Janet Warren Movies
- 1954
Single mother Betty Dixon has been savagely stabbed to death with a bollo knife. A lack of additional evidence makes it extremely difficult for Friday (Jack Webb) and Smith (Ben Alexander) to locate the perpetrator; all that is certain is that the killer is a madman. Ultimately, the detectives track down a recently discharged mental patient--who insists the victim "dared" him to murder her! This episode was adepted from the Dragnet radio broadcast of August 3, 1950. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1953
The Twonky is ostensibly based on a wickedly funny short story by Henry Kuttner, though the resemblance between the original and the adaptations is thin indeed. In one of his few starring roles, Hans Conried plays philosophy professor Kerry West, who despairs when his wife (Janet Warren) squanders his money on a new television set. Professor West is even more upset when the TV turns out to be "The Twonky," a futuristic creature that does all of West's work, censors his books and newspapers, and reads everybody's thoughts. The Twonky has been designed to help people, but the professor -- who hates TV to begin with -- doesn't want that sort of help. The film's outcome is radically different from the denouement of Kuttner's original story: given a preference, most sci-fi buffs would opt for the Kuttner version. The Twonky was written and directed by Arch Oboler, the creator of radio's Lights Out. When interviewed in 1970, Hans Conried recalled that he told the producer that The Twonky would probably bomb at the box-office (which it did), whereupon the producer genially replied "That's all right. I need a tax write-off this year anyway." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hans Conried, Gloria Blondell, (more)
- 1953
Arriving at a medical building, Friday (Jack Webb) and Smith (Ben Alexander) investigate the disappearance of society matron Louise Marston. Filing the missing-persons report is Louise's husband, dentist Robert Marston (Whit Connor), who explains that he waited two weeks to notify the police of his wife's absence because he has been receiving letters from her, postmarked New York City. Meanwhile, Louise's stepfather (Willis Bouchey) suspects Marston of killing his wife so that he could collect an inheritance and set up his own dental building. The two detectives finally learn the truth just before construction of Dr. Marston's "dream office" gets under way. This episode is adapted from the Dragnet radio broadcast of June 14, 1951. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
This cute film is Doris Day's film debut and in it she plays Georgia Garrett, a substitute traveller on an ocean cruise. Her friend Elvira Kent (Janis Paige) had scheduled the cruise but at the last minute cancels when she suspects that her husband is cheating on her and she decides to stay at home to check up on him. So she gets her friend Georgia to go on the cruise in her stead. Meanwhile the husband hires a detective to watch Elvira while on the cruise, because, he too, suspects cheating. Of course, the detective falls for the substitute Elvira (Doris Day), making a somewhat complicated scenario with many possibilities. This is a fun-filled spoof with lots of good tunes by Doris Day. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Doris Day, Jack Carson, (more)
- 1947
Though Republic's Winter Wonderland sounds like a vehicle for the studio's resident skating star Vera Hruba Ralston, she's nowhere to be seen in this 71-minute comedy. Instead, Lynne Roberts plays heroine Nancy Wheeler, the daughter of a farmer (Roman Bohnen) whose property is in close proximity to a posh skiing lodge. Nancy falls in love with the lodge's handsome ski instructor Steve Kirk (Charles Drake), leading somewhat circuitously to a series of skating exhibitions, sled races and even a ski ballet. Eric Blore goes through his paces as the droll lodge owner, while the heroine's daughter is played by future Father Knows Best co-star Elinor Donahue. Winter Wonderland was co-written by Arthur Marx, son of Groucho. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lynne Roberts, Charles Drake, (more)
- 1947
John Van Druten's Broadway hit The Voice of the Turtle was purchased by Warner Bros. as a vehicle for...well, in all likelihood, stars Eleanor Parker and Ronald Reagan were both second choices. Reagan is a returning GI who falls in love with Parker, an ingenuous young actress. Circumstances require the hero and heroine to share the same apartment, though the implications don't get much farther than the knowing wisecracks of supporting player Eve Arden. The original play's stars were Elliott Nugent and the matchless Margaret Sullavan, and both Reagan and Parker seem overwhelmed by the responsibility of filling those shoes. Nothing in The Voice of the Turtle (reissue title: One for the Book) is quite as funny as the film's outtakes, which were widely distributed during the Reagan presidency on the basis of a scene in which an increasingly testy Reagan is unable to zip up his trousers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ronald Reagan, Eleanor Parker, (more)
One of several low-budget mellers directed by scriptwriter Maxwell Shane, Fear in the Night was based on the short story Nightmare by William Irish (pseudonym for Cornell Woolrich). In his first starring role, DeForest Kelley plays Vince Grayson, a young man who has a terrible nightmare wherein he sees himself killing someone. When he awakens, Vince finds a couple of pieces of evidence indicating that his dream was no dream. Detective Cliff Herlihy (Paul Kelly) doesn't believe that Vince has killed anyone, but agrees to investigate. While taking shelter from a storm in a remote mansion, the detective and the young man stumble upon a mirrored room -- just like the one in Vince's dream. The frenzied Vince is nearly driven to suicide, but Detective Herlihy deduces that his friend's nightmare was the handiwork of Lewis Belnap (Robert Emmett Keane), the mansion's owner, who is a dabbler in hypnosis. Fear in the Night was remade in 1956 as Nightmare, with Kevin McCarthy and Edward G. Robinson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Kelly, DeForest Kelley, (more)
Ronald Colman won an Academy Award for his portrayal of an off-the-beam actor in A Double Life. A beloved stage star, Anthony John (Colman), has problems with his private life due to his unpredictable outbursts of temper. This trait has already cost him his wife, Brita (Signe Hasso), and threatens to sabotage his career. Nonetheless, Anthony makes his peace with Brita, and the two actors star in a new Broadway staging of Othello. The play is a hit, running over 300 performances, but the pressures of portraying a man moved to murder by jealousy takes its toll on Anthony. In a fit of delirium, he strangles his casual mistress, Pat (Shelley Winters), but retains no memory of the awful crime. Press agent Bill Friend (Edmond O'Brien), unaware that Anthony is the killer, uses Pat's murder as publicity for Othello. Anthony becomes enraged at this cheap ploy, and attacks Friend. At this point, Anthony realizes that he has been living "a double life" and is in fact Pat's murderer. A Double Life was written for the screen by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, who occasionally digress from the melodramatic plotline to include a few backstage inside jokes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ronald Colman, Whit Bissell, (more)
Just as Edgar C. Ulmer would at PRC around the same time, young Phil Karlson turned Monogram's almost nonexistent production values to his advantage in two Charlie Chan whodunits: The Shanghai Cobra (1945) and Dark Alibi (1946). Karlson added touches of film noir to the usual hoary Chan melodramatics and the result was arguably the best of the Monogram "Chans." In The Shanghai Cobra, Charlie (Sidney Toler) is investigating several murders connected with the manufacture of wartime radium. The employees of a bank connected with the radium experiments have an unfortunate tendency to get themselves killed by the injection of cobra venom. Charlie remembers a similar case back in Shanghai in 1935, but the suspect in those murders escaped. Since his face was damaged in an explosion, the only tell-tale sign to identify him is by a streak of white in an otherwise jet-black mane -- unless of course the murderer has heard of hair dye. As always, Charlie's faithful if bumbling companions, Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland) and Tommy, the Number Three Son (Benson Fong), are along for the ride, offering their now patented sidekick humor. Toler, whose fondness for imbibing on the job was legendary, could basically sleepwalk through his role by 1945 and does so here. As for director Karlson's noir-ish touches, they quickly give way to business as usual, but the opening scenes of The Shanghai Cobra remain quite evocative. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sidney Toler, James B. Cardwell, (more)
An engagingly silly Charlie Chan whodunit from Poverty Row company Monogram, The Jade Mask mixed science fiction with Old House melodramatics and a generous dose of comedy. The venerable Chinese detective (Sidney Toler) is this time assigned by the government to establish the whereabouts of Harper (Frank Reicher), a scientist experimenting with a formula that may turn wood into solid steel. Harper, of course, turns up very much murdered and his strange house is virtually teeming with suspects. There is the dead man's Mrs. Danvers-like sister (Edith Evanson), a vaudeville strongwoman (short subject regular Dorothy Granger), the ubiquitous British-accented butler (Cyril Delevanti), and a mute garage mechanic (Lester Dorr). Several additional murders occur right under Chan's nose -- which nobody seems to particularly mind, least of all hayseed sheriff Al Bridge -- and corpses appear to be walking up and down staircases. Despite interference from manservant Birmingham Brown (the always welcome Mantan Moreland) and the inevitably dense Number Four Son (Edwin Luke), good old Charlie manages to catch the killer -- or killers -- within the allotted 66 minutes. Moreland and Luke, the real-life brother of Number One Son Keye Luke, perform their usual comedic asides, but the best lines are awarded to Preston Sturges stock-company regular Al Bridge as the plainspoken, homily spouting sheriff. Incidentally, although masks are indeed featured in The Jade Mask, none of them is made of jade. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, (more)
In this western, a courageous cowboy stops the land-grabbing conspiracy of a corrupt banker. The banker was planning to wait until hard-working local ranchers made their mortgage payments and then was going to stage a phony robbery so he could foreclose upon their land. Fortunately, the hero finds out about it and brings the crook to justice. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1942
In this musical, which manages to look back with nostalgia upon prohibition and the depression (no small accomplishment), George Raft plays George, a hoofer looking back on his glory days. His memories are triggered when The Paradise Club, a nightspot where he used to work, is about to be turned into a bowling alley. In the Roaring '20s, George and his partner Billie (Janet Blair) were a star attraction at The Paradise, run by Nick (S.Z. Sakall). George wants his relationship with Billie to be as graceful off-stage as on, but he has several rivals vying for her affections, including gangster Steve (Broderick Crawford) and policeman Dan (Pat O'Brien). Marjorie Rambeau plays Lil, modeled after brassy nightclub owner Texas Guinan. Raft actually worked for Guinan in his early days as a dancer, and he gets a chance to show off his fancy footwork accompanied by a number of classic tunes, including "Alabamy Bound", "Yes Sir, That's My Baby", "Sweet Georgia Brown", and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". Broadway was a loose remake of the 1929 Merna Kennedy vehicle of the same name. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Raft, Pat O'Brien, (more)
- 1942
One of the most often revived of Abbott & Costello's early-1940s films, Pardon My Sarong casts Bud and Lou as Chicago bus drivers Algy Shaw and Wellington Pflug. At the behest of millionaire playboy Tommy Layton (Robert Paige), Algy and Wellington hijack their own bus and speed off to California so that Tommy won't be late for an important yachting race. Our heroes are hotly pursued by bus-company troubleshooter Kendall (William Demarest), while Tommy's trail is dogged by rival yacht-owner Joan Marshall (Virginia Bruce). Eluding Kendall when they inadvertently drive their bus into the ocean, Algy and Wellington are rescued by Tommy and Joan, who through a plot wrinkle have been forced to share the same yacht. After several days of drifting aimlessly across the Pacific, the yacht ends up on a remote South Sea Island, where Algy and Wellington flirt capriciously with the local native girls. Through a fluke, Wellington is served up as a sacrifice victim and ordered to enter a sacred volcanic mountain-which happens to be the hideout for jewel thief Varnoff (Lionel Atwill) and his gang. The story wraps up with a zany Sennett-like chase, with Wellington attempting to rescue the kidnapped Joan from Varnoff's speedboat. Filled to overflowing with hilarious sight gags, cross-talk routines and throwaway lines, Pardon My Sarong scores on two levels: as a devastating send-up of Dorothy Lamour jungle epics and as a first-rate vehicle for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. One one quibble: the film certainly could have done without the scene in which Bud invites Lou to commit suicide! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, (more)
- 1941
Having joined the army in Buck Privates and the navy in In the Navy, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello signed up with Air Force in Keep 'Em Flying. Abbott and Costello play Blackie and Heathcliff, carnival workers who are fired from their jobs along with their pal, reckless stunt pilot Jinx Roberts (Dick Foran). When Jinx joins the Army Air Corps-the better to be nearer pretty USO singer Linda Joyce (Carol Bruce)-Blackie and Heathcliff loyally join up as well, obtaining low-echelon ground crew jobs. While Jinx tries to cure Linda's brother Jim (Charles Lang) of his fear of flying, Heathcliff pursues a romance with wisecracking waitress Gloria Phelps (Martha Raye), never quite catching on that Gloria has an identitical-twin sister (also Martha Raye). A bit too plot-heavy for its own good, Keep 'Em Flying is at its best when concentrating on Abbott & Costello, who in addition to performing their patented cross-talk routines participate in a zany runaway-torpedo chase and a gratuitous but amusing episode in a spooky carnival funhouse. As a bonus, Costello gets to do a bit of "straight" acting, and he's quite good at it. Deleted scenes include a comedy magic act (later restaged in Abbott & Costello's Lost in a Harem) and a wild episode at a skating rink (reworked two years later in Hit the Ice). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, (more)
- 1941
Another cookie-cutter Universal minimusical, Moonlight in Hawaii gathered together the usual suspects-Johnny Downs, Leon Errol, Jane Frazee, Mischa Auer, Sunny O'Dea et. al.--in their usual roles. Downs plays a young man named Pete, who shepherds a group of sightseers to Honolulu. Pete's greatest ambition is to star on radio with his pals the Merry Macs, and to this end he curries favor with potential sponsors Spencer (Leon Errol) and Lawton (Richard Carle), partners in a pineapple-juice factory. The complications begin piling up when Spencer and Lawton have a falling out over the affections of wealthy dowager Mrs. Floto (Marjorie Gateson), forcing Pete and his pals to play matchmaker. Superstar-to-be Maria Montez shows up in a bit role as a hula-hula dancer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jane Frazee, Leon Errol, (more)
- 1941
Johnny Mack Brown saves the day in the Universal western programmer Law of the Range. Finding himself in the middle of a family feud, Brown endeavors to unruffle the combatants' feathers for the sake of leading lady Nell O'Day. He proves that there's nothing for the families to fight over when he corrals the instigator of the feud, "outsider" Alan Bridge. Brown wields his six-shooters, Ms. O'Day displays some fancy riding and roping skills, Riley Hill (billed as Roy Harris) makes an impressively nasty screen debut, and comic relief Raymond Hatton provides...comic relief. Law of the Range is a remake of the 1935 Buck Jones vehicle The Ivory-Handled Gun. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Johnny Mack Brown, Fuzzy Knight, (more)
