Sunday Wilshin Movies
- 1935
Based upon a book by I.A.R. Wylie that was previously filmed as Young Nowheres, Some Day is a simple romantic tale about love among the working class. In this case, that class is represented by Curley Blake (Esmond Knight) and Emily ( 19-year-old $Margaret Lockwood, later one of Britan's most popular film stars). Curley runs the elevator in an apartment house, while Emily is a cleaning girl, one of whose clients -- Mr. Canley (Henry Mollinson) -- lives in this building. They long to be married, but their pitifully low wages and dim hopes of improving their lots prevent them from tying the knot. Anxious to do something special for Emily, who has been to hospital, Curley decides to prepare a special dinner for her, using the flat of a tenant who is supposed to be away. Unfortunately, that tenant returns, irate at this unauthorized use of his apartment, and he and Curley fight. The elevator operator is charged with illegal entry, and things look black until Canley steps in and sets things right. The story was filmed again in 1937 as That Man's Here Again. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
- 1934
The popular British husband-and-wife screen team of Anne Grey and Lester Matthews star in Borrowed Clothes. Grey plays an impulsive aristocrat who purchases a failing dress shop. She knows very little about business, but her down-to-earth hubby (Mathews) proves a willing tutor. Slowly but surely, Grey turns the shop into a winning proposition, thereby proving that she's more than an empty-headed socialite. Borrowed Clothes was adapted by Aimee Stuart and Philip Stuart from their own stage play Her Shop; the film was released in the US by Columbia Pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1932
The Love Contract was based on Chauffeur Antoinette, a French stage comedy. Wealthy Antoinette (Winifred Shotter) loses all her money in the stock market, whereupon she puts her mansion up for sale. The first potential buyer turns out to be Neville Cardington (Owen Nares), the stockbroker who inadvertently brought about Antoinette's ruin. Upon learning that Cardington, a married man, intends to use the mansion as a trysting place for himself and his mistress, our heroine plots a diabolically clever revenge. But she forgets all this when her nemesis turns out to be a decent sort who eventually falls in love with her. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Winifred Shotter, Owen Nares, (more)
- 1932
Wendy Barrie made her film debut in the verbose British mystery Collision. Wendy takes a back seat to top-billed Sunday Wilshin, who plays a scheming widow. To cover up her complicity in a jewel theft, Wilshin contrives to pin the blame on newlywed Gerald Rawlinson. With the help of Rawlinson's new bride (Ms. Barrie), the real culprit is collared. Collision is based on a play by E. C. Pollard. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1932
In this romance, the love lives of several London dress shop employees are chronicled. Much of the story centers upon the head dressmaker who gets into trouble by borrowing one of her own designs to attend a gala with a rich fellow and finds herself accused of stealing it. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1932
This romance, based on a surprisingly sophisticated story by Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne, teams up Herbert Marshall with his then-wife Edna Best. Best is Mary Price, deserted by her husband when he leaves England to seek his fortune during the Boer War in 1900. Destitute and desperate, she meets aspiring author Michael Rowe (Marshall) at a museum. Rowe offers to share what little money he has with her and soon a romance develops. They agree to marry, in hopes that her husband has disappeared for good. And, as the years pass, it seems like he has. Rowe becomes a successful and respected writer and he and Mary raise a son, David (Frank Lawton). On the night that David becomes engaged to pretty society girl Romo (Elizabeth Allan), however, Price (D.A. Clarke-Smith) reappears, and while the young couple is away, Rowe has a fight with Price, who dies at the scene from a heart attack. Michael and Mary are interrogated, but Scotland Yard never makes the connection between Price and Mary, and the investigators assume that Michael was merely protecting himself from an intruder. While the couple is off the hook legally, they feel it is morally necessary to come clean about their past in front of David and his fiancée. David is more than willing to forgive his parents their sins, and Romo stands by them, too. What could have been a tiresome subject is brought to life by the talent of all involved -- not only the actors, but also writers Angus MacPhail, Robert Stevenson, and Lajos Biro, who brought Milne's story to the screen. Stevenson, incidentally, would become one of Britain's most respected directors, and MacPhail would frequently work with Alfred Hitchcock -- though apparently not on The Man Who Knew Too Much, which gave Best one of her best screen roles. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Frank Lawton, Herbert Marshall, (more)
- 1932
Based upon a thrice-filmed book by Sir Compton Mackenzie, Dance Pretty Lady is a romantic drama set in the Edwardian era. Jenny (Ann Casson) is a young Cockney lass who, despite her humble origins, is pursuing a career as a ballerina. Jenny meets Maurice (Carl Harbord), a young bohemian artist for whom money is no problem. She finds him attractive and falls in love with him. Maurice, for his part, is quite taken with her. However, he does not support the concept of marriage, and so asks her to be his mistress rather than his wife. Despite her love for him, Jenny wants no part of such an arrangement. Maurice eventually gives in and agrees to marry her, but Jenny does not want believe in his sincerity, and so the two part. After Maurice has left for the continent, Jenny realizes how much she desperately loves him and becomes extremely unhappy. Waiting for him to return, she pines away and grows disconsolate, at length believing that he has surely become involved with someone else. Despondent, she somehow falls into a relationship with Jack Danby, a friend of Maurice's, but is then filled with remorse. When Maurice finally returns, he learns of what is happened; initially upset, he then realizes that Jenny behaved this way because of her feelings for him and the way he treated her, and he makes a genuine offer of marriage to her. Dance marked the feature film debut of a young Hermione Gingold in a small role. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
- 1932
Muller becomes the housekeeper of the man she loves, a member of Berlin society, in this romantic comedy. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Robey, Ian Hunter, (more)
- 1931
Ralph Lynn (who also co-directed) plays a twittish lawyer whose prior engagements prevent him from attending his sweetheart's birthday party. Thanks to a series of unavoidable (and hilariously unbelievable) coincidences, Lynn ends up at a dance hall with a woman he barely knows. The problem: How to divest himself of this lady without hurting her feelings and getting into trouble with his own girlfriend. It's Ralph Lynn's show all the way, and he makes the most of every comic opportunity. It would be nice to say that the film's production values were on the same level as the star's performance -- nice, and untrue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Winifred Shotter, Kenneth Kove, (more)
- 1928
A wealthy man pretends he is bankrupt to teach his wayward daughter a lesson. An early, silent Hitchcock film which is wonderfully photographed. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Betty Balfour, Gordon Harker, (more)
- 1923
The Pittsburgh-born star of low-budget serials such as Wolves of Kultur (1918) and Hurricane Hutch (1921), Charles Hutchison moved his operations to Great Britain in the mid-1920s. Playing a cowboy who crosses paths with a mad nobleman (Greed's Gibson Gowland), Hutchison attempted to transfer his stock-in-trade -- furious, non-stop action -- to the more leisurely paced British film industry. The attempt -- which included torture chambers, damsels-in-distress and other cliches of the genre -- was by all accounts unsuccessful. Hutchison was soon enough back in Hollywood, where he continued his career mainly behind the camera, producing and directing very low-budget action melodramas and serials through the 1930s. He was still associated with the genre as late as 1944, when he appeared in the Republic serial Captain America. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1922
Produced, written and directed by Chilean-born Adelqui Millar, this British silent film starred American expatriate Evelyn Brent. Jack Trevor rescues the down-and-out Miss Brent from a fate worse than death, only to discover that she is his very own daughter. Miss Brent, later created a star by Joseph Von Sternberg, admitted to have fooled British movie-makers into believing that she was a famous American stage tragedienne. Today, the smoldering beauty is perhaps best remembered as the one-armed cultist in the 1943 thriller The Seventh Victim. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1922
After Lillias, a pretty but self-serving woman, accidently kills the dog of a gypsy woman, the gypsy puts an evil spell on her. Later, when Lillias dumps her latest lover Hugo, he goes off to join the gypsy's touring circus, and he ends up falling in love with the gypsy. After the couple has set a wedding date, they run into Lillias in London, and she invents a scheme to win back the heart of Hugo by destroying the reputation of the gypsy woman. Though Lillias's plot does indeed drive the two lovers apart, ultimately she fails to bring Hugo back into her own arms and, in defeat, Lillias finds a rich American to marry and eventually has a child with him. But when her daughter is stricken with a near-fatal illness, the gypsy woman is the only one who can save her, and she promises to help if Lillias admits to her deceitful ways. Lillias complies, and Hugo and his true love are brought back together once and for all. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
