W.H. Brown Movies

Director Lawrence Kasdan and Frank Galati adapted their screenplay for The Accidental Tourist from Anne Tyler's novel. William Hurt plays Macon Leary, a well-known "travel advisor" headquartered in Baltimore. The tragic death of Leary's son causes him to withdraw from the world, which in turn prompts his wife (Kathleen Turner) to walk out on him. Recuperating from a broken leg, Leary moves in with his sister (Amy Wright) and brothers (Ed Begley Jr., David Ogden Stiers)-staid middle-aged intellectuals all. Discipline problems with his dead son's dog lead Leary to hire flaky professional dogwalker/trainer Muriel Pritchett (Geena Davis, who won an Oscar for her performance). The only non-uptight person within shouting distance, Muriel begins to melt Leary's self-protective shell. Once his wife realizes that she has some competition, she makes moves to get him back. But he has by now become accustomed to Muriel's unfettered lifestyle. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This comedy was based -- as many silent films were -- on a Saturday Evening Post story. Blanche St. George (Eunice Van Moore) has a repertory company that performs Uncle Tom's Cabin in every tiny hamlet they can manage to reach. Two of her star players are her sons, John (Benjamin Haggerty), who plays Uncle Tom, and Roy (Gareth Hughes), who at 16, balks at the fact that he's still playing Little Eva -- especially since his girl lives in the next town. The troupe registers at the only hotel around, and Blanche is horrified to discover that the proprietor, Mr. Wilson (Edward Martindel), is her ex-husband. John, who has not seen his father since he was very little, confides in him and confesses that both he and his brother hate the theatrical life. They're stuck with it, however, until their mother makes enough money to buy the hometown opera house. Wilson offers to help. The show that night is a complete disaster. Just as Eva is about to ascend, a jeer from the crowd infuriates Roy and he tears off his wig. Then he catches his robe in the scenery and knocks the backdrop down. He immediately takes off for Wilson's farm. Wilson gives his wife the money to buy the opera house, providing she let him have the boys. She agrees, and John and Roy have a much happier life with their father. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

The Whispering Chorus was arguably the closest Cecil B. DeMille ever came to making an "art" picture. Stalwart DeMille supporting player Raymond Hatton gave the performance of his career as embezzling bank clerk John Trimble. Hoping to escape punishment for his crimes, Trimble arranges for an anonymous, mutilated corpse to be identified as his own then starts life over again with a new identity. Several years later, however, Trimble is caught in a web of circumstantial evidence, and ends up being put on trial for his own murder! Prepared to reveal his true identity, Trimble is begged not to do so by his dying mother (Edythe Chapman), since such a revelation would bring disgrace upon Trimble's "widow" Jane (Kathryn Williams), who has since become the wife of Governor George Cogswell (Elliot Dexter) and is currently pregnant with her second husband's baby. Not wishing to see his wife branded a bigamist and her unborn child labelled a bastard, Trimble maintains his silence and willingly goes to the gallows. Some of the special-effects work in The Whispering Chorus bordered on the miraculous, especially the sequence in which Trimble is "surrounded" by the voices of his Thoughts, but what lingers longest in the memory are the performances by Raymond Hatton and Edythe Chapman. Unfortunately, The Whispering Chorus was a resounding failure at the box office, convincing director DeMille to ever afterward forsake "Art" in favor of gaudy showmanship. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi