Carl Stockdale Movies

This spy thriller is centered upon the actions of the Cipher Bureau, a part of a government agency devoted to intercepting and decoding secret messages. The protagonist must destroy a ring of thinly disguised German spies. The film contains a lot of interesting information about how codes are deciphered and other things such as the ways that broadcast music can contain secret codes. The spies on both sides get involved in a gun battle. The good guys save the day. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this depressing drama, even though she is an adult, the eldest daughter of a hillbilly clan headed by a brutal patriarch still must endure his vicious beatings. Finally her mother and other friends counsel her to leave the hills. She does and ends up in New York where she enrolls in nursing classes. While studying, she also meets the dashing young attorney who helped convict her father of a shooting several months before. After graduating, she returns home to assist a doctor in a free clinic. Unfortunately, her father will not let her back into the family home, which causes her no pain at all. When the ruthless father begins attempting to sell off her younger sister as a child bride, the nurse comes to her aide. A fight ensues between father and daughter culminating in the father's accidental death. Her beau defends her in court, but she is sentenced to 25 years in prison anyway. Unfortunately, the locals are angered by the killing and decide to get their own revenge and lynch her. Fortunately, the lawyer saves her and bundles her on a plane and gets her away from there. This film is adapted from a true story. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

When Walter Pidgeon wasn't playing Greer Garson's perfect husband at MGM, he could usually be found portraying a newspaper editor. This is how we find him in My Dear Miss Aldrich, the first MGM flick in which Pidgeon was awarded top billing. Maureen O'Sullivan plays the title character, a glamorous schoolteacher who receives an inheritance from a wealthy relative. That legacy turns out to be the very newspaper managed by Mr. Pidgeon--and the usual fireworks result. My Dear Miss Aldrich was written by Herman J. Mankiewicz, a former newspaperman who would cap his cinematic reminiscences with his 1940 screenplay for Citizen Kane. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gene Autry is the star (but not the title character) of Oh, Susanna!, a Republic musical western. What plot there is consists of Autry running afoul of masked robbers. Thrown from a speeding train, Autry is rescued by comedy relief Smiley Burnette and grizzled Earle Hodgins. Autry takes a few more singing breaks, then brings the robbers to justice. A 1951 William Elliott western, also titled Oh, Susanna! is not a remake. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It took British author James Hilton six weeks to write his visionary novel Lost Horizon. It took director Frank Capra two years-and half of his home studio Columbia's annual budget-to bring it to the screen. After a lengthy preamble, inviting audiences to imagine their own ideas of Utopia, the film opens on a chaotic scene at a Chinese airfield. As hordes of bandits approach, hundreds of refugees scramble to board the last plane out. Only five people make it: Mildly disenchanted Far Eastern diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), his hotheaded younger brother George (John Howard), embezzler Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), dithery fossil expert Lovett (Edward Everett Horton) and consumptive prostitute Gloria Stone (Isabel Jewell). As the plane flies off towards the Himalayas, Robert realizes that he and his fellow passengers are heading in the wrong direction. They are, in fact, being kidnapped-but why? And where to? The plane crash-lands in the snowy Tibetan interior. The pilot is killed, but the passengers are safe. By and by, a strange caravan approaches, led by an enigmatic Chinese named Chang (H. B. Warner). Joining the caravan, Conway and his party are led through a treacherous mountain pass and into a land of temperate weather and dazzling beauty. This is Shangri-La, the idyllic lamasery presided over by the aged, wizened High Lama (Sam Jaffe). In this fertile valley, people are not encumbered by such exigencies as crime, dictators and hatred; instead, everyone is devoted to the pursuit of wisdom and self-improvement-and best of all, the aging process has been slowed to a walk, allowing people to live well past the two-century mark. Though he still does not know why he was brought here, Conway is quicker to adapt to Shangri-La than his wary fellow passengers. He even falls in love with Sondra (Jane Wyatt), an attractive, intelligent young woman. Finally granted an audience with the High Lama, Conway discovers that the old man is actually Father Perrault, the Belgian missionary who founded Shangri-La-over two hundred years earlier. Dying, the High Lama has selected Conway, whose idealism and even-handedness is world famous, to succeed him-and hopefully spread the "love thy neighbor" edict of Shangri-La to the rest of the war-torn world. Conway is willing to assume leadership, but younger brother George, his mind poisoned by spiteful Shangri-La resident Maria (Margo), insists upon escaping to the outside world. The older Conway warns that, despite her youthful appearance, Maria is well past sixty and will surely perish once she leaves Shangri-La; but Maria retorts that the high lama is insane, and that everything he has told Conway is a lie. Disillusioned, Conway agrees to leave with Jack and Maria. The trek back to civilization is a grueling one, especially for Maria, who-true to Conway's prediction-shrivels from age and dies. Appalled that he has been misled, George kills himself. Weeks later, and amnesiac Conway stumbles into a Tibetan mission, where he is rescued and brought back to England. When his memory is restored, however, Conway runs back to Shangri-La, and into the arms of Sondra. When Lost Horizon was shown to preview audiences, it ran nearly three hours-and it was a disaster. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have rescued his pet project by merely burning the first two reels and opening the film with the evacuation scene; In fact, while Capra did remove the film's "flashback" framework, he made most of his cuts in the body of the picture. The release length of Lost Horizon was 132 minutes, pared down to 119 when it when into general distribution. When it was reissued in the 1940s and 1950s, it was rather clumsily pared down to anywhere from 95 to 100 minutes. Only in the mid-1980s was Lost Horizon restored to its original length, with stills used to illustrate certain scenes for which only the soundtrack existed. While not the enormous hit Capra and Columbia had hoped it would be, Lost Horizon was popular enough to allow the name "Shangri-La" enter the household-word category. In 1973, producer Ross Hunter felt the urge to inflict a wretched musical remake onto an unsuspecting public. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jean Harlow offers her final screen performance in this witty and -- in retrospect -- quite moving racetrack comedy-drama co-starring Clark Gable and Walter Pidgeon. When her father dies shortly after losing his horse farm to Duke Bradley (Gable), Carol Clayton (Harlow) refuses the handsome bookmaker's offer to forget the debt and instead vows to pay him back in full. She even forbids her stockbroker fiancé, Harley Madison (Pidgeon), to make wagers that may benefit Duke, but promises to marry him once her champion horse wins at Saratoga. But against all the odds, Carol falls in love with Duke and when he appears in danger of ruination, she finds herself rooting for the competitor to win the all-important race. Saratoga, which was finished using both onscreen and voice doubles for Jean Harlow, was partially filmed on-location at Lexington and Louisville, KY, and in Saratoga Springs, NY. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Fritz Lang's first American film is a vigorous and perceptive indictment of mob law, starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney. Katherine (Sidney) leaves her boyfriend, Joe Wilson (Tracy), behind in their Midwestern hometown when she takes a job in another city. Joe is a decent, hard-working soul, who wants to save up to buy a gas station and looks forward to the future when he and Katherine can get married. A year later, Joe is traveling to meet Katherine so that they can be married. Driving through a small town, Joe is stopped by a deputy sheriff waving a shotgun. Apparently there has been a kidnapping, and the fact that Joe has peanuts in his pocket circumstantially incriminates him in the crime. Joe is arrested and jailed. As Joe sits in his jail cell, the local townspeople begin to talk and whisper and spread rumors. Finally, a lynch mob forms and heads toward the jail. The mob tries to storm the jail and frustrated over their inability to penetrate the prison walls, they set the jail on fire. Joe barely manages to escape ("I could smell myself burning"), but the mob thinks that Joe has been burned to death. Behind the scenes, and with the help of his brothers, Joe tries to rig the verdict in the impending trial of the 22 vigilantes. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

The MGM historical "spectacular" San Francisco was allegedly based on a three-sentence synopsis, submitted verbally to producer B.F. Zeidman by studio troubleshooter Bob Hopkins. The story begins on the Barbary Coast on New Year's Eve, 1906, as rakish but likeable political boss Blackie Norton (Clark Gable) hires demure young singer Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald) to perform at his rowdy Paradise gambling house. Local priest Father Mullin (Spencer Tracy), Blackie's best friend, disapproves of the exploitation of the lovely Mary, feeling that she's suited for classier surroundings. Jack Hurley (Jack Holt), Nob Hill socialite and Blackie's political rival, agrees with Father Mullin and offers the girl the opportunity to sing with the San Francisco Opera. Blackie, who's fallen in love with Mary but won't admit it to himself, jealously holds on to her contract, forcing Mary to walk out on him. For the rest of the film, Mary is torn between the "respectable" lifestyle offered her by Hurley and the baser creature comforts provided by Blackie. It looks for a while that Hurley has won out, but fate takes a hand in the form of the devastating San Francisco Earthquake of April 18, 1906 (a special effects tour de force for art directors Arnold Gillespie and his uncredited associate James Basevi). Hurley is killed in the holocaust, while Blackie, desperately searching for Mary in the rubble, at long last finds religion and prays to God for his sweetheart's salvation. At the end, an unidentified bit player shouts defiantly "We'll build a new San Francisco!" -- and by golly, they do! The Hollywood censors were not so much bothered by the sexual subtext of San Francisco or its harrowing earthquake finale as they were by a scene in which Father Mullin is knocked down by an unrepentant Blackie. To "purify" this potentially blasphemous sequence, screenwriter Anita Loos quickly added an earlier scene in which Mullin and Blackie, both dressed in turtleneck sweaters, genially duke it out at an exercise gym, whereupon the priest cold-cocks Blackie with the greatest of ease. By establishing that Mullin could have punched out Blackie, but chooses not to in the controversial later scene, not only allows that scene to pass, but also strengthened the priest's character. San Francisco proved to be one of MGM's biggest hits, remaining in almost constant reissue for the next three decades. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The second screen version of Anna Katherine Green's 1878 whodunit stars Donald Cook as Dr. Truman Hartnell, a dedicated physician who after declaring old Silas Leavenworth (Frank Sheridan) fit for fight is appalled to learn that the wealthy broker is found dead, an apparent suicide. But Silas, who had bandied about the idea of leaving his ill-gotten gains to charity, had plenty of enemies within his own household. And sure enough, as Detective Bob Gryce (Norman Foster) soon learns, the mean old geezer was murdered by a person or persons unknown. Among the suspects: Henry Clavering (Gavin Gordon), Silas' disgruntled business partner; Eleanor (Jean Rouverol), Leavenworth's pretty niece; and Phoebe (Maude Eburne), the victim's cranky old-maid of a sister. A pet monkey also figures prominently in the plot but the original denouement was too gruesome for the British censors and Republic filmed a copout ending for foreign release versions. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Paul Muni is a prominent physician who is kidnapped by gangsters and forced to tend the needs of head crook Barton MacLaine. MacLaine takes a liking to the intellectual doctor and allows him to go home after his job is done. Muni finds himself the reluctant "staff physician" for the gangster, thus is periodically spirited away from his practice to look after the criminal. He has given his word not to "rat" on the crooks, but he can't sit idly by while the gangsters loot the city. Muni foils the crooks by injecting them with a drug which induces temporary blindness. Dr. Socrates was remade in 1939 as King of the Underworld, with Humphrey Bogart as the gangster boss and actress Kay Francis in Paul Muni's role (with surprisingly few dialogue alterations to accommodate the gender switch!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Buck Jones' fourth Universal western, The Crimson Trail turned out to be one of his best-ever vehicles. The plot has something to do with two rival ranch owners who suspect each other of cattle rustling. Kitty (Polly Ann Young) daughter of one rancher, is in love with Billy Carter (Buck Jones), nephew of the other. For a while, it looks like Billy is the rustler, but this of course could never be. The thrill-packed ending pits our hero against the real villain, Luke Long (Ward Bond at his nastiest). The spectacular climactic shot of a burning ranchhouse would pop up in innumerable Universal westerns of the 1930s and 1940s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this Western, neighboring sheep farmers engage in a long-standing feud over that results in tragedy. The problem began when someone began stealing their livestock. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide