Alan Hale, Jr. Movies

Three disparate young men struggle to become Army Air Corps pilots in this rousing drama that earned an Oscar for its excellent aerial special effects. The film is also noted for making Veronica Lake, who previously appeared in films under the name Constance Keane, a star. For added realism, the three male leads, William Holden, Ray Milland and Wayne Morris were placed into the same training program at Randolph Field, Texas (and also Kelly Field, Texas) as real recruits. Lake plays a seductress who pursues Holden while Constance Moore plays a female photographer who comes to shoot a story and ends up falling for Milland. By the time the pilots' rigorous training has finished only one will have proved himself fit to fly. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

One of the first big-studio productions to acknowledge America's entry into WW2, 20th Century-Fox's To the Shores of Tripoli was filmed with full the cooperation of the US Marine Corps. John Payne plays Chris Winters, a wealthy, wise-lipped young Marine recruit who learns the true meaning of "Semper Fidelis" the hard way, courtesy of tough-as-nails drill sergeant Dixie Smith (Randolph Scott). Chris also falls in love with Navy nurse Mary Carter (Maureen O'Hara in her first Technicolor appearance), which leaves his poor hometown sweetheart Helene Hunt (Nancy Kelly) in the lurch. By film's end, Chris is one of the Few and the Proud as he and his buddies are shipped off to combat overseas. Portions of To the Shores of Tripoli were filmed in Hawaii just before the Pearl Harbor attack; according to studio publicity, some of the cameramen managed to capture portions of the Japanese raid on film, though none of these scenes seem to have made their way into the final release print. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Top Sergeant was the third of four inexpensive Universal action films top-billing Leo Carrillo, Andy Devine and Don Terry. Terry plays the title character, drill sergeant Dick Manson of the Engineer Corps. Carrillo and Devine are cast respectively as Corporals Frenchy Devereaux and Andy Jarrett, whose merry antics constantly land them in the stockade. All three protagonists are instrumental in capturing a gang of bank robbers, but one of the crooks (Don Porter) escapes after killing Manson's younger brother (Gene Garrick). The rest of the picture details Manson's herculean efforts to track down the murderer without going AWOL. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The fourth production from the enterprising King Brothers, Rubber Racketeers drew its inspiration from late-breaking headlines. When wartime rationing kicks in, rubber suddenly is at a premium, resulting in a brisk black market in bootlegged rubber tires. Patriotic defense plant worker Bill Barry (Bill Henry) rounds up his fellow workers to help stem the activities of hot-tire racketeer Gilin (Ricardo Cortez). In his American film debut, John Abbott plays a mute secondary hoodlum named Dumbo, who inability to speak neatly hides his cultured British dialect. Partially designed as a warning to "You, the Public" to avoid shady entrepreneurs like Gilin, Rubber Racketeers also succeeds as a purely as a rip-roaring actioner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An expansion of, and improvement upon, Lillian Hellman's stage play of the same name, Watch on the Rhine stars Paul Lukas, recreating his Broadway role of tireless anti-fascist crusader Kurt Muller. As the clouds of war gather in Europe in the late 1930s, Muller arrives in Washington DC, accompanied by his American wife Sara (top-billed Bette Davis) and their children Joshua (Donald Buka), Bodo (Eric Roberts) and Babette (Janis Wilson). The Mullers stay at the home of Sarah's wealthy mother Fanny Fannelly (Lucille Watson), who lives in her own world of society get-togethers and can't be bothered with politics. Also staying with Fanny is Rumanian aristocrat Teck de Branovis (George Coulouris) and his American wife Marthe (Geraldine Fitzgerald). To protect his family, Muller keeps his "underground" activities a secret from Fanny and her guests, but de Branovis is suspicious of the mild-mannered visitor. It turns out that de Branovis is actually a Nazi sympathizer, willing to betray Muller for a price. Using blackmail as one of his weapons, de Branovis threatens to destroy all that Muller has been fighting for. To prevent this, Muller kills de Branovis in cold blood. Now technically a murderer, Muller bids his family a reluctant goodbye, heading back to Europe to continue his vital work. If ever there was a justifiable homicide in a motion picture, it was the killing of the odious de Branovis in Watch on the Rhine. Still, the Hollywood production code dictated that a murderer must always pay for his crimes, thus a coda is added, alluding to Muller's death-providing a golden opportunity for a nifty smiling-through-the-tears curtain speech by Bette Davis. Scripted by Lillian Hellman's lover Dashiel Hammett, Watch on the Rhine earned several Academy Award nominations, as well as a "best actor" Oscar for Paul Lukas. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This musical is a remake of a 1933 film. Like the first, it is set on campus and chronicles the romantic travails of the school rowing champion who has recently come back from a military stint abroad. A young coed is mighty pleased to see him, but he keeps avoiding her. A subplot concerns a group of crooks who are trying to fix a boat race. Songs include: "Sweetheart of Sigma Chi" (F. Dudleigh Vernon, Byron D. Stokes), "Penthouse Serenade" (Will Jason, Val Burton, sung by Phil Regan), "It's Not I'm Such a Wolf, It's Just You're Such a Lamb" (Merle Maddern, Lanier Darwin, sung by Phil Brito), "And Then It's Heaven" (Edward Seiler, Sol Marcus, Al Kaufman, sung by Brito), "Cement Mixer" (Slim Gaillard, Lee Ricks, sung by Gaillard), "Yeproc-Heresi" (Gaillard, sung by Gaillard), "Bach Meets Carle" (a Bach pastiche by Frankie Carle), and "Five Minutes More" (Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn, sung by Brito). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

It Happened On Fifth Avenue was easily the most ambitious movie made by the then-newly-organized Allied Artists for at least a decade after its release -- actually, as a "Roy Del Ruth Production," it was made through rather than by Allied Artists, which may explain why it stands so far apart from the Bowery Boys movies and other productions normally associated with Allied during this period. And amazingly, it works, mostly thanks to a genial cast and a reasonably light touch by director/producer Roy Del Ruth, and in spite of a script that needed at least one more editorial pass. Victor Moore is the star and dominant personality -- if there is one in what is, basically, an ensemble cast -- as Aloyisius T. McKeever, a genial hobo whose annual routine for finding winter quarters is to wait for multi-millionaire Michael O'Connor (Charlie Ruggles) to lock up his Fifth Avenue mansion and head to Virginia, and move in during the man's absence. He chances to meet Jim Bullock, a homeless WWII veteran (displaced, ironically, by one of O'Connor's development projects), and gives him shelter in the mansion. They become a trio when O'Connor's free-spirited daughter Trudy (Gale Storm) shows up, fleeing her finishing school, and the two men -- thinking she's an impoverished runaway from an abusive father -- take her in. She goes along with the masquerade and gradually falls in love with Jim, who also chances to meet two former army buddies (Alan Hale, Jr., Edward Ryan) who -- you guessed it -- are also desperately trying to find homes, in their cases for their wives and growing families. Now there are nine people living in the shelter of O'Connor's Fifth Avenue mansion, and in between setting up housekeeping, Jim and his two buddies manage to come up with an idea about how to build homes for veterans and their families. Trudy, her identity still a secret to the other, gets her father to meet the "squatters" incognito, in hope that he'll take to Jim, but a series of misunderstandings and his own impatience and lack-of-faith leads him to reject everything decent he sees about Trudy's friends. In desperation, to keep them from being evicted and arrested, she calls in reinforcements in the person of her mother (Ann Harding), long estranged from her father. O'Connor is still not convinced of Jim's worth, and definitely doesn't see him as a potential husband for Trudy -- and, in a comic mix-up, he ends up going head-to-head with Jim for the property where he plans to build those houses for veterans, causing them to lock horns once more. Matters do eventually fall into place, as they usually do in Christmas movies of this sort, which more closely resembles The Bells of St. Mary's or One More Spring -- to name another movie about displaced New Yorkers -- than It's A Wonderful Life (with which it is usually compared). It Happened On Fifth Avenue is usually defined as a Christmas movie, in part because of its plot time-line, but more than that, it's a movie that, like George Seaton's Miracle On 34th Street -- made the same year -- sings of the generosity of the human spirit, and the feeling of renewal that was in the air in the immediate post-World War II era, a funny, gentle, warm look at people making their way in a time when, for the first time since the Great Depression and the outbreak of the Second World War, cautious optimism seemed an appropriate approach to life. And not for nothing was this reportedly lead actor Don Defore's personal favorite of all of his movies. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

This musical tells of two argumentative brothers who accidently find themselves working on the same musical performance. ~ All Movie Guide

Adapted by Allen Boretz from Lucille S. Plumbs and Sara B. Smith's stage play Ever the Beginning, My Girl Tisa is set in New York at the turn of the century. Tisa Kepes (Lilli Palmer) is a newly arrived immigrant girl who hopes to bring her father to America. She is fleeced by travel-agent Hugo Haas, browbeaten by sweatshop-owner Akim Tamiroff, and offered sagacious but ineffectual legal advice by Sam Wanamaker. It takes a "deus ex machina" appearance by Theodore Roosevelt (Sidney Blackmer) to solve Tisa's dilemma. When asked about My Girl Tisa, director Elliot Nugent was proudest of his ability to cut down on the budget by filming several of his street scenes from an overhead vantage point, thereby economizing on sets and extras. The film was produced independently by Milton Sperling's United States Pictures, and released by Warner Bros. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charles Starrett plays Steve Allan in Columbia's Blazing Trail. Halfway through the proceedings, Starrett dons the familiar mask of the do-gooding Durango Kid, and when ranch-owner Old Mike Brady (Robert Malcolm) is murdered, Steve (Starrett) tries to root out the killer. Several people had pretty good motives, including Brady's envious brothers (Steve Darrell and Steve Pendleton--this film is festooned with Steves!) Before the Durango Kid swings into action, the film pauses for a few musical interludes, courtesy of hillbilly warblers Hank Penny and Slim Duncan. An uncredited Jock Mahoney performs a few of the Durango Kid's chancier stunts. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lloyd Bacon's baseball comedy stars Ray Milland as Vernon Simpson, a chemist who develops a product which repels wood. Signing on with a major league team as a pitcher, he throws screwballs doctored with his solution, becoming a sensation who strikes out every batter he faces. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

William Bendix is perfectly cast as a diehard baseball fan who hates umpires with every fibre of his being. Bendix' devotion to baseball has lost him job after job, so his father-in-law (Ray Collins)--who happens to be an umpire--forces Our Hero to enroll in umpire school. Eventually Bendix learns to respect his new job, even gaining a measure of popularity by earning the nickname "Two-Call Johnson" (the result of double vision brought about by an overdose of eye drop medicine). But when Bendix calls a play against a popular pitcher, he is accused of cheating by the angry fans. Forced to disguise himself to get to the Big Game, Bendix arrives at the ball park to a chorus of "boos." Exonerated by the pitcher, who praises the umpire's honesty, Bendix is the hero of the day...until he makes another unpopular call two seconds later. Kill the Umpire is climaxed by a zany chase sequence scripted by former cartoon director Frank Tashlin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide