Harry Tenbrook Movies

Now considered lost, Thieves Gold was another in a lengthy series of westerns starring Harry Carey and directed by John Ford. Once again cast as "Cheyenne Harry," the star plays the foreman of the Savage Ranch, where his sole companion is his Uncle Larkin. Fed up with his isolated existence, Harry quits his job and heads to the border town of Agua Preista, where he joins up with soldier-of-fortune Curt Simons. Before long, our hero has been swept up with a scheme to rob a gold shipment but is dissuaded from this disastrous course when he falls in love with runaway heiress Alice Norris. Thieves Gold contained plenty of fisticuffs and gunplay, but the little humanistic touches provided by star Carey and director Ford lifted the film out of the standard Western syndrome. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This crude melodrama starring William Desmond seems like it came from an earlier age when it's compared to other films of the roaring '20s, and in a way it did; this was a remake of the 1916 film starring J. Warren Kerrigan. Desmond plays John Fairmeadow, a Bowery drunk who finds redemption when he travels to a lumber camp. He spends so much time trying to reform the rest of the camp -- first with his fists, then with his pious ways -- that he is nicknamed "the parson." He does convince quite a few men that soda pop is preferable to the hard stuff, but there is a villain in their midst. Jack Flack (Albert J. Smith) betrays Claire (Marin Sais), the wife of saloonkeeper "Pale" Peter (Francis Ford). Ultimately, Claire commits suicide by leaping into the river, so Flack turns his attentions to orphan Pattie Batch (Mary McAllister), Fairmeadow's protégé. Fairmeadow rescues her, and, while battling it out with Flack, discovers Claire's body. Peter seeks vengeance for his wife's death and kills Flack, ridding the camp of his wickedness. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Smiling Bill Flannigan (William Desmond), a once-renowned prizefighter, escapes West after accidentally killing an opponent in the ring in this muscular Universal western. The ex-boxer obtains the job of ranch cook and gets involved with the ubiquitous war between ranchers and sheep men. Hailing from Scotland and out of a long line of entertainers, brawny Desmond began his 25-year screen career playing the parson opposite stage star Cyril Maude in Peer Gynt (1915). A heavily dramatic beginning for an actor who would later star in robust serials such as Perils of the Yukon (1922), The Riddle Rider and The Vanishing Rider (1928), all for Universal. Desmond's leading lady in The Burning Trail, Mary McIvor, was also his off-screen wife. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The Outlaw Dog stars Ranger, one of the better Rin-Tin-Tin rivals, in the title role. When his master is attacked and left speechless, Ranger is held responsible. On the lam from the Law, the canine hero links up with telegrapher Bill Brady (Rex Lease) and Bill's girlfriend Helen Meadows (Helen Foster). He gets a chance to clear his name by helping Bill trap a pair of outlaws who plan to blow up a mail train and abscond with the loot. Finally, Ranger's former master regains his voice, exonerates the dog, and everything in the garden is lovely. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this curious film, a knickknack collector falls in love with the daughter of a jewel collector. When a rare stone is swiped from a reception at the latter's home, the daughter and her sweetheart begin looking for it. As they drive to the police, they are taken upon a most circuitous path until they end up at the home of Satan, wherein many strange people dwell. The couple is befriended by a helpful dwarf. They must all attend a masquerade ball, and there some of Satan's minions abduct the woman and demand that she produces the jewel, lest she be tortured. Both she and her love then must endure a number of terrifying encounters before they can escape. Unfortunately, the bizarre ordeal has rendered them both stark raving mad. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a macho ironworker and his equally tough friend decide to leave New Orleans to work as beam-walkers on a New York City skyscraper. This arouses the ire of his Cajun girlfriend who promptly shoots at him as he walks away and then follows him to the Big Apple where she becomes a nightclub performer. Time passes and her ex-lover becomes the head of the ironworker's union. He then finds himself dishonest crooks who are trying to manipulate him into embezzling treasury funds for them by having their most luscious moll seduce him. Fortunately, the ever-jealous Cajun girl and her pistol intervene, and the treasury money is saved. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

John Ford directed this undersea adventure from the early days of the sound era; it features talking sequences along silent passages with intertitles. After a brief shore leave in Singapore, where sailors have the opportunity to slake their thirsts for both liquor and women, the crew of a U.S. Navy S-13 submarine is ordered back to duty (with many still drunk) in hopes of getting into safer waters before rough weather hits. In the midst of a storm, the sub collides with a ship and starts to sink; the S-13 begins taking on water, which knocks out their radio equipment not long after they begin sending out distress signals. The sub has a limited amount of oxygen on board, and tempers begin to flare as the men begin to wonder who (if anyone) can survive if they are not rescued soon. Adding to this tension is the presence of torpedo launcher Burke (Kenneth MacKenna). The ship's commander, Weymouth (Charles Gerrard), thinks that Burke may actually be Quartermain, a British officer who was the enemy of Weymouth's best friend and was widely presumed to be dead after going missing in action. A young Frank Albertson plays the sub's ensign, and John Wayne has a small part as a radio operator. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Coney island vendors Baltimore Clark (Bill Boyd), Dutch Herman (Robert Armstrong) and Skeets O'Reilly (James Gleason) spend their off-hours (and some of their on-hours) carrying on a friendly rivalry for the affections of pert drugstore counter girl Sally (Ginger Rogers). But when America enters WW1, our three heroes leave Sally behind and join the Navy. Before long, Baltimore, Dutch and Skeets find themselves smack in the middle of an ongoing conflict between the German U-boat fleet and a shadowy "mystery" ship. Naturally, the boys are crewmen on the aforementioned mystery vessel, which is used as a decoy to bring the enemy out into the open. Despite this tense situation, the film spends a goodly amount of time showing the three protagonists cheerfully cheating on Sally with fetching foreign damsels in other ports of call. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first of director John Ford's three films for 1931 was the now-forgotten The Seas Beneath. Essentially a reworking of Ford's 1930 effort Men Without Women, the story concentrates on the WWI submarine crew captained by rough-and-tumble Bob Kingsley (George O'Brien). While trying to coerce a German sub into a winner-take-all battle, Kingsley learns that his sweetheart Anna-Maria Von Stuben (Marion Lessing) is an enemy spy, and that her brother and fiancee are officers on the German vessel. Adding to the intrigue is Mona Maris, a sexy Cabaret singer who likewise moonlights as a spy. The Seas Beneath was largely filmed on location in and around Catalina Island. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this western, a Texas Ranger is assigned to bring in a woman who is causing trouble in a nearby town. He soon comes to suspect, however, that she is being set up to deflect attention away from a gang of cattle thieves and bandits led by a man whom the Ranger believes killed his brother. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

Completed in mid-1930, Scarface, based on Armitage Trail's novel of the same name, might have been the first of the great talkie gangster flicks, but it was held up for release until after that honor was jointly usurped by Little Caesar and Public Enemy. Paul Muni stars as prohibition-era mobster Tony Camonte, a character obviously patterned on Al Capone (whose nickname was "Scarface"). The homicidal Camonte ruthlessly wrests control of the bootlegging racket from his boss, Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins), and claims Lovo's mistress, Poppy (Karen Morley), in the bargain. But while Poppy satisfies him sexually, Tony has a soft spot in his heart only for his sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak). The film's finale is one of the longest and bloodiest of the 1930s, maintaining suspense and concern for the characters involved even though Muni has deliberately done nothing to make Tony likeable to audience. The grimness of Scarface is leavened by a few choice moments of black humor. Forced to leave a stage production of Rain in order to commit a murder, Tony returns to his theater seat and anxiously asks his buddies how the play came out. Some of the film's funniest moments belong to Vince Barnett as the mentally deficient, illiterate gangster secretary, who at one juncture gets so mad at a caller on the phone that he shoots the receiver. Scarface features a famous "'X' Marks The Spot" logo, inspired by news photos of gangland murders: whenever a character is killed, the letter "X" appears on screen in one form or another. Example: When a rival gangster (played by Boris Karloff) is killed at a bowling alley, the camera cuts to his bowling ball knocking down all the pins -- a strike, denoted, of course, by an "X." Producer Howard R. Hughes couldn't release Scarface until he toned down some of the violence, reshot certain scenes to avoid libel suits, added the subtitle "The Shame of the Nation" to the opening credits, and shoehorned in new scenes showing upright Italian-Americans banding together to wipe out gangsterism. After its first run, Scarface was completely withdrawn from distribution on Hughes' orders; the film would not be seen again on a widespread basis until it was reissued by Universal in 1979, shorn of 8 of its original 99 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tom Mix once again goes up against corrupt Fred Kohler in this would-be epic Western filmed on-location at Kanab, UT. Retiring from a life of train robbing, Benjamin R. Jones (Kohler) takes over the ghost town of Stillwell, knowing full well that the property belongs to Molly O'Rourke (Margaret Lindsay). Enter horse wrangler Tom Mason (Mix), who smells a rat and does his best to unmask Jones as the crook he knows him to be. Molly at first falls for Jones' scheme, but confronts him when a general feeling of lawlessness sets in. The villain, alas, has an ace up his sleeve: Molly owes back taxes on her property, which is ripe for a takeover. The Fourth Horseman was the fifth of nine Westerns Tom Mix would make for Universal from 1932-1933 before an on-the-set accident basically ended his career as a series Western star. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide