Virginia Toland Movies
- 1951
Gasoline Alley was based on Frank King's popular comic strip of the same name. The strip's central characters, service station owner Walt Wallet (Don Beddoe) and his adopted son Skeezix (James Lydon), take a back seat to newlyweds Corky (Scotty Beckett) and Hope (Susan Morrow). Hoping to establish his independence from his family, Corky opens up his own restaurant, which results in nothing but headaches. The film tries as best it can within 76 minutes to recreate the 30-year continuity of the original comic strip. Director Edward Bernds, a graduate of Columbia's short-subject department, relies upon a couple of his 2-reeler colleagues, Dick Wessel and Gus Schilling, to provide a soupcon of slapstick. Because of legal entanglements, neither Gasoline Alley nor its sequel Corky of Gasoline Alley are available for TV showings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Scotty Beckett, Jimmy Lydon, (more)
- 1950
Fred Astaire and Betty Hutton make a surprisingly copacetic screen team in Let's Dance. Hutton plays a more sedate role than usual as war widow Kitty McNeil. Not wishing to have her young son Richard (Gregory Moffatt) grow up in the stiff and stuffy environs of her Boston in-laws' mansion, Kitty sneaks off with the kid and resumes her prewar show-business career. She is reunited with her USO dancing partner Donald Elwood (Astaire), who hopes to give up performing in favor of the business world. Inevitably, Kitty and Donald resume their old act, while, equally inevitably, Kitty's Bostonite grandmother-in-law Serena Everett (Lucille Watson) sets the legal wheels in motion to gain custody of little Richard. Fred Astaire manages to match Betty Hutton's patented raucousness during the hillbilly musical number "Oh, Them Dudes", though he is given the opportunity to do the sort of dancing he does best--notably a brilliant routine atop and around a piano. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fred Astaire, Betty Hutton, (more)
