Marie Windsor Movies

Randolph Scott once more contributes mightily to Warner Bros.' annual box-office gross in the well-mounted western The Bounty Hunter. Filmed in 3D but released "flat", the film casts Scott as the title character, who is hired by the Pinkertons to bring in three train robbers. Riding into the town of Twin Forks, Scott quickly ascertains that the outlaws are hiding somewhere in the vicinity. He then bides his time, hoping that the crooks will tip their hands, lead him to the stolen money, and let down their guard long enough to allow for a speedy capture. Scott's leading ladies on this trip are Dolores Dorn as the daughter of the town doctor, and Marie Windsor as the postmistress with Something To Hide. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Elmo Williams, the veteran Hollywood film editor who gained fame for his work on High Noon, serves as director of the medium-budget western The Tall Texan. Lloyd Bridges plays the title character, a convicted murderer named Ben Trask. While being escorted to prison, Trask talks his captors into prospecting for gold. A rich vein has been found in Indian territory, attracting gold-hunters like flies to honey. Despite warnings from the local tribe, the prospectors refuse to leave. Even when a compromise is reached with the Indians, at least one of the gold-seekers oversteps his bounds. A climactic Indian attack is thus a foregone conclusion, and since none of the white characters is particularly sympathetic, the viewer is hard put not to root for the Indians. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Eddie Cantor, beloved "banjo eyed" entertainer who conquered stage, films, radio and television, is given the Hollywood biopic treatment in this largely uninvolving film. Cantor is portrayed by Keefe Brasselle, a minor nightclub performer of the 1950s who couldn't hope to come within shouting distance of Cantor's appeal. The storyline charts Cantor's professional progress, from the lower East Side boyhood to his ascendancy as star of The Ziegfeld Follies. It also chronicles his enduring marriage to wife Ida (Marilyn Erskine). Surprisingly shortchanged in the film was Cantor's humanitarian work (primarily on behalf of the March of Dimes and various Jewish causes); instead, screen time is wasted on Aline MacMahon, as lachrymose as possible in the role of Eddie's grandmother, and Jackie Barnett, giving a gosh-awful performance as Jimmy Durante. At the beginning and end of the film, the real Eddie and Ida Cantor appear, ostensibly to watch the unspooling of The Eddie Cantor Story in a Warner Bros. screening room. At the fade-out, Eddie turns to Ida and says "I've never been so happy in my life." Now that was great acting! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Auer directed and Steve Fisher wrote this police procedural film in the vein of the popular Detective Story of two years earlier. The film juggles around four characters through a particularly bad night in a Chicago precinct -- Johnny Kelly (Gig Young), a stressed out cop ready to crack; Sally "Angel Face" Connors (Mala Powers), a cheap strumpet lounge singer; Hayes Stewart (William Talman), a former magician and present thug; Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold), a smooth and corrupt district attorney; and Sgt. Joe (Chill Wills), an Everyman character, known as "The Voice of Chicago." The skimpy plot concerns Kelly, who is having an affair with Angel Face and is ready to quit his job and leave his wife Kathy (Paula Raymond) at the drop of a hat. In order to get quick money to escape Chicago and start life anew with Angel Face, Kelly accepts an assignment and a payment from Biddel to escort low-life Stewart across the state line. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

This off-beat western is set in a remote western town that has made it illegal for men to enter. The town is owned by a powerful female gambler whose reign is toppled by a handsome and persistent cowboy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Narrow Margin is generally considered a "model" B picture; some film buffs go farther than that, labelling this 1952 RKO suspenser as the best low-budget studio production ever made. Nail-hard detective Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) is assigned to protect gangster's widow Mrs. Neall (Marie Windsor) as she rides the train from Chicago to LA, en route to testifying at a grand jury. There's no love lost between the ill-tempered Neall and Brown, especially since Brown's partner (Don Beddoe) was killed by mobsters while shielding Neall from harm. On the train, Brown makes the acquaintance of a likeable woman (Jacqueline White) and her playful young son. He also comes in contact with a rather secretive fat man (Paul Maxey), who may well be a mob assassin. Not long before the train pulls into California, Brown is approached by small-time crook (Peter Brocco), who offers the detective a great deal of money if he'll permit Neall to be silenced. Brown appears to be tempted, but this is only a smokescreen to throw the crooks off the trail. The Narrow Margin was remade (and unnecessarily padded and attenuated) in 1990. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ninety per cent of Little Big Horn takes place before Custer's Last Stand; thus, the emphasis is on character and suspense rather than spectacle (just as well, since spectacle was well out of the range of parsimonious Lippert Studios). Lloyd Bridges heads a small band of cavalrymen who desperately try to reach the Little Big Horn in time to warn Custer of a Sioux ambush. One by one, the men are picked off by Indian sharpshooters. The only survivors are Bridges and John Ireland, longtime enemies who may very well knock each other off before ever getting to Custer. Little Big Horn was the first directorial assignment for western-writer Charles Marquis Warren. It was hardly the last: Warren would later be one of the most prolific contributors to the Gunsmoke TV series of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jon Hall is right in his element in the Columbia low-budgeter Hurricane Island. Hall plays Captain Carlos Montalvo, second-in-command to Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon (Edgar Barrier). Engaged in a search for the Fountain of Youth, Montalvo gets mixed up with lady buccaneer Jane Bolton (Marie Windsor) and Indian princess Okahia (Jo Gilbert). The villains, who lurk at every plot turn, are thwarted in a climactic hurricane, chiefly comprised of stock footage from earlier films (a specialty of producer Sam Katzman). Hurricane Island is in and out in 71 breezy minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though the title role of Frenchie goes to Shelley Winters, top billing in this period actioner is bestowed upon Joel McCrea as sheriff Tom Banning. Hoping to find her father's murderers, New Orleans gambling-house proprietress Frenchie Fontaine (Shelley Winters) sets up shop in the Wild West. With the help of sheriff Banning, Frenchie is able to locate one of the two killers. But after tracking down the second culprit, Banning finds himself facing a murder charge. Though it isn't readily obvious, Frenchie is actually a reworking of 1939's Destry Rides Again, with Joel McCrea and Shelley Winters playing variations of the characters originally essayed by James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Petroleum engineer Buzz (Richard Denning) agrees to bring in a gusher for oil driller Reno (Carleton Young). When Reno is murdered, the oil well is inherited by Terry (Marie Windsor). Buzz decides to stick around when Reno's ruthless sister Lilli (Fay Baker) schemes to wrest the well away from Terry. He also hopes to find out the identity of Reno's murderer--and it's a real surprise, except maybe for dyed-in-the-wool "B" picture buffs. Produced independently by Bel-Air Productions, Double Deal was purchased outright by RKO Radio, which then handled distribution. The film was directed by Abby Berlin, on loan from Columbia Pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Western star William Elliot always insisted that his idol was silent-film cowboy William S. Hart. Elliot's Hellfire, then, can be seen as his tribute to the 1916 Bill Hart classic Hell's Hinges. Elliot plays a hard-bitten frontier gambler whose life is saved by a preacher. When the preacher dies as a result, Elliot vows to mend his ways. He becomes a minister himself, planning to finish constructing a church that his predecessor had started. To finance this project, he hopes to collect the reward on female outlaw Marie Windsor. She resists all attempts to bring her to justice, but after a climactic shoot-out with the rest of the criminal element in town, the wounded Windsor repents her sins and agrees to turn herself in. Hellfire was written by Dorrell and Stuart E. McGowan, who later collaborated on the long-running TV anthology Death Valley Days. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Set shortly after the Battle of New Orleans, the film casts John Wayne as John Breen, a Kentucky trooper making the long journey homeward with his confreres. Breen becomes involved with a plan by robber baron Blake Randolph (John Howard) to deprive hundreds of French army refugees of land granted to them by an Act of Congress. Championing the cause of the refugees, Breen does his best to defeat Randolph and his minions--and to prevent the villain's marriage to Fleurette De Marchand (Vera Ralston), the daughter of a former French general (Hugo Haas). Oliver Hardy makes a rare appearance sans Stan Laurel as Wayne's pugnacious, philosophical sidekick Willie Payne. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Garfield, in the best performance of his career, portrays Joe Morse, an ambitious attorney who has long since abandoned his scruples in favor of monetary reward. Morse now represents the interests of crime boss Ben Tucker (Roy Roberts), who plans to take over the numbers racket in New York. Morse has devised a way of doing this legally and above-board, with no violence: Tucker's people will bring about the collapse of the illegal numbers racket in the city, using a race track-betting scam that will bankrupt the small-time underworld numbers banks; an investigation will ensue, along with a call for a legal numbers operation in the form of a lottery, which Tucker will control through Morse's machinations. The whole plan hinges on Morse's estranged brother, Leo (Thomas Gomez), a small-time numbers banker who is to be shielded from the collapse, and who will serve as the "legitimate" front for Tucker. Leo is the flaw in the plan, however, because not only can't he stand the sight of Joe, but he is also too honest to participate in the plan -- he doesn't want his employees, all decent people just looking to earn a living, forced into the employ of real gangsters. Joe orchestrates a series of police raids that force Leo into his corner, and Joe's plan seems to be working out, but then the whole enterprise is threatened when a rival mob, run by Tucker's former Prohibition-era partner, Fico (Paul Fix), starts pressuring Leo, trying to get to Joe and Tucker. Fico and his men aren't any different from Tucker's mob, except that they're prepared to start shooting sooner to get what they want. Tucker decides to hang tough and expects everyone, including Leo, to do the same, even when Fico starts sending thugs around to frighten everyone. Soon Joe is beset by problems on three fronts -- he wants his brother out of Tucker's combination and safe; he is trying to romance Leo's bookkeeper (Beatrice Pearson), who is too nice a girl for who he is; and his own well-being is threatened by both Fico and Tucker, and a state investigator who has already tapped the phone of Joe's otherwise respectable partner. All of these threads are pulled together in the final section of the film, which is as violent and disturbing, yet poetic and graceful a resolution as any crime film of the 1940s ever delivered. Force of Evil was star-crossed almost from the start, as many of the people involved, including star John Garfield and director Abraham Polonsky (a writer making his debut behind the camera, with help from assistant director Don Weis in doing the camera set-ups and blocking), were suspect at the time for their leftist political views. Indeed, the company that made Force of Evil, Enterprise Productions, was also in trouble for the leftist leanings of its films in the midst of the Red Scare, and went out of business just as the movie was finished -- dropped by United Artists and picked up by MGM, of all studios, Force of Evil made it into theaters during Christmas week of 1948, not the ideal schedule for something as grim (albeit great) as this film was. As it turned out, it was Polonsky's last chance to direct for more than 20 years, and Garfield's last completely successful film. And a movie that should have been a triumph for all concerned ended up a cult favorite. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide