Reginald Denny Movies
The last in a long line of British actors, Reginald Denny left school at 16 to enter the family trade. His first important assignment was the role of Prince Danilo in a travelling company of The Merry Widow. He first came to the U.S. in a 1912 production of Quaker Girl, then returned to England to star in musical productions. After World War I service as a Lieutenant in the 112th squadron of the British Flying Corps, Denny appeared in several Broadway productions and made his film bow at the New Jersey-based world film studios. Hired on the basis of his finely tuned physiques, Denny starred in Universal's boxing short-subject series The Leather Pushers before being promoted to features. During the 1920s, Denny was one of Universal's most popular stars, headlining a series of frothy domestic comedies, most of which co-starred Laura LaPlante and were directed by William A. Seiter. In talkies, Denny's British accent made it difficult for him to continue in the "all-American" roles he'd been playing at Universal, but he continued to flourish as a character actor, showing up in everything from Romeo and Juliet (1936) to Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1937). He also played the "silly ass" second lead of Algy in several Bulldog Drummond "B" pictures. Since his World War I experience, Denny remained active in aviation; he was a pioneer in the field of radio-controlled aircraft. In fact, the U.S. Navy prototype radio aircraft TDD was named in his honor (the initials stood for Target Drone Denny). A busy actor on films and television into the 1960s, Reginald Denny returned to Broadway in 1958 to replace Robert Coote as Col. Pickering in My Fair Lady. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Previously filmed in 1929, Philip MacDonald's novel Patrol was lensed by director John Ford as The Lost Patrol in 1934. Sergeant Victor McLaglen is in charge of a World War I-era British cavalry regiment, stranded somewhere in the Mesopotamian desert. McLaglen hasn't asked for the responsibility: the commanding officer has been killed by an Arab sniper, leaving McLaglen to take over. One by one, McLaglen's men are picked off as they desperately fend off the enemy, waiting for reinforcements to arrive. The most spectacular death scene goes to Boris Karloff, playing a religious zealot who goes insane and begins marching towards the Arabs while bearing a makeshift cross. Max Steiner's relentless musical theme for The Lost Patrol would later be adapted into his score for Warner Bros' Casablanca. Lost Patrol would itself be adapted as the 1939 western Bad Lands. Originally running 74 minutes, Lost Patrol is now generally available only in its 69-minute reissue form. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Victor McLaglen, Boris Karloff, (more)
- 1934
A love triangle amidst the world of musical entertainment provides the basis for this drama. The trouble begins when a gigolo begins wooing a mother and daughter simultaneously. This creates family disharmony as the mother begins resenting her daughter who resents the gigolo himself. The mother is murdered and the gigolo is the prime suspect. The daughter hires a detective to investigate. He discovers that it was the mother's husband that did the deed, but before he can tell anyone, the daughter and the gigolo have gotten back together. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Judith Allen, Reginald Denny, (more)
- 1933
In this comedy, a young couple are forced to marry after they are accidentally locked in a store overnight. Unfortunately for the young groom, his overbearing mother is unhappy with the match and keeps trying to get them divorced. She even follows them on their honeymoon. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George "Slim" Summerville, ZaSu Pitts, (more)
- 1933
In this drama, Diana (Myrna Loy) is a beautiful tourist from the United States who is visiting Cairo, accompanied by her Uncle Cecil (C. Aubrey Smith) and Aunt Powers (Louise Closser Hale). Diana is to meet her fiance Gerald (Reginald Denny) in Cairo, but she soon makes the aquaintance of Jamil (Ramon Novarro), a handsome local who works for the hotel as a tourist guide. Jamil returns Diana's lost dog, earning her gratitude, though she's unaware that Jamil took the dog himself so that he could return it to her. After several days of showing Diana Cairo's most magificnet sights (and scheming to keep Gerald at a distance), Jamil reveals his secret to Diana -- that he's actually an Arab prince who wants Diana's hand in marriage. However, Diana isn't especially taken with this idea at first, and and before long the darker side of Jamil's infatuation makes itself known. The Barbarian was based in part on one of Ramon Novarro's silent hits, The Arab, and the film inspired more than a few raised eyebrows in 1933 thanks to a scene where Myrna Loy swims in the nude at an oasis, though Loy later wrote that she was wearing a flesh-colored body stocking in deference to her modesty (and the censors). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ramon Novarro, Myrna Loy, (more)
- 1933
In this drama, a bright young mill worker is left in charge of his late employer's estate. This causes many hard feelings from the surviving family. He forces the boss's son and daughter to work in the factory. They do not want to. For revenge they begin divulging trade secrets to a competitor. They only stop after the daughter falls in love. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Reginald Denny, Lila Lee, (more)
- 1933
Star Reginald Denny also directed and wrote the 1933 programmer The Big Bluff. Denny is hired by a group of con artists to impersonate a British nobleman. The plan is to fleece social-climbing Claudia Dell, who'd married the nobleman to gain wealth and prestige. The twist: Denny really is the person he's pretending to be. While Denny, a major star of the silent era, was generally consigned to supporting roles in talkies, he could always count on a leading assignment at one of the smaller Hollywood studios: The Big Bluff was produced by Tower Productions, a poverty-row concern specializing in films headlining fading stars. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1933
Distantly related to Frederick Lewis Allen's non-fiction book of the same name, Only Yesterday uses fictional characters to trace the years between 1917 and 1929. Wealthy New Yorker John Boles recalls a long-ago affair with southern belle Margaret Sullavan. She gave birth to his child without ever naming the father, then moved to New York herself and set up a dress shop. As the stock-market crash of 1929 wipes out his life savings, Boles becomes remorseful over how he's forgotten Sullavan, who is now dying. He acknowledges that he is the father of her child, and promises to make a good life for the boy despite his dire financial situation. Only Yesterday opens with a remarkable montage sequence showing the devastating effects of the Depression; after that, it never quite gains momentum despite the superb performance of Margaret Sullavan (in her film debut). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Margaret Sullavan, John Boles, (more)
- 1932
In this crime drama, two corrupt financiers conspire to fake the murder of their boss and leave a hapless chauffeur to shoulder the blame. Their scheme works and the driver is given the death penalty. Fortunately, on the day of his execution, the "dead" man shows up and saves him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1931
Previously filmed in 1926 with Norma Talmadge, the creaky David Belasco stage piece Kiki served as a curious talkie vehicle for "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford. The star plays the title character, a jazz-age Parisian chorus girl (complete with a molasses-thick French accent). When theatrical impresario Victor Randall (Reginald Denny) falls in love with Kiki, he sets the girl up in a fancy apartment, which does not rest well with Randall's ex-wife. Likewise unhappy with the situation is Kiki, whose restless spirit cannot be confined by her posh surroundings nor her possessive lover. In the film's most famous scene, the heroine, in white-tie-and-tails male drag, performs a Busby Berkeley-choreographed musical number with a group of male dancers, culminating in an unceremonious tumble into the orchestra pit. Though Mary Pickford delivered her best talkie performance to date, the actress's longtime fans didn't respond to her straying so far from her established screen image, and as a result Kiki was the first of Pickford's United Artists productions to flop at the box office. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mary Pickford, Reginald Denny, (more)
- 1931
Two wives catch their husbands with other women and decide to take a vacation of their own in this drama. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1931
Amanda (Norma Shearer) and Elyot (Robert Montgomery) -- a witty, sophisticated married couple -- divorce and marry other mates. Amanda chooses stuffy Victor (Reginald Denny), while Elyot's selection is the tiresome Sibyl (Una Merkel). Coincidentally, both newlywed couples honeymoon at the same Swiss hotel -- in adjoining suites, in fact. Amanda and Elyot realize anew that the flame of their love has never been extinguished, but when both slip off for a lover's tryst, they fall into their old pattern of ceaseless bickering. When Victor and Sibyl catch up with their erring mates, they themselves begin arguing. Once the point has been made that Amanda and Elyot deserve each other and that Victor and Sibyl are likewise perfectly matched, this elegant comedy of manners draws to a quiet close. A fairly faithful adaptation of the classic Noël Coward stage play (virtually all of the witticisms, notably "Some women should be struck regularly -- like gongs" are left intact, though we truly miss "You're looking lovely in this damned moonlight"), Private Lives is played with such polish and expertise that we're willing to overlook the fact that only one of the four principals (Reginald Denny) is genuinely British. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, (more)
Based on the stage comedy by Charles W. Bell and Mark Swan (previously filmed in 1920), Parlor, Bedroom and Bath is a curious mixture of all that was good and everything that was bad in Buster Keaton's talkie features. Keaton plays Reginald Irving, a dimwitted bill-poster who finds himself the pawn in a scheme cooked up by wealthy Jeffrey Haywood (Reginald Denny). It seems that Jeffrey will not be permitted to marry Virginia Embrey (Sally Eilers) until a suitable husband is found for Virginia's older sister Angelica (Dorothy Christy). Since Angelica has rejected all the available suitors, Jeffrey schemes to offer Reginald as an eligible mate. First, however, he has to transform our dopey hero into a gentleman -- and a great lover. Somehow or other, poor Reginald innocently ends up in a compromising situation involving vampish Polly Hathaway (Charlotte Greenwood) and the very married Nita Leslie (Joan Peers) at a posh no-tell hotel. Keaton is permitted a few choice pantomimic moments in Parlor Bedroom and Bath, notably his scenes with the aggressive Charlotte Greenwood and a spectacular sight gag "borrowed" from his 1920 silent classic One Week. On the whole, however, Keaton is lost in a sea of unfunny dialogue and tired farcical situations -- a not untypical pitfall of his MGM talkies. Long unavailable due to legal complications, Parlor, Bedroom and Bath can be purchased from any of the public-domain video companies proliferating in the U.S. (Incidentally, that baronial "upstate New York" mansion in the film's early scenes was actually Buster Keaton's Beverly Hills home) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Buster Keaton, Charlotte Greenwood, (more)
- 1930
Reginald Denny, one of Universal's top stars of the 1920s, tried to transfer his light-comedy formula to talkies with Embarrassing Moments. Hoping to fend off the advances of suitor Jasper Hickson (William Austin), heroine Marion Fuller (Merna Kennedy) claims she already has a husband. When the time comes to prove the existence of her imaginary mate, Marion persuades total stranger Thaddeus Cruikshank (Denny) to pose as hubby. It is understood, of course, that our hero is to keep his distance, and not to do anything as foolish as falling in love with Marion. And, of course, Thaddeus is true to his word -- not! Reginald Denny's silent-screen image as a go-getting young American was undercut by his pronounced British accent, and before long he was consigned to secondary roles, albeit good ones. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Reginald Denny, Merna Kennedy, (more)
- 1930
The second of Cecil B. DeMille's talkies (as well as his second for MGM), Madam Satan is an exercise in incoherence, but this doesn't detract one iota from its entertainment value. Kay Johnson plays the sedate wife of philandering Reginald Denny, who is currently carrying on with "jazz baby" Lillian Roth. In a desperate effort to win back her husband, Johnson disguises herself as the alluring, provocatively clothed "Madame Satan." In this guise, she attends a lavish charity costume party being thrown by socialite Roland Young on a dirigible moored high above New York Harbor. Failing to recognize his mousey little wife, Denny arranges for a rendezvous with Madame Satan. When she reveals her true identity, Denny is outraged and threatens divorce. Suddenly, the dirigible is struck by lightning; it breaks loose from its moorings, tossing its terrified passengers around and about. Denny behaves heroically in shepherding the passengers into their parachutes; meanwhile, Johnson gives up her own parachute to save Roth. Coming to the mutual realization that each is worthy of the other's love, Johnson and Denny are reunited. Though when taken out of context, the dirigible sequence appears to be the ultimate in campy melodrama, this scene and all the scenes that built up to it are played for laughs: DeMille didn't take this farrago any more seriously in 1930 than we do today. Highlights include several unexpected and charmingly innapropriate musical numbers, including a bizarre "Ballet Mechanique" featuring dancer Theodore Kosloff. Though DeMille carefully threw in every ingredient that he hoped would appeal to a mass audience, Madam Satan was one of his few box office flops. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1930
This sprightly romantic comedy chronicles the delightfully unlikely and tempestuous relationship between an opera diva and a sneak thief. They meet after he breaks into her home and attempts to chloroform her. She awakens and arrogantly warns him that the drug could destroy her beautiful voice. The thief then recognizes her as his very favorite singer. The two become friends. She attempts to have him take voice training so that she can reform him from a crook to an opera star, but he hates it and so prepares to resume his previous vocation. This causes her to ask him to marry him, but he refuses until she agrees to give up her career. Unfortunately, their married life is anything but blissful and eventually, he leaves her. Fortunately, they are reunited in the story's romantic conclusion. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1930
In this romance, the family chauffeur tells no one that he is really a decorated war hero. He does this to stay away from bootleggers and to keep the besotted daughter of his employer away from him. In the end, the hapless driver can no longer resist the charms of the enamored girl and romance ensues. When she learns that they are really from the same social class, marriage ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Reginald Denny, Miriam Seegar, (more)
- 1930
In this comedy, a young man slated to inherit a big fortune is conned into dressing up as Napoleon by his aunt and uncle who tell him he is to attend a costume ball. Instead, they take him to an asylum and have him committed. Fortunately, he, a nurse, and several inmates manage to escape and return to his home where he manages to get rid of his troublesome relatives. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1930
Metropolitan Opera diva Grace Moore made her film debut in MGM's A Lady's Morals. The film purports to be the biography of "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind, who was ballyhooed to stardom by 19th-century showman P.T. Barnum (Wallace Beery, who'd re-create the role in 1934's The Mighty Barnum). Most of the story, however, is given over to the fabricated romance between Lind (Moore) and young composer Paul Brandt (Reginald Denny), who gives her up when stricken with blindness. As if this wasn't trouble enough, Lind loses her voice at the height of her career; she regains her golden throat, but Paul is lost to her forever. Grace Moore sings seven songs during the film's amazingly brief (75-minute) running time, two of them operatic classics. The anemic box-office showing of A Lady's Morals and her follow-up vehicles briefly squelched Grace Moore's hopes for film stardom, but a few years later she enjoyed enormous success in a series of Columbia musicals. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Grace Moore, Reginald Denny, (more)
- 1930
Those Three French Girls are Charmaine (Fifi D'Orsay), Dian (Yola D'Avril) and Madelon (Sandra Ravel), each a real oo-la-la in her own right. All three get mixed up in the affairs of stuffy Englishman Larry (Reginald Denny) and the even stuffier Earl of Ippleton (George Grossmith). Meanwhile, American doughboys Owly (Cliff Edwards) and Yank (Edward S. Brophy) set their own sights on the lovely trio. The result is an uneven combination of drawing-room comedy and slapstick farce, including such standbys as the roadster caught in the rain and the idyllic (but innocent) overnight stay in the barnyard. And, of course, Those Three French Girls strip down to their skivvies when things threaten to get dull. Hard to believe that P.G. Wodehouse wrote the original story, and that one of the screenwriters was Arthur Freed, who later produced such prestigious MGM musicals as An American in Paris and Singin'in the Rain. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cliff Edwards
- 1929
This 1929 drama about mistaken identities contains three eight minute scenes that involve talking. The rest of the film is silent and subtitled. The trouble begins when the hero follows a pretty lady aboard an ocean liner. He boards the ship using the name of his friend who was supposed to take the cruise for health reasons. The friend was told that if he did not board the boat, he would not receive his inheritance. Unfortunately for the hero, a male nurse believes that he is the sick friend and forces him to stay in the cabin and subsist upon a diet of goat's milk. He is finally able to escape the nurse and search for the girl. Unfortunately, a band of jewel thieves sees him and mistakes him for a detective. The robbers are after the girl's necklace. The nurse finds the hero and forces him back to the cabin explaining to the crew that the man is crazy. Later the hapless hero unknowingly thwarts the thieves, gets away from the nurse, and finally gets the girl. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Reginald Denny, Olive Hasbrouck, (more)
- 1929
The fact that "all-American" leading man Reginald Denny spoke with a pronounced British accent somewhat worked against his portrayal of a New York parole officer in Red Hot Speed. Alice Day plays the daughter of newspaper publisher DeWitt Jennings, the latter currently engaged in an "anti-speeding" campaign. Sure enough, Day is arrested by a traffic cop for going approximately 75 in a 25-mile an hour zone. She is put in the care of Denny, who sets about to "reform" the heroine while keeping her identity a secret to save her father from embarrassment. Four screenwriters were responsible for this entertaining trifle, which began life as a silent picture but emerged on screen as a part-talkie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Reginald Denny, Alice Day, (more)
- 1929
Reginald Denny starred in this comedy, a part-talkie about a zealous real-estate dealer in love with his client's daughter. Charles Blaydon (Denny) is eager to sell a fashionable suburban house to Weaver (Harvey Clarke), a wealthy art collector, mainly because he has fallen in love with Weaver's brunette daughter Kay (Lorayne DuVal). But there is a catch: In order to unload the mansion, Charles must also sell the neighboring property. Mistaking a gang of thieves for potential buyers, Charles invites them to dinner at the Weavers, where the gang proceeds to steal the valuable Weaver objets d'art. Old man Weaver, however, is delighted with his new "friends" and refuses to believe that they are thieves -- that is, until the gang leader (Eddie Phillips) kidnaps Kay, with Charles in hot pursuit. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Reginald Denny, Otis Harlan, (more)
