Mary Ellis Movies
American actress Mary Ellis was better known for her theatrical and operatic work than for her brief, mediocre film career during the mid-'30s. The New York City native started out in the Metropolitan Opera in 1918 where she remained for four years. In 1922, she appeared on Broadway in a production of The Merchant of Venice. Following the failure of her film career, she moved to England and again found success on the stage. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
The Three Worlds of Gulliver is perhaps the least known of the Charles H. Schneer-Ray Harryhausen collaborations of the 1960s, perhaps because it was withdrawn from circulation so soon after its initial release. Kerwin Mathews, star of the Schneer-Harryhausen classic Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1957), stars as Jonathan Swift's globetrotting adventurer Lemuel Gulliver. The first "world" is Lilliput, populated with teeny-tiny people who are about to go to war because they can't agree over which end of an egg to crack. Gulliver's second stop is Brobdignag, where our hero is surrounded by giants. The third world is England, where Gulliver is thrown into a lunatic asylum when he tries to relate his astonishing adventures. Jo Morrow plays the thoroughly dispensable love interest. The script, by director Jack Sher and Arthur Ross, manages to retain a great deal of Swift's trenchant satire without detracting from the film's "fun for all ages" entertainment value. As always, Harryhausen's Dynamation special effects are superb. A lilting, semihumorous musical score by Bernard Herrmann is the icing on this cinematic cake. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Kerwin Mathews, Jo Morrow, (more)
- 1951
The Magic Box was the English film industry's contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain. Its all-star cast generously forsook their usual salaries for the privilege of paying tribute to that unsung pioneer of cinema, William Friese-Greene, here played by Robert Donat. Adapted by Eric Ambler from the controversial biography by Ray Allister, Magic Box contends that Friese-Greene was the true father of motion pictures, and not such upstarts as W. K. L. Dickson and Thomas Edison. Told in flashback, the film details Friese-Greene's tireless experiments with the "moving image," leading inexorably to a series of failures and disappoints, as others hog the credit for the protagonist's discoveries. The huge cast includes such British film luminaries as Joyce Grenfell, Miles Malleson, Michael Redgrave, Eric Portman, Emlyn Williams, Richard Attenborough, Peter Ustinov, Cecil Parker, Kay Walsh, and, best of all, Laurence Olivier as the confused bobby who witnesses Friese-Greene's first motion picture demonstration. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Robert Donat, Margaret Johnston, (more)
- 1937
The popular Ivor Novello musical play Glamorous Night was given a conservative film treatment in 1937--minus much of the Novello score that had made it famous. Opera singer Mary Ellis plays an opera singer (why not?) who falls in with a band of roguish but likeable gypsies. Mary manages to convince her Bohemian cohorts to rescue the King from the machinations of his ambitious prime minister. As "cast insurance" to make certain that Glamorous Night would get American bookings, Hollywood character actors Otto Kruger and Victor Jory are given leading roles. The US distributors also sliced the film down from 81 to 65 minutes, through the simple expedient of removing several songs. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mary Ellis, Otto Kruger, (more)
- 1936
Mary Ellis, Paramount's answer to Columbia's Grace Moore, stars in the title role in this musical melodrama/whodunit. When her fiancé dies under mysterious circumstances, neophyte opera diva Mary Stuart (Ellis) flees to South America, assumes a new identity, and obtains a position with a local opera company. Although promising her new boss, Glinka (Guy Bates Post), to concentrate wholly on her art, Mary, now Maria, spends most of her energy rebuffing several lovesick gentlemen, including Philip Roberts (Norman Foster), whose uptight brother, David (Walter Pidgeon), at first dismisses her as a sordid femme fatale. Another marriage proposal leads to another murder and David finally begins to see a connection. While not fending off would-be suitors, Mary Ellis performs selections from the operas Isabelle and Bad Masque. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mary Ellis, Walter Pidgeon, (more)
- 1935
Paramount Pictures decided in 1935 to create a new romantic team, thus cast singing stars Carl Brisson and Mary Ellis in the frothy operetta All the King's Horses. Brisson does the "Prisoner of Zenda" bit as a movie star who is forced by circumstances to impersonate a look-alike king. Ms. Ellis is the highborn lady who seems to be fooled by the ruse. The plots roll merrily onward while various and sundry musical-comedy character actors (including Edward Everett Horton and Eugene Pallette) fuss and fume in the background. Danish singer Carl Brisson had created a minor sensation by introducing "Cocktails for Two" in Paramount's Murder at the Vanities (34), but the studio's attempts to turn him into a Scandinavian Maurice Chevalier were unsuccessful. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Carl Brisson, Mary Ellis, (more)
- 1935
Tulio Carminati, who was previously and felicitously teamed with Grace Moore in One Night of Love, co-stars with another splendid operatic singer, Mary Ellis, in Paris in Spring. Ellis plays Simone, who breaks up her long-standing engagement with Paul de Lille (Carminati) because she balks at the notion of marriage. Simultaneously, young lovers Mignon (Ida Lupino) and Albert (James Blakely) split up for the same reason. In desperation, Mignon heads to the Eiffel Tower, intending to leap to her death. She is dissuaded from doing away with herself by Paul, who'd come to the tower with the same thought in mind. The symbiotic relationship between the two couples is played to the hilt, especially when Mignon and Albert conspire to make Simone and Albert jealous. The distinctly American character actor Lynne Overman is bizarrely but effectively cast as a dry-witted French gendarme. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mary Ellis, Tullio Carminatti, (more)
- 1934
That old theatrical war-horse Bella Donna (previously filmed in America by Alla Nazimova) was resurrected by Britain's Twickenham Studios in 1934. Conrad Veidt stars as sinister Egyptian Mahmoud Baroundi, who even before the film gets under way has left a long trail of ruined women behind him. His latest victim is American girl Mona Chepstow (Mary Ellis), whom Baroundi treats like dirt and makes her like it. The plot centers around a murder by poison, as evidenced by the film's deliberately exotic title. Critics in 1934 praised newcomer Mary Ellis for underplaying her role, but many film fans preferred Nazimova's arm-waving histrionics in the earlier version. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mary Ellis, Conrad Veidt, (more)
