Grady Sutton Movies

One of Harold Lloyd's best feature-length comedies, The Freshman, features the bespectacled regular guy as Harold Lamb, a naïve young man who heads off to college believing campus life will be just as it is in the movies; he even learns a little dance he saw one of his favorite actors do in a film. However, Harold soon discovers that real life isn't all that much like the pictures, and he quickly becomes the laughing stock of the university. Determined to prove himself, Harold tries out for the football team, but he serves as water boy and rides the pine until he finally gets a chance to redeem himself at the big game. Along the way, Harold also tries to woo a lovely co-ed, Peggy (Jobyna Ralston). 22 years later, writer/director Preston Sturges used the climactic football game as the opening for his collaboration with Harold Lloyd, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The best of comic actor Reginald Denny's silent vehicles, Skinner's Dress Suit is a surprising contemporary piece about status-seeking. Denny is an office worker whose wife Laura LaPlante hectors him into asking for a raise. Not only does Denny get the extra dough, but he's asked to take a cut in salary. Nonetheless, he tells LaPlante that he's gotten the increase, whereupon she delightedly makes plans to spend several hundred dollars on home and wardrobe improvements. Denny is fitted out with a new dress suit, which makes him a social success--and obliges him to stay one step ahead of the tailor whenever he's behind in his payments. Just when it appears as though Denny will be swamped in debt, a series of cute coincidences transform him into his office's most valued employee. This second film adaptation of Henry Irving Dodge's novel Skinner's Dress Suit is a vast improvement upon the 1917 filming, with a peppy Charleston sequence thrown in as a bonus. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a college sophomore gets into deep trouble when he gambles away his tuition money on the first day of school. Now to pay for his education, he must work as a soda jerk at a local fountain. There he meets and falls in love with a pretty coed. Because the shop's owner also loves her, he fires his rival. The student is now destitute and unemployed. He is just about to drop out when the money he needs mysteriously arrives in the mail. He thinks the money came from his mother and then begins readying himself for the big football game. He ends up sidelined until the final three minutes of the game. It is a tie score. No sooner is the hapless fellow placed on the field than he fumbles the ball and is knocked unconscious. He groggily awakens on a stretcher and as he is carried off the field, he learns that the girl paid his way. Suddenly the excited fellow sits bolt upright, leaps from the stretcher and begins running across the field to catch her before she boards the train. As he runs, the ball is thrown to him and he manages to score the winning touch down. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Few films outside of Let's Go Native could boast a cast as diverse as Jack Oakie, Jeanette MacDonald and Kay Francis -- all under the direction of Leo McCarey. A variation of the "Admirable Crichton" theme, the story concerns a group of highly incompatible people, all stranded on a tropical island. Among the castaways are Brooklyn cabbie Voltaire McGinniss (Oakie), socialite Joan Wood (MacDonald), Joan's reluctant fiance Wally Wendell (James Hall), and good-time girl Constance Cooke (Kay Francis). The local natives prove to be surprisingly sophisticated, thanks to the influence of a song-and-dance man (Skeets Gallegher) who'd been shipwrecked sometime earlier. Using costumes that she's bought for a show she hopes to produce, the enterprising Joan buys the oil-rich island from the natives, only to have it sink into the sea after an earthquake. By this time, however, everyone has fallen in love with everyone else, so there's smiles all around when the rescue party arrives. Nothing makes much sense in Let's Go Native, but the film scores points on sheer energy and good spirits. As a bonus, director Leo McCarey harks back to his Laurel & Hardy days by incorporating a tit-for-tat "reciprocal destruction" routine. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This entry was part of MGM's short-lived "The Boy Friends" series, which was developed by director George Stevens. In this one, two elderly people, both widowed, want to get married, but the kids do their best to stop them. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

In this romantic comedy, a socialite has an argument with her sweetie and decides to exact revenge by spending the whole day, and much of the night with a notorious playboy. It is all innocent, but unfortunately, gossip ensues and she loses her job. Things get worse when the scandal gets back to her beau and he threatens to call of their wedding. The whole mess is straightened out when the playboy comes forth and swears her innocence. Later it is he that becomes her husband. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

An early comedy about the generation gap, this 1932 movie was written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who went on to write and direct films such as Guys and Dolls and Cleopatra. Director Frank Tuttle co-wrote the script, based on a successful play called The Goose Hangs High by Lewis Beach. Donald Ingals (Richard Bennett) and his wife Eunice (Frances Starr) are conventional and loving parents who are shocked when their son Bradley (Buddy Rogers) comes home from college with ideas that they consider to be outrageous. His parents would like him to get involved with Mary Burke (Peggy Shannon), a prim and proper young lady. More complications ensue because Bradley's sister Lois (Frances Dee) is attracted to the flapper lifestyle, but she isn't sure whether she can handle its emotional demands. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Drafted into the army during World War I, those muddled misfits Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy make a shambles of Training Camp before being shipped to France. When their best pal Eddie (Donald Dillaway) is killed in battle, Stan and Ollie vow to locate the grandparents of Eddie's orphaned little daughter (Jacquie Lyn). Unfortunately, the grandparents are named Smith--and they live in New York City. With only a city directory and phone book as their guide, Stan and Ollie undergo several chucklesome misadventures as they scour the canyons of Manhattan to find Mr. and Mrs. Smith. With the orphanage officials hot on their heels, the boys take drastic action to raise enough money to get out of town with the little girl. All turns out well when Eddie's grandfather makes an appearance under the least likely circumstances. But before Laurel & Hardy can enjoy their own happy ending, they cross the path of an old enemy from their army days: a knife-wielding chef with blood in his eye. The second of Laurel & Hardy's feature-length films, Pack Up Your Troubles is, so far as we're concerned (and here we part company with most Laurel & Hardy buffs), infinitely more amusing than their first feature effort, 1931's Pardon Us. Best bit: An overtired Laurel, attempting to tell a bedtime story to the little girl, ends up snoozing away as the kid finishes the story. The powerhouse supporting cast includes such Laurel & Hardy regulars as James Finlayson, Billy Gilbert, Rychard Cramer, Charles Middleton and Charlie Hall. George Marshall, the film's director, proves a mirthsome menace in the small role of the vengeful chef. For years available only in its 62-minute reissue form, Pack Up Your Troubles was restored to its full 68-minute glory in the mid-1980s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Distantly related to Frederick Lewis Allen's non-fiction book of the same name, Only Yesterday uses fictional characters to trace the years between 1917 and 1929. Wealthy New Yorker John Boles recalls a long-ago affair with southern belle Margaret Sullavan. She gave birth to his child without ever naming the father, then moved to New York herself and set up a dress shop. As the stock-market crash of 1929 wipes out his life savings, Boles becomes remorseful over how he's forgotten Sullavan, who is now dying. He acknowledges that he is the father of her child, and promises to make a good life for the boy despite his dire financial situation. Only Yesterday opens with a remarkable montage sequence showing the devastating effects of the Depression; after that, it never quite gains momentum despite the superb performance of Margaret Sullavan (in her film debut). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Katharine Hepburn stars as Booth Tarkington's would-be society belle Alice Adams. The product of a family of modest means, Alice nonetheless dreams of being accepted by the "better people." Luck of luck, she meets well-to-do young Fred MacMurray at a social gathering; he is charmed by her pathetic attempts at putting on airs and accepts her invitation to dine at the Adams home. The meal is a disaster: Alice's parents (Fred Stone and Anne Shoemaker) are obviously way out of MacMurray's league, while the servant (Hattie McDaniel) that the family hired for the occasion shows up drunk and very surly. Alice Adams was the first major directorial assignment for George Stevens, as well as one of the few Katharine Hepburn vehicles of the 1930s to score a hit with the public. ~ Hal Erickson, 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