Robert Graves Movies

This is an epic Darryl F. Zanuck production that plays fast and loose with historical facts regarding early 19th century French politics and the building of the Suez Canal. Tyrone Power stars as Ferdinand de Lesseps, an engineer and son of a French nobleman (Harry Stephenson). At the start of the film, he is in love with Eugenie (Loretta Young), but so is the French President Louis Napoleon (Leon Ames). After his father is appointed French consul to Egypt, the younger de Lesseps travels there and conceives the idea of a canal connecting the Mediterranean and Red seas. Back in France, he is promised help by Eugenie, now Napoleon's mistress, in exchange for Count de Lesseps' agreement to dissolve the government temporarily. Napoleon then declares himself emperor, making Eugenie his empress. The elder de Lesseps dies of shock at the political betrayal, while the younger de Lesseps starts building the canal, overcoming attacks by tribal people and severe heat. France cuts off backing, and de Lesseps has to get help from England to finish the project. A sandstorm injures de Lesseps, and his French-Egyptian lover Toni (Annabella) straps him to a post to save him, sacrificing her own life for the canal. Power and Annabella married each other after the film. The descendants of de Lesseps sued 20th Century Fox for libel, but lost. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Groucho Marx received co-writer credit (along with his old friend Norman Krasna) for King and the Chorus Girl, though very little Marxian wit is in evidence. What remains is a fun but forgettable comedy about a European monarch (Fernand Gravet) who woos and wins a down-to-earth American chorine (Joan Blondell) who works at the Folies Bergere. Edward Everett Horton and Jane Wyman (fifth-billed) provide comic relief as the respective best friends and severest critics of the leading players. The film had a topical edge in that it was released the year after Britain's King Edward renounced his throne for American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. Significantly, King and the Chorus Girl was released in England as Romance is Sacred, effectively downplaying the touchy "royal" angle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

Onslow Stevens stars as insurance investigator Dan Adams, hot on the trail of gangster Duke Trotti (Noel Madison). As it happens, Dan's own brother Eddie (Allen Vincent) is in Duke's employ. Suffering an attack of conscience, Eddie decides to go straight and blow the whistle on Duke's operation, only to be pumped full of lead for his troubles. But Eddie's murder is the key that leads to the destruction of the villains, so it cannot be said that he died in vain. The hardly necessary romantic interest is provided by Dan's faithful assistant Carol Carter (Kay Linaker). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This French-language version of the 1935 Hollywood musical Folies Bergere retains the original star (Maurice Chevalier) and director (Roy Del Ruth) and Busby Berkeley's big-scale production numbers. It also follows substantially the same plot: A nightclub entertainer (Chevalier), is hired to pose as his look-alike (also Chevalier), a prominent aviation tycoon. The masquerade causes consternation for the entertainer's girlfriend, who of course has no idea what's going on, and for the tycoon's wife, who can't understand why her cold-fish husband has suddenly become so warm and demonstrative. Beyond the obvious language change, the major differences between the two Folies Bergeres are found in their supporting casts: for example, Natalie Paley plays the tycoon's spouse role originally essayed by Merle Oberon, while Sim Viva, as the girlfriend, fills the dancing shoes of the English-language version's Ann Sothern. Folies Bergere served as the basis for two future 20th Century-Fox musicals, That Night in Rio and On the Riviera, neither of which were released in French versions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of several variations of the "Mata Hari" and "Fraulein Doktor" legends, Universal's Madame Spy is set during WW I. Fay Wray stars as Maria, the wife of Austrian diplomat Captain Franck (Nils Asther). What Franck doesn't know is that Maria is a Russian secret agent, assigned to spy on her own husband. Eventually captured and sentenced to be shot, Maria manages to make her escape by crawling through "No Man's Land" -- looking none the worse for wear at the end of her ordeal. A scene-for-scene remake of the German drama Under False Flags, Madame Spy was itself remade (and heavily rewritten) as a "B" picture in 1942. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Columbia Pictures workhorse Lambert Hillyer was both writer and director of Men of the Night. Bruce Cabot plays Kelly, a Hollywood detective, assigned to capture a holdup gang. While dallying with carhop Mary (Judith Allen), Kelly jumps to the hasty conclusion that the girl is somehow tied in with the crooks. Acting on this misapprehension, he nearly gets both Mary and himself killed by the villains (headed by Charles Sabin, a stage actor who never quite clicked in films). Ward Bond, a mere supporting player in 1934, goes into his comedy-relief mode as Cabot's dimwitted partner. Men of the Night ran 58 minutes, just long enough to fit comfortably on the bottom half of a Columbia double bill. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on Al Jolson's 1931 Broadway hit, Wonder Bar transposes the "Grand Hotel" formula to a lavish nightclub in Paris' Montmartre district. Presiding over the evening's entertainment is manager-emcee Al Wonder (Jolson), who after greeting his guests in a multitude of languages (a la Joel Grey in Cabaret) introduces a steady stream of top variety acts. The star attraction of the Wonder Bar floor show is the Latin dance team of Inez (Dolores Del Rio) and Harry (Ricardo Cortez). Al worships Inez from afar, but she is hopelessly in love with Harry, a no-good louse who is carrying on with Liane (Kay Francis), the wife of prominent banker Renaud (Henry Kolker). Meanwhile, German military officer Captain Von Ferring (Robert H. Barrat), who has lost his fortune to bad investments, enjoys one last fling at the Wonder Bar before committing suicide. The two main subplots converge when Inez stabs Harry out of pique, whereupon the ever-loyal Al deposits Harry's body in Von Ferring's car, knowing full well that Von Ferring intends to drive himself off a steep hill to his death. Never letting Inez find out that she killed Harry, Al stands stoically aside as she finds true happiness with composer Tommy (Dick Powell). Lest this all sound heavily somberly serious, it should be noted that Wonder Bar is chock full of laughs, from both Jolson (who runs through quite a repertoire of tried-and-true routines) and the drunken antics of "tired business men" Hugh Herbert and Hobart Cavanaugh. The musical numbers staged by Busby Berkeley range from sedate to incredible, with the bizarrely racist 10-minute "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule" (truly a jaw-dropping experience) falling into the latter category. The film's most outrageous moment, however, is an uninhibited chunk of homosexual humor on the dance floor ("Boys will be boys!", crows Jolson) which just barely squeaked past the Hollywood censors! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this romance a school marm takes a cruise and falls for an unobtainable man, a district attorney married to a crippled woman. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Poverty row company Syndicate released this early sound western starring silent-screen refugee Mahlon Hamilton as a reformed gambler who saves Doris Hill's ranch from a gang of crooks by using a few of his otherwise retired tricks. The principal actors in this film, Hamilton, Hill and Robert Graves (as the leader of the gang) had all seen better days in the silent era but still enjoyed recognition in small towns, the intended market for Syndicate releases. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Never one to take his metier too serious, Universal cowboy hero Hoot Gibson came dangerously close to outright burlesque in the aptly titled Smilin' Guns. As "Dirty Neck" Jack Purvin, Gibson is his old uncouth self but when he sees a newspaper photograph of Eastern socialite Helen Van Smythe, soon to arrive at the nearby dude ranch, Gibson hightails it to San Francisco in order to learn how to become a gentleman. Returning to the ranch, the new but not necessarily improved Gibson shreds his dandified image in order to save Helen from a lecherous but decidedly fake count and her mother (Virginia Pearson) from a jewel thief (Robert Graves). The count was played by none other than Leo White, whose mustache-twirling continental noblemen/revolutionists had graced several Charles Chaplin comedies in the 1910s. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Who better to play Somebody's Mother than perennial movie matriarch Mary Carr. As often happened in Carr's films, the poor, downtrodden female protagonist is ignored by one and all, even when she performs a final noble gesture to assure the happiness of her children. This time, the actress is cast as "Matches Mary," whose profession is implicit in her name. Suffering stoically throughout the film, Matches Mary makes certain that no ill will befall the romantic leads (Rex Lease and Kathryn McGuire). It surely goes without saying that the male lead is Mary's long-lost son, whose success she enjoys vicariously at the end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on a 1910 novel by Hamlin Garland, Cavanagh, Forest Ranger; a Romance of the Mountain West, this silent Western from Vitagraph starred former child actress Helene Costello as Virginia Weatherford, a college graduate returning after ten years in the East to her home in Sulfur Springs. Virginia's mother, the owner of a rooming house (Eulalie Jensen), has turned hard and uncaring in her absence and the girl finds comfort in her friendship with Ross Cavanagh (Kenneth Harlan), a forest ranger. The latter runs afoul of cattle baron Sam Gregg (William Walling), who resents a new tax on cattle grazing on government land. When Gregg sends his henchmen to "persuade" Cavanagh to see things his way, the ranger is rescued in the nick of time by Virginia. After bringing Gregg and his men to justice, Cavanagh marries Virginia and they return East. Later in 1925, the old Vitagraph was sold lock, stock, and barrel to the upstart Warner Bros. and Helene Costello would star in that company's -- and America's -- first "all-talkie" melodrama, Lights of New York (1929), the gangster melodrama that introduced the expression of taking someone "for a ride." ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide