Anthony Coldeway Movies

This farcical melodrama starring Jack Holt was a pleasant program feature. Holt is Robert Pitt, a wealthy young idler who has just returned home to the States from London. While at a restaurant, he notices pretty Molly Creedon (Sigrid Holmquist). He sees that she has a photograph inscribed "with love" and as a joke, he makes a bet with his pals that he will obtain an autographed picture from the girl within 24 hours. But getting the photo is harder than it seemed at first, and he finally asks a burglar to help him out by stealing it. What Pitt doesn't realize is that Molly's father is "Big Phil" Creedon, the police commissioner, and there is a plot to steal some jewels from a British family. Pitt becomes a suspect in the attempted robbery, which he winds up preventing. After saving the jewels, he gets both the photograph and Molly. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Ronald Reagan is his usual sprightly self as ambitious insurance claims adjuster Eric Gregg. While diligently investigating a phony insurance racket, Gregg remains blissfully unaware that his own wife Nona (Sheila Bromley) has become deeply indebted to the crooks. Once this fact surfaces, Gregg loses both Nona and his job. Picking up the pieces is friendly cigar-stand clerk Patricia Carmody (Gloria Blondell), who ends up helping Gregg round up the villains. At the time Accidents Will Happen was released in 1938, the newspapers were jam-packed with stories about big-money insurance frauds; though the film lacks this timeliness when seen today, it remains an enjoyable trifle thanks to the always-dependable Reagan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This satirical film was based on the play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly. Neil McRae (Edward Everett Horton) is a composer who, instead of finishing his symphony, is forced to write jazz music to live. He also has a pupil, Gladys Cady (Gertrude Short), who comes from an eccentric nouveau riche family. His friend, Dr. Rice (Frederick Sullivan), suggests that he wed Gladys so he can complete his symphony. Neil is reluctant to do so, but his sweetheart, Cynthia Mason (Esther Ralston), agrees with the doctor, so he proposes to Gladys. She accepts, but McRae is distraught by his action. Rice gives him some medicine so he can sleep, and he has a fantastic nightmare in which he goes ahead and marries Gladys. Everything in the dream is warped and exaggerated, from the jazzy minister to Gladys' freakish family. McRae goes through the dream in his pajamas and is finally driven so mad by it all that he kills Gladys and her family. He is put on trial for his crime and convicted of being too highbrow. As a result he is sentenced to write jazz forever. McRae wakes up in a panic, but luckily Gladys breaks off the engagement. He happily reunites with Cynthia. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

In this show biz melodrama, Jacqueline Logan played a nightclub entertainer spurning her wealthy stage door Johnny in favor of a young man (Rex Lease) who she believes to be poor but honest. In reality, the boy is a society scion only masquerading as an average Joe in order to test the girl's love. When she discovers the truth, Logan throws herself at one of her former suitors (Phillips Smalley), a ruthless man about town who almost rapes the girl before she comes to her senses. Memorable for playing a glamorous Mary Magdalene in Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927), Jacqueline Logan suffered a severe career setback after the changeover to sound and later worked as a dress extra. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Long before Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock joined forces in Speed (1994), there was the strikingly similar Warner Bros. B-picture Busses Roar. A gang of Axis spies decide to use a California passenger bus to secretly transport a demolition bomb to a coastal oil field. The bomb is set to go off upon arrival, wiping out the passengers along with the oil deposits. Among those passengers is Army sergeant Ryan, who senses that something's amiss and then races against time to save himself and the others from being blown to smithereens. Another of the hapless commuters is played by Eleanor Parker, making an excellent impression in her first feature film appearance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When kindly saloon keeper Tim O'Day (Ben Hendricks) is killed by a thug, his wife (Louise Dresser) takes over the business. Because she feels that a saloon is not the best place to raise her little girl Molly (Vondell Darr), she hands the child over to be raised by Mrs. Kendall, a society matron (Kathlyn Williams). When prohibition comes in, Mother O'Day's saloon becomes a fancy cabaret. In the meantime, Molly (now played by Virginia Lee Corbin) has grown up to be a frivolous, self-centered flapper who gets involved with the criminally minded Mark Roth (Ricardo Cortez). Even though Molly scorns her mother, whom she does not remember, Mother O'Day is determined to put Roth behind bars. Roth becomes involved in a shooting at the cabaret. Molly is there, and it brings back the distant memory of her father's murder. She now remembers her mother, and is reunited with Cliff Kelley, her childhood sweetheart (Pierre Gendron). ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Code of the Prairie was among the first of cowboy star Sunset Carson's vehicles for Republic Pictures. There is nothing extraordinary about the plot, in which Carson, wrongly accused of a crime, vanquishes the villains with a spectacular (and undoubled) display of fisticuffs. What is unusual is the billing. Comedy relief Smiley Burnette is actually billed above nominal leading man Sunset Carson, proof positive of Burnette's enormous popularity with western fans. Burnette's top-dog status in the Carson series would continue until 1945, when he left Republic to join Charles Starrett at Columbia Pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

As usual, this Jimmy Aubrey comedy makes little sense, but it contains a lot of gags. Jimmy is a dentist's assistant who turns the office upside down while the dentist is away. After using a variety of ways to extract teeth, including a mallet and a hammer and chisel, he has to chase after a floating patient who has taken too much laughing gas. Eventually, a basic plot emerges -- the bad guy (Oliver Hardy) lusts after the dentist's wife, whom the assistant also fancies. They're both trying to court her when the dentist -- an extremely jealous guy, and apparently with some reason -- gets home. They hide, none too successfully, and when the dentist finds them, chaos ensues. The bad guy abducts the wife and drives off, while the dentist and the assistant give chase on a motorcycle. Eventually the wife is rescued and returns home with her husband. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Republic's winning combination of western star Wild Bill Elliot, comic sidekick Gabby Hayes and leading lady Anne Jeffreys is shown to good advantage in Death Valley Manhunt. Elliot plays a lawman who is hired by a group independent oilmen to protect them from crooked business interests. One of the bad guys is Richard Quinn (Weldon Heyburn), who tries to stir up a range war against the oilmen and the local landowners. When Elliot figures out what Quinn is up to, pity the poor bad man who gets in Our Hero's way. In the film's best scene, Wild Bill finds himself atop an oil well just as a gusher is about to burst forth from the earth. ~ 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

Legendary racecar driver Barney Oldfield plays himself in the engaging little period piece The First Auto. Russell Simpson plays livery-stable owner Hank Armstrong, who is appalled beyond words when his son Bob (Charles E. Mack) comes home with one of those newfangled "horseless carriages." Throwing Bob out of the house, Hank stubbornly sticks to his stable business, only to be driven into bankruptcy by the ever-growing popularity of the automobile. When Bob returns to his hometown to participate in an auto race, his father, having temporarily gone off the beam, agrees to sabotage the boy's car to make certain that he loses. Only when he attends the race does Hank realize that he's booby-trapped his own son's vehicle. On cue, the car blows up, but Bob emerges unscathed, setting the stage for an emotional reunion between father and son. Long believed lost, The First Auto has been restored to nearly its original length and has frequently been telecast over the Turner Classic Movies cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Canine star Rin Tin Tin makes his all-talking (or is it all-barking?) debut in Warner Bros.' Frozen River. In characteristic fashion, Rinty braves the elements to rescue heroine Nina Quartero from the villains, a gang of cutthroats and thieves. The doggie hero also comes to the aid of little Davey Lee, a saucer-eyed child star best remembered for his appearance opposite Al Jolson in The Singing Fool (1928). Reportedly, Rinty didn't immediately warm up to Lee and tried to take a nip out of the kid during one scene, but the four-legged star was quickly mollified by his trainer Lee Duncan. Its behind-the-scenes intrigue notwithstanding, Frozen River proved that Rin Tin Tin was capable of weathering the talkie revolution. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Having missed the opportunity to re-create his Broadway role in The Jazz Singer on film, Georgie Jessel attempted to launch a movie career in lesser vehicles. In Ginsberg the Great, Jessel plays an aspiring sideshow magician whose act is tinctured with ethnic humor. Given a crack at the Big Time, our hero ingratiates himself with a producer (Sam Hubert) by saving the latter's jewels from being stolen. But once a "carney," always a "carney" Featured in the cast is perennial Laurel & Hardy foil Stanley J. "Tiny" Sandford as a circus strongman, and Akka the Chimp as -- Akka the Chimp. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide