Alan Hale, Jr. Movies

Sierra Passage was the first of a brief series of program westerns produced by Monogram and starring Wayne Morris. The film casts Morris as Johnny Yorke, the sharpshooting star of a travelling show run by Sam (Roland Winters) and Thad (Lloyd Corrigan). Johnny hopes someday to run across the man (or men) responsible for the murders of his parents. Meanwhile, he romances the travelling troupe's songstress Ann (Lola Albright). Billy Gray, who later played Bud in TV's Father Knows Best, shows up as the younger Johnny Yorke. The ironic ending of Sierra Passage is but one of the film's many unexpected highlights. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gene Autry sings "When the Bloom is on the Sage" in this early entry in his popular television series. When the board of supervisors allocates $20,000 for government roadwork, including $3,000 from newcomer Henry Harlow (Steven Darrell), the latter voices his fear of road agents. To safely transfer the monies to the bank in Quincy, Harlow proposes to use the stage as a decoy while he and the sheriff (Tom London) travel by buckboard. The buckboard is held up by a bandit (Alan Hale Jr.) but Gene, who suspects Harlow of treachery, makes a double switch and the money is saved. The Double Switch was restored by Gene Autry Entertainment in 2000. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Cornell Wilde serves as "box office insurance" in this Swiss-filmed romantic comedy. Wilde plays American sailor Stanley Robin, who while vacationing in Switzerland falls in love with Suzanne (Josette Day), the daughter of a local watchmaker. Their romance is threatened by the arrival of French femme fatale Yvonne (Simone Signoret). Those not interested in the amorous entanglements will be amused by Cornel Wilde's antic attempts at learning to ski. Wilde's navy buddies include such TV stars-to-be as Alan Hale Jr. (of Gilligan's Island) and George Petrie (of Dallas). Among the screenwriters for Swiss Tour was Curt Siodmak, who adapts to comedy as well as he did to Gothic horror in the 1940s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gene Autry plays a dual role in the above-average Columbia oater Rim of the Canyon. Our hero plays "himself" and his own father, a famed sheriff. Twenty years ago, Autry Sr. threw a trio of outlaws (Walter Sande, Jock Mahoney and Francis McDonald) into jail for stealing a large sum of money. When the crooks escape and head for the hidden loot, it's up to Autry Jr. to track them down. Unlike previous Columbia Autrys, Rim of the Canyon downplays the musical element in favor of fast, sometimes violent action. Even Autry's faithful horse Champion gets in on the act by trampling one of the crooks. Autry's leading lady this time out is Nan Leslie, later a busy TV character actress; another future TV favorite, Alan Hale Jr., essays a supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gene Autry enjoyed considerable success with his recording of Stan Jones' haunting "Riders in the Sky". He then parlayed this success into a film, which proved to be one of Autry's best postwar efforts. The basic plot concerns Autry's efforts to clear rancher Ralph Lawson (Steve Darrell) of a trumped-up murder charge. The trumper-upper, Rock McCleary, is played by Robert Livingston, a former cowboy star who turned to character roles late in his career. The heroine is played by Gloria Henry, ten years removed from her TV fame as Alice Mitchell in Dennis the Menace. The title song is imaginatively staged by director John English, with a ghostly Tom London riding hard and fast as a montage of moody images play across the screen. So effective was this vignette that Columbia included it in the coming-attractions trailer for Riders in the Sky. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When Homecoming was first released in 1948, some observers felt that Clark Gable's unusually sensitive performance was based on his own memories of losing his wife Carole Lombard in a 1942 plane crash. Intriguingly, Gable's Homecoming co-star is Lana Turner, with whom it was rumored that he was having an affair at the time of Lombard's death. Told in flashback, the story concerns the romance of war-time army surgeon Ulysses Delby Johnson (Gable) and Red Cross nurse Lt. Jane "Snapshot" McCall (Turner). Though married, Johnson cannot help to be drawn to Jane as they slog through the hellish battlegrounds of Italy and France. As the war draws to a close, Johnson is faced with a dilemma: how can he find happiness with Jane without bringing misery to his beloved wife Penny (Anne Baxter). As it turns out, Fate intervenes to solve Johnson's problem. Though well-acted and directed, Homecoming is just too thin to be spread out over 12 reels. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This third film version of James Hagan's stage play One Sunday Afternoon was directed by Raoul Walsh, who helmed the second adaptation (1941's Strawberry Blonde). This time around, songs have been added to accommodate the talents of Dennis Morgan and Janis Paige. Morgan stars as turn-of-the-century dentist Biff Grimes, who has spent the last ten years regretting that he hadn't married Amy Lind (Dorothy Malone), the girl of his dreams. Biff also harbors a grudge against Amy's husband Hugo Barnstead (Don DeFore), who was instrumental in getting Biff sent to prison on a fraud charge. Unbeknownst to his ever-loving wife Virginia (Janis Paige), who has stood by him through thick and thin, Biff schemes to exact an awful revenge on the two-faced Barnstead-only to discover in the nick of time that he's been better off all along because he didn't wed the avaricious Amy. Though consistently pretty to look at, One Sunday Afternoon pales in comparision to the earlier movie adaptations of the Hagan play, especially Strawberry Blonde, which had the added benefit of Jimmy Cagney in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, 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

Monsieur Beaucaire, Booth Tarkington's novel about an 18th-century French barber who poses as a swashbuckling aristocrat, was the surprising source for this Grade-A Bob Hope comedy. While in the original novel the tonsorial hero pretended to be someone he wasn't by choice, in this 1946 film Hope is coerced into posturing as a nobleman on the threat of death. It's "out of the frying pan" time here, since Hope will be a target for execution the moment he weds a Spanish princess in place of genuine noble Patric Knowles. Bob's actions will prevent a war between Spain and France, but it's likely he won't be around to celebrate the Peace. Hiding his cowardice by cracking wise at every opportunity, Hope manages to save both the day and himself; he even rescues Joseph Schildkraut, the film's nominal villain, from the guillotine. The female contingent is represented by Joan Caulfield as Bob's covetous girl friend, Marjorie Reynolds as a princess, and Hillary Brooke as a haughty schemer (who is given her just desserts in an early slapstick set-piece). Woody Allen has long expressed his affection for Monsieur Beaucaire, an affection made doubly obvious in "homage" fashion by Allen's 1975 costume comedy Love and Death. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Mitchell Leisen utilizes his stylistic pizzazz to enliven this romantic comedy that proves the old adage "opposites attract" -- but only after three or four reels. Claudette Colbert is Katherine Grant, an upper-crust fashion photographer who has a gang of admirers snapping at her heels. When her vindictive editor tries to teach her a lesson for her snobbishness by giving her an assignment photographing lower-class workers digging a tunnel, she falls for Jim Ryan (Fred MacMurray). Ryan is also attracted to her, so when she leaves her camera tripod in the tunnel, Ryan obligingly returns it to her. When Ryan returns to the job site, he is ribbed by his co-workers. Ryan loses his head and gets into a fight and is subsequently suspended from his job. Katherine, feeling guilty about Ryan being suspended from his job (and also looking for an excuse to have him around), hires him as her assistant. But in his new job, Ryan starts to put the make on one of Katherine's flirtatious models, Darlene (June Havoc). Katherine must now find a way to overcome her superior attitude and make her true feelings known to Ryan. ~ Paul Brenner, 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