Raymond Walburn Movies

An unofficial remake of the 1935 Alice Faye-George Raft vehicle Every Night at Eight, And the Angels Sing stars Dorothy Lamour as Nancy Angel, unofficial leader of a struggling, Andrews-like singing sister act. Nancy is in love with saxophone player Happy Morgan (Fred MacMurray), self-appointed "protector" of the Angel Sisters. Unfortunately -- and as it turns out, unharmoniously -- Nancy's sister Bobby (Betty Hutton is also ga-ga over Happy, but he barely acknowledges her existence. Meanwhile, the third Angel sister, Josie (Diana Lynn), stands on the sidelines and cracks wise. Before a happy ending can be realized, virtually every person in the cast goes through an extended period of poverty, which at one juncture forces Happy to form a singing-waiter act with his longtime crony Fuzzy Johnson (Eddie Foy Jr.. Although the film's title song is (surprisingly) never performed, And the Angels Sing is otherwise a smorgasbord of typical 1940s tunes, with Betty Hutton taking front and center with her inimitable "scat" renditions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lois Andrews, best known in 1943 as the ex-wife of comedian Georgie Jessel, plays the title character in this cinemadaptation of Joseph P. McEvoy's popular comic strip Dixie Dugan. Swept up in the war effort, Dixie gets a job as secretary to government official Roger Hudson (James Ellison). Though Roger pursues her romantically, Dixie remains faithful to her defense-plant-worker fiancee Matt Hogan (Eddie Foy Jr.) Both Roger and Matt believe that a woman's place is in the home, but Dixie proves that their chauvinism is out of place during the National Emergency. Lois Andrews' inexperience is modified somewhat by the assured performances of Charlotte Greenwood and Charlie Ruggles as Dixie's parents. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

According to this exuberant Paramount musical, famed pre-Civil War minstrel performer Daniel Decatur Emmett looked and sounded exactly like Bing Crosby! Very loosely based on the real Emmett's life and career, the film is essentially an excuse for an unending stream of Southern-fried ballads and boisterous blackface production numbers. The best scenes involve Emmet's creation of the minstrel tradition, helped along by Billy De Wolfe as the original "Mr. Bones." As Emmet's sweetheart Millie Cook, Dorothy Lamour has less to do than fourth-billed Marjorie Reynolds as Jean Mason, the physically challenged girl whom Emmet ultimately marries. In the midst of several old-time musical numbers, Bing Crosby introduces one of his lasting hits, "Sunday, Monday and Always". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Lady Bodyguard of the title is pretty but somewhat physically frail A. C. Baker (Anne Shirley). An advertising representative for an insurance company, A. C. gets into trouble when she okays several $1000 life-insurance policies as a publicity stunt. One of the recipients is Terry Moore (Eddie Albert), who, thanks to a typographical error, finds that he's been insured for one million dollars. Desperately, A. C. tries to talk Terry into cancelling the policy, but his avaricious beneficiaries don't want this to happen. There are laughs and thrills aplenty as a sleep-benumbed Terry pilots an airplane carrying A. C. and all of those vultures who'd benefit mightily from his demise. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Universal's "Baby Sandy" series officially ended with Sandy Gets Her Man, but the infant star still had one picture left on her contract, so that's why Bachelor Daddy was born. Edward Everett Horton, Donald Woods, and Raymond Walburn carry the burden of the plot as the Smith Brothers, Joseph, Edward and George. Confirmed bachelors, the Smiths are forced to play nursemaid when a baby is accidentally abandoned at their doorstep. The laughs arise from the brothers' bumbling efforts at parenthood, culminating in a slapsticky finale wherein the runaway Baby Sandy takes charge of a hand-operated elevator. Ironically, one of the minor players in Bachelor Daddy is teenager Juanita Quigley, who once enjoyed brief stardom at Universal as "Baby Jane". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The nationwide search for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind formed the basis of Claire Booth Luce's satirical Broadway comedy Kiss the Boys Goodbye. By the time the film version came out in 1941, Gone with the Wind was yesterday's news, but the picture still manage to elicit loud laughter from moviegoers bombarded by bad news from Europe. When Broadway producer Bert Fusher (Jerome Cowan) decides to produce a lavish musical version of a best-selling civil war novel, he dispatches director Lloyd Lloyd (Don Ameche) and composer Dick Rayburn (Oscar Levant) to the Deep South, in search of a genuine Southern-belle leading lady. Lloyd and Rayburn end up on the Georgia plantation of Tom Rumson (Raymond Walburn), where they are forced to sit through an impromptu audition by Rumson's niece Cindy Lou Bethany (Mary Martin). Lloyd can't stand the girl, but Rayburn is enchanted by her-never suspecting that Cindy Lou is a phony, who prior to this meeting had never stepped below the Mason-Dixon line. Eventually, Lloyd and Cindy Lou fall in love and the show goes on. Many of playwright Luce's more pointed barbs have been blunted by the Hollywood censors, with the more pungent gags replaced by lavish musical numbers. Still, Kiss the Boys Goodbye is a lot of fun, especially whenever the magnificent Elizabeth Patterson (cast as Mary Martin's unreconstructed-southerner aunt) takes center stage. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jack Oakie is near the top of his form as Boley Bolenciecwcz, the best college football player to come down the pike in a generation. But Boley has two problems -- he likes to sleep a lot when he's not training, and he isn't terribly bright, and might just fail his examinations and become inelligible to play. So the president of his college, under the gun to produce a winning team, comes up with a solution -- he sends Boley to live with Professor Murray (onald Meek), an eccentric member of the faculty (who practices magic tricks when he isn't teaching economics), whose daughter Louise (Linda Darnell) is head of the pep-squad and will tutor Boley. Enter Jimmy M'Gonnigle (George Murphy), a dancer and ex-college player himself, who's sent to the college by the hood (Sheldon Leonard) who owns the club where he was working, to keep an eye on Boley and make sure his playing is what it's written up to be. Jimmy falls in love with Louise, and manages to romance her in between her playing nursemaid to Boley -- meanwhile, a pair of grifters (Raymond Walburn, Ruth Donnelly) sent to back Jimmy up get mixed up with Louise's grandfather (Walter Brennan), a Civil War veteran who isn't always sure what year it is. And then secondary hood "Sea Biscuit" (Milton Berle) arrives to put the boss's plan into operation, kidnapping Boley so he can't play. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The title of Millionaires in Prison (which begs for the rejoinder "about time!") pertains to four individuals. Two of the incarcerated millionaires, Bruce Vander (Raymond Walburn) and Harold Kellogg (Thurston Hall) have become the fall guys in a corporate swindle; the other two are brokers James Brent (Morgan Conway) and Sidney Keats (Chester Clute), who scheme to arrange an illicit stock deal in the joint. Prisoner Nick Burton (Lee Tracy) - the unofficial leader of the convicts - runs the prison like a resort, and treats the other inmates like kings. In the central story, Dr. William Collins (Truman Bradley) - a physician locked up for driving recklessly - discovers the cure for Malta fever and uses four infected prisoners as test subjects. Director Ray McCarey obviously didn't put a high priority on credibility when making Millionaires in Prison; of this, Variety wrote, "Some situations are implausible, but good for laughs." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This box-office smash comedy of manners featured the popular Myrna Loy as Margot Sherwood Merrick, the stodgy editor of a glamorous women's fashion magazine. To protect herself from suitors and jealous wives of businessmen, she wears a gold band on the third finger of her left hand and pretends that she is married. But the wolfish artist Jeff Thompson (Melvyn Douglas) is undeterred. After his efforts to romance Margot fail repeatedly, her icy exterior finally melts and the two become involved. She then has to explain the ring to all her cronies. Jeff's idea is to pretend to be her long-lost husband, but this plan backfires and leads to some comic complications. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Set in the years leading up to the Civil War and its outbreak, Dark Command tells a fictionalized version of the story of William Clarke Quantrill, the schoolteacher-turned-renegade, whose raids -- ostensibly on behalf of the Confederacy -- turned Kansas into a charnel house. John Wayne plays Bob Setton, a young Texan who arrives in Lawrence, KS, in 1859 on his way west, partnered with George "Gabby" Hayes. He meets Marie McCloud (Claire Trevor) and her younger brother, Fletch (Roy Rogers), and takes a liking to them, especially Marie. His only competition for her is William Cantrell (Walter Pidgeon), the local schoolteacher, who has big ambitions in life. He is nominated for town marshal and seems a shoo-in, especially as his only rival is Bob Setton, who admits he knows nothing about the law and can't even read, but Setton wins with his honest, unpretentious speech. At the time, Kansas is riven by strife, as settlers from the North opposed to slavery and those from the South supporting it pour into the territory, and Setton has his hands full. His most difficult personal moment comes when he must arrest Fletch for shooting an anti-slavery farmer (Trevor Bardette) to death. Cantrell leads a campaign of terror against the jury, however, which finds the young man not guilty just as the Civil War breaks out. In the months that follow, Setton and his posse go after the raiders who are stealing and destroying huge amounts of property in Kansas on behalf of the Confederacy. He suspects Cantrell is their leader, but can't prove it, and has to tread carefully. As the raids worsen, and the war drags on -- even Marie's pro-Confederacy banker father is murdered during a run on his bank -- their conflict comes to a violent end as Cantrell launches an attack on Lawrence, vowing to destroy the town, with only Bob Setton and Cantrell's own mother (Marjorie Main) standing in his way. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this comedy/mystery a milquetoast ad man finds his good ideas constantly copped by ambitious coworkers. His boss doesn't even seem to see him. The ad man's wife pushes her husband into confronting his boss during a party. Unfortunately, the timid fellow finds himself accused of murder after a corpse is found in the trunk of his car. He is quickly incarcerated for the crime. Meanwhile his wife begins investigating in an attempt to prove his innocence. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In his feature film debut, Glenn Ford plays a department-store clerk who saves up enough money to buy a small patch of land in Arizona. Unable to afford a car, Ford hitchhikes to his new home, and along the way teams up with a transient (Richard Conte) and an illegal alien (Jean Rogers). The girl is torn between both men, but ultimately opts for the clerk. To save the girl from deportation, the clerk marries her, and together they make a new life for themselves in his tiny Arizona homestead. Adapted from a story by Dalton Trumbo, Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence was directed by former silent film star Ricardo Cortez. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide