuing scandal, Carrie deserts George to become an actress. Years later, the conscience-stricken Carrie tries to regenerate George, who has fallen into bum-hood. If Laurence Olivier seems a surprising casting choice in Carrie, try to imagine what the film would have been like had Cary Grant, Paramount's first choice, accepted the role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

People Will Talk was less a movie than a conduit for the genteel liberalism of screenwriter/director Joseph M. Mankiewicz. Cary Grant plays Dr. Praetorius, an unorthodox medical professor at a sedate midwestern college who seems more interested in the human soul than in the cold facts of the human body. Praetorius' nemesis is a conservative rival doctor (Hume Cronyn) who presses for an investigation of our hero's clouded past--with special emphasis given the mysterious old man (Finlay Currie) who lives with Praetorius and waits on him hand and foot. In the course of the film, Praetorius falls in love with one of his students, an unmarried pregnant girl (Jeanne Crain). At the climactic hearing concerning Praetorius' fitness, the presiding judge (Basil Ruysdael) decides that Praetorius' "modern" methods are more worthwhile than the pragmatic, cut-and-dried theories of his enemies. Based on a German play by Curt Goetz, People Will Talk is a bit too proud of its own cleverness, with Mankiewicz' political planks being wedged in at all the inappropriate times (while conversing with the father of the pregnant girl, Praetorius launches on a gratuitous attack against farm subsidies!) Still, the film is ten times more intelligent than most of Hollywood's 1951 output, and contains one of Cary Grant's best and subtlest seriocomic performances. Bonus: In the first scene of People Will Talk, the snoopy lady who brings Praetorius' "shady" past to the attention of Hume Cronyn is played by an uncredited Margaret ("Wicked Witch of the West") Hamilton. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Raton Pass is a curious western based on the rules of Community Property. Dennis Morgan and Patricia Neal portray a recently married husband and wife, each of whom owns half of a huge cattle ranch. Neal is a tad more ambitious than her husband, and with the help of a little legal chicanery she tries to obtain Morgan's half of the spread. He balks, so she hires a few gunslingers to press the issue. In a 1951 western, the greedy party usually came to a sorry end; Raton Pass adheres strictly to tradition. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This period melodrama stars Ava Gardner as Barbara Beaurevel, a woman who inherits a substantial fortune from her grandmother. The source of the Beaurevel estate is a subject much whispered about among polite company, but Barbara hopes to wipe away its stigma by using her money to help others through good works. Barbara is in love with Dr. Mark Lucas (Robert Mitchum), but since the good doctor is married, there is little she can do to win his affection. Barbara persuades Paul (Melvyn Douglas) to try to seduce Dr. Lucas' wife Corinne (Janis Carter) in hopes of driving him away from her. Not long after this plan fails, Barbara finds a way to truly prove her love to Dr. Lucas. Corrine is murdered, Dr. Lucas is accused of the crime, and Barbara realizes that the testimony that could save his life would mean having to reveal the truth about her grandmother's shameful past. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

When there is a sudden outbreak of mysterious murders in the Texas Big Bend country, a young drifter new to the area, played by John Barrymore, is the prime suspect. Captured and held for the murders, the rancher who is holding Barrymore does not realize that he has been set up to take the fall for these murders by some men who were thought to have been killed years before in a range war. Now these despicable men are back and are getting their own revenge on those who were involved in the range war which left them wounded. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi