Tom Wilson Movies

Clark Gable and Jane Russell star in this rugged widescreen western, exquisitely photographed by Leo Tover and directed by veteran action expert Raoul A. Walsh. Gable plays Ben Allison, who with his brother Clint (Cameron Mitchell) journeys to Montana in search of gold. They come upon wealthy businessman Nathan Stark (Robert Ryan), whom they try to rob of $20,000. Instead, Stark talks Ben and Clint into becoming partners with him on a cattle drive to Montana. As the group travels to Texas, they come upon a party of settlers being attacked by Indians. They save the saucy Nella Turner (Jane Russell) and she joins with Ben, who has been made trail boss, and Clint on the cattle drive. Ben and Nella are attracted to each other but after an initial fling, Nella rejects him -- Ben just wants enough money to buy a small ranch and Nella won't settle for slim pickings. Arriving in Fort Worth, Nella takes up with Stark, whose desire to make as much money as possible coincides with Nella's money-hungry ambitions. But when, at Stark's insistence, she accompanies him on the final trek to Montana, the seething friction between Ben and Stark erupts as the drive heads into dangerous Indian country. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In this heart-warming drama, a beggar and his performing dog, Flip, struggle to eke out a living upon the cruel streets. He is hired to perform at a rich kid's birthday party. There, the beggar is offered $500 for his beloved dog. He refuses and again hits the streets. Soon he becomes so impoverished that he can no longer provide food for his four-legged friend; he sells him for $20. The beggar is then beaten and robbed. Later he learns that Flip died. The man soon follows the dog to heaven where they begin performing for God. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Veterinarian Ronald Reagan contracts anthrax from treating diseased cows in this horsey melodrama from Warner Bros. In fact, Reagan's dutiful Dr. Larry Hanrahan is so busy with the cows that he completely ignores a summons from lady horse breeder Rory Teller (Alexis Smith) to treat her prize-winning stallion. Rory is pretty peeved over what she perceives as a slight and briefly, ever so briefly, contemplates accepting a proposal of marriage from smooth-talking author Stephen Purcell (Zachary Scott). Until, that is, the seriousness of Larry's condition finally forces her to take a drastic measure: to treat the dying vet with the same serum he had used on the cattle. According to some reports, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were scheduled to star in Stallion Road as a follow-up to the hugely successful The Big Sleep (1946). Rather than appear in what they rightfully considered a Grade-B production, they chose to go on suspension. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Tugboat Annie Sails Again stars Marjorie Rambeau as the rambunctious female skipper created by Norman Reilly Raine. In this one, Tugboat Annie is threatened with the loss of her job as cap'n of the tacky tugboat Narcissus, much to the delight of Bullwinkle (Alan Hale), skipper of the rival Salamander. In order to raise $25000 in a hurry, Annie agrees to tow a drydock to Alaska, but this plan is scuttled when another, sleeker tug lands the contract. Annie saves the day-and her job-when the other tug gets into trouble on the high seas. The romantic subplot is handled by Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan, both of whom are as cute as can be. Incidentally, outtake footage exists of Tugboat Annie Sails Again wherein pert Ms. Wyman cusses like a sailor while splashing around in a studio tank. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Veteran movie heavy Boris Karloff plays a sympathetic role in Devil's Island. Karloff portrays a humanitarian physician, arrested for treating the wounds of a treasonous fugitive. Sent to the Devil's Island penal colony, Dr. Karloff runs afoul of sadistic commandant James Stephenson, who seems obsessed by the guillotine (an execution sequence is one of the film's longest scenes). Stephenson's wife Nedda Harrigan, fed up with her husband's cruelties, aids Karloff in turning the tables on the commandant. Participating in an escape, Karloff makes his way to freedom and clears his name. Devil's Island runs a scant 60 minutes, due to editing demands made by the French consulate in Washington, who felt that the film was detrimental to Franco-American relations. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Otis Ferguson has said of Each Dawn I Die that "the story is of the kind you would have to see to disbelieve." And to be sure, the film is nothing more than a sampler of '30s prison-film conventions. But with the brilliant acting by James Cagney and the fast-paced and hard-edged direction of William Keighley, the film clatters past like an express train. Cagney plays Frank Ross, an innocent newspaperman who is railroaded into prison by a corrupt district attorney. In prison, he meets hardened-con Stacey (George Raft). Frank, at first, doesn't want to associate with Stacey and the other prisoners, but trapped in the hellhole prison, he more and more turns into a bitter con. Finally granted a hearing from the parole board, Frank pleads his innocence, but the parole board is headed by Grayce (Victor Jury), the man responsible for his imprisonment, and his parole is denied, and Frank becomes more hardened and embittered. By this point, Stacey has befriended him and agrees to help Frank prove his innocence. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In this entry in the long-running series, the Dead End Kids are freshly out of reform school when they find themselves victimized by the tough, corrupt head of the Hell's Kitchen Shelter. A reformed racketeer tries to help out, but he winds up violating his parole and getting sent back to prison. As he goes, he gets some satisfaction out of seeing the crooked superintendent sent up the river too. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Though not a sequel to Angels with Dirty Faces, this Warner Bros. programmer does star the Dead End Kids-or, more specifically, Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, and Bernard Punsley. Fresh out of reform school, Gabe Ryan (Frankie Thomas) promises his sister Joy (Ann Sheridan) that he'll go straight, and promptly joins the Beale Street Termites (the Dead Enders), a tough but basically good-hearted street gang. Local mobster William Kroner (Bernard Nedell), seeking out a fall guy for a series of arsons, frames Gabe for a fire in which helpless invalid Sleepy (Punsly) dies. With the help of the other Termites, crusading DA Pat Remson (Ronald Reagan) tries to prove Gabe's innocence, using surprisingly high-handed tactics to get results: arresting Kroner on a misdemeanor, he turns the crook over to the kids, who force a confession out of the terrified crook. In this and several other instances in the film, the gang's rowdy behavior is "purified" because the end justifies the means. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A remake of Dr. Socrates (1935), this middling melodrama features Kay Francis as Carol Nelson, a medical doctor blaming gangster Joe Gurney (Humphrey Bogart) for the death of her husband (John Eldredge) during a police raid. Determined to get even, Dr. Nelson sets up practice in a small town where a couple of Gurney's henchmen are serving time. And sure enough, Gurney is soon in dire need of Carol's help after being wounded in a jailhouse break. Convincing the gang boss and his men that they all suffer from eye infections, the good doctor proceeds to blind the mobsters with adrenaline eye drops and then calls the cops. Warner Bros. used the general idea a third time in Bullet Scars (1942), yet another B-movie. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Making his debut with Warner Brothers, Henry Fonda plays an apprentice high-voltage lineman working with the no-nonsense, but very experienced Pat O'Brien. Stringing up the high-tension electrical wires on tall metal towers is dangerous work, but from the moment he sees the linemen at work, farm boy Slim (Fonda) knows that this is the job for him. He convinces crew-boss Red Blayd (O'Brien) of this and after heavy-duty training, and the overcoming of a few fears, he starts to work. Tensions arise when Fonda falls in love with Blayd's gal Cally (Margaret Lindsey). Much of the plot was drawn from Tiger Shark (1932). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This hard-hitting Warner Bros. courtroom drama begins with the usual "Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental" disclaimer. Filmgoers with long memories, however, recognized Robert Rossen and Aben Kandel's screenplay as a blow-by-blow recreation of the Leo Frank-Mary Phagan case of 1915. Phagan, a 14-year-old employee in a Marietta, GA pencil factory, was found murdered. The bulk of the evidence pointed to a black janitor (who actually confessed to the crime years after the fact), but race-baiting Atlanta newspaper publisher Tom Watson decided to go after Leo Frank, the Northern Jew who owned the factory where Mary worked. "We can lynch a nigger any time," the politically ambitious Watson is alleged to have said, "but when do we get a chance to hang a Yankee Jew?" Thanks largely to Watson's "guilt by headline" campaign, and to Fulton County's cooperative solicitor general, Frank was found guilty and sentenced to death. Georgia Governor John M. Slaton, who all along smelled something fishy in the case, commuted Frank's case to life imprisonment (and was ruined politically as a result). En route to prison, Frank was abducted by a mob and lynched, an incident that boosted the prestige of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan. Aben Kandel dramatized this appalling miscarriage of justice in his novel Death in the Deep South, which served as the basis for They Won't Forget. In Mervyn LeRoy's film version, Lana Turner (in a star-making turn) plays Mary Clay, a teen-aged typing school student who dresses garishly and flirts with every man she meets. Mary is later found murdered; the last person to see her alive was her teacher, recently arrived Northerner Robert Hale (Edward Norris). Once more, a black janitor (played as a superstitious moron by Clinton Rosemond) is the most likely suspect, but the ambitious district attorney (Claude Rains) seems sincere in his belief that Hale is guilty. Once Hale is sentenced to death, the governor, played by Paul Everton, commutes his sentence, serene in the belief that, once his career is finished, he'll be able to retire peacefully (real-life governor Slaton did not go down so benignly). Except for the removal of the original case's anti-Semitic elements, They Won't Forget is stark, powerhouse filmmaking, one of the best of Warners' "social protest" films of the 1930s. It was remade as the 1987 TV movie The Murder of Mary Phagan starring Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Peter Gallagher, and Charles S. Dutton (as well as as the unsuccessful 1998 Broadway musical Parade). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In one of the best Charlie Ruggles-Mary Boland vehicles of the 1930s, Ruggles plays a mild mannered husband prone to sleepwalking. His nocturnal prowlings cause no end of embarrassment for his wife (Mary Boland), especially since Ruggles is a more aggressive personality when asleep. Eventually, Ruggles' midnight wandering gets him mixed up with gangsters. It looks bad for our stars, but Ruggles and Boland manage to wriggle out of the dilemma and into a happy ending. Early to Bed was scripted by versatile character actor Lucien Littlefield, who plays a small part in this film and had previously appeared with Ruggles and Boland in the memorable Ruggles of Red Gap (36). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This western tells the story of a brave Army captain assigned to escort an important official's daughter through Indian country. Unfortunately, a pair of wicked buffalo hunters have been trying to upset the Cheyenne by breaking the treaty the woman's father created; they are hunting the massive beasts. The woman gets entangled with the crooks after her guide is tossed in the poky and the fed-up Cheyenne begin waging war. Fortunately, the hero manages to escape and mount his trick horse to stop the villains and restore peace. Look for super-athlete Jim Thorpe as the Cheyenne leader. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide