Pierre Watkin Movies

Though Humphrey Bogart is the official star of Knock on Any Door, the film is essentially a showcase for Columbia's newest young male discovery John Derek. The first production of Bogart's Santana company, the film casts Bogart as attorney Andrew Morton. A product of the slums, Morton is persuaded to take the case of underprivileged teenager Nick Romano (Derek), who has been arrested on a murder charge. Through flashbacks, Morton demonstrates that Romano is more a victim of society than a natural-born killer. Though this defense strategy does not have the desired result on the jury thanks to the badgering of DA Kernan (George Macready), Morton does manage to arouse sympathy for the plight of those trapped by birth and circumstance in a dead-end existence. As Nick Romano, John Derek would never be better, nor would ever again play a character who struck so responsive a chord with the audience. Nick's oft-repeated credo--"Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse"--became the clarion call for a generation of disenfranchised youth. Director Nicholas Ray would later expand on themes touched upon in Knock on a Any Door in his juvenile delinquent "chef d'oeuvre" Rebel without a Cause. Viewers are advised to watch for future TV personalities Cara Williams and Si Melton in uncredited minor roles. Knock on Any Door spawned a belated sequel in 1960, Let No Man Write My Epitaph. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Esther Williams and Red Skelton share equal screen time for once in the MGM Technicolor musical Neptune's Daughter. The title character is, of course, Williams, here cast as Eve Barrett, a bathing-suit manufacturer (and sometimes model). Skelton plays Jack Spratt, the masseur at a fancy polo club, who falls for Eve's sister (Betty Garrett). To prove worthy of her love, Jack poses as dashing Latin polo star Jose O'Rourke (Ricardo Montalban), resulting in a wealth of comic complications. The slapstick setpieces include a hilarious horse-mounting routine and a climactic set-to between Skelton and petty crook Mike Mazurki; there's also a few inspired moments from Mel Blanc, cast as a slow-talking Mexican. While Xavier Cugat is on hand as "himself," the film's musical high point is the Oscar-winning Baby It's Cold Outside, performed first by Williams and Montalban and then by Skelton and Garrett. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Douglas Sirk's love of cinematic esoterica was kept in check in the musical comedy Slightly French. Dorothy Lamour stars as Mary O'Leary, a carnival entertainer who's discovered by enterprising director John Gayle (Don Ameche). The plot dictates that Gayle must pass off Mary as an elegant Parisian actress/singer. This slender plotline enables the film to toss off a number of satirical quips about show biz, and to display Lamour in a variety of exotic costumes. The best musical numbers occur during an extended film-within-a-film sequence. Slightly French is buoyed by its expert supporting cast, including Janis Carter, Willard Parker and Adele Jergens. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The fourth of Joan Crawford's Warner Bros. vehicles, Flamingo Road doesn't hold up as well as her earlier Mildred Pierce or Humoresque, but there's plenty to please the eye and ear. Sideshow kootch-dancer Lane Bellamy (Crawford), stranded in a backwater town, gets a job as a waitress. Lane begins falling in love with Fielding Carlisle (Zachary Scott), the political protégé of the town's big-daddy sheriff Titus Semple (Sidney Greenstreet). Semple regards Lane as a gold-digging troublemaker, and does his best to break up the romance, framing her on a trumped-up morals charges and having her shipped off to prison. Once out of the "joint," Lane returns to town, seeking revenge against both Semple and Carlisle. She charms political hack Dan Reynolds (David Brian) into marriage, then transforms Reynolds into a "reform candidate" bent on destroying the corrupt Semple machine. Faced with political ruin, Lane's ex-beau Carlisle commits suicide, a fact that Semple uses as a weapon against Reynolds. A showdown is inevitable--but the story is far from over! Flamingo Road later served as the basis for a weekly TV series; both the film and the series were based on a play by Robert and Sally Wilder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tulsa was, in 1949, the most elaborate production released to date by the Eagle-Lion corporation-though all evidence, especially the technical credits, suggests that the film was put together at Universal-International, then merely distriibuted by Eagle-Lion (who made a fortune at the box office). The film traces the matriculation of the sleepy Oklahoma village of Tulsa into a major oil center Susan Hayward stars as an amibitious cattleman's daughter who wishes to wreak vengeance on the encroaching oil interests but who becomes a "black gold" mogul herself. Robert Preston costars as a geologist who hopes to rescue his beloved Oklahoma from being utterly devastated by drilling and derricks. This being a late-1940s film, Greed runs a poor second to Good at film's end, with the oilmen and the conservations learning to work together rather than as bitter enemies. While the story is a good one, the true selling angle of Tulsa was its action sequences, notably a fire scene that must have cost as much as all the other Eagle-Lion releases of 1949 combined. Originally lensed in vibrant Techicolor, Tulsa is usually seen today in washed-out, two-color Public Domain prints. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hot on the heels of Columbia's The Fuller Brush Man, MGM released another Red Skelton gagfest, A Southern Yankee. Set during the Civil War, the film casts Skelton as bumbling bellboy Aubrey Filmore. Yearning to help the Northern cause by becoming an undercover spy, Aubrey succeeds beyond his wildest dreams when circumstances force him to pose as notorious Southern secret agent Major Drumman (George Coulouris), aka "The Grey Spider". Infiltrating rebel territory, our hero does his best (which is none too good) to intercept the Grey Spider's messages and smuggle them to the North. Along the way, he falls in love with pert Southern belle Sallyann Weatherby (Arlene Dahl). Many of the side-splitting gag routines were devised by Buster Keaton, notably the now-famous scene in which Aubrey gingerly walks across the battlefield between Northern and Southern lines carrying a two-sided flag -- the Northern Stars and Stripes on one side, the Southern Stars and Bars on the other -- a strategy that works until the wind suddenly changes! Though Edward Sedgwick is credited with the direction, Red Skelton later revealed that A Southern Yankee was actually directed by S. Sylvan Simon. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Siren of Atlantis is the third movie version of Pierre Benoit's fantasy novel L'Atlantide, first film in 1921. Jean-Pierre Aumont and Dennis O'Keefe star as Foreign Legionnaires Andre and Jean, who while on a routine mission in the African desert stumble upon the sunken city of Atlantis. Once they've arrived in the subterranean metropolis, they are forbidden to leave by sultry Queen Antinea (Maria Montez). For her own perverse amusement, Antinea romances both Andre and Jean, then sits back and watches the two duke it out over her affections. One of the men survives to tell the tale-if he can find anyone to believe him, that is. To their credit, Henry Daniell and Morris Carnovsky play their supporting roles with utterly straight faces. Of the many deliriously awful Maria Montez vehicles of the 1940s, Siren of Atlantis may well be the worst, though it's not without its campy pleasures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With Maurice Conn as producer and Peter Stewart (aka Sam Newfield) as director, one suspects that 20th Century-Fox's The Counterfeiters was actually produced by one of the minor companies like Film Classics or PRC. Scotland Yard investigator Jeff McAllister (John Sutton) teams with the FBI to track down a gang of clever counterfeiters, headed by Philip Drake (Hugh Beaumont). The plot becomes as thick as London pea soup when McAllister falls in love with Drake's daughter Margo (Doris Merrick). After attempting to protect her father from prosecution, Margo realizes that she's on the wrong side and throws in with McAllister. Lon Chaney Jr. does another variation of "Lennie" from Of Mice and Men as Drake's moronic henchman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Strange Mrs. Crane stars Marjorie Lord, later famous as the TV wife of Danny Thomas (and the real-life mother of actress Anne Archer) in the atypical role of female crook Gina Crane. Hoping to bury her criminal past, Gina settles into a comfortable existence as the wife of politician Clinton Crane (Pierre Watkin). When her former associate Floyd Durant (Robert Shayne) shows up to blackmail Gina, she has no choice but to murder the man. Things take a bizarre turn when Barbara Arnold (Ruthe Brady) is charged with Durant's murder-and Gina Crane is selected to serve on the jury! Director Sherman Scott was actually the prolific Sam Newfield, taking a brief respite from his multitude of B-western series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Frank Capra's only MGM film, State of the Union was adapted by Anthony Veiller and Myles Connolly from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse. Spencer Tracy plays an aircraft tycoon who is coerced into seeking the Republican Presidential nomination by predatory newspaper mogul Angela Lansbury. Campaign manager Van Johnson suggests that, for appearance's sake, Tracy be reunited with his estranged wife Katharine Hepburn (replacing Claudette Colbert, who'd ankled the project after a pre-production donnybrook with director Capra). Realizing that Tracy and Lansbury are having an affair, Hepburn nonetheless agrees to grow through the devoted-wife charade because she believes that Tracy just might make a good President. Her faith is shattered when Tracy, corrupted by the Washington power brokers, publicly compromises his values in order to get votes. Only in the film's last moments does Tracy prove himself worthy of Hepburn's love and his own self-respect by admitting his dishonesty during a nationwide radio-TV broadcast. Much of the biting wit in the original Broadway production of State of the Union is sacrificed in favor of the director's patented "Capracorn," but the film is no less entertaining because of this. As usual, the supporting cast is impeccable, from featured players Adolphe Menjou (whose off-camera political arguments with Hepburn threatened to shut down production at times) and Margaret Hamilton, to bit actors like Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer and Tor (Plan 9 From Outer Space) Johnson. Because the television rights to State of the Union belonged to Capra's Liberty Films, the picture was released to TV by MCA rather than MGM's syndication division. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An Innocent Affair was the original release title for the tame marital comedy Don't Trust Your Husband. Making her first film appearance in six years, Madeleine Carroll plays Paula Doane, the wife of ad executive Vincent Doane (Fred MacMurray). For business reasons, Vincent is obliged to entertain lovely widow Margot Fraser (Louise Allbritton). Misunderstanding the situation, Paula vows to "get even" with Vincent by dallying with wealthy tobacco magnate Claude Kimball (Charles "Buddy" Rogers, who like Carroll was returning to films after a six-year absence). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens next. At the very least, it was nice to see Fred MacMurray and Madeleine Carroll working together on-screen for the fifth (and as turned out, the last) time. Much of An Innocent Affair is a thinly disguised advertisement for "Prince" Michael Romanoff's Hollywood eatery. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Barbara Stanwyck plays Polly Fulton, rebellious daughter of a wealthy industrialist (Charles Coburn). Polly marries a conservative economist professor (Richard Hart), but she chafes at his values and leaves him for socialist professor Van Heflin. Polly nearly ruins both her father's reputation and her own by embracing Heflin's radicalism. Based on a novel by J. P. Marquand, B.F.'s Daughter emerges as an unsubtle swipe at the policies of the late president Franklin Roosevelt; perhaps this was at the behest of MGM's arch-Republican head man Louis B. Mayer. In England, where the letters "B. F." comprise a euphemism for "bloody fool", the film was retitled Polly Fulton. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide