Bobby Vernon Movies

W.C. Fields plays Ambrose Wolfinger, the henpecked husband to end all henpecked husbands. A widower, Ambrose married a second time only to provide a mother for his pretty daughter (Mary Brian). What he got was an overbearing harpy of a wife (Kathleen Howard), a fussy and imperious mother-in-law (Vera Lewis) and a shiftless brother-in-law (Grady Sutton). Ambrose plans to attend a much-awaited wrestling match, but can't get the day off of work. He lies for the first time in his life, telling his boss that his mother-in-law has died. En route to the wrestling meet, Ambrose suffers one mishap after another, from a string of traffic tickets to an encounter with a runaway tire. He gets to the match just in time to miss the whole thing, and ends up bruised and battered on the sidewalk. Meanwhile, his home is being deluged with flowers, offered in sympathy for his "dead" mother-in-law who is very much alive but not amused. When his boss discovers the deception, he fires Ambrose. The poor man returns home to face the cold stares of his wife's family. They goad and harass him until he can stand no more: when brother-in-law insults his daughter, Ambrose punches him out (a scene that always results in audience cheers) and tells everyone else where to go. Soon after, his anxious ex-boss calls up; only Ambrose can decipher the important messages left behind on his cluttered desk, and would Ambrose like to come back to work? His loyal and loving daughter negotiates a hefty salary hike for Ambrose, and the film ends with Our Hero assuming his proper role as head of the household, with his obnoxious in-laws literally left out in the rain. An uproarious "worm turns" farce, Man on the Flying Trapeze was an expanded version of 1932 Mack Sennett two-reeler, Too Many Highballs, and a partial remake of Fields' own silent feature Running Wild (27). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Joan Blondell, borrowed for the occasion from Warner Bros., earned top-billing in this delightful Hollywood parable, but the real star is of course Stuart Erwin as the irrepressible grocery clerk Merton Gill. Paramount screenwriters Saul Mintz, Walter De Leon and Arthur Kober based their witty scenario on Henry Leon Wilson's 1922 novel Merton of the Movies, the 1923 Broadway play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, and the 1924 Famous Players silent version starring Glenn Hunter. By 1932, the story was indeed well-known: Aspiring to become a famous screen cowboy, small-town delivery boy Merton Gill arrives in Hollywood, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and complete with a diploma from the National Correspondence Academy of Acting. Crashing the gates of Majestic Pictures (read: Paramount), Merton manages to fumble his one line bit in the latest Buck Benson (Dink Templeton) western and is fired on the spot. Unwilling to leave the studio, the hapless thespian survives on leftover scraps from the extra's lunch boxes until discovered by comedy starlet "Flip" Montague (Blondell), who takes pity on him and arranges a meeting with Jeff Baird (Sam Hardy), head of the slapstick comedy unit. Bestowed a new name, Whoop Ryder, Merton is starred in what he assumes to be a serious western melodrama but what in reality is yet another burlesque featuring cross-eyed low comic Ben Turpin. Although a big hit with preview audiences, a humiliated Merton is ready to return to the grocery business when "Flip" persuades him to stay by telling him that he is "darn near perfect." ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

No longer available for viewing, Heebee Jeebies was the third of Hal Roach's silent Our Gang films to be distributed by MGM. According to the most reliable sources, the story concerned a professional hypnotist (played, apparently, by former Keystone comedy star Bobby Vernon), who cast his spell on the youthful Our Gang members and everyone else in town. The highlight is the scene in which the kids (Joe Cobb, Farina Hoskins, Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins, Jean Darling, and the rest) begin behaving like barnyard animals at a high-society tea party. Heebee Jeebies was originally released on November 19, 1927. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

As overwrought and overacted as it appears today, this melodrama took America by storm in 1915. Its history actually goes a bit deeper than the poem The Vampire by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling's poem, in fact, had been inspired by a scandalous 1897 painting by Philip Burne-Jones, which showed a woman in a white nightgown grinning triumphantly over a man's lifeless form. A play, entitled A Fool There Was, was made from the poem in 1909 by Porter Emerson Browne and it promptly became a smash (although it was vilified by critics). Producer William Fox bought its screen rights, but he didn't film it until 1914. By the time he cast Theda Bara in the role, she had already transformed herself from Ohio-born Theodosia Goodman into unsuccessful stage actress Theodosia de Coppett. Clearly another name change was in order, and Bara -- short from Baranger, her maternal grandfather's last name -- was chosen (Theda was one of her nicknames). Over the next several years, Bara would make literally dozens and dozens of films for Fox; only a few are known to still exist and this is one of them. Wealthy diplomat John Schuyler, "the Fool" (Edward Jose), loves his wife (Mabel Frenyer) and daughter (Runa Hodges), but his life goes awry when he leaves without them on an important foreign mission. On the ship he meets the Vampire (Bara). By the time Schuyler reaches Italy, he has forgotten about everything but this wicked vamp. His wife, his work, and even his child are replaced in his heart by this evil woman. He lives for her every whim, oblivious to the rest of the world. She keeps him under control through the use of drink and drugs and his fortune slips away. Finally his health does too, and he dies at the vampire's feet. She scatters rose petals on his inert form and gloats. Even though this melodramatic style of vamp was out of fashion by the 1920s (a subtler, more stylish version had developed), this film was remade in 1922 with Estelle Taylor in the lead. Predictably, the picture bombed. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi