Howard Estabrook Movies

Shipped off to a fancy girl's school, Becky (Vivian Martin) runs up against the snobbery of her classmates. To impress these haughty little hussies, Becky claims that she is the product of a wealthy household, though the truth is that both her mother and father have virtually worked themselves to death on behalf of their daughter. To keep up appearances, Becky tackles two jobs, working by day as a maidservant and by night as a cabaret entertainer known only as "the Masked Dancer." When the truth about Becky's double (or is it triple?) life comes out, she fully expects to be rejected by her friends and loved ones alike. Instead, she becomes the wife of the rich, handsome doctor who has loved her from afar since the film's opening credits. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Grace Barrow (Hope Hampton) has become a cabaret dancer in New York, and when she hears her ailing mother needs money, she accepts an offer from Kenneth Bellwood (Arthur Edmund Carew). The crooked Bellwood wants to keep Robert Casson (Harrison Ford) in New York so that he'll miss out on a valuable Brazilian option, and he wants Grace to help. So Grace accompanies Casson on a round of parties and revelry. But then she finds herself falling in love with him and begins to feel guilty. Meanwhile, her sister Alice (Mary Astor) comes to town and falls under Bellwood's influence. Bellwood dumps his mistress, Evelyn Dolores (Dagmar Godowsky), and she angrily confronts him. Their argument ends when Evelyn kills Bellwood, but Alice is accused of the crime. Grace finally confesses Bellwood's scheme to Casson, who forgives her. Evelyn has committed suicide and in her note, she reveals that she killed Bellwood. Alice returns home, and Casson weds Grace. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Thanks to constant exposure in excerpt form in scores of silent-movie compilations, Play Safe is the best-known of the Monty Banks comedies. Banks plays a dapper little doofus who tries to rescue heiress Virginia Cragg (Virginia Lee Corbin) from the evil machinations of crooked estate trustee Silas Scott (Charles Mailes). The film comes to a heart-pounding climax as Virginia is kidnapped by Scott's minions and spirited off to a freight train. Banks mans a fruit wagon, gives chase after the villains, and ultimately boards the train, leading to a spectacular slapstick setpiece in which both hero and heroine narrowly escape death at every twist and turn. The justly famous runaway-train finale was later released separately as the two-reeler Chasing Choo-Choos. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This was the third screen version of A.E.W. Mason's oft-filmed novel about one soldier's triumph over cowardice and was the last rendering during the silent era. Here, Richard Arlen stars as Harry Faversham, the British officer who resigns rather than fight against rebels in Egypt. When four of his former colleagues present him with feathers signifying their belief that he's a coward, Faversham has a change of heart, and posing as an Arab, he goes on a potentially deadly mission to rescue captured British forces. Fay Wray also appears as Ethne Eustance. Wray and directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack would reunite four years later for another classic tale of adventure, King Kong. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Most of Dressed to Kill takes place at a swank nightclub which serves as an Underworld rendezvous. Heroine Jean (Mary Astor) hopes to recover the bonds that her imprisoned sweetheart is accused of stealing. To do this, Jean sidles up to mob boss Mile-Away Barry (Edmund Lowe), figuring that he was the mastermind behind the theft. Unfortunately, the crooks play for keeps, and by Reel Five it looks as though Jean is going to be taken "for a ride." But Mile-Away Barry undergoes a sudden change of heart, putting his own life on the line to save Jean's. One symbolic touch -- the chief heavy dying from police bullets under an advertising billboard reading "You Can't Win" -- was borrowed from Josef Von Sternberg's Salvation Hunters and would be used again, with variations, in Howard Hawks' Scarface. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charles Rogers and Mary Brian, Paramount Pictures' cutest couple, are starred in the collegiate drama Varsity. Amazingly, the film does not include a football game, or even a football team. The story concerns the romance between college boy Jimmy Duffy (Arlen) and carnival girl Fay (Mary Brian). Looking askance at this union is dormitory janitor Pop Conlin (Chester Conklin), who, unbeknownst to everyone but himself, is Jimmy's long-lost father. A chronic alcoholic, Pop worries that Jimmy has inherited the family "curse," and that the boy will pass it along to his own children. The tension mounts when a couple of crooks conspire to get Jimmy liquored up so that they can steal a cache of cash intended to finance a campus temperance organization. Originally set at Yale University, the alma mater of screenwriter Wells Root, Varsity ended up taking place in Princeton when the Yale-ees protested. Essentially a silent picture, Varsity includes a reel and a quarter of dialogue near the end of the film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gary Cooper, as a lanky Wyoming ranch and foreman, places his gun on a poker table after being insulted by one of the gamblers and intones, "If you want to call me that . . . smile." That much quoted line's origin is in this early sound version of the Owen Wister novel, The Virginian, directed by Victor Fleming. When the Virginian meets his old friend Steve (Richard Arlen), he gives him a job on his crew at the Box H Ranch near Medicine Bow, Wyoming. Newly arrived in town is the new schoolmarm, Molly Wood (Mary Brian), and both men take notice. Afterwards, in a saloon, The Virginian encounters the evil Trampas (Walter Huston), and the two get into an argument over a dancer. The Virginian calls Trampas' bluff but, although Trampas backs down, he seethes inside. Afterwards, following a christening party, The Virginian walks Molly back home, and a friendship grows between the two that burgeons into love. But when Steve joins up with Trampas and his gang of rustlers and is captured by a posse, The Virginian is forced to supervise Steve's lynching. After that, Molly spurns The Virginian. However, when The Virginian is wounded, Molly forgets all that, and nurses him back to health. They decide to finally marry, but Trampas interferes with their plans --Trampas wants The Virginian to leave town, and he is out gunning for him. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In this convoluted drama, the jolly painted face of a circus clown is but a mask for an avaricious, ruthlessly ambitious, and deceitful man. Hap is performing in small New Orleans clubs when he saves the life of the starving Gardino, a member of a distinguished family of European clowns. Though impoverished and unemployed, Gardino is determined to avoid the family slapstick and become a "serious" performer of high-class clowning. Hap suggests they team up, but thanks to Gardino's refusal to do slapstick, their act is a dud. Gardino leaves in a huff. Later Hap finds his former partner performing Hap's proposed act with a new partner. He is doing quite well, and when he sees Hap, Gardino apologizes and they again team up. This time Gardino insists on star billing. To make matters worse, he steals Hap's girl and they marry. The honeymoon is barely over before Gardino is playing around with other women and gambling away all of their money. After his latest affair goes bust, Gardino grows despondent and so walks into the sea, never looking back. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

No one was surprised in 1929 that aviation mogul Howard R. Hughes would produce a paean to World War I flying aces like Hell's Angels. Given Hughes' comparative inexperience as a moviemaker, however, everyone was taken slightly aback that the finished film was as good as it was. The very American Ben Lyon and James Hall play (respectively) Monte and Roy Rutledge, a couple of British brothers who drop out of Oxford to join the British Royal Flying Corps. Several early scenes establish Lyon and Hall's romantic rivalry over two-timing socialite Helen (Jean Harlow). While flying a dangerous bombing mission over Germany, the brothers are shot down. The commandant (Lucien Prival), who'd earlier been cuckolded by one of the brothers, savors his opportunity for revenge. He offers the boys their freedom if they'll reveal the time of the next British attack; if they don't cooperate, they face unspeakable consequences. Roy, driven mad by his combat experiences, is about to tell all when he is shot and killed by Monte. The latter is himself condemned to a firing squad by the disgruntled commandant -- who, it is implied, will soon meet his own doom at the hands of the British bombers. Nobody really cares about this hoary old plot, however; Hell's Angels culls most of its strength from its crackerjack aerial sequences. The highlight is a Zeppelin raid over London, one of the most hauntingly effective sequences ever put on film. From the first ghost-like appearance of the Zeppelin breaking through the clouds, to the self-sacrificing behavior of the German crew members as they jump to their deaths rather than provide "excess weight," this is a scene that lingers in the memory far longer than all that good-of-the-service nonsense in the finale. Also worth noting is the star-making appearance of Jean Harlow. When Hell's Angels was begun as a silent film, Norwegian actress Greta Nissen played the female lead. During the switchover to sound, producer Hughes decided that her accent was at odds with her characterization, so he reshot her scenes with his latest discovery, Harlow. While she appears awkward in some of her scenes, there's no clumsiness whatsoever in her delivery of the classic line about slipping into "something more comfortable." Originally, Marshall Neilan was signed to direct the film, but became so rattled by Howard Hughes' interference that he handed the reins to Hughes himself, who was in turn given an uncredited assist by Luther Reed. Also ignored in the film's credits are the dialogue contributions by future Frankenstein director James Whale, who'd been hired as the film's English-dialect coach. Modern audiences expecting a musty museum piece are generally surprised by Hell's Angels' high entertainment content: they are also startled by the pre-code frankness of the dialogue, with phrases like "The hell with you" bandied about with reckless abandon. In recent years, archivists have restored the film's two-color Technicolor sequence, providing us with our only color glimpses of the radiant Jean Harlow. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This fact-based drama chronicles the events that led to the murder of a notorious gambler. The story begins when a young cardsharp goes to see his brother, whom he believes is a stockbroker. In reality, the brother is a famed gambler who is trying to quit and try to rebuild his marriage. When the professional gambler sees that his card-playing sibling is preparing to make the same mistakes he did, he decides to risk his life and gamble one more time to teach him an unforgettable lesson. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama a reformed safecracker is pressured by his ex-cellmate to pull off one last job. The cellmate gives the safecracker a chance for peace and happiness on an isolated farm. There he meets a pretty woman and her grandmother. He falls in love with the young woman. Unfortunately, he soon discovers that they are part of his cellmate's gang. Eventually the two lovers are reunited and truly reformed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Eternal movie juvenile Eric Linden offers perhaps the best performance of his career in RKO's Are These Our Children? In this pioneering Juvenile Delinquent drama, Linden plays a know-it-all high school dropout who falls in with a bad crowd. While burglarizing the delicatessen of a family friend (William Orlamond), Linden accidentally kills the old man. No one can connect him with the crime, and for a while Linden privately gloats as he reads newspaper stories of the killing. But one of his friends (Ben Alexander), who was in on the robbery, spills the beans, and Linden winds up going to the chair. The true impact of Are These Our Children? is Linden's performance as an emotionally immature youth who cannot fully fathom the seriousness of his dilemma: he tries to jolly himself into believing that he hasn't killed anyone, and as he sits on death row he continues displaying a childish bravado, as if expecting to wake up from a bad dream at any moment. Despite its age and the corniness of some of the dialogue, Are These Our Children? is an unforgettably powerful film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide