Lee Shumway Movies

In his first of 16 Westerns for independent producer A.W. Hackel, Johnny Mack Brown is Branded a Coward when instead of preventing a saloon hold-up, he is spotted cowering behind the bar. The reason for Johnny Hume's reticence is to be found in his background: 20 years earlier, little Johnny was orphaned when his parents' wagon was attacked by a gang of outlaws headed by the infamous "Cat" (Yakima Canutt). As the grown Johnny explains to stuttering sidekick Oscar (Syd Saylor), he has been "yellow ever since." Johnny's courage is tested once again when the two friends witness a stage hold-up. After chasing the outlaws away, Johnny and Oscar escort the stage into the town of Lawless, AZ, where female passenger Ethel Carson (Billie Seward) extols Johnny's prowess with a gun. To his embarrassment, Johnny is elected deputy marshal. Secrets from the past keep resurfacing and Johnny must constantly fight his own fears. In the end, the former coward proves his real worth in a final face-to-face struggle with the leader of the stage robbers (Robert Kortman), a villain patterning himself after the original Cat. During the fight, an unusual birthmark on the outlaw's arm reveals him to be Johnny's own brother Billy. Long thought killed in the massacre, Billy has instead been raised by the original, now deceased Cat. Unable to prevent his henchmen from attacking, Billy bravely stops a bullet meant for Johnny. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

After suffering a nervous breakdown (at least that's what she calls it), imperious movie star Carol Corliss (Ginger Rogers) retreats to a small mountain resort community to recuperate. Carol proceeds to adopt a series of ridiculous disguises so she won't be bothered by her fans, only to realize that she misses being bothered. She also tangles with chauvinistic local sportsman Emory Muir (George Brent), who's convinced that Carol is one shrew who is worth taming. In Person was released after the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicle Top Hat, but filmed earlier; even so, Rogers performs a pair of dance routines choreographed by future Top Hat associate Hermes Pan, and as a bonus sings a trio of songs co-written by Oscar Levant and Dorothy Fields. Fans of the Three Stooges will recognize comedy-foil Bud Jamison as a disgruntled (and non-speaking) elevator passenger in the film's opening scene. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Long before its "Teen Agers" series of the 1940s, Monogram Pictures went to college in the minor musical Girl of My Dreams. Heading the somewhat over-aged student body are BMOC Larry Haynes (Edward Nugent) and track-star Don Cooper (a handsome young Lon Chaney Jr., here still billed as Creighton Chaney). The story's focal point is a student election, which obliges Larry and Don to neglect their campus sweeties Gwen (Mary Carlisle) and Mary (GiGi Parrish). Comedy relief comes from Sterling Holloway and Arthur Lake, cast respectively as the school newspaper editor and a fresh frosh. One suspects that the people who made such pictures as Girl of My Dreams never set foot in a real college. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this children's movie, a married vaudevillian team learns that talent scouts are looking for the new Shirley Temple. Unfortunately, they have an adorable little boy. This does not prevent them from dressing up like Temple and entering him in a contest, which he, unfortunately for him, wins. He then finds himself bewigged and train-bound for Hollywood. The hapless lad, would rather die than face life as a little girl, and so leaps from the speeding train. He soon encounters a friendly vagabond and a gang of fugitive bank robbers who think the lad may be able to help them with their nefarious schemes. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Columbia Pictures workhorse Lambert Hillyer was both writer and director of Men of the Night. Bruce Cabot plays Kelly, a Hollywood detective, assigned to capture a holdup gang. While dallying with carhop Mary (Judith Allen), Kelly jumps to the hasty conclusion that the girl is somehow tied in with the crooks. Acting on this misapprehension, he nearly gets both Mary and himself killed by the villains (headed by Charles Sabin, a stage actor who never quite clicked in films). Ward Bond, a mere supporting player in 1934, goes into his comedy-relief mode as Cabot's dimwitted partner. Men of the Night ran 58 minutes, just long enough to fit comfortably on the bottom half of a Columbia double bill. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Promoted as a follow-up to Frank Capra's 1933 hit Lady for a Day, Lady by Choice resembles the earlier film only in its choice of leading lady. May Robson plays a drunken derelict who'd once been quite a heartbreaker. Her self-respect is restored when she is asked to pose as fan-dancer Carole Lombard's mother. Lombard is part of the deal only to gain publicity for herself, but Robson takes her assignment seriously, ordering Lombard to give up her tacky profession and use her talents for something more dignified. At first against her will, Lombard starts taking formal acting and singing lessons and begins gaining a reputation as a serious artist. Wealthy Roger Pryor, a family friend of Robson's, falls in love with Lombard, but she breaks off the relationship so that Pryor won't be disinherited. Robson takes a hand in things, forcing Pryor and Lombard together in a delightfully devious fashion. Lady By Choice proved that Columbia Pictures (and scriptwriter Jo Swerling) could turn out a perfectly respectable Frank Capra film without Frank Capra. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Warner Bros.' hard-hitting chain-gang movie was a faithful adaptation of the similarly titled autobiography of Robert Elliot Burns. Paul Muni plays World War I veteran James Allen, whose plans of becoming a master architect evaporate in the cold light of economic realities. Flat broke, Allen is forced to pawn his war medals, which have become a glut on the market. When Allen is innocently involved in a restaurant holdup, the police don't buy his story that the robber (Preston S. Foster) had forced him to clean out the cash register, and Allen is sentenced to ten years on a chain gang. The brutal scenes that follow make the later chain-gang movie Cool Hand Luke (1967) look like a picnic in the country. Unable to stand any more, Allen escapes and heads to Chicago. Using an alias, he builds a new life for himself and within five years is the respected president of a bridge-building firm. His landlady (Glenda Farrell), learning about his past, forces Allen to marry her. When he falls in love with another girl (Helen Vinson) and asks for a divorce, his wife turns him over to the authorities. The real-life Robert Elliot Burns was still a fugitive when he wrote his exposé of the chain-gang system; the publication of Burns' book led to the abolishment of that system and an erasure of Burns' sentence. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tim McCoy is falsely accused of killing his own father in this typical low-budget oater directed by the generally efficient but unexciting D. Ross Lederman. Framed in the killing of his own father, Tim Benton (McCoy) escapes from prison along with brutish Red Larkin (Matthew Betz). The fugitives head for the former Benton mine now operated by the villainous John Sebastian (Ethan Laidlaw), where Tim plans to rob the payroll. En route, they are discovered by Bob Dinsmore (William A. Howell), the new marshal of Silver City, who is killed by Red. Tim, who believes the marshal to be merely knocked unconscious, decides to impersonate him in order to get the goods of the two men, Stevens and Ainsley, who framed him on behalf of Sebastian. Accepted by the townspeople in general and the sheriff's daughter Alice (Gulliver) in particular, Tim's scheme is endangered by the arrival of both Stevens (Bob Perry) and Ainsley (Dick Dickinson). After quickly arresting the two henchmen, Tim tells Red that he no longer wishes to go through with the planned payroll robbery. Red, in anger, frames his former partner for Dinsmore's murder. In the ensuing shootout, Red is mortally wounded, but manages to clear Tim's name before he expires. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Tom Keene's first western entry of 1932, Partners casts the star as the partner of travelling medicine-show entrepreneur Billy Franey (who's quite funny in his few scenes). When Franey is murdered, Keene is accused of the crime. Escaping from the sheriff on his faithful horse Flash, Keene sets about to prove that someone else was responsible for the killing. This proves to be a boon to the burgeoning romance between our hero and Franey's daughter Nancy Drexel. Like many of Keene's early talkies, Partners is set in a "modern" West, where Model T's and roadsters rub noses with the equestrian population. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Widow from Chicago is Polly Henderson (Alice White) -- only she isn't really a widow and in fact has never been married. It's like this: Polly's police-detective brother Jimmy (Harold Goodwin), hoping to get the goods on the criminal gang run by vice lord Dominic (Edward G. Robinson), impersonates Chicago gangster Swifty Dorgan (Neil Hamilton), who is missing and presumed dead. While posing as Swifty, Jimmy is gunned down by a rival gang, right before Polly's eyes. Hoping to exact revenge, Polly pretends to be Swifty's widow and in this guise lands a job at Dominic's nightclub. And then -- get ready for the BIG SURPRISE! -- the real Swifty Dorgan shows up. Only the energetic performance by Edward G. Robinson makes this Byzantine-plotted crime yarn worth sitting through. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"Sweet Mamma," a phrase popularized in the Barney Google comic strip, referred to a pretty girl, usually blonde, who attached herself to whatever "sugar daddy" happened to be available. In this instance, Alice White is the "Mamma" of the title, a tootsie named Goldie. Basically good at heart, Goldie falls into bad company when she begins singing in a gangster-controlled nightclub. She survives long enough to go off hand-in-hand with her true love, honest Jimmy (David Manners), and to prove to the audience that most of the gangsters (in this picture, anyway) aren't such tough eggs after all. The use of "natural sound" in the exterior sequences becomes intrusive at times, especially when Jimmy is taken for a ride by the villains in the climax. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's narrative poem Evangeline briefly abandoned the curriculum of English Literature 101 for the purposes of this part-talkie screen adaptation. Dolores Del Rio stars as the title character, an Acadian lass whose marriage to kinsman Gabriel (Roland Drew) is forestalled by the British invasion of the Grand Pre region. Exiled from the territory along with most of the other Acadians, Gabriel is transported far, far away from Evangeline's arms. Our heroine spends the rest of the film in search of her sweetheart, but the two are reunited only after Gabriel falls mortally ill, and Evangeline has joined an order of nuns. The film was billed as a "talkie" by virtue of its two songs, both performed by Dolores Del Rio. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide