Charles D. Brown Movies

Once one of Hollywood's "top ten" screen attractions, Charles Farrell had slipped somewhat by the end of the 1930s, and obliging to accept roles in such B productions as Columbia's Flight to Fame. Farrell plays air force captain Lawrence, a Billy Mitchell type who finds himself constantly at odds with his old-fashioned superiors. When his revolutionary new pursuit plane is rejected by the powers-that-be, Lawrence befriends another "radical"named Fisk, who has developed a deadly new death ray "for the good of mankind". Inevitably, the ray falls into the wrong hands, causing a series of mysterious air disasters. At first suspecting Fisk of misusing his invention, Lawrence eventually discovers that the actual culprit is another disgruntled aviator. Columbia's all-purpose heroine Jacqueline Wells provides the obligatory love interest. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Two imprisoned con men become ace football players on the prison team in this comedy. They get into real trouble when the duo decides to bust out to keep the mother of a fellow inmate from getting conned by a gang of crooks. When the warden finds out, he is steaming mad because he has bet his entire fortune on an upcoming game and without his two stars, the team will surely lose. Fortunately for him, the two hustle back to prison and get there just in time to win the Big Game. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Glenda Farrell plays still another fast-talking girl reporter in Universal's Exposed. Willing to sell her soul for a story, newspaper sob sister Click Stewart (Farrell) is presently on the trail of DA William Reardon (Otto Kruger), a "Judge Crater" type who disappeared without a trace several years earlier. Following a lead, she finds Reardon residing in a flophouse, where he's been drinking his life away ever since he sent an innocent man to the electric chair. Sensing a swell scoop, Click offers to locate the daughter of the wrongly executed man so that Reardon can apologize; in exchange, our heroine will get the ex-DA's exclusive story. As the story progresses, Reardon rehabilitates himself and Click regains her essential decency and humanity, whereupon they team up to smash the operation of racketeer Mike Romero (Bernard Nedell). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a woman is betrothed to a district attorney. When a man is falsely convicted of murder and condemned to death, the woman postpones her wedding to prove him innocent. She enlists the help of a former gangster and eventually succeeds in saving the innocent man's life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Louis Hayward plays an arrogant Cambridge student who emigrates to America and enrolls at the West Point. Hayward's superior attitude earns him the enmity of his fellow students and the derisive nickname "the Duke". Those viewers familiar with college pictures will know as early as the opening titles that Hayward is down deep a swell guy. He proves this by helping impoverished plebe Richard Carlson pay his college costs and winning a crucial hockey game against a Canadian team. While Hayward and his student companions all look a bit long in tooth to be West Pointers, 20-year-old leading lady Joan Fontaine fits right in to the predictable proceedings. Like most of producer Edward Small's films, Duke of West Point was a perennial attraction on TV's "Late Late Shows" in the 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Young Roger Calverton (Ronald Sinclair) and his uncle Sir Peter Calverton (Sir C. Aubrey Smith) bring their prize race-horse The Pookah to America, hoping to win a major purse and save their impoverished family estate. They cross paths with Tim Donahue (Mickey Rooney), one of the top young jockeys in the business, and also with Cricket West (Judy Garland), the niece of Mother Ralph (Sophie Tucker), who runs the boarding house where Donahue resides. Cricket likes to sing every chance she gets, and also has a terrible crush on Tim, but even she can't abide his brash, cocky attitude about himself -- and as a good hostess and also a sensible girl, she also gets just a tiny bit smitten with Roger. He and Tim have a rough first meeting but find that they do sort of like each other, and soon Tim -- who has had a tough, hard-scrabble life -- becomes very close to his new friend from England and to Sir Peter, especially when he finds out how much they love horses and racing. He agrees to ride The Pookah -- but then the young jockey is suckered by his estranged father (Charles D. Brown), a low-life member of a gambling syndicate, into throwing the race. This leads to a tragedy that forces Tim to walk away from his profession and everyone he knows, until Cricket finds him and convinces the boy that what he did wasn't entirely his fault, and that he still has the power to make up for a part of it. Tim steals some of the money he gave his father -- supposedly to save the man's life -- to help Roger get The Pookah into another race, but he still has to overcome the machinations of the mob so he can right the wrong he did to the best friends he's ever had. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Frank Capra's seminal screwball comedy, which won all five major Academy Awards for 1934, is still as breezy and beguiling today. Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, a spoiled heiress who has married fortune-hunting aviator King Westley (Jameson Thomas), despite her father (Walter Connolly)'s objections. To keep Ellie from marrying this lothario, her father has been holding her prisoner aboard his yacht. But Ellie bolts from the yacht, swims ashore in her clothes, and eventually slips onto a Greyhound bus bound for New York. Aboard the bus is newspaper reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who has recently been fired for drinking on the job. Peter gets the last seat on the bus -- but when he gets up to argue with the bus driver, Ellie takes his seat. Since it is the last seat on the bus, they have to share it. When Ellie has her purse stolen and she refuses to report it, Peter begins to suspect something. The next morning, they both miss the bus after a leisurely breakfast, and Peter reveals that he knows her identity. She makes a deal with him: if he helps her get to New York, he can write a scoop about her for his paper. Peter thinks she is a spoiled brat, however, and refuses a monetary bribe: "I'm not interested in your money or your problem. You, King Westley, your father -- you're all a lot of hooey to me!" But as they travel northward and engage in a series of misadventures, the gruff newspaperman and the spoiled rich girl, thrown together by circumstances, fall in love with each other. This movie set the pace for the "screwball" comedy, the witty and romantic clash of temperaments between a man and a woman mismatched in both personality and social position, a type of movie often associated with Katherine Hepburn in such classics as Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and, with Spencer Tracy, Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957), among others. The only other movies to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay) were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

The Secret Call is adapted from The Woman, a play by William C. DeMille (brother of Cecil B.) Peggy Shannon plays Wanda Kelly, the daughter of a disgraced politician. Reduced to working as a switchboard operator, Wanda is privy to the many secrets and indiscretions of the clients of a big-city hotel. She also finds romance in the form of handsome Tom Blake (Richard Arlen). The huge cast of characters comes in handy for the film's multitude of subplots, none of which ever get their wires crossed. Peggy Shannon acquits herself nicely in her first major role, but by the end of the decade her career was in decline. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An eerie early-talkie mystery, Murder by the Clock spends most of its time in a cemetery. The matriarch (Blanche Frederici) of a wealthy family is haunted by the notion that she'll be buried alive. To avoid this contingency, she has a horn installed in the family mausoleum, to be activated in case she arises from her casket. The lady is murdered, and shortly after her internment the horn blows at regular intervals. Each time the horn is heard, the dead woman is seen wandering the cemetery, and each time one of her relatives winds up dead. These "supernatural" events are actually being orchestrated by a covetous family member (there's a large legacy involved of course), who uses the services of several homicidal confederates. Murder by the Clock was perhaps more frightening in 1931 than it is today, but a TV revival is long overdue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A vaudevillian working in a third-rate burlesque show suffers marital turmoil when success swells his head in this silent back-stage melodrama. He celebrates his stardom with a few drinks. Unfortunately, this leads to alcoholism and carousing with other women causing his wife to eventually leave him and find happiness with another. Meanwhile, the vaudevillian teeters on the brink of alcoholic ruin. Fortunately, just before he tumbles into an eternal bottomless pit of hopelessness, she returns to save him and marital bliss resumes. One of the dance scenes was filmed in early two-tone Technicolor. The film was later remade as Swing High, Swing Low (1937) and as When My Baby Smiles at Me (1948). ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide