Martha Tilton Movies

More expensive-looking than most PRC productions, Crime Inc. is based on a story by former crime reporter Martin Mooney. Drawing from his own experiences, Mooney has concocted a tale of a newspaper journalist who faces a prison term because he refuses to reveal his sources. Tom Neal plays the Mooney counterpart, a crime reporter who takes on a gang of racketeers. His effectiveness is somewhat diluted when he falls in love with Martha Tilton, the sister of one of the crooks. Further complicating things is the fact that the foreman of a jury listening to testimony against the racketeers is in fact the leader of the gang. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A college student's passion for swinging music leads him to found his own band. When he starts spending more time playing music than studying, his father, a prominent hotelier, steps in and sends the lad to a dude ranch in Arizona. Undeterred, the boy brings the band with him. Once there, he encounters a pretty girl. Unfortunately, her father owns a rival hotel chain. Fortunately, after much singing, dancing and misunderstanding, the two young people finally manage to fall in love. Though only an hour long, the film is packed with 16 popular songs. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

You'll Never Get Rich was the first of two films made by Fred Astaire at Columbia, and also the first in which he was paired with his favorite female dancing partner--not Ginger Rogers or Cyd Charisse, but Rita Hayworth. Fred and Rita play a team of Broadway dancers whose partnership is abruptly rent asunder when Fred is drafted into the Army. Unable to adapt to military routine, Astaire frequently ends up in the guardhouse; during one of these visits, he and the Delta Rhythm Boys collaborate on the lively song-and-dance number "The A-starable Rag." Back to the plot: Rita shows up on the army base as the girl friend of captain John Hubbard. This leads to more fancy footwork, and, of course, a happy ending for our stars. Though the Cole Porter score yielded no hits, one of the songs, "Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye", was nominated for an Academy Award. Robert Benchley provides comic relief, as he would in the subsequent Astaire vehicle The Sky's the Limit. You'll Never Get Rich was followed by the even better Astaire-Hayworth pairing You Were Never Lovelier. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

By 1937, producer Hal Roach was hoping to wean himself away from the Laurel & Hardy-Our Gang slapstick on which he had built his studio's reputation by delving into the "screwball comedy" genre. Roach selected the racy Thorne Smith fantasy novel Topper for adaptation, and the result was one of the most endearingly funny films of the decade. Constance Bennett and Cary Grant play Marion and George Kerby, a wealthy, freewheeling young married couple whose uninhibited lifestyle is the talk of the town. After a particularly bibulous evening on the town, the Kerbys race homeward in their gleaming new roadster. George fails to negotiate a curve, and the car plows into a tree, killing both its occupants. Seconds later, the ghosts of George and Marion emerge from the wreckage, behaving as frivolously as if nothing had happened. Upon realizing that they're dead, the Kerbys also realize that they haven't been immediately snatched up into Heaven. Determining that they're required to perform one good deed before being allowed past the Pearly Gates, George and Marion set about to "liberate" stuffy, sedate, henpecked banker Cosmo Topper (Roland Young). At first resistant to the charms of his invisible benefactors, Topper begins to loosen up and truly enjoy life for the first time. Naturally, this doesn't sit well with Topper's supercilious wife (Billie Burke) nor his long-suffering butler (Alan Mobray), especially during a climactic free-for-all at a vacation resort. Though special effects abound in Topper, most of the humor derives from the embarrassed reactions of Roland Young as he tries to fend off the flirtatious advances of the ghostly Marion and the benignly strongman tactics of the spectral George. Adding to the fun are Eugene Pallette as a flustered house detective and Arthur Lake as a pratfalling bellboy. The musical score by longtime Hal Roach composer Marvin Hatley is perfectly attuned to the zany goings-on (including snatches of background music from Roach's earlier Laurel and Hardy comedies), while Hoagy Carmichael appears briefly on screen to introduce the film's signature tune, "Old Man Moon." Topper proved successful enough to warrant two sequels, as well as a popular TV series of the early 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide