Gig Young Movies

This unusual, dreamlike John Wayne vehicle is set in the East Indies. The focus of the film is the deadly rivalry between two men of the sea. Ship's captain Rails (John Wayne) nurses a long-standing grudge against shipping magnate Van Schreeven (Luther Adler). The reason for the animosity: Van Schreeven stole away Rails' love, Angelique (Gail Russell). Revenge has warped Rails to point that sometimes he seems to be the heavy of the picture. Complications involving valuable pearls ensue before the offbeat climax, which finds Rails scuttling his own vessel, the Red Witch, as means of getting even. The film's resolution is one of the strangest ever concocted for a Wayne picture. Wake of the Red Witch represented the second screen teaming of John Wayne and Gail Russell; the film must also have held some special significance for Wayne, since he named his own production company, Batjac, after the shipping firm depicted in the picture. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Woman in White attempts to translate the archaic prose of 19th century gothic-mystery writer Wilkie Collins to the medium of film. Gig Young plays a 19th century painter who, while en route to a country estate, encounters a strange, ethereal young lady (Eleanor Parker) who both begs his help and insists that he keep their meeting a secret. He will meet the girl again at several crucial junctures -- though she will fail to recognize him. The painter has unknowingly stumbled upon a scheme by the diabolical Count Fosco (Sydney Greenstreet) to claim an inheritance on behalf of a dissipated nobleman (John Emery); the plan involves a marriage of convenience to the hapless lady of the house (Alexis Smith), blackmail, hidden siblings, and the suppression of a dark family secret involving Fosco's neurotic wife (Agnes Moorehead). The full plotline is far too labyrinthine to go into detail here -- in fact, it can barely be followed in the film itself. While The Woman in White suffers from excess verbiage, the film is at its best in its shadowy, nocturnal "conspiracy" set pieces and in the scenes with timorous aristocrat John Abbott, to whom every raised voice is a threat to his fragile health. And keep an eye on Sidney Greenstreet's pet monkey, Iago, easily the most well-adjusted character in the film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The third talkie version of Dumas' The Three Musketeers, this splashy MGM adaptation is also the first version in Technicolor. Gene Kelly romps his way through the role of D'Artagnan, the upstart cadet who joins veteran Musketeers Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young) and Aramis (Robert Coote) in their efforts to save their beloved Queen Anne (Angela Lansbury) from disgrace. They are aided in their efforts by the lovely and loyal Constance (June Allyson), while the villainy is in the capable hands of Milady De Winter (Lana Turner) and Richelieu (Vincent Price). Notice we don't say Cardinal Richelieu: anxious not to offend anyone, MGM removed the religious angle from the Cardinal's character. While early sound versions of Three Musketeers eliminated the deaths of Constance and Milady, this adaptation telescopes the novel's events to allow for these tragedies. True to form, MGM saw to it that Lana Turner, as Milady, was dressed to the nines and heavily bejeweled for her beheading sequence. Portions of the 1948 Three Musketeers, in black and white, showed up in the silent film-within-a-film in 1952's Singin' in the Rain, which of course also starred Gene Kelly. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Big Town was the first of a series of Pine-Thomas productions inspired by the radio series of the same name--which in turn was spun off into a long-running TV series. Philip Reed stars as crusading newspaper editor Steve Wilson, while Hillary Brooke portrays Wilson's ever-loving, ever-efficient "Girl Friday" Lorelei Kilbourne. Vowing to rid his community of the stench of Yellow Journalism, Wilson assumes command of the Illustrated Daily Press, utilizing his tabloid as a bastion of truth and a weapon against big-city corruption. Crusading against a local crime ring, Wilson unfortunately goes "too far", and is nearly destroyed by lawsuits before he can redeem himself. To avoid confusion with the teleivision series, Big Town was retitled Guilty Assignment for its earliest TV showings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a print shop owner suffers a blow to the head and wakes up a mind-reader. Meanwhile the president of a publishing firm finds himself involved with a former chorus girl who has secretly teamed up with a phony mind-reader. An ambitious friend of the president aspires to his job; to get it he enlists the help of the chorus girl and her friend to begin blackmailing him. Fortunately, the real mind-reader intervenes and foils their plans. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Our Hearts Were Growing Up is the sequel to Paramount's surprise 1944 hit Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. The first film was based on the memoirs of actress Cornelia Otis Skinner; the sequel was inspired by the fevered imaginations of the screenwriters. Gail Russell plays Ms. Skinner, while Diana Lynn costars as Cornelia's best friend Emily Kimbrough. This time the girls visit the college boyfriends, only to become involve with a pair of benign bootleggers, portrayed by Brian Donlevy and William Demarest. Their misguided association with the criminal results in consternation for Cornelia's father, the eminent stage actor Otis Skinner (Charlie Ruggles). Ironically, Gail Russell, who played Cornelia Otis Skinner in both of the Our Hearts films, was cast opposite the real Ms. Skinner in the 1943 ghost chiller The Uninvited--and was nearly murdered by the older actress in the course of the plotline! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ayn Rand wrote this adaptation of Chris Massie's book Pity Mr. Simplicity, about a soldier who falls in love with a former comrade's wife -- an amnesiac who may have murdered her husband. The story begins in Italy when two soldiers, Allen Quinton (Joseph Cotten) and Roger Morland (Robert Sully), hatch a scheme concerning Singleton (Jennifer Jones), his girl back home. Allen agrees to write love letters to Singleton for his friend and, based on the heartfelt emotions evident in the letters, she falls in love with Roger. Returning home, Singleton and Roger marry, but Roger proves to be a drunken, abusive husband. One night, as Roger is beating Singleton, he is stabbed to death by her stepmother. Singleton goes in to shock, rendering her unable to recall the murder, while her stepmother has a stroke, making her unable to speak. Accused of murder, Singleton is sentenced to a year in jail. Allen, in the meantime, hears about the murder of his friend and comes to visit Singleton, and the two proceed to fall in love. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

The popular screen team of Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray stars in this wartime farce. MacMurray is an army pilot who develops engine trouble during a vital mission. Thinking he's about to die, MacMurray radios back his undying affection for his dog "Piggy." But the radio reception is fuzzy, and it is assumed that he has said "Peggy"--which happens to be the character name of Colbert, who intercepts the message. MacMurray survives the plane crash, whereupon he is whisked back home into the arms of Peggy, which is not to the liking of Peggy's gormless fiance (Gil Lamb). Practically Yours was guaranteed to make money, which it did. Its humor not meant to survive the ages, which it hasn't. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

On December 6, 1941, a squadron of nine B-17 bombers takes off for Hickam Field, HI. The crew of the Mary Ann, including two new men, assistant radio man Private Chester (Ray Montgomery) and gunner Sergeant Joe Winocki (John Garfield), assembles for the flight, and in the first 20 minutes, the movie reveals certain things about the crew: the shadowy past of one, the mother of another, and the wife of a third; two of them are good friends with the sister of McMartin (Arthur Kennedy), the bombardier, who lives in Honolulu; the son of the senior member of the crew, Sgt. White (Harry Carey Sr.), is a pilot stationed at Clark Field in the Philippines. Then more characters make entrances: the aircraft commander Quincannon (John Ridgely); Weinberg (George Tobias), a Jewish mechanic from New York; and a man from a farm in the upper Midwest -- they all represent a broad cross-section of America as it saw itself, and the "regular guys" in the Army Air Force as it existed in 1941. The flight proceeds without incident. Winocki, an embittered, washed-out flight school candidate who accidentally killed another pilot, is about to leave the service when the weather report from Hickam Field is interrupted, and the radio man begins picking up transmissions in Japanese. The Mary Ann and the rest of the squadron fly right into the middle of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor unarmed and out of gas, and nearly crack up landing on an emergency field; no sooner do they make repairs than the crew comes under attack, and the plane takes off and makes for Hickam Field, which they find a flaming shambles. They fly on to the Philippines, stopping at Wake Island just long enough to meet a few members of the doomed Marine garrison, taking their company mascot, a dog, with them. At Clark Field, the Mary Ann and her crew finally go into action against the enemy, flying in alone against a Japanese invasion force; Quincannon is mortally wounded in the brief action, which leaves the plane damaged seemingly beyond repair. The remaining crew won't give up the plane, however, even when ordered to abandon and destroy her; they get the bomber off just ahead of the advancing Japanese, and survive to help bring retribution to the invading fleet and the Japanese empire. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

James Cagney made his first Technicolor appearance in the morale-boosting aviation flick Captains of the Clouds. Cagney plays Brian MacLean, a hotshot Canadian bush pilot who delights in stealing jobs-and women-away from his competitors. Brian is forced to shape up in a hurry when he's assigned to train other pilots for the Royal Canadian Air Force. At the ending of the training period, he is given his first real RCAF assignment: The seemingly unimportant task of shepherding American bomber planes across the Atlantic to England. With startling suddenness, Brian comes to realize the true importance of his job when he is forced into a deadly confrontation with a fleet of Nazi raider planes. Real-life Canadian WW1 flying ace Billy Bishop plays a small but pivotal role in Captains of the Clouds, while the leading-lady duties were handled by Warner Bros. stock actress Brenda Marshall (aka Mrs. William Holden). Cinematographer Sol Polito earned an Oscar nomination for his vivid color photography, though aerial photographers Elmer Dyer, Charles Marshall and Winston Hoch were certainly just as deserving. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the wake of Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates, every studio in Hollywood began cranking out service comedies. Warner Bros.' contribution to this trend was You're in the Army Now, featuring the unlikely but undeniably chucklesome duo of Jimmy Durante and Phil Silvers. The stars are cast as Jeeper and Breezy, erstwhile vacuum-cleaner salesman who stage a demonstration at a local army camp, only to end up in uniform themselves. Thanks to their ineptitude and chronic inability to follow orders, our heroes spend most of their training period in the guardhouse. They try to atone for past misdeeds during maneuvers, only to end up trapped in a remote cabin which teeters perilously on a mountain ledge (the whole routine was borrowed-actually, stolen-from Chaplin's The Gold Rush). Not teamed in the traditional sense, Durante and Silvers are permitted to perform their solo specialties, with both comedians coming out fairly even in terms of laugh delivery. As a bonus, this is the film in which nominal romantic leads Regis Toomey and Jane Wyman performed the longest screen kiss in movie history (Leonard Maltin clocked it at three minutes, five seconds)-a feat that reportedly led Wyman's then-husband Ronald Reagan to wonder aloud why he couldn't keep his wife's interest that long! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 1940 peacetime draft spawned a whole slew of military and naval comedies, the most successful of which was Abbott and Costello's Buck Privates. In this vein, Warners' Navy Blues features several studio contractees (including Ann Sheridan and Jack Carson), a few borrowed comedians (Jack Oakie, Jack Haley, Martha Raye) and a plethora of forgettable musical numbers. The plot: A ship's crew goes on leave in Honolulu, has a high old time, meets a few pretty girls, and heads back to sea. That's all. Modern viewers will get a kick out of spotting Navy Blues supporting actor Jackie Gleason, who must have relished the opportunity of working with his idol Jack Oakie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide