Elaine Shepard Movies

The presence of William Powell as legendary showman Flo Ziegfeld at the beginning of Ziegfeld Follies might lead an impressionable viewer from thinking that this 1946 film is a Technicolor sequel to the 1936 Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld. Not so: this is more in the line of an all-star revue, much like such early talkies as Hollywood Revue of 1929 and Paramount on Parade. We meet a grayed, immaculately garbed Ziegfeld in Paradise (his daily diary entry reads "Another heavenly day"), where he looks down upon the world and muses over the sort of show he'd be putting on were he still alive. Evidently Ziegfeld's shade has something of a celestial conduit to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, since his "dream" show is populated almost exclusively by MGM stars. Vincente Minnelli is given sole directorial credit at the beginning of the film, though many of the individual "acts" were helmed by other hands. The Bunin puppets offer a tableau depicting anxious theatregoers piling into a Broadway theatre, as well as caricatures of Ziegfeld's greatest stars. The opening number, "Meet the Ladies", spotlights a whip-wielding (!) Lucille Ball, a bevy of chorus girls dressed as panthers, and, briefly, Margaret O'Brien. Kathryn Grayson and "The Ziegfeld Girls" perform "There's Beauty Everywhere." Victor Moore and Edward Arnold show up in an impressionistically staged adaptation of the comedy chestnut "Pay the Two Dollars". Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer (a teaming which evidently held high hopes for MGM) dance to the tune of "This Heart is Mine." "Number Please" features Keenan Wynn in an appallingly unfunny rendition of an old comedy sketch (performed far better as "Alexander 2222" in Abbott and Costello's Who Done It?) Lena Horne, strategically placed in the film at a juncture that could be edited out in certain racist communities, sings "Love". Red Skelton stars in the film's comedy highlight, "When Television Comes"-which is actually Skelton's classic "Guzzler's Gin" routine (this sequence was filmed late in 1944, just before Red's entry into the armed services). Astaire and Bremer return for a lively rendition of "Limehouse Blues". Judy Garland, lampooning every Hollywood glamour queen known to man, stops the show with "The Interview". Even better is the the historical one-time-only teaming of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in "The Babbitt and the Bromide". The excellence of these sequence compensate for the mediocrity of "The Sweepstakes Ticket", wherein Fanny Brice screams her way through a dull comedy sketch with Hume Cronyn (originally removed from the US prints of Ziegfeld Follies, this sequence was restored for television). Excised from the final release print (pared down to 110 minutes, from a monumental 273 minutes!) was Judy Garland's rendition of "Liza", a duet featuring Garland and Mickey Rooney, and a "Baby Snooks" sketch featuring Fanny Brice, Hanley Stafford and B. S. Pully. A troubled and attenuated production, Ziegfeld Follies proved worth the effort when the film rang up a $2 million profit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this entry, the detective must find two missing industrialists. They and $100,000 suddenly vanished while flying in a passenger plane. It does not take long for the supersleuth to discover that their disappearance is part of a conspiracy against the government. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A woman is brutally strangled and her body stuffed into a suitcase in this otherwise rather frivolous low-budget thriller. The unfortunate woman is one Myra Duryea (Polly Ann Young), who has discovered that her husband Clark (Theodore von Eltz) and his equally unsavory brother Victor (Edward Emerson) are not the law-abiding jewelry salesmen they present themselves to be, but a couple of crooks. Arriving in San Francisco on the very day of the murder, Myra's sister, Gloria Watkins (Elaine Shepard), is told by Clark that his wife simply upped and left. Gloria's new friend, police officer turned cab driver Eddie Barton (Norman Foster), smells a rat, however, and begins an investigation. In desperation, Clark and Victor frame the nosy cabby in their next heist but Eddie manages to elude the law long enough to rescue an imperiled Gloria and bring the thieves to justice. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Each of Bob Allen's six westerns for Columbia had the words "Ranger" or "Range" in the title, and Law of the Ranger was no exception. It all begins when despotic frontier fuhrer Nash (John Merton) doesn't like what newspaper editor Polk (Lafe McKee) has been writing about him. He arranges Polk's death, which action attracts the attention of Texas Ranger Bob (Allen). Our hero rides into town to thwart Nash and make the range safe for homesteaders, accomplishing his task in less than one hour's screen time. Considering the newspaper background in Law of the Range, it's worth noting that leading-lady Elaine Shepherd later became a real-life journalist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Comedian Johnny Arthur, who played Spanky McFarland's absent-minded father in the 1935 "Our Gang" comedy Anniversary Trouble, returns as the father of another Gang member, Darla Hood, in the one-reel entry Our Gang: Night 'N' Gales. Though he'd rather spend his evening in peace and quiet, Mr. Hood (Arthur) is forced to endure the offkey harmonizing of the Four Nightengales, a junior singing aggegation comprised of Spanky, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Billy "Buckwheat" Thomas and Eugene "Porky" Lee. After interminable choruses of "Home Sweet Home", the four boys are finally ready to leave, but are forced to stay in the Hood home due to a sudden rainstorm. Both Darla and her mother (Elaine Shepherd) are delighted, but Mr. Hood is dismayed, especially when he is told that he must share his bed with the Four Nightengales. Driven crazy by the boys' unintentionally disruptive shenanigans, Mr. Hood escapes to the living room and tries to sleep on the couch, covering himself with a bear rug to keep warm. You guessed it: The kids mistake him for a real bear, and comic chaos ensues. Highlighting this little comedy is a surrealistic dream sequence, underscored by the Nathaniel Shilkret composition "Funny and Mysterious" (a familiar leitmotif in many a Laurel and Hardy feature). Night 'N' Gales was originally released on July 24, 1937. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In their first serial effort, newcomers Republic Pictures went with the tried and true: beloved animal trainer Clyde Beatty, who had earlier headlined the Mascot serial The Lost Jungle (1934). It is really Beatty, playing himself, who meets and saves Baru (Manuel King), "The Son of the Jungle," and his sister, Valerie, Goddess of Joba (Elaine Shepard). The latter is held captive by an evil High Priest (Lucien Prival), who has aligned himself with a couple of nasty white traders and a force of winged bat-men. In the 15th and final chapter, "The Prophecy of Gorn," the jungle city of Joba -- High Priest, evil traders, ferocious bat-men and all -- is swallowed up by a gigantic stock footage earthquake. Nat Levine, who had merged his serial empire, Mascot Pictures, into the new Republic, produced with his usual keen sense of economy, and the serial was co-directed by the veteran B. Reeves Eason and former film editor Joseph Kane. Darkest Africa was also released in an edited feature version, Batmen of Africa, and re-issued in 1949 under the new rather cumbersome title King of the Jungleland. The proud owner of a gorilla suit that would see jungle-film duty well into the television era, Ray "Crash" Corrigan appeared both in and out of his suit in this serial, billed, rather modestly, as "Ray Benard." Corrigan was to star in Republic's second serial, Undersea Kingdom (1936). Manuel King, Beatty's young and rather pudgy sidekick, was actually somewhat of a rival who billed himself, probably with some accuracy, as "The World's Youngest Wild Animal Trainer." ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide