Paul Scardon Movies

Even after three appearances as oriental sleuth Charlie Chan, Roland Winters showed no interest in taking the role seriously. Shanghai Chest finds Charlie in the employ of the U.S. government, assigned to solve a series of puzzling murders. The victims all appear to have died by snakebite, which would have been impossible under the circumstances. Further confusing the issue is the fact that all fingerprints at the scenes of the crime have been left by a man who's supposed to be dead. Even with the dubious assistance of son Tommy (Victor Sen Yung) and chauffeur Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland), the clever Mr. Chan cracks the case. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This suspenseful crime drama reenacts the famed 1947 prison break out of the Canon City, Colorado corrections facility and features the actual warden, Roy Best playing himself. The trouble begins when one prisoner manages to fashion a crude pistol. Enlisting the aid of eleven others, they successfully escape and terrorize the town until the warden and his men manage to round up the survivors and bring them back. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Susan Peters, a fine actress of the 1940s whose career was curtailed by an accident which left her wheelchair-bound, utilizes her handicap to her advantage in Sign of the Ram. Peters plays an invalid wife and mother who exercises dictatorial control over all around her. Peters' loved ones are willing to forgive her nastiness due to her condition--a fact that she realizes fully and exploits to the utmost. Eventually her atrocious behavior leaves Peters alone and friendless, but even in her darkest moments she insists upon being a "control freak" and engineers her own spectacular death. Far more tasteful than it sounds, Sign of the Ram was a worthwhile valedictory vehicle for Susan Peters, who died a few years after the film's release. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A Hollywood movie company descends on the Ozarks in this pleasant, if low-budget, musical from PRC undoubtedly inspired by the concurrent success of Broadway's Oklahoma! Despairing of the ill-tempered behavior of Shirley, a scientifically raised mule, Dr. Jane Colwell (Martha O'Driscoll) returns to the farm in Missouri's Ozark Mountains. Shirley's indubitable talents, however, are discovered by a movie company, whose producer, Mike Burton (William Wright), sets out to win the affection of both Dr. Colwell and her obstinate animal, a feat accomplished much to the consternation of the company's star, Gloria Baxter (Renee Godfrey). The expected romantic confusion ensues and three professors from the Midland College Deptartment of Agriculture (Will Wright, Chester Clute, and Paul Scardon) descend on the movie location to put a halt to Shirley's promising screen career. But Mike and his flamboyant director (John Carradine) do their best to placate both the prominent faculty and their beast, and soon everyone is enjoying a typical Missouri hayride. Second leads Eddie Dean and Mabel Todd perform "There's a Rose That Grows in the Ozarks" and "Monkey Business"; Renee Godfrey and the Tailor-Maids take care of "Big Town Gal"; leading lady Martha O'Driscoll warbles "Never Knew That I Could Sing" and "I'm So In Love With You"; and the entire company, including John Carradine, performs "There's Nothing Like an Old Missouri Hayride." ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Dismissed by critics as corny and obvious in 1944, this overlong but sincere biopic looks pretty good when seen today, cliches notwithstanding. Fredric March, 47 at the time, convincingly plays American author Sam Clemens, aka Mark Twain, from his early 20s to his death at 75. In typical movie-biography fashion, every single incident that happens in Twain's life is an INSPIRATION: he hears the depth-indication call "Mark Twain" while working on a riverboat and his face lights up; he engages in a jumping-frog contest against Bret Harte (John Carradine) and comes up with his first popular published story; and so on. Alexis Smith is better than usual in the role of Twain's wife Olivia Langdon, even keeping a straight face while Twain courts her in Fluent Quotation ("Everybody talks about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it", he says during a Hollywood-romance cloudburst). Though the script barely touches upon the dark side of Twain's nature, we are not spared his financial reverses (brought about by bad investments and his struggle to publish Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs. The closing sequence, with Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn beckoning the spirit of Mark Twain to heaven as Halley's Comet fills the skies, may seem laughable on paper, but works quite well on film; even director Irving Rapper expressed amazement at the effectiveness of this scene! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

As Academy Award-winning films go, Mrs. Miniver has not weathered the years all that well. This prettified, idealized view of the upper-class British home front during World War II sometimes seems over-calculated and contrived when seen today. In particular, Greer Garson's Oscar-winning performance in the title role often comes off as artificial, especially when she nobly tends her rose garden while her stalwart husband (Walter Pidgeon) participates in the evacuation at Dunkirk. However, even if the film has lost a good portion of its ability to move and inspire audiences, it is easy to see why it was so popular in 1942-and why Winston Churchill was moved to comment that its propaganda value was worth a dozen battleships. Everyone in the audience-even English audiences, closer to the events depicted in the film than American filmgoers-liked to believe that he or she was capable of behaving with as much grace under pressure as the Miniver family. The film's setpieces-the Minivers huddling in their bomb shelter during a Luftwaffe attack, Mrs. Miniver confronting a downed Nazi paratrooper in her kitchen, an annual flower show being staged despite the exigencies of bombing raids, cleric Henry Wilcoxon's climactic call to arms from the pulpit of his ruined church-are masterfully staged and acted, allowing one to ever so briefly forget that this is, after all, slick propagandizing. In addition to Best Picture and Best Actress, Mrs. Miniver garnered Oscars for best supporting actress (Teresa Wright), best director (William Wyler), best script (Arthur Wimperis, George Froschel, James Hilton, Claudine West), best cinematography (Joseph Ruttenberg) and best producer (Sidney Franklin). Sidebar: Richard Ney, who plays Greer Garson's son, later married the actress-and still later became a successful Wall Street financier. Mrs. Miniver was followed by a 1951 sequel, The Miniver Story, but without the wartime setting the bloom was off the rose. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Each of Bob Hope's "My Favorite" films (My Favorite Blonde, My Favorite Brunette, My Favorite Spy) was, by accident or design, a parody of a dead-serious movie genre. 1942's My Favorite Blonde, for example, was a takeoff of Alfred Hitchcock in general and Hitchcock's 39 Steps in particular. Two-bit vaudeville entertainer Hope gets mixed up with gorgeous blonde British-spy Madeline Carroll. The "maguffin" (Hitchcock's nickname for "gimmick") which ties the two stars together is a ring which contains the microfilmed plans for a revolutionary new bomber. Hope and Carroll are forced to take it on the lam when Hope is framed for murder by Nazi-agents Gale Sondergaard, George Zucco et. al. Highlights include Hope eluding capture by impersonating a famed psychologist (watch for Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer as Hope's most contentious "patient"). Madeline Carroll also got several opportunities to shine comedically, especially when she lapsed into cloying baby talk while posing as Hope's wife. Bob Hope was hesitant to work with My Favorite Blonde director Sidney Lanfield, having heard of Lanfield's reputation as an on-set dictator. However, the two got along so swimmingly that they would collaborate on such future top-notch Hope farces as Let's Face It (1943) and The Lemon Drop Kid (1951). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Tim Holt is mistaken for a notorious gunslinger in this average Western, which RKO filmed at Kanab, UT, in tandem with the star's previous effort, the much better Wagon Train. Believed by everyone to be Deuce Mallory, a gunman hired to kill local prospector Caleb Winters (Paul Scardon), The Fargo Kid (Holt) decides to play out the charade in order to trap Nick Kane (Cy Kendall), the corrupt businessman who had ordered the hit in the first place. Things get a bit dicey when the real Deuce Mallory (Paul Fix) rides into town but aided by sidekicks Johnny (Ray Whitley) and Whopper (Emmett Lynn), The Kid manages to prevent the murder, and, in return, earns the love and respect from everyone, including the prospector's pretty daughter, Jennie (Jane Drummond). Ray Whitley performs his own and Fred Rose's "Crazy Ole Trails Ahead" and "Twilight on the Prairie" in this remake of the 1932 Tom Keene oater The Cheyenne Kid, which itself was a talkie version of a 1928 Bob Steele silent, Man in the Rough. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Given the omnipresence of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1940, the second film version of Robert E. Sherwood's Waterloo Bridge would have to be laundered and softened to pass muster. In the original, made in 1931, the heroine is nothing more or less than a streetwalker, patrolling London's Waterloo Bridge during World War I in hopes of picking up the occasional soldier. She falls in love with one of her clients, a young officer from an aristocratic family. Gently informed by the young man's mother that any marriage would be absolutely impossible, the streetwalker tearfully agrees, letting her beau down gently before ending her own life by walking directly into the path of an enemy bomb. In the remake, told in flashback as a means of "distancing" the audience from what few unsavory story elements were left, the heroine, Vivien Leigh, starts out as a virginal ballerina. Robert Taylor, a British officer from a wealthy family, falls in love with Vivien and brings her home to his folks. This time around, Taylor's uncle (C. Aubrey Smith), impressed by Vivien's sincerity, reluctantly agrees to the upcoming marriage. When Taylor marches off to war, Vivien abandons an important dance recital to bid her fiance goodbye, losing her job as a result. Later, she is led to believe that Taylor has been killed in battle. Thus impoverished and aggrieved, she is given a motivation for turning to prostitution, a plot element deemed unecessary in the original-which indeed it was. Now the stage is set for her final sacrifice, though the suicidal elements are carefully weeded out. Waterloo Bridge was remade for a second time in 1956 as Gaby, with Leslie Caron and John Kerr. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Early silent star Leah Baird both wrote the story and played the leading lady in this mediocre drama. Robert Taylor (Vernon Steele) has been romancing Blanche Mansfield (Baird), but he has also been seeing Grace Eldridge (Arline Pretty) at the same time. When he tells Blanche that he is going to marry Grace, she attacks him. Taylor goes to the hospital with a knife wound, and Grace, when she hears that her fiancé has been keeping company with someone else, dumps him. A friend talks Taylor out of prosecuting Blanche, who starts over again under an assumed name. Later on, Blanche and Grace meet, and, completely unaware of the connection they have through Taylor, become fast friends. When the truth finally comes out, Grace angrily shoots Blanche. Blanche, however, recovers from her wound and the two ladies become pals once again. Grace decides to take Taylor back, while Blanche weds a longtime admirer, John Graham (Richard Tucker). ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

Universal was still trying to push Miss DuPont (who had a prominent role in Erich Von Stroheim's Foolish Wives) as a star here. But director Paul Scardon was no Stroheim, and this cliché tale of backstage life was tangled up in confusing complications. DuPont plays Willow Winters, a chorus girl who works her way up to stardom honestly -- meaning, she doesn't sleep her way to the top. She achieves the pinnacle of success as an understudy who's called in when the star falls ill. The wealthy, and lusty, Leander Sills (Edwin Stevens) can't believe she's a good girl, but she proves it in no uncertain terms. So when he's murdered by a jealous woman, he wills Willow half his fortune, with a written note saying she showed him that "all women can't be bought." The letter falls into the hands of Sills' lawyer (Douglas Gerrard), who keeps it hidden, since he wants Willow (and the money) for himself. This causes a rift between Willow and her fiancé, Peter Galliner (Jack Mower), because he thinks something was going on between her and Sills. Eventually he comes to believe that Willow is innocent of any wrongdoing and they are reunited. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

This above-average British melodrama was based on "The Living Dead", a story by Mary Lerner. Bessie Barriscale stars as a woman who is compelled to marry a man she knows is wrong for her. Five hellish years later, her no-good spouse throws her over in favor of his mistress. When he threatens to take away her child, Barriscale is driven to the titular breaking point. She kills the lout, confessing the crime to her understanding mother-in-law. The film's upbeat ending would not have been possible in the Production Code-dominated 1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi