Niles Welch Movies

This obscure wartime travelogue details the journey of news correspondent Rey Scott from Hong Kong to Tibet. It's hardly an easy trek, requiring Scott to negotiate the treacherous Burma Road and the Red Highway in Mongolia. Along the way, Scott's 16-millimeter camera records a variety of fascinating sights, some of them never before seen on film. The film takes an ominous and then horrific turn at the end, as Scott shows the appalling results of the Japanese bombing of Chungking. Kukan (the Chinese word for "Courage") was originally designed to stir up audience sympathy for China in their ongoing struggle against Japan -- as if such sympathies still needed stirring up as late as 1941. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Magazine publisher Clark Gable is happily married to Myrna Loy. Clark's devoted, super-efficient secretary Jean Harlow may have once harbored a secret desire for her boss, but she's perfectly content with boyfriend James Stewart. Accompanying Gable on a crucial business trip, Jean answers the phone in her boss' suite. Myrna, on the other end of the line, misunderstands, thereby setting the stage for a series of subsequent misunderstandings. As one can see, nothing much really happens in Wife vs. Secretary. The film is a vehicle in every sense of the word, totally reliant on the appeal of its stars. But it works beautifully, and remains as entertaining now as it did sixty years ago. One film historian has wondered what Wife vs. Secretary would have looked like had it been made before the imposition of the production code: would Jean have really had an affair with Clark, thereby giving Myrna something to really worry about? No matter; while it may have been racier, it's not likely the film could have been any more entertaining than it already is. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this romance, a social worker employed by Traveler's Aid finally is able to show her love to a construction foreman responsible for building the Golden Gate Bridge. She has loved him for nine years and is delighted that they can finally be together. Unfortunately, both of them are so busy that it is difficult to be together. Fortunately, they do eventually connect. The film contains actual footage of the construction of the great San Francisco Bridge. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In perhaps the most tranquil B-Western of the 1930s, Buck Jones, who also produced, plays the tough but goodhearted proprietor of the Bonanza, the only gambling establishment in otherwise God-fearing Silver Creek. Noel Francis, who used to play blonde schemers in Warner Bros. gangster films, earns second billing as the casino's equally goodhearted chanteuse. Surprisingly, the glamorous Miss Francis is not paired off with Jones, but has to settle for country pumpkin Grady Sutton, of all people. In fact, the hero must wait no less than 51 minutes before he is finally provided a few romantic moments with Peggy Campbell, who arrives just in time to warble "Tonight May Never Come Again" to an enraptured Jones. The latter does very little of anything in this film, except prevent a couple of gamblers (Rodney Hildebrand and Harry Semels) from robbing the casino's safe, proving himself worthy in the eyes of Pastor Timothy Tucker (Niles Welch) and his girlfriend Martha (Marion Shilling) along the way. Restored by Universal/MCA in 2000, Stone of Silver Creek has no action to speak of, but is saved from the doldrums by good performances from Jones, the unfairly forgotten Noel Francis, and the always watchable Grady Sutton, who gets the top-billed girl for the first and only time in his long career. Unlike most Westerns of the day, Stone of Silver Creek was produced entirely on the Universal back lot. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In this drama, an amateur pilot is driven to living life in the fast lane after he pilots that plane that crashed and killed his parents and his sister. He goes on to marry. He and his new wife live in terrible conditions until he suddenly inherits $8,000 which he uses to buy a plane and start up a commuter service. Unfortunately, he finds himself again in debt. His disgusted wife leaves, but when he is hurt in a car crash, she eventually returns. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Actually this film should have been titled "Here Comes Jimmy Cagney Again, so Duck!". James Cagney is a bantam-cock sailor who runs up against chief petty officer Pat O'Brien. Seems that Cagney and O'Brien had come to blows early in the film when O'Brien stole Cagney's date at a dance hall. O'Brien resents both Cagney and Cagney's attentions towards O'Brien's sister (Gloria Stuart). The animosity intensifies when O'Brien court-martials Cagney for going AWOL. But all passions are spent when Cagney heroically rescues his shipmates from a raging fire. Here Comes the Navy proved to Jimmy Cagney's fans that he could still deliver the goods even with the tighter movie censorship imposed in 1934. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Invincible Studios' Cross Streets is something of a watershed film, providing leading roles for fading silent stars Claire Windsor and Kenneth Thomson and relative newcomers Johnny Mack Brown and Anita Louise. The story is the old saw about the brilliant surgeon who disappears from view after a fatal misdiagnosis. Twelve years later, the surgeon, now a shabby hobo, returns home, where he redeems himself by performing a life-saving operation. But there's no happy ending for our hero, who through a convoluted plot twist is shot by the jealous husband of the Doc's prospective mother-in-law! Cross Streets might easily have been titled Crossed Wires, what with its tangled web of complex plotlines. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a fighter's fiancee refuses to marry him until he can overcome his insane jealousy. He does and they marry. The jealousy resurfaces when he finds his wife and her boss in a hotel room. He goes mad with rage and kills her boss. His wife is blamed for the killing. Just before the verdict is announced, the guilt-ridden man confesses and himself receives the death-penalty. Time passes and his finally hour arrives. He asks the attending priest to offer him a 10-count. Just as the priest hits nine, his voice becomes that of a referee and the boxer is seen slowly awakening from being knocked on conscious during a fight. The whole story was but a dream. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Ken Maynard goes undercover to prove that his father (Horace B. Carpenter), a bank president, did not commit suicide but was murdered in this routine Western from low-budget KBS Productions. Returning to his hometown of Mesa to find his father's death pronounced a suicide, Cal Weston (Maynard) is reunited with old friend Joel Winters (James Marcus) and his daughter, Ruth (Muriel Gordon), both of whom believe in Ken's theory of murder. Investigating, Ken learns that the bank's vice-president, Martin Carter (Niles Welch), has been cooking the books with the help of town bully Burl Adams (Al Bridge). But when his true identity is discovered by one of the gang members (William Norton Bailey), Carter and Adams turn the tables on Ken, who is in grave danger of being lynched by an irate citizenry. Happily, a vigilante committee that includes town rowdies Nip (Edward Brady) and Tuck (Charles King) believes in his innocence and the true culprits are made to confess. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Another of Paramount's "pocket epics" based on the works of Zane Grey, The Mysterious Rider pits good guy Kent Taylor against villain Irving Pichel. A crooked land dealer, Pichel spends most of his screen time seeking out legal means to cheat the homesteaders out of their property. He is thwarted by the Lone Ranger-like "Mysterious Rider," who may well be hero Taylor. One of the two leading ladies is Gail Patrick, later a specialist in scheming "other women" roles, and much later the producer of TV's Perry Mason series. The film's director was Fred Allen, not the comedian but a one-time film editor who specialized in cinematic sagebrushers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed in the San Jacinto Mountains above Palm Springs, CA, this Buck Jones series entry was publicized as the first talkie "of consequence" with a Mountie background. Jones played Tom McKenna, a disgraced Royal Canadian Mountie who turns highway robber to pay off his gambling debt. He joins a gang of outlaws led by Morgan (Niles Welch) and to prove his loyalty is assigned to rob a safe belonging to the father (Ralph Lewis) of his former girlfriend, Shirley (Greta Grandstedt). The safe, however, is empty and Tom is chastised by Shirley. Still on probation with the gang, Tom performs lookout duty while the bandits attack the Limited express train. The gang is ambushed by the Mounties and Tom is revealed to have been working undercover all along. With Morgan and his henchman, Pierre (Mitchell Lewis), safely behind bars, Tom is promoted to inspector and reunited with a relieved Shirley. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Such were the ways of Hollywood that the dignified H.B. Warner, who played Jesus in 1927's King of Kings, found himself in such low-budget fare as Cross-Examination a scant five years later. Warner makes the best of the situation in the role of Gerald Waring, defense attorney in a sensational murder trial. Depsite the badgering of prosecutor Dwight Simpson (Edmund Breese), Waring is determined to clear his client David Wells (Donald Dillaway) of the charge that David murdered his millionaire father. The case comes to a head when the Wells family's housekeeper makes a startling statement from her deathbed. Cross-Examination would seem to have been inspired by the 1925 legal drama The Goose Woman, itself based on the notorious Hall-Mills murder case. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide