Paul Stanton Movies

Dr. Jim Kildare (Lew Ayres) plays Good Samaritan with potentially disastrous results in The People vs. Dr. Kildare. Happening upon the scene of a motor accident, Kildare performs an emergency operation on crash victim Frances Marlowe (Bonita Granville), an ice-skating star. While recovering in Blair General Hospital, Frances discovers that her leg is paralyzed, and promptly sues Kildare and his hospital for negligence, to the tune of $100,000 (real money back in 1941!) Just when all seems lost, Kildare's irascible mentor Dr. Leonard Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) ascertains the true source of Frances' paralysis, leading to another operation and?..and, well, it's better seen than read. Questionable comedy relief is provided by Red Skelton as dumbell orderly Vernon Briggs (Skelton was never truly comfortable in this type of role), while an unbilled Dwight Frye ("Renfield" in the original Dracula) shows up as a mild-mannered jury foreman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Strange Alibi offered young Warner Bros. contractee Arthur Kennedy to carry a picture all by himself. The star is cast as detective Joe Geary, who is suddenly and unexpectedly fired from the police force. Appararently embittered, Geary joins a criminal gang. Actually, it's all part of a scheme cooked up between Geary and police chief Sprague (Jonathan Hale) to infiltrate the mob. But the crooks get wise, bump off Sprague, and frame Geary for murder. It takes a jail break and a wild chase before Geary is able to clear himself. Critics in 1941 noted that a Warner Bros. B picture would have seemed incomplete without at least one prison scene. And isn't that a young Jackie Gleason as one of the bad guys? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the wake of Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates, every studio in Hollywood began cranking out service comedies. Warner Bros.' contribution to this trend was You're in the Army Now, featuring the unlikely but undeniably chucklesome duo of Jimmy Durante and Phil Silvers. The stars are cast as Jeeper and Breezy, erstwhile vacuum-cleaner salesman who stage a demonstration at a local army camp, only to end up in uniform themselves. Thanks to their ineptitude and chronic inability to follow orders, our heroes spend most of their training period in the guardhouse. They try to atone for past misdeeds during maneuvers, only to end up trapped in a remote cabin which teeters perilously on a mountain ledge (the whole routine was borrowed-actually, stolen-from Chaplin's The Gold Rush). Not teamed in the traditional sense, Durante and Silvers are permitted to perform their solo specialties, with both comedians coming out fairly even in terms of laugh delivery. As a bonus, this is the film in which nominal romantic leads Regis Toomey and Jane Wyman performed the longest screen kiss in movie history (Leonard Maltin clocked it at three minutes, five seconds)-a feat that reportedly led Wyman's then-husband Ronald Reagan to wonder aloud why he couldn't keep his wife's interest that long! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Midnight Angel was the title of this Paramount actioner when it was first released in December of 1941. But by the time the film reached the hinterlands, America had entered WW2, and thus it was that Midnight Angel was rechristened Pacific Blackout, which remained its title to this very day. Falsely convicted of murder (in one of those movie trials that takes only a few minutes!), young Robert Draper (Robert Preston) escapes custody during a practice blackout drill. Under cover of darkness, Draper hopes to find the real killer, who turns out to be a member of a Nazi sabotage ring. Our hero is helped along by Mary (Martha O'Driscoll), one of the most refreshingly self-reliant heroines in B-picture history. Among the secondary players are a young Hungarian immigrant named Eva Gabor and a portly German refugee named John Banner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When millionaire bachelor John Hubbard takes a run-out powder at his own wedding, Hubbard's vengeful fiancee Polly Ann Young has the luckless fellow committed to an insane asylum. Hubbard escapes with certified looney Adolphe Menjou; together they join a carnival run by Carole Landis. Hubbard and Menjou not only save Landis from bankruptcy, but also convince Hubbard's allegedly normal uncle Charles Butterworth (who races fire engines as a hobby) to arrange for the carnival to be set up right next to the family mansion. Directors Hal Roach, Hal Roach Jr. and Gordon M. Douglas deliberately blur the thin line between sanity and insanity throughout Road Show. Just who's crazier: the delusional Menjou, who takes photographs with an invisible camera, or lovestruck Indian George E. Stone, who spends his free time chasing after carnival employee Patsy Kelly? And are the freewheeling carney folk any goofier than the flibbertigibbet society folk? The Charioteers, a black singing group who'd previously appeared in the Broadway production of Hellzapoppin, act as a sort of Greek chorus, commenting on the action with several refrains of the Hoagy Carmichael song "Calliope Jane". The amiable wackiness of Road Show is capped by a car-chase finale. The film was based on a novel by Eric Hatch, who four years earlier had worked on Roach's Topper. Watch for several familiar comedy faces among the uncredited bit players, including Shemp Howard of Three Stooges fame. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Those popular MGM co-stars William Powell and Myrna Loy take a break from their usual Thin Man duties to star in the zany comedy I Love You Again. The film opens with Loy prepared to divorce her dull businessman husband Powell. A blow on the head causes Powell to remember his former life as a notorious con man. No one in town has any knowledge of Powell's criminal past, a fact he hopes to use to his advantage. Loy, astounded at Powell's sudden surge of amorous ardor, reconsiders her divorce. When she learns of his true identity, she is even more fascinated. Another blow on the head restores the non-criminal Powell--at least, that's what he and Loy would like you to believe. The film's highlight is a screamingly funny sequence in which Powell plays scoutmaster to a group of surly youngsters (including Our Gang veterans Carl Switzer and Mickey Gubitosi, aka Robert Blake). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The notoriously temperamental Miriam Hopkins is ideally cast as equally contentious theatrical prima donna Mrs. Leslie Carter in The Lady With Red Hair. As rapidly paced as any Warner Bros. gangster picture, the film charts Caroline Carter's rise to fame on Broadway through the auspices of impresario David Belasco (Claude Rains). The screenwriters take great pains to cast Carter in a sympathetic light, suggesting that she turned to the lucrative world of the theater to regain custody of her son (Johnnie Russell), won by her husband in their acrimonious 1889 divorce settlement. Though at first she meets with nothing but failure, our heroine perseveres, and by 1904 she is the idol of millions throughout the world. Along the way, she marries visionary producer Lou Payne (Richard Ainley), but by film's end she is reunited with her mentor Belasco. A young Cornel Wilde makes his screen debut as an aspiring actor in a boarding-house sequence. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Communism-the American variety-is given a hilarious going-over in 20th Century-Fox's Public Deb No. 1. Spoiled society girl Penny Cooper (Brenda Joyce) impulsively lends her voice to a Communist rally, which earns her a public spanking by 100% All-American waiter Alan Blake (George Murphy). Impressed by Blake's boldness, Penny's ulcerated father, soup tycoon Millburn Cooper (Charlie Ruggles), hires the young man as a vice-president, hoping in this way to keep his daughter in line. Murphy manages to win Joyce from her socialite boyfriend Bruce Fairchild (who else but Ralph Bellamy?), but she refuses to abandon her Communist ideology until she is disillusioned by Russia's invasion of Finland. The heroine's rejection of the Red cause is symbolized by an (implicit) act of defecation performed by a passing dog on a crumpled Communist pamphlet. When originally released, the film was titled Elsa Maxwell's Public Deb No. 1, in recognition of the presence in the cast of famed New York social arbiter and partygiver Elsa Maxwell, who in the film's silliest scene shows up at a costume party dressed as Benjamin Franklin! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Frank Capra's classic comedy-drama established James Stewart as a lead actor in one of his finest (and most archetypal) roles. The film opens as a succession of reporters shout into telephones announcing the death of Senator Samuel Foley. Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), the state's senior senator, puts in a call to Governor Hubert "Happy" Hopper (Guy Kibbee) reporting the news. Hopper then calls powerful media magnate Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold), who controls the state -- along with the lawmakers. Taylor orders Hopper to appoint an interim senator to fill out Foley's term; Taylor has proposed a pork barrel bill to finance an unneeded dam at Willet Creek, so he warns Hopper he wants a senator who "can't ask any questions or talk out of turn." After having a number of his appointees rejected, at the suggestion of his children Hopper nominates local hero Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), leader of the state's Boy Rangers group. Smith is an innocent, wide-eyed idealist who quotes Jefferson and Lincoln and idolizes Paine, who had known his crusading editor father. In Washington, after a humiliating introduction to the press corps, Smith threatens to resign, but Paine encourages him to stay and work on a bill for a national boy's camp. With the help of his cynical secretary Clarissa Sanders (Jean Arthur), Smith prepares to introduce his boy's camp bill to the Senate. But when he proposes to build the camp on the Willets Creek site, Taylor and Paine force him to drop the measure. Smith discovers Taylor and Paine want the Willets Creek site for graft and he attempts to expose them, but Paine deflects Smith's charges by accusing Smith of stealing money from the boy rangers. Defeated, Smith is ready to depart Washington, but Saunders, whose patriotic zeal has been renewed by Smith, exhorts him to stay and fight. Smith returns to the Senate chamber and, while Taylor musters the media forces in his state to destroy him, Smith engages in a climactic filibuster to speak his piece: "I've got a few things I want to say to this body. I tried to say them once before and I got stopped colder than a mackerel. Well, I'd like to get them said this time, sir. And as a matter of fact, I'm not gonna leave this body until I do get them said." ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Hollywood Cavalcade was a fictionalized history of silent films and the growth of the movie industry. Don Ameche portrays a character based on equal portions of Mack Sennett and D. W. Griffith, while Alice Faye's silent star is an amalgam of Mabel Normand and Gloria Swanson. Ameche breaks into pictures with slapstick comedies, initiating the first "pie throwing" scene, with Buster Keaton the thrower and Alice Faye the throw-ee. Thanks to Ameche, Faye becomes a major comedy star, appearing in wild Keystone Kops chase comedies. But success goes to Ameche's head, and soon he's staging elaborate Intolerance-like historical spectacles. As Ameche's artistic aspirations climb, his relationship with the faithful Alice deteriorates. She finds solace with her young leading man (Alan Curtis) and becomes a top dramatic star. Having made and lost several fortunes, Ameche talks Alice into appearing in his "comeback" picture, but shortly before filming ends, she and her husband are in a serious auto accident. The husband is killed, and as Faye recuperates, Ameche agonizes over how he'll save his uncompleted masterpiece. He witnesses the premiere of Al Jolson's part-talking The Jazz Singer and decides to risk everything by scrapping his film and remaking it as a talkie. Faye, who's never really stopped loving Ameche, agrees to star in this new project. On a level of accuracy, Hollywood Cavalcade is for the birds, but it scores on its energetic performances and nostalgic appeal. As a bonus, several past movie greats appear in cameos: Al Jolson, Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett, Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin, Jimmy Finlayson, Hank Mann and even Rin Tin Tin Jr. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Twentieth Century-Fox borrowed Spencer Tracy, from MGM for the sprawling (yet economically produced) historical drama Stanley and Livingstone. Tracy plays 19th-century American journalist Henry M. Stanley, an adventure-prone sort who is assigned by his editor (Henry Hull) to locate lost Scottish missionary David Livingstone (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) in darkest Africa. There are perils aplenty before the inevitable meeting in the clearing, capped by the immortal courtesy "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Though seriously ill, Livingstone is content ministering to the natives, declining Stanley's invitation to return home. Upon arriving back to civilization, Stanley tells his story of Dr. Livingstone, but without tangible proof, he is accused of perpetrating a fraud. Only at the very last moment is Stanley vindicated; at this point, he decides to go back to Africa to continue the late Dr. Livingstone's work. This didn't happen in real life, nor is the studio-dictated romance between Spencer Tracy and Nancy Kelly completely copacetic with the facts; outside of this, Stanley and Livingstone comes pretty close to living up to Fox's ad-campaign slogan "The Most Heroic Exploit the World Has Known." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ginger Rogers slipped off her dancing shoes to play one of her best comic roles as Polly Parish, a salesgirl at a large department store. Single and with no steady beau, Polly leads a quiet life until she discovers a baby left at her doorstep. While puzzled by this development, Polly feels for the child and decides to adopt the baby. However, most of her co-workers raise their eyebrows at Polly's new status as a single mother, believing that she's actually the mother. The owner of the store where Polly works, J.B. Merlin (Charles Coburn), is taken aback, and his son David (David Niven), who has a reputation as a ladies' man, is dispatched to lead Polly back to the straight-and-narrow. Bachelor Mother was remade in 1956 as Bundle of Joy, a vehicle for then-married Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A transport pilot is ordered to fly a risky mission. The pilot, Scott, refuses the dangerous mission and is fired from his job. Scott starts up a pilot school which struggles to stay in business. As an inspector for the government, Foster gives Scott trouble about his school, Scott hopes a new government pilot program will help him out. ~ All Movie Guide