King Donovan Movies

Curt Siodmak's The Magnetic Monster (1953) is a truly novel science fiction film, in terms of its rather cerebral plot and low-key, quietly intense execution. As much a mystery and, in its first half, a manhunt, as it is a sci-fi-thriller, the movie pushed lots of suspense buttons for viewers in 1953 and still holds up more than a half century later. Richard Carlson (who also co-produced) plays Dr. Jeff Stewart, an agent for the Office of Scientific Investigation. Stewart and his colleague, Dr. Dan Forbes (King Donovan), begin searching for a dangerously radioactive element, which they have good reason to believe is somewhere in the Los Angeles area. They soon learn that this is no ordinary investigation -- among its other attributes, the unknown element generates enough radiation to kill, and also manifests a powerful magnetic field. The trail leads them to Dr. Howard Denker (Leonard Mudie), a rogue scientist who, working on his own, has created a new isotope of an element called serranium, which proves to be not only highly radioactive, but dangerously unstable in ways that science has never seen before. Every 11 hours, the serranium mass enters a growth cycle requiring massive amounts of energy, which it obtains by absorbing the energy from the atomic structure of any matter around it, releasing huge amounts of radiation in the process. The serranium mass doubles in size with each cycle, doubling its energy needs in the process, as well as the potential destructiveness of the next cycle. The danger lies not only in the potential for destruction in the serranium's rapidly increasing energy absorbtion, but its ever-increasing mass, which, at some point, will threaten to unbalance the Earth itself, in its rotation and orbit. Long before that, however, the resulting radiation is going to start killing large numbers of people, and the destructive force accompanying it will threaten to split the Earth's surface apart. Stewart and Forbes soon recognize that the only hope they have of stopping the process is to get ahead of it, by bombarding the serranium with enough energy to force it to divide into two relatively stable elements. The only possible source of sufficient energy is the world's largest cyclotron, which has been built by the Canadian government in Nove Scotia -- but is even it powerful enough to do the job, and can they get the deadly isotope there in time? ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Audie Murphy plays wagon train scout Jim Harvey in Universal-International's Tumbleweed. Through a series of unfortunate circumstances, Harvey is wrongly accused of saving himself while allowing the people under his protection to be slaughtered by Indians. With the help of sheriff Murchoree (Chill Wills) and his Native American friend Tigre (Ernesto Iglesias), Harvey breaks out of jail to prove his innocence. Figuring largely in the proceedings are horse-rancher Nick Buckley (Roy Roberts) and his wife Louella Buckley (K.T. Stevens), who provide Harvey with a "loser" horse that turns out to be a winner when the hero needs it most. The revelation of the film's true villain should be amusing for fans of TV's Gilligan's Island. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

1953's The Mississippi Gambler was the third Universal Studios film to bear this title--though with a different plot each time. Tyrone Power plays an all-around adventurer who cuts quite a swath through antebellum New Orleans. In between scenes of gambling, fist-fighting and swordplay, Power woos Piper Laurie, who chooses to marry wealthy Ron Randell; in turn, Power is wooed by Julie Adams, whose ardor is not reciprocated. The climax finds Power in a card table showdown with Ms. Laurie's ill-tempered brother John Baer. Mississippi Gambler is consistently good to look at, even when the storyline threatens to snap under the pressure. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hollywood, 1927: the silent-film romantic team of Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) is the toast of Tinseltown. While Lockwood and Lamont personify smoldering passions onscreen, in real life the down-to-earth Lockwood can't stand the egotistical, brainless Lina. He prefers the company of aspiring actress Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), whom he met while escaping his screaming fans. Watching these intrigues from the sidelines is Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor), Don's best pal and on-set pianist. Cosmo is promoted to musical director of Monumental Pictures by studio head R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) when the talking-picture revolution commences. That's all right for Cosmo, but how will talkies affect the upcoming Lockwood-Lamont vehicle "The Dueling Cavalier"? Don, an accomplished song-and-dance man, should have no trouble adapting to the microphone. Lina, however, is another matter; put as charitably as possible, she has a voice that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard. The disastrous preview of the team's first talkie has the audience howling with derisive laughter. On the strength of the plot alone, concocted by the matchless writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Singin' in the Rain is a delight. But with the addition of MGM's catalog of Arthur Freed-Nacio Herb Brown songs -- "You Were Meant for Me," "You Are My Lucky Star," "The Broadway Melody," and of course the title song -- the film becomes one of the greatest Hollywood musicals ever made. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Young Sally Moyne (Ann Blyth) seldom makes a move in life without first consulting Saint Anne, patron saint of all young girls. Sally's faith in the efficacy of St. Anne has a salutary affect on all those in her orbit. It can also be said that Sally's tight relationship with her patron saint is of invaluable help in her family's Herculean efforts to save their home and hearth from the machinations of land-grabbing alderman Goldtooth McCarthy (John McIntyre). The sublime supporting cast includes Frances "Aunt Bee" Bavier and Otto Hullett as Sally's parents, Edmund Gwenn as her supposedly invalid grandfather, and Jack Kelly and Lamont Johnson as her looney brothers. One of the last of the "crazy family" comedies inspired by the success of You Can't Take It With You, Sally and St. Anne is also one of the best of its kind. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Universal's newest "heartthrobs" Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie were first teamed in this lavish adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's The Prince Who Was a Thief. Curtis stars as Julna, the rightful heir to a Middle Eastern throne. Kidnapped in infancy, Julna is raised as a thief by the roguish Yussef (Everett Sloane). Eventually, however, Julna's true identity is revealed, prompting him to lead a revolt against the evil, usurping Mustapha (Donald Randolph). Piper Laurie steals the show as Tina, a carnival contortionist who falls in love with Julna and helps him regain his throne (most of Laurie's trickier stunts were performed in long shot by a much heftier double). Fine escapist entertainment, The Prince Who Was a Thief secured major stardom for both its leading players. And no, this is not the film in which Tony Curtis utters the apocryphal line "Yonduh lies duh castle of my faddah." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Highly respected defense attorney Dwight Bradley Mason (Walter Pidgeon) is able to clear young Rudi Wallchek (Keefe Brasselle) of a murder rap. When it's all over, however, Rudi lets slip a careless comment which leads Mason to believe that his client was guilty after all. Using the evidence at hand, the attorney retraces his steps, only to discover that one of the town's leading citizens is a criminal mastermind. The solution to this ethical dilemma is straight out of the "postman always rings twice" school of crime fiction. Even after justice has been served, however, Mason's conscience dictates that everyone responsible for all previous legal miscarriages be punished -- including himself! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

James Cagney plays a once great newspaper reporter ruined by liquor. Thanks to the help of reformed alcoholic James Gleason, Cagney pulls himself out of the gutter and restores his journalistic reputation. Because of his own redemption, Cagney is asked by his editor to straighten out the editor's nephew (Gig Young), a drunken wastrel. The task is made dicey by the fact that the nephew's wife (Phyllis Thaxter) is Cagney's former girlfriend. The nephew's involvement in gangsters results in the death of Cagney's old friend Gleason, but Cagney swallows his rage, vanquishes the crooks, and puts the nephew on the right track. Come Fill the Cup was a little too melodramatic to succeed as an anti-alcohol tract, but it was well acted throughout, especially by Gig Young, who received an Oscar nomination for his efforts. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Humphrey Bogart plays Martin Ferguson, a prosecutor about to put Albert Mendoza (Everett Sloane), the head of a murder-for-hire ring, on trial. But the night before the trial, his key witness, Joe Rico (Ted de Corsia), dies in a fall out of the window of the room in which he's been guarded, part of an abortive escape attempt to keep from testifying. His case in shambles, Ferguson and detective Captain Nelson (Roy Roberts) try to piece the entire four-year investigation back together from square one, trying to find something that might give them another way to prosecute Mendoza. The main body of the movie is told in flashback, starting when a small-time hood named Duke Malloy (Michael Tolan, then billed as Lawrence Tolan) walks into a police station to turn himself in for killing his girlfriend -- and says that someone made him kill her. He babbles to the bewildered detectives about "hits" and "contracts" and men nicknamed Philadelphia, Big Babe, and Smiley. The body isn't found, but they arrest Malloy, who hangs himself in his cell. That dead end leads, almost by accident, to Philadelphia Tom Zaca (Jack Lambert), an asylum inmate who has to be put under sedation at the mention of Malloy's name. They find another suspect's body burning in his building's incinerator, and then Big Babe Lazick (Zero Mostel), a two-bit hood, hiding in a church in mortal fear of his life. He begins weaving a tale of a murder-by-contract ring and its head operator, Joe Rico, of a murder contract that Duke Malloy never filled on a girl who had to change her name, of mistaken identity and the murder of the girl's cab-driver father, and the connection between that and a murder that they both witnessed eight years earlier. In the midst of all of those interlocking stories (spread across ten years), there's something Ferguson missed -- when he had Rico to testify -- that he has to sort out from the reams of testimony and evidence, and he has to figure it out before Mendoza does, or lose the last witness he has. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Mercedes McCambridge plays a singing waitress named Cash-and-Carry Connie in The Scarf. This alone should be enough to keep the viewer's interest, but in fact the film has much to please the eye and ear. John Ireland stars as John Barrington, an escapee from a institution for the criminally insane. Actually, Barrington is not a looney tune, but instead the victim of an insidious plot orchestrated by a clever murderer. The only person who believes Barrington's story is turkey-farmer Ezra Thompson (James Barton), who hides Our Hero from the authorities. Things really get hopping when the aforementioned Connie unwittingly provides the clue that will prove Barrington's innocence. Co-starring in The Scarf is Emlyn Williams as an all-too-cooperative psychiatrist. The film was directed by E. A. Dupont, whose American career never quite scaled the heights of his years in the German film industry. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Right Cross stars Dick Powell as cynical sportswriter Rick Gavery and Powell's wife June Allyson as boxing manager Pat O'Malley. Subbing for her incapacitated father (Lionel Barrymore), Pat grooms prizefighter Johnny Monterez (Ricardo Montalban) for the championship. Johnny holds a grudge against the world because he feels that his Mexican heritage has made him an outcast, though curiously the audience never sees any prejudice levelled against him. Gradually, Pat falls in love with the tempestuous Monterez, while Gavery, who's always carried a torch for Pat, observes from the sidelines. The film wisely avoids the usual boxing-flick cliches, most commendably during the climactic Big Bout. Marilyn Monroe appears unbilled in the opening scene as Dick Powell's dinner companion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Glenn Ford and Rhonda Fleming star in The Redhead and the Cowboy, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out who plays what. Fleming is cast as Confederate spy Candace Bronson, who makes her way through enemy lines to deliver an important message. She is accompanied by Gil Kyle (Glenn Ford), who needs Candace to testify on his behalf in a murder trial. Though not necessarily sympathetic to the Southern cause, Gil helps Candace complete her mission. Also around and about is Dunn Jeffers (Edmond O'Brien), a Union spy who pretends to help Gil and Candace. As Civil War westerns go, Redhead and the Cowboy is pretty good, with some particularly exciting action highlights. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Horace McCoy (They Shoot Horses, Don't They), Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye offers James Cagney at his nastiest. The star plays career criminal Ralph Cotter, who gets things started by violently busting out of jail, then murdering his partner in crime. Seeking out female companionship, he "courts" his ex-partner's sister Holiday (Barbara Payton) by beating her black and blue. After committing a robbery, he is approached by two crooked cops who want a piece of the action. Blackmailing the cops, Cotter gains control of the situation. Is there any way to stop this fascinating creep? Filmgoers in Ohio never found out, because Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye was banned in that state as "a sordid, sadistic presentation of brutality and an extreme presentation of crime with explicit steps in commission." Supporting Cagney are Luther Adler as his equally crooked lawyer, Ward Bond and Barton MacLane as the dishonest cops, and Cagney's brother William (who produced the film) as Ralph Cotter's brother. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide