Nick Stewart [Nicodemus] Movies

While taking a train trip from L.A. to Chicago, mild-mannered George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) makes the acquaintance of Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh). As they indulge in a brief bit of spooning, Hilly tells George that her boss is on the verge of exposing a group of vicious art forgers. Later that evening, George sees the body of Hilly's boss being thrown off of the train. Detective Sweet (Ned Beatty) agrees to investigate, but he too is bumped off. The instigator of these outrages is master forger Roger Devereau (Patrick McGoohan), who, with his crony Mr. Whiney (Ray Walston) is planning a particularly diabolical crime. Worse still, they take Hilly prisoner so she can't tip off the cops. When George is also targeted for elimination, he manages in slapstick fashion to elude the killers. Falling off the train, he ends up being arrested on some trumped-up charge or other by a local sheriff. He makes his escape in the company of petty thief Grover Muldoon (Richard Pryor) -- and that's only the beginning. A box-office smash, Silver Streak paved the way for the equally successful 1980 Wilder-Pryor vehicle Stir Crazy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With this all-star Cinerama epic, producer/director Stanley Kramer vowed to make "the comedy that would end all comedies." The story begins during a massive traffic jam, caused by reckless driver Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), who, before (literally) kicking the bucket, cryptically tells the assembled drivers that he's buried a fortune in stolen loot, "under the Big W." The various motorists setting out on a mad scramble include a dentist (Sid Caesar) and his wife (Edie Adams); a henpecked husband (Milton Berle) accompanied by his mother-in-law (Ethel Merman) and his beatnik brother-in-law (Dick Shawn); a pair of comedy writers (Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney); and a variety of assorted nuts including a slow-wit (Jonathan Winters), a wheeler-dealer (Phil Silvers), and a pair of covetous cabdrivers (Peter Falk and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson). Monitoring every move that the fortune hunters make is a scrupulously honest police detective (Spencer Tracy). Virtually every lead, supporting, and bit part in the picture is filled by a well-known comic actor: the laughspinning lineup also includes Carl Reiner, Terry-Thomas, Arnold Stang, Buster Keaton, Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, and The Three Stooges, who get one of the picture's biggest laughs by standing stock still and uttering not a word. Two prominent comedians are conspicuous by their absence: Groucho Marx refused to appear when Kramer couldn't meet his price, while Stan Laurel declined because he felt he was too old-looking to be funny. Available for years in its 154-minute general release version, the film was restored to its roadshow length of 175 minutes on home video; the search goes on for a missing Buster Keaton routine, reportedly excised on the eve of the picture's premiere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this adventure, set in the dark African jungles, visiting American scientists inadvertently enrage the local natives when they steal a sacred golden tablet. Fortunately a jungle dwelling doctor helps the insensitive brutes return the tablet before they are killed by the natives. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In 1943, Oscar Hammerstein Jr. took Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, rewrote the lyrics, changed the characters from 19th century Spaniards to World War II-era African-Americans, switched the locale to a Southern military base, and the result was Carmen Jones. Dorothy Dandridge stars as Carmen Jones, tempestuous employee of a parachute factory. Harry Belafonte plays Joe (originally José), a young military officer engaged to marry virginal Cindy Lou (Olga James). When Carmen gets into a fight with another girl, she is placed under arrest and put in Joe's charge. Succumbing to her attractiveness, Joe accompanies Carmen to her old neighborhood, where, after killing a sergeant sent to retrieve him, he deserts the army. Carmen tries to be faithful, but fortune-telling Frankie (Pearl Bailey) warns her that she and her soldier are doomed. Enter Joe Adams in the role of boxer Husky Miller (a play on Carmen's bullfighter Escamillo), who sweeps Carmen off her feet, ultimately with tragic consequences. Alhough both Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte were singers, their opera voices were dubbed in by LeVern Hutcherson and Marilyn Horne. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A semi-sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Columbia's Down to Earth is a camp- and kitsch-lover's delight. More beautiful than ever, Rita Hayworth stars as Terpsichore, the Goddess of Dance. From her perch Up Above, Terpsichore discovers that Broadway producer Danny Miller (Larry Parks) intends to put together a musical satire, lampooning herself and her fellow Greek Gods. Eliciting the aid of Heavenly emissary Mr. Jordan (Roland Culver, taking over from the earlier film's Claude Rains), Terpsichore descends to Earth in human form, landing a role in Miller's play. Through her bewitching influence, Miller agrees to abandon his plans for a satire, transforming his production into a portentiously serious "work of art"-which lays a large and noxious egg with the opening-night crowd. Somehow, our ethereal heroine manages to set things right, but there's still one nagging problem: Will she, a goddess, ever be permitted to fall in love with a mere mortal like Miller? Repeating their Here Comes Mr. Jordan roles, James Gleason and Edward Everett Horton appear respectively as the eternally flustered Max Corkle (formerly a fight promoter, now a theatrical agent) and the pompous, rule-bound Heavenly messenger #7013. Silly but immensely entertaining, Down to Earth was remade as the sillier but decidedly less entertaining Xanadu in 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Faced with the challenge of writing a screenplay based on the life of fabulously wealthy, fabulously successful composer Cole Porter, one Hollywood wag came up with a potential story angle: "How does the S.O.B. make his second million dollars?" By the time the Porter biopic Night and Day was released, the three-person scriptwriting team still hadn't come up with a compelling storyline, though the film had the decided advantages of star Cary Grant and all that great Porter music. Roughly covering the years 1912 to 1946, the story begins during Porter's undergraduate days at Yale University, where he participated in amateur theatricals under the tutelage of waspish professor Monty Woolley (who plays himself). Though Porter's inherited wealth could have kept him out of WWI, he insists upon signing up as an ambulance driver. While serving in France, he meets nurse Linda Lee (Alexis Smith), who will later become his wife. Focusing his attentions on Broadway and the London stage in the postwar years, Porter pens an unbroken string of hit songs, including "Just One of Those Things," "You're the Top," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Begin the Beguine," and the title number. The composition of this last-named song is one of the film's giddy highlights, as Porter, inspired by the "drip drip drip" of an outsized rainstorm, runs to the piano and cries "I think I've got it!" The film's dramatic conflict arises when Porter is crippled for life in a polo accident. Refusing to have his legs amputated, he makes an inspiring comeback, even prompting a WWI amputee to remark upon his courage! Corny and unreliable as biography, Night and Day is redeemed by the guest appearances of musical luminaries Mary Martin (doing a spirited if disappointingly demure version of her striptease number "My Heart Belongs to Daddy") and Ginny Simms, the latter cast as an ersatz Ethel Merman named Carole Hill. Jane Wyman, seen as Porter's pre-nuptial sweetheart Gracie Harris, also gets to sing and dance, and quite well indeed. Beset with production problems, not least of which was the ongoing animosity between star Grant and director Michael Curtiz, Night and Day managed to finish filming on schedule, and proved to be an audience favorite -- except for those "in the know" Broadwayites who were bemused over the fact that Cole Porter's well-known homosexuality was necessarily weaned from the screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Song of the South is a blend of live action and animation, based on the popular "Uncle Remus" stories of Joel Chandler Harris. Set in the years just after the Civil War, the story begins with young Johnny (Bobby Driscoll) being sent to live at the southern plantation of his grandmother (Lucile Watson) while his parents contemplate divorce. At first disconsolate, the boy is cheered up by African-American handyman Uncle Remus (James Baskett), who tells him many delightful fables concerning the clever trickster Br'er Rabbit, whose adventures are illustrated in cartoon form. Each story has a moral, which Johnny applies to the exigencies of his real life. Johnny's mother (Ruth Warrick) disapproves of Uncle Remus, and orders the boy never to visit the kindly old black man again. Uncle Remus packs his bags and leaves; while chasing after him, Johnny is injured by a bull. He recovers thanks to the friendly presence of Uncle Remus, and all is forgiven. The film was awarded the Best Song Oscar for "Zip-a-dee Doo Dah," and James Baskett won a special Oscar for his portrayal of Uncle Remus. Disney has withheld the movie in the U.S. ever since its last theatrical re-release in 1986, due to controversy over what some (including the NAACP) argue is a sugar-coated depiction of the Reconstruction-era South. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

I Love a Bandleader is an easy-to-take vehicle for personable orchestra leader Phil Harris. "Old Curly" is cast as housepainter Phil Burton, who while suffering from amnesia imagines that he's the leader of a popular swing band. While suffering this delusion, Burton falls in love with perky Ann Carter (Leslie Brooks). When his memory returns, Burton returns to his meek, untalented self-but not for long, if Ann has anything to say about it! Costarring with Harris is his fellow Jack Benny Show cohort, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, who does his usual flawless comic job-and even gets to sing! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

According to Hollywood lore, both John Wayne and director Frank Borzage refused to work with Vera Hruba Ralston, the Czech-born inamorata (and future wife) of Republic Pictures owner Herbert I. Yates. Yates somehow managed to convince Wayne to change his mind, but Borzage was replaced by contract director Joseph Kane. The result was Dakota, the company's major release of 1945, a potentially sprawling empire-building Western. Wayne and Ralston play newlyweds heading for Fargo, North Dakota, where they plan to buy land in anticipation of the coming of the railroad. They are opposed by saloon owner Jim Bender (Ward Bond), who also knows about the expansion and is coercing the homesteaders into selling their land to him and his chief lieutenant, Collins (Mike Mazurki). The latter has been elected president of the Wheat Growers Association, and soon the farmers find themselves indebted to Bender. But Wayne, with his wife's help, beats Bender and his henchman at their own game, making certain that the farmers are well compensated for selling their land to the railroad company owned by Ralston's father (Hugo Haas). Contrary to popular belief, Vera Hruba Ralston was not Dakota's chief liability. For some reason, Republic Pictures, normally a leader in action-oriented melodrama, chose to employ an inordinate amount of rear projection footage this time around, making for rather dull viewing. The Western only leaves the confines of the studio back lot for the climactic prairie fire scenes, filmed by a second unit under the direction of stunt expert Yakima Canutt. Apparently a better figure skater than an actress, Ralston actually shows a bit of spirit in some of her scenes but is rather obviously upstaged by the veteran Ona Munson as a kind-hearted saloon entertainer. Munson was borrowed from Warner Bros. and her singing of "Coax Me" by Andrew B. Sterling and Harry Von Tilzer remains one of Dakota's main pleasures despite editor Fred Allen's endless cross-cutting to Ralston's reactions. The latter was reportedly a very pleasant person devoid of a prima donna ego and would be cast opposite John Wayne again in The Fighting Kentuckian (1949). Republic serial heroines Linda Stirling and Adrian Booth can be spotted among Munson's dancing girls. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The last and least of RKO Radio's B-series based on radio's "Great Gildersleeve", Gildersleeve's Ghost is a standard "scare" comedy redeemed by some enthusiastic performances. The barely relevant title comes from the fact that the film opens in a graveyard, where two spectral ancestors of Springfield water commissioner Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve (Harold Peary) discuss his chances in the upcoming mayoral election. The rest of the film takes place in a spooky old mansion, where mad scientists Wells (Frank Reicher) and Lennox (Joseph Vitale) are experimenting with an invisibility formula. Their unwilling subject is vivacious blonde Terry Vance (Marion Martin), whose ability to appear and disappear at will causes a lot of embarrassment for poor old Gildersleeve. The film doesn't miss a trick: there's even an extended bit involving a gorilla. Very basic stuff, Gildersleeve's Ghost admittedly delivers plenty of laughs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

My Son, the Hero was a rare comedy from the PRC studio mills-and rarer still, it was directed by melodrama specialist Edgar G. Ulmer. Roscoe Karns plays a third-rate fight manager misleadingly known as Big Time. Justifiably proud of his war-correspondent son Michael (Joseph Allen Jr.), Big Time tries to measure up to his son's accomplishments by writing letters to the boy, claiming to be a wealthy businessman. When Michael comes home on furlough, Big Time panics, worrying that he'll be exposed as a fraud. But he hasn't taken into consideration his golden-hearted ex-wife Gerty (Patsy Kelly) and punchdrunk prizefighter Kid Slug (Maxie Rosenbloom), who help Big Time come off as a hero in the eyes of his son. My Son, the Hero represented Patsy Kelly's last film appearance until her comeback role in Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Go West, Young Man represented the first time that Mae West starred in a film not originally written with her in mind. Based on Lawrence Riley's stage comedy Personal Appearance (which starred Gladys George on Broadway), the film casts La West as Mavis Alden, a pretentious and somewhat stupid movie star who is shipped out on a nationwide promotional tour of her latest picture, Drifting Lady. Stranded in a backwater Pennsylvania town, she finds time for a chaste romance with local gas-station attendant Bud (Randolph Scott). Her enthusiastic press agent tries to stage-manage a wedding between the two casual lovers, whereupon West wriggles out of the commitment by renouncing Scott -- repeating the flowery dialogue from her newest cinematic masterpiece. Mae West is moderately amusing in an uncharacteristic assignment, but one wonders what the results would have been if Paramount had allowed her to star in her first choice of assignments: A satirical biography of Catherine the Great. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide