Billy West Movies

This adaptation of the comic novel by T. Coraghessan Boyle is the story of real-life Corn Flakes inventor Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (Anthony Hopkins), an eccentric health nut in the early 20th century. Convinced of the benefits of holistic health practices (mostly involving irrigation of the bowels and colon), Kellogg opens a spa in Battle Creek, Michigan that immediately attracts the well-to-do of his time, including Will (Matthew Broderick) and Eleanor Lightbody (Bridget Fonda). A young couple with sexual and marital problems, the Lightbodys aren't helped much by the forced separation of sexes at Kellogg's sanitarium, and the situation is further exacerbated by Will's obliging nurse (Traci Lind) and Eleanor's encounters with a group of German sex therapists. Also at the spa are Charles Ossining (John Cusack), an ambitious con man who sees a fortune in Kellogg's cereal, and the unwashed, cretinous George Kellogg (Dana Carvey), one of the doctor's several dozen adopted children. A spoof as obsessed as its protagonist with its scatological subject matter, The Road to Wellville was an unusual effort for director-composer Alan Parker, known better for darker dramatic material and musicals. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

When he's shipped off to prison on a tax-evasion charge, millionaire Van Dyke (Walter Connolly) breathes a sigh of relief: at least he'll be free of his dizzy, spendthrift wife (Billie Burke) and spoiled-rotten daughter Carol (Joan Bennett). Once behind bars, Van Dyke strikes up a friendship with amiable reformed bootlegger Ricardi (George Raft). Since Ricardi is to be sprung first, Van Dyke suggests that the ex-crook take on the task of "taming" the incorrigible Carol. Unwilling to be stifled by a former jailbird (even a good-looking one), Carol decides to get even by persuading one of Ricardi's former cohorts, a shady character named Tex (Lloyd Nolan) to stage a fake kidnapping. Trouble is, Tex kidnaps the girl for real, obliging Ricardi to race to her rescue -- but only after deliberately breaking every traffic law known to man, so that he'll be pursued by a veritable battalion of motorcycle cops (this hilarious finale was later re-used in the 1941 Buster Keaton two-reeler So You Won't Squawk). A heady blend of screwball comedy and crime melodrama, She Couldn't Take It is one of the fastest and funniest films of 1935. ~ 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

In this crime drama, Flicker Hayes (James Cagney) is a safecracker who has just been released following a stretch in prison; after his last job, his partners Dan Curley (Bradley Page) and Red Deering (Ralf Harolde) set him up, and now Hayes is determined to get revenge. Fooling them into believing that there's no hard feelings, Hayes sets up another robbery with Curley and Deering, but after it goes off without a hitch, Hayes turns the tables on his so-called friends and squeals on them to the cops, keeping all the money for himself. Hayes makes tracks for San Francisco, unaware that Curley has escaped from the police and is hot on his trail. Once he settles in San Francisco, Hayes meets Rose Lawrence (Joan Blondell), a former streetwalker who has reformed and settled down with fisherman Nick Gardella (Victor Jory). Even though she's married, Hayes falls head over heels for Rose, and she finds that she's quite attracted to him as well. Rose is torn between Hayes and Gardella, but Hayes' decision about the relationship is made for him when Curley and his goons arrive in San Francisco, and Hayes has to flee for his own safety. He Was Her Man was the last of seven pictures James Cagney and Joan Blondell would make together. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The second talkie version of the Avery Hopwood's theatrical war-horse The Golddiggers of Broadway, Gold Diggers of 1933 was the second of three back-to-back 1933 Warner Bros. musicals benefiting from the genius of Busby Berkeley. The basic plot is retained from the Hopwood play: Showgirls Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler and Aline McMahon attempt to find financial backing for the new show planned by producer Ned Sparks. Songwriter Dick Powell, an incognito man of wealth, offers to put up the money, a fact that brings down the wrath of his older brother Warren William, who despises show folk. Attempting to buy off the three girls, William is placed in a compromising position by the crafty Blondell and is compelled to bankroll the musical himself. The oddest aspect of Gold Diggers of 1933 is the fact that the mood of the songs is wildly at variance with the plot. The film begins with dozens of chorus girls (led by Ginger Rogers) happily chirping "We're In the Money", a rehearsal number interrupted when the finance men burst in to claim the sets and props from the impoverished troupe. At the end, when everyone is genuinely in the money, the troupe stages a downbeat "Brother Can You Spare A Dime"-style production number, "Remember My Forgotten Man"--and it is on this doleful indictment of the Depression that the film fades out! Other Berkeley-staged musical highlights include "Pettin' in the Park" (yes, that salacious little baby really is Billy Barty) and the neon-dominated "Shadow Waltz", all written by the prolific Harry Warren and Al Dubin. As spectacular as Gold Diggers of 1933 was, it would be topped by the last of Berkeley's 1933 trilogy, Footlight Parade. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An admirably tough B-picture enlivened by an energetic James Cagney performance, Picture Snatcher stars Cagney as Danny Kean, a former gangster who has decided to go straight after a stretch in the big house. Danny has fallen for Patricia (Patricia Ellis), the daughter of the cop who put him away (Robert Emmett O'Connor). Dad isn't convinced that Danny has left his life of crime behind him, and he isn't too impressed with his new career taking pictures for a sleazy tabloid newspaper. Between getting a lurid photo of a fireman in front of a burning building (where his wife and her lover met their fate) and a daring shot of a woman being executed (based an actual incident when a New York Daily News photographer got a photo of Ruth Snyder in the electric chair), Danny's work is selling papers but hardly making Officer O'Connor think his daughter is in good hands (especially since he was in charge of press security for the execution). Short, sweet and sassy, Picture Snatcher is the sort of gutsy fare Warner Bros. did best in the 1930's; Ralph Bellamy turns in a great supporting performance as Danny's boozy editor. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

James Cagney stars as a popular prizefighter who loses his winnings through too much partying and too many women. Cagney's fans finance the boxer's regenerative stay at a New Mexico health resort. For the sake of pretty, poverty-stricken Marian Nixon, Cagney enters into a return bout. He splits his winnings with Nixon, then goes back to his old skirt-chasing pattern with fickle society girl Virginia Bruce. Having had his nose broken, Cagney fixes it up to please Bruce, and stops taking chances in the ring lest his beezer get smashed again. It doesn't take long for Cagney to plummet from popularity, but true-blue Nixon is there for him when he gets wise to himself. The beautifully staged fight scenes in Winner Take All, wherein James Cagney disdains the use of a double, were later excerpted in Cagney's last-ever film, 1985's Terrible Joe Moran. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Once again, Billy West borrows Oliver Hardy away from Bobby Ray (West was producing Ray's films, along with starring in his own). West plays a husband who is suffering from stress, and from his wife's awful cooking. The doctor advises him to take a vacation, so he and the wife (Ethlyn Gibson) go to the country to visit relatives. Cousin Wilbert (Hardy) meets them at the station and gives them the wagon ride from hell. At the farm, they find their relatives are a strange and uncouth bunch, with no table manners whatsoever. The couple never does manage to get any dinner, and then they discover that not only do they have to sleep in separate beds, they have to share their separate beds with various cousins. Finding their vacation more stressful than what they left behind, the couple sneaks out and returns home. This is the last known appearance of Oliver Hardy in a Billy West film. He was already making films for Hal Roach where, within a couple of years, he would be teamed up with a partner whose talents proved to be a perfect blend with his -- Stan Laurel. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Oliver Hardy played the "heavy" for Billy West, both while West was known as the premier Charles Chaplin imitator, and several years later, after West had dropped the Chaplin trappings. This latter-day West comedy was made a couple of years before Hardy teamed up with Stan Laurel. Hardy is a stage manager who has spent the day watching really horrible performers audition...and then out comes West with a violin. This is the last straw, and the stage manager summarily kicks him out. Billy finds a little boy being harassed by a bunch of bullies and comes to his aid. The kid turns out to be the stage manager's son. The stage manager breaks up the fracas and continues to pursue Billy. But the child is hit by a car, and Billy takes him home and goes for a doctor. The stage manager, unaware of what has happened, continues to chase after Billy. Finally he realizes that Billy has saved his son's life, and gratefully agrees to listen to an audition. Unfortunately, Billy's playing is excruciatingly bad, and the stage manager breaks the violin over his head. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Diminutive Bobby Ray and portly Oliver Hardy play employees of the Blatz and Blatz Interior Design company, hired to wallpaper Dr. Brown's sanatarium. When an inmate accidentally drops alcohol into the hospital's water supply, the two drunken wallpaperers go at their work with a vengeance. A now-forgotten comic, Ray looked enough like Stan Laurel for this inexpensive two-reel comedy to be advertised as a Laurel and Hardy offering when released to the home movie market in the early '60s. Hardy himself later acknowledged that his character in this film resembled the Ollie of later fame, with a condescending attitude toward his less-brainy partner, dainty hand gestures and all. Produced by comedian Billy West and released as a "Mirthquake Comedy," Stick Around also featured Hazel Newman as a nurse and Harry McCoy as the owner of the sanitarium. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Although this two-reel Billy West comedy was released under the banner of the Bull's Eye Film Corporation, it's likely that it was made while the comic was still working for King Bee. Oliver Hardy, who did not join West and the other King Bee stock players in later endeavors, also appears in the film. West, Charles Chaplin's most notable impersonator, borrows some of Chaplin's best gags, and performs them pretty well here. Billy is on the run from the law and eludes the pursuing cops by entering a cafe. There, he runs afoul of the headwaiter (Hardy) when he can't pay for the beer he has drunk and gets tossed out not once, but several times. The cops catch up with him, and, faced with the choice of jail or gainful employment, he chooses the job. So Billy goes to work as a waiter at the very same cafe, and is forced to put on a dress and dance when one of the dancers suddenly quits. A prize fighter (Leo White) comes in and manhandles his date. Billy comes to the girl's aid and then winds up having to face the fighter in the ring. Somehow, Billy manages to win, but later on, the fighter harasses the girl again and Billy has to give him another knockout punch. One of the bit players in the film is a slightly boozy piano player -- it's director Charles Parrott, who later became more famous as Hal Roach comic Charley Chase. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

San Francisco's Chinatown is the scene for this two-reel melodrama of crime and miscegenation. The cruel saloonkeeper Pat Gallagher (Walter Long) wants to marry off his daughter Maggie (Billie West) to a gangster, but she runs away and hides in a neighborhood shop. There she is persuaded to marry its Chinese owner Hop Woo (Eugene Pallette), only to be mistreated by him. Two decades later he decides to sell their daughter Ah Woo (Signe Auen) into slavery, but she is rescued by her brother and his friend Jack Donovan (Tom Wilson) who marries Ah Woo. The despairing Maggie takes her own life, and Ah Woo and her brother go to live with Donovan on his ranch. Note actress Signe Auen, who later changed her name to Seena Owen and worked throughout the silent era, capping her career by portraying the monstrous Queen Regina in Erich von Stroheim's final (and unfinished) silent Queen Kelly. 15/2rl ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide