Anthony Coldeway Movies

Warner Bros.' resident singing cowboy, the amiable Dick Foran, warbles "The Prairie Is My Home" and "When the Cowboy Takes a Wife" (by M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl) in between battling a corrupt judge in this pleasant B-Western produced by the studio's busy Bryan Foy unit. Foran is Steve Ainslee, a Texas Ranger who goes undercover as a cowboy in order to solve the killing of rancher Major Burton (Gordon Hart). Watching a gang of rustlers re-brand Burton's horses, Ainslee discovers that their leader, Hank (Henry Otho), is working for Judge Blake (Robert Middlemass), a corrupt jurist whose courtroom is the local saloon. Attempting to arrest the judge, Ainslee is accused of being a rustler himself and Burton's daughter, Alice (Anne Nagel) believes that he killed her father. But Ainslee and his bucolic sidekick, Jeff Carter (Eddie Acuff), obtain proof of the judge's guilt and are able to make an arrest following a climactic and quite exciting shootout. Although nothing out of the ordinary, Guns of the Pecos is never dull and contains several pleasant performances, including those of Acuff, the brother of country singer Roy Acuff, and Fay Holden, as the heroine's lovesick aunt. The latter was billed under her stage-name, "Gaby Fay," in this film. The director of this Western, Noel Smith, had begun his career helming Jimmy Aubrey comedies in the late 1910s. Not one of filmdom's most exciting personalities, Dick Foran, a baritone, looked good enough on a horse and was actually more convincing than some of his colleagues in clinches with the heroine. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Draegermen are the brave people who rescue victims of mining disasters. This film tells the story of a Nova Scotia mining disaster that left three men, a doctor, the mine owner, and a foreman, stranded during a cave-in. The head draegerman is in love with the doctor's daughter. He leads the crew on the dangerous mission to save the men. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This Dick Foran "singing western" makes extensive use of stock footage from First National's Ken Maynard series of the silent era. Foran is cast as Northern officer Rod Colton, who goes undercover during the Civil War to flush out a gang of Confederate spies. It develops that the mercenary villains are planning to play one side against the other by fomenting an Indian uprising. Colton finds an unlikely but very attractive ally in the form of dance-hall hostess Lucy Blake (Paula Stone). Evidently Frank McGlynn Sr. was busy during shooting of Trailin' West, else why would the role of Abraham Lincoln be played by brawny Robert H. Barrat? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Richard Cromwell stars in Columbia's Men of the Hour as dedicated newsreel cameraman Dave Durkin. When Dave and his shutterbug pal Andy Blane (Wallace Ford) have a falling out over gorgeous Ann Jordan (Billie Seward), Andy retaliates by arranging a frame that will get Dave fired. Disgraced and blacklisted, Dave gets back into the good graces of the newsreel company when he films the assassination of a foreign potentate. The story is for all intents and purposes over at this point, but Columbia decided to "hypo" the last reel by throwing a chase between Dave and the assassins. Appropriately, most of the action highlights in Men of the Hour were culled from stock newsreel footage. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Invincible Studios' Cross Streets is something of a watershed film, providing leading roles for fading silent stars Claire Windsor and Kenneth Thomson and relative newcomers Johnny Mack Brown and Anita Louise. The story is the old saw about the brilliant surgeon who disappears from view after a fatal misdiagnosis. Twelve years later, the surgeon, now a shabby hobo, returns home, where he redeems himself by performing a life-saving operation. But there's no happy ending for our hero, who through a convoluted plot twist is shot by the jealous husband of the Doc's prospective mother-in-law! Cross Streets might easily have been titled Crossed Wires, what with its tangled web of complex plotlines. ~ 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

Onoto (Myrna Loy) is slated to be sold to a wealthy Mandarin, but is rescued from the auction block by white fugitive from justice Gregory Kent (John Miljan). Onoto falls in love with Kent, and he with her, but this is 1928, and marriage between races is still taboo. Gallantly, Onoto forsakes Kent so that he may marry his white sweetheart Nadine Howells (Leila Hyams), then sadly disappears into the night. Asian actress Anna May Wong, who by rights should have played the leading role, is consigned to a glorified bit part. ~ Hal Erickson, 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

Directed by a young Michael Curtiz, this Warner Bros. epic had aspirations of becoming another Intolerance (1916). In the end, Curtiz' treatise of man's inhumanity to man was ironically sabotaged by the enormous success of yet another studio release, the groundbreaking The Jazz Singer (1927). Basically a quaint romantic melodrama set during World War I, Noah's Ark opens with American George O'Brien falling in love with German Dolores Costelllo while travelling on the Orient Express on the eve of war. The train wrecks and the two seek shelter at a nearby hostelry. Russian military officer Noah Beery tries to molest Miss Costello but is repulsed by O'Brien. The three meet again near the end of the war in a little French village, where Beery accuses Costello, now Mrs. O'Brien, of being a German spy. Placed before a firing squad, Dolores is saved in the nick of time by her husband, a member of the squad.The Germans use this very moment to bomb and all are soon entombed in the basement of a demolished building. Comparing the war with the Biblical account of the Flood, screenwriters Anthony Coldeway and Darryl F. Zanuck flash back to Miriam (Costello) and Japheth (O'Brien) at the festival of Jaghut. The climactic Flood (the filming of which brought Miss Costello a severe case of pneumonia) pulls out all the stops and is magnificent in UCLA's lovingly restored print. After the deluge, the story shifts back to war-torn France, where Costello and O'Brien are rescued by the Red Cross on the eve of the Armistice. Ready to be released, Warner Bros. withdrew the film in order to add several scenes of dialogue, considered a necessity after the unprecedented reception of The Jazz Singer. The results were doleful: Ever so often, Noah's Ark comes to a screetching halt as the characters leave the realm of silent movies to speak stolid lines of dialogue. The cumbersome Vitaphone sound-on-disc made for pedestrian drama as everyone were forced to speak slowly and enunciate carefully. Dolores Costello, Warners' blonde leading lady and the off-screen Mrs. John Barrymore, suffered the most and would see her flourishing career all but evaporate. But UCLA's restoration of Noah's Ark proves once and for all that the rumors of Miss Costello having trouble with sibilants were highly exaggerated. It was Costello's line-reading of "Merthy, merthy, have you no thisther of your own?" in Tenderloin (1928) that supposedly sealed her fate in talkies. But even though the restored Noah's Ark shows little sign of the dreaded lisp, the hapless Miss Costello is visibly ill at ease before the microphone and her stilted dialogue, by Coldeway, is of no help whatsoever. "Part-talkies" like Noah's Ark were mercifully only a stop-gap measure; by the time of M-G-M's Broadway Melody (released June 6, 1929), "all-talking, all-dancing" features had already freed themselves from the constraints of early sound technology. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

It's hard to believe that Darryl F. Zanuck, producer of such anti-prejudice films of the 1940s as Gentleman's Agreement and Pinky, wrote the incredibly racist screenplay of Old San Francisco. After a lengthy prologue detailing the establishment and settlement of San Francisco by the Spanish aristocracy, the story proper begins in 1906 at the hacienda of Don Hernandez Vasquez (Josef Swickard) and his lovely daughter Dolores (Dolores Costello). Having fallen upon hard times, Don Hernandez nonetheless refuses the entreaties of wealthy businessman Michael Brandon (Anders Randolf) to purchase his property. Originally hired by Brandon to persuade the Vasquez family to move out, young lawyer Terrence O'Shaughnessy (Charles E. Mack) changes his mind when he falls in love with Dolores. Meanwhile, Chris Buckwell (Warner Oland), in charge of all illegal activities in Chinatown, offers himself as the "champion" of the Vasquez clan, all the while plotting to grab their land for himself and claim Dolores as his bride. Able to indulge in his skullduggery without fear of retribution from his Chinese victims because of his Caucasian status, Buckwell makes the mistake of revealing to Dolores that he actually has Oriental blood. When Dolores threatens to expose Buckwell as a "half-breed," he kidnaps the girl and attempts to sell her into white slavery. Surrounded by lustful Chinese merchants, Dolores prays for salvation -- whereupon the San Francisco Earthquake destroys everything around her, including Buckwell's criminal empire! Miraculously, both Dolores and Terrence escape from the earthquake unscathed, and in the final scene they are shown arm in arm, overlooking the rebuilt and "redeemed" San Francisco. Though beautifully photographed and consummately produced, Old San Francisco is no classic, nor will it ever be mistaken as a monument for racial tolerance. ~ 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

Irene Rich heads the cast of this lachrymose "mother love" drama. Rich is cast as Sylvia "Dearie" Darling, a nightclub entertainer who willingly sacrifices her own health, wealth and happiness for the sake of her son Stephen (William Collier Jr.) Alas, the ungrateful boy grows up despising his mother, doing everything he can to humiliate her once he comes of age. Only when tragedy looms over the horizon does Stephen comes to his senses. The film is told in flashback, as the repentant Stephen unfolds his life story to publisher Samuel Manley (Anders Randolph). Dearie is the sort of high-gloss soap opera that would become the province of such actresses as Ruth Chatterton, Ann Harding and Kay Francis in the 1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide