George Watts Movies

George Stevens' Talk of the Town is a quick-witted comedy driven by wonderful performances by Cary Grant, Ronald Colman and Jean Arthur. Michael Lightcap (Colman) is a stuffy law professor in line to a Supreme Court appointment, who is spending the summer at the house of schoolteacher Nora Shelley (Arthur). But Lightcap is not the only guest at the house. Shelley has also let Leopold Dilg (Grant)--a man who had recently escaped from prison, where he was serving a sentence for false accusations of immolating a local factory--stay at the house, telling Lightcap that he is a gardener. In addition to striking up a friendship, Lightcap and Dilg also compete for the affections of Shelley. Eventually, the professor learns of Dilg's true identity, finding out that Leopold was framed by a crooked government, led by the foreman of the factory, who supposedly died in the fire. When Dilg is captured by the police, Lightcap comes to his defense, bringing the still-alive foreman out of hiding and, in the process, clearing Leopold of all the charges. Talk of the Town received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Original Story, Best Score, Best Editing, and Best Interior Decoration, yet it lost in all of the categories. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Andrew Jackson is very happy to serve as the secretary of the society that honors his presidential namesake until he is arrested for embezzling from the town coffers. With no one to speak on his behalf, poor innocent Jackson is tossed into jail. There he finds himself haunted by several ghosts, including Presidents Andrew Jackson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Supreme Court Justice John Marshall. Each of this sagacious specters offers his advice to the incarcerated Andrew. Then Jesse James shows up and helps Andrew, the only one who can see them, escape and with their help, bring the real crooks to justice. When not helping Andrew, the ghosts have great fun adjusting to the modern world. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on Cornell Woolrich's novel The Black Curtain (later dramatized several times on the radio series Suspense), Street of Chance top-bills Burgess Meredith as an amnesia victim. He awakens in the middle of the street, with nary a clue of who he is or what he's done. Meredith comes to learn that his past year of darkness has been a crowded one--and that he might be a murderer! Louise Platt plays Meredith's wife, but it's total stranger Claire Trevor who seems most interested in probing Meredith's past. Street of Chance is worth spending 74 minutes with, even though the true identity of the killer becomes obvious halfway through. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

James Stewart's last Hollywood film before entering military service, Come Live with Me teams Stewart with the hauntingly beautiful Hedy Lamarr. Lamarr plays a wealthy Austrian emigree, in love with a married American publisher. The girl must quickly find an American husband or she'll be deported. Along comes Stewart, an idealistic (and starving) writer given to quoting poetry in moments of crisis. He marries her on a "strictly business" basis...but Love finds a way, especially after Stewart wins fame by writing a story about his companionate marriage. Come Live with Me served as the screen debut of 80-year-old actress Adeline de Walt Reynolds, who as Jimmy Stewart's grandmother launched a twenty year career as everyone's favorite matriarch. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

MGM's The Trial of Mary Dugan was based on the popular stage play by Bayard Vellier, previously filmed as a Norma Shearer vehicle in 1929. This time, Laraine Day is cast as Mary Dugan, a young stenographer who is falsely accused of murdering her philandering employer Edgar Wayne (Tom Conway). In the course of her trial, Mary falls in love with her attorney Jimmy Blake (Robert Young). The original Trial of Mary Dugan was highlighted by the heartfelt testimony of the tarnished heroine, who recounted a life of shame and degradation endured on behalf of her impoverished law-student brother. Thanks to the tightened censorial restrictions of 1941, Mary Dugan's checkered past is eliminated, leaving the viewer with just another courtroom melodrama. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Detective Chester Morris and his nosy wife Jean Parker set up housekeeping in a small Reno hotel room, whence Morris conducts his investigation of a kidnap case. It appears that the abduction has some tenuous connection with a recent bank robbery. As Morris digs deeper, he finds that virtually all of his neighbors either have something to do with cases at hand, or else they have something to hide. Its screenplay sticking fairly closely to the source novel by Daniel Mainwaring (writing under the pseudonym of Geoffrey Holmes), No Hands on the Clock is a rare foray into mystery for Paramount's action-picture production team of Pine and Thomas. The title refers to a handless clock hanging inside a Reno mortuary--which of course turns out to be a vital clue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Wild Geese Calling is one of those 20th Century-Fox star vehicles which used to pop up all the time on TV before the Carsons, Lenos and Lettermans rendered "The Late Late Show" obsolete. Set in Oregon and Alaska at the turn of the century (the last century, that is), the film stars Henry Fonda as John Murdock, a restless young lumberjack. Tired of his job at a Seattle logging camp, he heads to the Yukon in search of gold. Here he marries dance hall girl Sally (Joan Bennett), who turns out to be the sweetheart of his old pal Blackie (Warren William). Throughout the early months of their marriage, he spends less time paying attention to her than he does worrying that she'll run off with her ex-beau. Murdock finally shows he's a right guy when he risks his life braving the elements to deliver a doctor to her bedside when she goes into labor. Russell Simpson, who played Henry Fonda's dad in The Grapes of Wrath, shows up in a typically grizzled role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cesar Romero plays an outwardly tough prohibition-era gangster who in reality wouldn't hurt a fly. He maintains his "killer" reputation by planting evidence of his involvement at the scenes of other crooks' crimes. Romero begins aspiring for respectability when he falls in love with Virginia Gilmore and adopts the orphaned Stanley Clements. Through his own non-homicidal means, Romero redeems himself by wiping out a genuinely nasty gangster boss (Sheldon Leonard). Tall, Dark and Handsome was remade in 1950 as Love That Brute, with Paul Douglas in the Cesar Romero role--and with Romero playing the villain! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Judy Garland performs her only on-screen death scene early in the proceedings of Little Nellie Kelly. But despair not! Garland soon reappears as the daughter of the character she was playing in the film's first reels. Now a girl of 20, Garland has fallen in love with Douglas McPhail, much to the dismay of her father George Murphy and grandfather Charles Winninger. However, Murphy and Winninger are too much at odds with each other to give proper attention to Garland. Going into her Miss Fixit act, Garland patches up the differences between pop and grandpop, and gets to keep her beau in the bargain. Based on the play by George M. Cohan, Little Nellie Kelly affords Judy Garland ample opportunity to sing a swing version of "Singin' in the Rain", as well as several newer songs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The last of MGM's "Nick Carter" trilogy, Sky Murder is a tad too cute and clever for its own good, but its mystery angle holds up pretty well. Returning from a weekend party, amateur sleuth Nick Carter (Walter Pidgeon) boards a private plane, where urbane Fifth Columnist Andrew Hendon (Tom Conway) is murdered in a locked compartment. Suspicion immediately falls upon refugee Pat Evans (Kaaren Verne), who was being blackmailed into helping Hendon smuggle secrets to the Nazis. Dividing his time between the land and the air, Carter is eventually able to expose the real murderer, and to smash the Nazi spy ring for good and all (or at least until the next spy movie). The film is hampered by the excessive comedy relief of Carter's self-appointed assistant Bartholomew the Bee Man (Donald Meek), who once upon a time was an amusing character. Far better attuned to the film's framework is perennial dumb blonde Joyce Compton, here cast as deceptively scatterbrained female detective Chris Cross. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

To quell the rumors that musical stars Alice Faye and Betty Grable detested each other (actually they were fast friends, if not close buddies), 20th Century-Fox cast both ladies in their 1940 "inventory" musical Tin Pan Alley. Set in the years just prior to and during WW1, the film casts Faye and Grable as Katie and Lily Blaine, a singing-sister act playing the vaudeville circuits of the land. Ambitious songwriter Skeets Harrigan (John Payne) senses star potential in Katie Blaine, and his efforts to promote her-and his tunes-at all costs result in a great deal of ill-will before the inevitable happy ending. Counterpointing the likeably ruthless Skeets is his ebullient partner Harry Calhoun (Jack Oakie), who spends most of the picture trying to find suitable lyrics for a novelty ditty he's written, a quest that proves unsuccessful until a stuttering soldier inspires him to write "K-K-Katie". With the exception of the Mack Gordon-Harry Warren song "You Say the Sweetest Things Baby", all the tunes heard in Tin Pan Alley were popular during the period depicted in the film, including "Moonlight Bay", "Honeysuckle Rose", and "Goodbye Broadway, Hello France". The film's best ensemble piece is "The Shiek of Araby", with corpulent "potentate" Billy Gilbert matching the lissome Alice Faye and Betty Grable step for step. Incidentally, this number was one of several to be severely trimmed before final release: removed entirely was a delightful sequence involving the Tin Lizzie-inspired song "Get Out and Get Under", though this scene later appeared on a cable-TV compendium of excised 20th Century-Fox musical highlights. The winner of a 1940 Oscar for Alfred Newman's score, Tin Pan Alley was remade in 1950 as I'll Get By. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the print ads for Soak the Rich, writers/producers/directors Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur were shown singing "We're the boys who wrote the yarn/ And here's what it's about/ Class ideas don't mean a thing/ When love kicks 'em out." The film pokes broad fun at New Deal liberalism and 1930s campus unrest, which the authors evidently regarded as a passing fad ("the latest form of necking," observes one character) Millionaire college chairman Humphrey Craig (Walter Connolly) is saddled with fuzzy-headed daughter Belinda (Mary Taylor), who allows campus radicals to hold rallies in her living room. The main bone of contention is Belinda's romance with starry-eyed economics professor Buzz Jones (John Howard), whom Craig had fired after the publication of Jones' inflammatory book Soak the Rich. Belinda's enchantment with "pinkos" comes to an end when she's kidnapped by a comically menacing communist agitator (Lionel Stander) and when Buzz proposes marriage (in the Brave New World, she reasons, there is no room for matrimony). Her fed-up daddy solves matters with a shotgun wedding -- only it's the bride, not the groom, who's the reluctant participant. Novelist Alice Duer Miller, a longtime Hecht-MacArthur crony, plays a supporting role. Soak the Rich may sound like a "lost masterpiece," but it isn't; in fact, many critics regard it as one of the worst films of the 1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide