Harry Todd Movies

Intending to get value for money out of their house leading man Rex Lease, Tiffany Studios cast the personable actor in everything from westerns to sports dramas to domestic comedies like Borrowed Wives. Lease plays Peter Foley, who stands to inherit a fortune from his late uncle. The problem: To increase his allowance from his wealthy relative, Peter pretended to have a wife. Naturally, the will stipulates that Peter still be married, lest he lose his $800,000 legacy. The rest of the plotline is implicit in the film's title, with everyone concerned running around at top speed to convince the audience that something funny is going on. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Journeyman director Richard Thorpe (who later helmed Elvis Presley features) directed this bizarre early talkie western which incorporated comedy musical numbers (vampish Nita Martan sings Crying Blues and A Man Like That) into a standard western plot dealing with rustlers and revenge. Joining up with a travelling medicine show, Westerner Clay Conning (Kenneth Harlan) tries to help his fellow troupers protect themselves against the villains. He also champions the cause of heroine Mary (Dorothy Gulliver), who is likewise being victimized by the baddies. Thrown into jail on a trumped-up charge, Conning escapes to see that justice is done. Screenwriters Bennett Cohen and James Aubrey threw in a stranded theatrical troupe to provide the vaudeville routines. Leading man Kenneth Harlan was the husband of actress Marie Prevost. Harlan's days as a star were numbered, but he continued in character roles for another decade and a half. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In this musical western, a cowpoke goes searching for his brother's killer. The brother had been a Texas Ranger. He finds the killer and they have a midnight showdown on Main Street. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

One of Hoot Gibson's final silent westerns (and a sequel to the popular Chip of the Flying U (1926)), King of the Rodeo presented the canny star as a rodeo champion from Montana getting himself ready for the big Chicago meet. There are, of course, a couple of bad guys to be dealt with along the way (including Monte Montague, here playing a character aptly named Weasel) and at one point, Gibson chases one of them through the traffic-jammed streets of Chicago. With the hayseed Slim Summerville and veteran slapstick comic Harry Todd to take care of the laughs and character actress Bodil Rosing as Gibson's devoted ma, wringing out a tear or two, a good time was had by all. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

A bookish Easterner (Hoot Gibson) is shipped off to a Western ranch for toughening up. Once on the ranch, he falls for a tough dame (Eugenia Gilbert) who is falsely accused of murdering her father's enemy. To the strains of "Courtin' Calamity," the former dude shows what he is really made of by capturing the real killer. This commonplace Western was Hoot Gibson's final part in a talkie. Carl Laemmle, the founder of Gibson's studio, Universal, and a great fan of Westerns, was running scared and didn't think outdoor pictures could do well with dialogue. Consequently, he canned all of his cowboy stars shortly after the release of Courtin' Wildcats, and Gibson's career never truly recovered. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Directed by Ernst Laemmle, a nephew of the studio's diminutive owner, this typical Universal oater starred Fred Humes and newcomer Fay Wray. Humes plays a rancher whose homestead is threatened by the evil machinations of crooked neighbor Stephen Laban (Norbert Myles). When snobbish Millicent Delacey (Lotus Thompson) arrives from the East, Humes attempts to impress her by masquerading as the Duke of Black Butte, a visiting nobleman. Millicent and her social climbing mother (Julia Griffith) buy the disguise hook, line, and sinker, but the idyll is interrupted by Laban and his henchmen, who frames Humes in a bank robbery. With the help of local girl Robyna Roberts (Wray), the hero manages to catch the real culprits and clear his good name. No longer threatened by foreclosure, Humes can settle down peacefully, not with the Eastern snob, but married to Robyna. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Marking the 50th anniversary of General George Armstrong Custer's famous defeat at Little Big Horn, Universal re-created the battle in their biggest production ($400,000) of the year, The Flaming Frontier. Veteran screen actor Dustin Farnum came out of semi-retirement to play Custer -- to overwhelmingly positive notices -- and according to studio publicity, the film employed several thousand extras, including many Native Americans. Universal re-created Fort Hays, Custer's outpost, on the back lot in the San Fernando Valley and a duplicate of Crane City was erected at great expense near Pendleton, Oregon. Unfortunately, the studio also cast their resident cowboy star, the lackadaisical Hoot Gibson, in the starring role, and the entire production was thus geared to Gibson's familiar shtick rather than faithfully re-telling the story of one of the great blunders in military history. In the hands of Edward Sedgwick, Gibson's usual director, the slaughter at Little Big Horn proved little more than a plot contrivance. Gibson played a Pony Express rider admitted to West Point due to the influence of a powerful senator (George Fawcett), whose daughter (Anne Cornwall) he loves. In return, Gibson assumes the blame when the senator's wastrel son (Harold Goodwin) gets in trouble with the daughter (Kathleen Key) of a crooked Indian agent (Ward Crane). Gibson is expelled and returns West to join Custer's forces. To get even with Gibson, whom he still accuses of defiling his daughter, the Indian agent conspires with Sitting Bull (African-American actor Noble Johnson) to lure Custer and his troops into an ambush. Misinformed about the strength of the enemy, Custer and his 400 men are slaughtered by Indian warriors numbering in the thousands. Gibson, meanwhile, has been sent for reinforcements, thus surviving the massacre. He later leads an uprising among the settlers against the nefarious Indian agent, who has taken the senator's daughter prisoner. Most reviewers were appreciative of Universal's great expenditure, but Variety's scribe saw the film as little more than an ordinary Gibson Western. Sadly, modern audiences are prevented from forming an opinion, as no prints now survive. However, many of the more spectacular sequences later found their way into The Indians Are Coming (1930), a Universal serial released in both silent and sound versions. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Prisoners of the Storm was based on the rugged James Oliver Curwood yarn The Quest of Joan. When two Canadian prospectors strike gold, they make plans to stake a mutual claim at a faraway trading post. One of the prospectors is murdered en route to the post, and that's when Mountie Walter McGrail enters the picture. Following orders, he sets out to arrest the surviving prospector on suspicion of murder. But McGrail's resolve weakens when the prospector's pretty daughter Peggy Montgomery (former child star "Baby Peggy") nurses him back to health when he's injured in a blinding snowstorm. Certain by now that Montgomery's father is innocent, McGrail dedicates himself to tracking down the real killer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Universal's humorously sloppy western hero Hoot Gibson starred in this average silent oater about a rugged ranch foreman who must prove his true worth in order to marry a banker's daughter (Ethel Shannon). As usual, Gibson played his character for laughs, and this film only added to his popularity. Buckaroo Kid was also an early showcase for freckled child actor Newton House, the star of the studio's popular "Champion Boy Rider" two-reel westerns 1927-1928. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Hungarian director Michael Curtiz made his American film bow with the highly stylized crime melodrama The Third Degree. Set against the backdrop of Coney Island, the story concerns a young couple, Annie Daly (Dolores Costello) and Howard Jeffries Jr. (Jason Robards Sr.). She's a working-class girl, he's the son of a wealthy family. Disinherited by his father, Howard finds himself the prime suspect when the old man is murdered. The hapless hero is strong-armed into a confession by the overzealous police, but eventually the truth is revealed, and the lovers are free to marry. Admittedly trying to impress his new employers at Warner Bros. with his cinematic know-how, Curtiz adopted a bizarre, expressionistic style that out-Caligaried Caligari; his camera pyrotechnics are particularly prevalent in a "subjective" sequence involving a dangerous carnival attraction. In fact, Curtiz spent so much time with offbeat camera angles and bizarre compositions that he nearly forgot to tell the story! Once he got all this gimmickry out of his system, however, Michael Curtiz settled down to become one of Warners' most prolific and dependable commercial filmmakers, remaining a fixture at the studio until 1950. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the few female western stars of the 1920s, Josie Sedgwick, played a girl searching for her outlaw father's killer in this routine Universal oater. Along the way, she nurses a handsome mine manager (Edward Hearn back to health, and they fall in love. As an inside joke, the villain in this film, played smoothly by Robert Walker, was given the name of a well-known supporting player, bearded Slim Cole. Like her sister Eileen, Josie Sedgwick's career waned in the mid 1920s, and she left the screen in 1926, returning only once to play Bob Steele's gun-toting mother in Son of Oklahoma (1932). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide