Jane Wyatt Movies

Like several other Harry Sherman Productions of the 1942-43 season, The Kansan was originally slated for a Paramount release, then redirected to United Artists. Richard Dix and Jane Wyatt, stars of the previous Sherman effort Buckskin Frontier, are reunited herein as western lawman John Bonniwell and rancher's daughter Eleanor Sager. After chasing the James Gang out of town, Bonniwell is appointed marshal by local bigwig Steve Barat (Albert Dekker). It turns out, however, that Barat is a crook with delusions of grandeur, hoping to use Bonniwell as a glorified henchman in his rise to power. Meanwhile, an unorthodox romantic triangle develops between Bonniwell, Eleanor as Barat's brother Jeff (Victor Jory). A powerhouse cast makes this modestly-budgeted western seem more expensive than it really was. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ray Middleton portrays the title character in Republic's Hurricane Smith. Mistakenly arrested on a holdup charge, Smith escapes, catches up with the real crooks, and forces them to hand over the dough. Had he returned it then and there the picture would have been over almost before it began; instead, Smith uses the money to build a Utopian city in the desert for himself and his lovely bride Joan (Jane Wyatt). Eventually, one of the criminals, Eggs Bonelli (J. Edward Bromberg), catches up with Smith and demands an exorbitant sum to keep his mouth shut. But Bonelli is silenced permanently by faithful Joan, who's not quite as demure as she seems. The 1952 Republic feature Hurricane Smith is not a remake of this offbeat romantic melodrrama. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Kisses for Breakfast is a dumbed-down remake of the 1930 marital comedy The Matrimonial Bed, itself based on a British stage play by Seymour Hicks-which in turn was adapted from a French farce by Yves Mirande and Andre Mouzey-Eon. With that pedigree, it's amazing that this frenetic 1941 slapsticker isn't better than it is, but it just isn't, that's all. Knocked out during a fight, Rodney Trask (Dennis Morgan) awakens with amnesia, totally unaware that he's just married Juliet Marsden (Shirley Ross). His only clue to his identity is an address found in his coat pocket, which leads him to the South Carolina home of Juliet's cousin Laura Anders (Janet Wyatt). A year passes, during which Rodney straightens out Laura's financial problems and wins her love. After their marriage, Rodney and Laura decide to visit her northern relatives-including, naturally, wife number one, Juliet, who has come to believe that Rodney is dead and is about to take a new husband. What follows is a endless series of silly slapstick gags, with poor Juliet receiving a great deal of unwarranted punishment at the hands of the capricious Laura. The mess eventually straightens itself out, by which time both heroines have thorougly alienated the audience. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Boasting a script cowritten by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell from a story by Budd Schulberg, Weekend for Three should have been a comedy classic-but alas, it isn't. Over the protests of her husband Jim (Dennis O'Keefe), Ellen Craig (Jane Wyatt) invites her old friend Randy (Dennis O'Keefe) to dinner. Jim endures Randy's phony effusiveness and loud, braying laughter only because he's certain that the jerk will go home soon. Instead, Randy invites himself to the Craig household for the weekend-and shows no signs of ever wanting to leave! More of an anecdote than a story, Weekend for Three is just too thin to be stretched over 61 minutes: it might have worked better as an Edgar Kennedy or Leon Errol 2-reeler. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It took British author James Hilton six weeks to write his visionary novel Lost Horizon. It took director Frank Capra two years-and half of his home studio Columbia's annual budget-to bring it to the screen. After a lengthy preamble, inviting audiences to imagine their own ideas of Utopia, the film opens on a chaotic scene at a Chinese airfield. As hordes of bandits approach, hundreds of refugees scramble to board the last plane out. Only five people make it: Mildly disenchanted Far Eastern diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), his hotheaded younger brother George (John Howard), embezzler Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), dithery fossil expert Lovett (Edward Everett Horton) and consumptive prostitute Gloria Stone (Isabel Jewell). As the plane flies off towards the Himalayas, Robert realizes that he and his fellow passengers are heading in the wrong direction. They are, in fact, being kidnapped-but why? And where to? The plane crash-lands in the snowy Tibetan interior. The pilot is killed, but the passengers are safe. By and by, a strange caravan approaches, led by an enigmatic Chinese named Chang (H. B. Warner). Joining the caravan, Conway and his party are led through a treacherous mountain pass and into a land of temperate weather and dazzling beauty. This is Shangri-La, the idyllic lamasery presided over by the aged, wizened High Lama (Sam Jaffe). In this fertile valley, people are not encumbered by such exigencies as crime, dictators and hatred; instead, everyone is devoted to the pursuit of wisdom and self-improvement-and best of all, the aging process has been slowed to a walk, allowing people to live well past the two-century mark. Though he still does not know why he was brought here, Conway is quicker to adapt to Shangri-La than his wary fellow passengers. He even falls in love with Sondra (Jane Wyatt), an attractive, intelligent young woman. Finally granted an audience with the High Lama, Conway discovers that the old man is actually Father Perrault, the Belgian missionary who founded Shangri-La-over two hundred years earlier. Dying, the High Lama has selected Conway, whose idealism and even-handedness is world famous, to succeed him-and hopefully spread the "love thy neighbor" edict of Shangri-La to the rest of the war-torn world. Conway is willing to assume leadership, but younger brother George, his mind poisoned by spiteful Shangri-La resident Maria (Margo), insists upon escaping to the outside world. The older Conway warns that, despite her youthful appearance, Maria is well past sixty and will surely perish once she leaves Shangri-La; but Maria retorts that the high lama is insane, and that everything he has told Conway is a lie. Disillusioned, Conway agrees to leave with Jack and Maria. The trek back to civilization is a grueling one, especially for Maria, who-true to Conway's prediction-shrivels from age and dies. Appalled that he has been misled, George kills himself. Weeks later, and amnesiac Conway stumbles into a Tibetan mission, where he is rescued and brought back to England. When his memory is restored, however, Conway runs back to Shangri-La, and into the arms of Sondra. When Lost Horizon was shown to preview audiences, it ran nearly three hours-and it was a disaster. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have rescued his pet project by merely burning the first two reels and opening the film with the evacuation scene; In fact, while Capra did remove the film's "flashback" framework, he made most of his cuts in the body of the picture. The release length of Lost Horizon was 132 minutes, pared down to 119 when it when into general distribution. When it was reissued in the 1940s and 1950s, it was rather clumsily pared down to anywhere from 95 to 100 minutes. Only in the mid-1980s was Lost Horizon restored to its original length, with stills used to illustrate certain scenes for which only the soundtrack existed. While not the enormous hit Capra and Columbia had hoped it would be, Lost Horizon was popular enough to allow the name "Shangri-La" enter the household-word category. In 1973, producer Ross Hunter felt the urge to inflict a wretched musical remake onto an unsuspecting public. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this action film, a rebellious cop doesn't hesitate to bend the rules when it comes to roughing up prisoners and bringing in deadly gangsters. His insistence on working alone and on using excessive violence causes conflict with his superiors. They change their minds when he engages in a great shoot-out with a notorious gun-toting gang leader and brings him to justice. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Twelve years before David Lean's definitive filmization of Dickens' Great Expectations, Hollywood had a go at the novel, with mixed results. The story is the familiar one of young Pip (George Breakstone as a boy, Phillips Holmes as an adult) whose future wealth is assured through the auspices of a mysterious benefactor. It turns out that Pip's "guardian angel" is condemned convict Magwich (Henry Hull), repaying a favor the lad had done for him years earlier. The film is a faithful if rather rushed adaptation of the Dickens original, encompassing within its 100-minute running time such unforgettable characters as the vindictive recluse Miss Havisham, the arrogant Estella, the likeable blacksmith Joe Gargery and Joe's less likeable wife. Henry Hull is overly mannered as Magwich and Florence Reed is distressingly dull as Miss Havisham, but Jane Wyatt and Alan Hale are perfectly cast as Estella and Gargery, respectively. Francis L. Sullivan, playing lawyer Jaggers, repeated the role in the 1946 David Lean film. And if you pay close attention, you'll spot Walter Brennan as one of Magwich's fellow convicts. The 1934 Great Expectations is neat and precise, but nowhere near as inspired as the celebrated remake. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide