Harlan Briggs Movies

Based upon Arthur Kober’s play (which was subsequently musicalized onstage as Wish You Were Here, Having Wonderful Time stars Ginger Rogers as Teddy Shaw, a typist who goes to a summer camp for a little rest and relaxation. She’s also getting away from Emil (Jack Carson), whose interest in Teddy is no longer returned. Arriving at Camp Kare-Free, she’s offered a ride by Chick (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), who works at the camp as a waiter. Unfortunately, they get off to a bumpy start when Chick spills her suitcase and an argument ensues. Once at camp, she makes friends with Fay (Peggy Conklin), Miriam (Lucille Ball) and Henrietta(Eve Arden). Chick apologizes to Teddy, and over the next six days their relationship blossoms, concurrently with that of Miriam and another guest, Buzzy. However, when Chick makes an improper advance during her last night at the camp, Teddy gets angry and leaves him. She dances with Buzzy to make Chick jealous and makes sure she is seen entering Buzzy’s cabin. She takes steps to see that nothing happens and leaves unscathed the next morning, but not before causing trouble between Buzzy and Miriam. Emil has arrived and plans to bring her home after breakfast. While they are eating, Emil proposes to Teddy. Both Chick and Miriam overhear this proposal, after which Miriam loudly comments that Teddy stayed overnight with Buzzy. In the ensuing confusion, Chick decks both Buzzy and Emil, and offers his own proposal to Teddy – which she happily accepts. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

Weldon Heyburn, Poverty Row's answer to Clark Gable, stars in the lively little cheapie Dynamite Delaney. Filmed with the cooperation of the State Highway Patrol of Pennsylvania, the story concerns a brash and none-too-likeable motor cop (Heyburn) who manages to get himself thrown off the force. Our hero redeems himself by tracking down a gang of ruthless kidnappers. The forgotten Eve Farrell shows up as Heyburn's waitress girlfriend, while former leading man and RKO casting director Donald Dillaway plays a secondary role. At 77 minutes, Dynamite Delaney was about two reels longer than the average action quickie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This harmless Universal musical comedy is worth having as one of the few filmed records of legendary Broadway comedian Jimmy Savo (his previous starrer, Once in a Blue Moon, is among the rarest of collector's item). The story proper is carried by Robert Wilcox and Nan Grey, cast as a pair of mismatched lovers who share a common interest in horse racing. Hero and heroine get mixed up in a shady get-rich-quick scheme, which threatens to turns disastrous but which ends up solving everyone's problems. Harry Davenport adds a touch of gentle pathos as a blind horseplayer. Jimmy Savo's pantomime turns and musical numbers were not up to his usual standard (at least that's what the critics said), but they play rather well when seen today, even though Savo's patented streak of healthy vulgarity had to be soft-pedalled for the screen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ace the Wonder Dog, RKO's Rin Tin Tin-wannabe, plays Picardy Max, a mongrel dog adopted by Dan Preston (James Ellison) when both are thrown in jail for vagrancy. Dan's legal problems are quickly done away with but his pretty boarder, Shirley Haddon (Helen Wood), is increasingly troubled by Dan's obsessive competitiveness with fellow dog owner Robert Mabrey (Robert Kent). In fact, the young man's grudge against the entire Mabrey family threatens to ruin his burgeoning relationship with Shirley but everything works out fine when Picardy helps locate a kidnapped Marian Mabrey (June Clayworth). Almost a Gentleman was the second of three programmers starring Ace the Wonder Dog and produced by RKO 1938-1940. Ace also worked for Republic Pictures and was featured in the 1943 serial The Phantom. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Rivalry surfaces between radio producers as they fight for control of programs and sponsors in this lively comedy that features Jack Benny's radio announcer, Don Wilson. One of the producers has trouble because he tends to tell the sponsors exactly what he thinks, no holds barred. Fortunately Wilson, his good friend, intervenes and saves the day. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on Aurania Rouveyrol's Broadway play Skidding, A Family Affair is a gentle comedy/drama centering around the Hardy family of Carvel (a small, idealized American town). Judge Hardy (Lionel Barrymore) hopes to be re-elected, but his campaign is put in jeopardy by his opposition of a wasteful public works program. The Judge's position is also threatened by his daughter's (Julie Haydon) unexplained separation from her husband. In the supporting cast, incidental to the plotline, was Mickey Rooney as Judge Hardy's teenage son Andy, Spring Byington as the Judge's wife, and Cecilia Parker as his younger daughter Marian. MGM head Louis B. Mayer sensed series potential in A Family Affair, and the result was the long-running and profitable "Hardy Family" series. Julie Haydon's character was written out of all subsequent "Hardy" films, Lewis Stone and Fay Holden replaced Lionel Barrymore and Spring Byington as Judge and Mrs. Hardy, and Mickey Rooney was elevated from the supporting cast to full leading man status as the effervescent Andy Hardy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this entertaining comedy, an American expatriate lives in Paris and fancies himself a clever con artist. Getting cocky, he invites his wife and daughter to join him. The daughter is about to marry and he promises her an exquisite French chalet. Now he must quickly find one before she arrives lest he end up with egg upon his face. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

New York-based actress Claudia Morgan, best known for her interpretation of Nora Charles in the radio-series version of The Thin Man, was afforded her only film-starring role in Universal's That's My Story. Having been fired from every paper in town, hotshot reporter Fields (William Lundigan) tries to wangle a job from city editor Carter (Ralph Morgan). Fields insists that he will be able to secure a jail-cell interview with notorious gun moll Bonnie Rand, and to that end he has himself arrested and thrown into the cell adjacent to Bonnie's. What he doesn't know is that the girl he's interviewing isn't Bonnie at all, but rival reporter Janet Marlowe (Claudia Morgan), who has likewise arranged her own arrest to wangle an exclusive out of the gun moll. To throw Fields off the track, Janet pretends to be Bonnie -- and the rest of the story hardly has to be elaborated upon, does it? Incidentally, Ralph Morgan and Claudia Morgan were real-life father and daughter, meaning that Claudia was also the niece of Frank "Wizard of Oz" Morgan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A lesser but no less amusing Joe E. Brown vehicle, Riding on Air was adapted from a series of Saturday Evening Post stories by Richard Macaulay. Brown and Vinton Hayworth play Elmer Lane and Harvey Schumann, two rival small-town newspaper reporters who spend half their time fighting over stories (including a juicy murder yarn) and the other half battling over heroine Betty Harrison (Florence Rice). Elmer finally gains the upper hand when he stumbles upon a gang of airborne smugglers; commandeering the crooks' plane, our hero goes on a wild and crazy ride before the aircraft is brought under control by a revolutionary new radio beam. He then settles the hash of local swindler Doc Waddington, played by Brown's old Warner Bros. crony Guy Kibbee. Produced independently by David Loew, Riding on Air was released by RKO Radio. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Financier J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) -- known in the press as "the Bull of Broad Street" -- may be one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the country, but he also knows the value of a dollar. And when his wife (Mary Nash) spends 50,000 of them on a sable coat, he is driven into such a fury in the ensuing argument on the roof of their Fifth Avenue townhouse, that he throws the coat into the street -- where it promptly lands on the head of Mary Smith (Jean Arthur), a clerk-typist on her way to work, riding on the upper deck of a double-decker bus, ruining her hat in the process. She jumps off the bus to try to return the coat, but Ball insists that she keep it. What she really needs, however, is not a 50,000-dollar sable coat so much as a ride to work -- as she doesn't even have a dime for bus fare -- and perhaps a new hat. Ball obliges, taking her to one of the top clothing stores in New York, buying her an expensive fur hat to go with the coat, and then dropping her at work in his limo. Her superiors, seeing her decked out in a sable coat and a new hat, and getting out of the chauffeured car, conclude that Mary is a kept woman, and, therefore, unfit to work for the boys magazine where she is employed, and they fire her. Now out of work and virtually broke, she seems to have become a victim of random fate, but suddenly the scales start to tip the other way from the very same misunderstanding that got her fired. Having been seen in the company of J.B. Ball -- whose name she didn't even get -- she is rumored to be his mistress; the prissy clothing store proprietor (Franklin Pangborn) spreads this story, and that turns Mary into the object of attention for Mr. Louis Louis (Luis Alberni), the owner of a failed luxury hotel on which Ball's bank holds the mortgage, and is about to foreclose. For reasons that she can't begin to understand, since there is nothing going on between her and J.B. Ball (whose name she doesn't even know), or between her and anyone, Louis moves her into the most luxurious suite in his hotel for a dollar a day, asking her only to inform "that certain someone" of how she loves living there. Mary has no idea of who "that certain someone" is, or what Louis is talking about, but she needs a place to live, and Louis is insistent. She still needs to eat, and, while trying to get a meal at the automat, she crosses paths with a handsome, well-meaning, but inept waiter (Ray Milland), who gets fired for helping her. She takes him into her suite so he has a place to stay, and the two fall in love in the course of finding out about each other. She knows that he is John Ball Jr., but doesn't realize that he is the son of J.B. Ball, trying to make it on his own, nor does she yet realize who J.B. Ball is, in terms of being the man who gave her the coat and the new hat, or one of the wealthiest men in the country. But after the elder Ball spends an innocent night at the Hotel Louis, a gossip columnist named "Wallace Whistling" (William Demarest) prints that he is keeping a woman at the hotel, and suddenly the Hotel Louis, perceived as a fashionable playground for the upper-crust, is filled with guests. This multiple case of mistaken identity plunges through two or three new layers, eventually bringing about an impending stock market crash to rival 1929, before Mary discovers who her would-be benefactor and her would-be fiancé are. She bails them out of the jam that they're in, also restoring the Ball's marriage, her own reputation, and her romance with Ball's son in the process. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The third of MGM's profitable Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy songfests, Maytime opens in the early 20th century, with a young girl arguing with her boyfriend over her wishes to become an opera singer. The girl's neighbor, a lonely old woman whom we gradually recognize as a convincingly "aged" Jeanette MacDonald, tells the girl of her own career in opera. The old lady was once the radiant young diva Marcia Mornay. In 1868 she was the toast of Europe, thanks to the tutelage of her voice instructor Nikolai Nazarov (John Barrymore). He proposes marriage, and Marcia accepts, more out of gratitude than love. In a euphoric pre-nuptial state, Marcia finds herself on Paris' Left Bank, where she meets handsome café crooner Paul Allison (Nelson Eddy). They meet again at a lavish Maytime festival, falling in love (to the accompaniment of Sigmund Romberg's most dazzling duets) in the process. Sadly, Marcia returns to Nazarov, while Paul goes off to America to lick his wounds. Seven years later, Marcia, making her New York debut in a fictional opera based on the works of Tchaikovsky, finds that the leading baritone is none other than Paul. Unable to envision life without her new love, Marcia begs Nazarov for a divorce. He smiles slyly and promises to give her her freedom-whereupon he heads to Paul's apartment and kills the poor fellow. The flashback done, Marcia advises her pretty young neighbor that one can never have both love and a career. Out of tragedy grows the happy ending, in which the spirit of the now-deceased Marcia is reunited with Paul in a blossom-filled Hereafter. On paper, Maytime may seem to be the ultimate in Hoke, but even in recent revival showings the film never fails to cast its spell over an audience. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marlene Dietrich stars as the noble Domini Enfilden in this third film version of Robert Hichens' 1904 novel. After caring for her dying father, Domini is told by her Mother Superior (Lucille Watson) that she should go to the Algerian desert to rest and seek sanctuary. On her way to the town of Beni-Mora, Domini meets the ill-tempered and mysterious Boris Androvsky (Charles Boyer), a Trappist monk who has forsaken his vows and also seeks the Algerian desert for salvation. Domini is attracted to this moody monk, but continues on. Her desert guide, Batouch (Joseph Schildkraut), takes Domini to a cabaret, where a riot breaks out during a production number. Boris re-appears to rescue her from the trashed club. Domini and Boris fall in love, marry, and travel to the desert for their honeymoon. There the newlyweds encounter a unit of the French Foreign Legion, whose commander, De Trevignac (Alan Marshal), holds a secret to Boris's past. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide