John Bromfield Movies

In this crime drama, an amiable car salesmen must begin selling stolen vehicles to pay for his sickly baby son's medical expenses. He tries to escape the gangsters who have been strong-arming him. Meanwhile, a policeman is investigating the crooks. When he gets too close, they kill him and frame the car salesman for the death. The salesman and the head mobster have a thrilling, final conflict aboard a speeding roller coaster at an amusement park. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this jungle adventure, two explorers travel deep within the mysterious, dangerous Amazon in search of medicinal herbs, used for head-shrinking by the natives, that could used in the treatment of cancer patients. During their arduous trek, the two slowly fall in love. Meanwhile a plantation owner tries to figure out why his workers are leaving in droves and going back to the jungles. He learns that they are being terrorized by a gigantic, hungry bird. Fortunately, things are not as they seem as the explorers soon find out. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Down-and-out artist Joe Manning (John Bromfield) wakes up from a night of drunken revelry in a jail cell, where he's being held on suspicion for the murder of a nightclub singer. It so happens that the dead woman was clutching a "class of 1945" high school pin in her hand, and it was on the basis of this circumstantial evidence that Joe was incarcerated. Provided with a phony alibi by friendly carhop Slacks (Julie London), Joe sets about to find the real killer--all the while hoping that it isn't himself. Since there are quite a few 1945 alumni in the neighborhood, Joe really has his work cut out for him. Featured in the supporting cast of Crime Against Joe is corpulent Henry Calvin, the future "Sergeant Garcia" on TV's Zorro, as Joe's cabdriver buddy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

W. Lee Wilder, the prolific but markedly less talented brother of Billy Wilder, both produced and directed The Big Bluff. Handsome but unscrupulous John Bromfield comes into the life of beautiful and wealthy Martha Vickers. Knowing that she has only a year to live, Bromfield marries her, then settles back to wait for his inheritence. But then she begins showing signs of recovery, forcing the caddish Bromfield to radically alter his plans. The Big Bluff was scripted by Fred Freiberger, who later served as producer of Star Trek. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gary Merrill heads the cast of the unorthodox western The Black Dakotas. The story is set during the Civil War, as President Lincoln tries to mollify the Sioux Indians in order to free up soldiers for more important fighting. Disguised as a Northerner, Brock Marsh (Gary Merrill) intercepts Lincoln's emissary and heads into Sioux territory himself, hoping to steal Union gold for the Southern cause, and to stir up an Indian war between the Sioux and the Dakotas, who have already cast their lot with the North. It soon develops that Marsh doesn't care who wins the war; he wants to abscond with the gold himself. Wanda Hendrix, who despite her divorce from Audie Murphy was still regularly employed in westerns, costars as the daughter of Southern spy Fay Roope, and the sweetheart of good-guy stagecoach driver John Bromfield. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Cole Porter title tune is but one of the musical highlights in the (literally) splashy Esther Williams musical Easy to Love. Reshuffling plot devices utilized in previous Williams vehicles, the film casts Williams as Julie Hallerton, the star of Ray Lloyd's (Van Johnson) aquacade. She loves Lloyd, but he hardly knows she exists. Only when she inaugurates romances with swimming instructor Hank (John Bromfield) and singer Barry (Tony Martin) does Lloyd wake up and smell the chlorine. The plot's finale is top-heavy with "good sport" behavior involving the three male leads. However, if you've come to an Esther Williams movie for the plot, maybe you'd better try another theatre. Easy to Love is the film that includes Busby Berkeley's legendary "motorboat/hang-glider" production number, performed at Florida's Cypress Gardens--though, incredibly, this aquatic tour de force is not the end of the picture! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In an obvious attempt to recreate some of the power and impact of Henry King's Twelve O'Clock High, Lesley Selander's Flat Top tells its story in flashback as Dan Collier (Sterling Hayden), a senior officer, recalls from the bridge of the carrier Princeton during the Korean War, the first squadron he commanded on the ship during World War II. Arriving as green recruits, the men resent Collier's grounding the most dedicated man in the squadron (Keith Larsen) for ignoring a wave-off; even more so, they fail at first to understand his sometimes harsh efforts at preparing them for battle against the Japanese -- we also get to meet the various men of the squadron, who are mostly identified by what they did in civilian life -- William Schallert plays a poet-turned-pilot named "Longfellow"; John Bromfield plays an ex-football player nicknamed "Snakehips". Most of the conflict centers on Collier and his efforts to make a good executive officer out of Joe Rodgers (Richard Carlson), who was already in the navy when he transferred to aviation but is too concerned with being popular with the men to be a good commanding officer. Meanwhile, the pilots face various conflicts, psychological and personal, as they move toward the thick of battle. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Lizabeth Scott and Diana Lynn are both effectively cast against type in Paid in Full. Scott plays Jane Langley, the spectacularly self-sacrificial older sister of selfish, reckless Nancy Langley (Lynn). Though she is in love with Bill Prentice (Robert Cummings), Jane gives him up to Nancy. And when Jane accidently causes the death of Nancy's child, she vows to makes amends by the most direct means possible. What follows is within the Production Code guidelines of the era -- but just barely. An unabashed "woman's picture" (that's what they called them back in 1949), Paid in Full doesn't always play well today, since viewers might be tempted to yell "Get real, Lizabeth!" at the screen. Still, it worked beautifully for its original target audience, especially those who'd read the factual Reader's Digest article upon which it was based. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Producer Hal Wallis evidently hoped to recapture the magic of his earlier Casablanca with 1949's Rope of Sand. To that end, he hired three of Casablanca's supporting players: Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, and Peter Lorre. This time, Henreid is the villain, a sadistic police inspector named Paul Vogel. Stationed somewhere in Africa, Vogel hopes to find a legendary lost diamond field. His principal rival in this endeavor is jewel thief Mike Davis (Burt Lancaster), who continues bouncing back from every death trap lain for him by the ill-tempered Vogel. The scenes in which Davis is subjected to various physical tortures is pretty raw for a 1940s film. Claude Rains co-stars as a diamond syndicate head misleadingly named Toady, while Peter Lorre does his shifty-mercenary act. Billed ninth as the nominal heroine is Hal Wallis' latest discovery, French actress/singer Corinne Calvet. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When Lucille Fletcher took on the challenge of expanding her classic 30-minute radio suspenser Sorry, Wrong Number into an 89-minute feature film, she opted on the Citizen Kane approach, filling the plotline to the brim with revelatory flashbacks. Barbara Stanwyck stars as bedridden hypochondriac Leona Stevenson, who while trying to make a call from her bedroom telephone gets her wires crossed and inadvertently overhears two men plotting a murder. Anxiously, Leona wades through telephone-company bureaucracy to trace the call, never catching on -- until it's too late -- that the murder being planned is hers. A series of flashbacks details the disintegrating marriage between the wealthy Leona and her weakling husband Henry (Burt Lancaster), and Henry's subsequent disastrous get-rich-quick schemes involving chemist Waldo Evans (Harold Vermilyea) and a surly gangster (William Conrad). It would have been a near-sacrilege to alter the radio play's ironic ending, which fortunately remains intact on film. Sorry Wrong Number was first heard on radio's Suspense series in 1943, with Agnes Moorehead as the harried Mrs. Stevenson (a role she'd repeat several times on radio and on stage). Though disappointed that she wasn't chosen to star in the film version, Moorehead took some satisfaction in the fact that a recording of the original radio program was played constantly on the set to help keep Barbara Stanwyck "in the mood". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide