William Arnold Movies

Brooklyn tugboat worker Eddie (Eddie Cantor), bullied and cowed by his tough-guy stepfather and stepbrothers (a la Harold Lloyd's The Kid Brother), inherits $77 million from his uncle, an Egyptologist. Con artist Dot (Ethel Merman) wants to get her lunchhooks on the money, and to this end offers herself as Eddie's adopted mother (never mind that she's nearly 20 years younger), intending to have her thuggish brother Louie (Warren Hymer) bump off our hero at the first opportunity. The nonsensical plotline ends up with Eddie, Dot, Louie, pompous Southern colonel Larrabee (Berton Churchill), and nominal romantic leads Jerry (George Murphy in his film debut) and Jane (Ann Sothern) trapped in the palace of Arab potentate Mulhulla (Paul Harvey). The better-than-average comic banter includes some funny bits between Cantor and Eve Sully, of the comedy team of "Block and Sully" (her husband-partner Jesse Block is also in the picture, but just barely). Spotted among the featured players in Kid Millions are such "Our Gang" members as Stymie Beard, Scotty Beckett and Tommy Bond, and there's a specialty by the Nicholas Brothers during Cantor's obligatory "blackface" number; and yes, that's Lucille Ball as a blonde Goldwyn Girl in the harem sequence. PS: According to Ethel Merman, the film's elaborate Technicolor ice-cream factory finale, in which Eddie allows dozens of tenement kids to gorge themselves on his tasty confections, posed censorship problems: while producer Sam Goldwyn was allowed to show the little boys with comically extended stomachs, he was not permitted to do so with the little girls, for fear that the audience might think the female moppets were pregnant! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Notorious as the movie that gangster John Dillinger attended on the night he was killed, Manhattan Melodrama has weathered the years as one of MGM's finest examples of pure storytelling. The pageant-like story begins in 1904, when the excursion steamer "General Slocum" blows up and burns in the East River. Two young boys are orphaned by the disaster. They are adopted by a kindly Jewish businessman (Harry Green) who has lost his own children. Years later, when he is killed during a anarchist rally, the boys are separated once more. They grow up to be straight-arrow attorney Jim Wade (William Powell) and big-time gambler Blackie Gallagher (Clark Gable). Though the two men still like and respect one another, they are now on opposite sides of the legal fence. The professional rivalry becomes personal when Jim marries Blackie's ex-mistress Eleanor (Myrna Loy). The typically stellar MGM supporting cast includes Nat Pendleton as Blackie's faithful stooge, Isabel Jewell as his addled girlfriend, Mickey Rooney as the younger Blackie (a marvelous piece of mimicry here), and blonde singer Shirley Ross, here appearing in blackface in a Harlem nightclub sequence, singing a new Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart tune that would later gain popularity (with different lyrics) as "Blue Moon." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charles Dickens' novel Dombey and Son is set in 1931 America in this interesting drama that centers on an egotistical, over-ambitious owner of a shipbuilding company. So focused is he on succeeding that he forgets his family and their needs. He begins looking for a successor to his wealth and immediately ignores his capable daughter (after all, a woman couldn't possibly manage a business now could she?) in favor of her younger, more frail son whom he is determined to turn into a "real man." When the father's wife dies, he does not allow his poor son to grieve. This causes the sickly youth to become physically weakened; he dies. This does not deter the ice-hearted father who again ignores his daughter and soon marries another woman so she can bear him an heir. Meanwhile the lonely daughter marries the son of her father's rival. The father's new bride is made miserable by his obsession and leaves him. Finally all his grief comes crashing down and in his subsequent rage, the man single-handedly destroys his newest ship, the one that would have brought him even more money for he has finally learned the bitter lesson that love is more important than material gain. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide