Albert Herman Movies

The motivating factor of The Missing Corpse is a feud between rival newspapermen Kruger (J. Edward Bromberg) and McDonald (Paul Guilfoyle). While Kruger tries to play fair, McDonald, a mob-connected slimeball who uses his publication for blackmailing purposes, does not. Before long, McDonald is murdered and his corpse is deposited in the back of Kruger's car. With the help of his fast-talking chauffeur Hogan (Frank Jenks), Kruger tries to dispose of the body to avoid being implicated in the crime, but the body just won't stay missing (despite the film's title). The revelation of the actual killer will undoubtedly amuse fans of the Superman television series. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The title tells all in the PRC quickie Delinquent Daughters. June Carlson and Teala Loring play a couple of mature-looking teenagers named June and Sally, whose parents never have any time for them. As a result, June and Sally fall in with a bad crowd and get mixed up in illicit drinking, wild parties and petty crimes. Vivacious French-Canadian comedienne Fifi D'Orsay is cast against type as a hard-boiled roadhouse hostess, while Joe Devlin, who spent most of the 1940s playing Mussolini lookalikes, represents The Law. As was the case in most films of this ilk, Delinquent Daughters ends up in a courtroom, with a stern-voiced judge (Frank McGlynn) admonishing both the girls and their neglectful parents. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The second of two PRC vehicles for veteran featured player Frank Jenks (the first was Shake Hands with Murder), Rogues' Gallery casts Jenks as Eddie, a wisecracking photojournalist. Teaming up with intrepid girl reporter Patsy (Robin Raymond), Eddie sets out to get an exclusive interview with Reynolds (H. B. Warner), inventor of a new listening device. Before they know what's happening, our hero and heroine are knee-deep in murder. As it turns out, Eddie had only to look over his shoulder to determine the killer's identity. As PRC films go, Rogues' Gallery is bright and snappy entertainment. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the first entry in PRC's Texas Ranger series, Tex Wyatt (Dave "Tex" O'Brien) and Panhandle Perkins (Guy Wilkerson) are recruits assigned by Tex's stern father, Captain Wyatt (Forrest Taylor), to look into a series of cattle rustlings. Despite strict orders not to arrest anyone, Tex goes after nasty Pete Dawson (Bud Osborne) and is kicked off the force for disobedience. He joins the rustlers instead, working as a spy for Panhandle and ranger sergeant Jim Steele (James Newill). The three of them manage to catch the leader of the rustlers (I. Stanford Jolley), and Tex is reinstated as a ranger. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

PRC's A Yank in Libya is distinguished by some of the oldest, grainiest stock footage ever seen in a mid-1940s film. Once past this aesthetic obstacle, however, the film isn't too bad. Walter Woolf King heads the cast as American war correspondent Mike Malone, on assignment in a papier-mache facsimile of Libya. Malone helps to squash a Nazi scheme to attack a British garrison, earning the everlasting gratitude of heroine Nancy Brooks (Joan Woodbury) and British consol Herbert Forbes (H. B. Warner). Reasonably amusing comedy relief is provided by radio dialectician Parkayarkus, aka Harry Einstein (the father of present-day comic actors Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Tex Ritter's thirty-second music Western for producer Edward F. Finney -- the last twenty released by Monogram -- The Pioneers was also Ritter's perhaps most unusual. "Suggested" by James Fenimore Cooper's 1853 The Leatherstocking Tales, the Western featured both Ritter and sidekick Slim Andrews wearing buckskin jackets, the latter even completing his ensemble with a homey coonskin cap. Ritter and Andrews played trail guides saving a wagon train from an Indian attack, much to the dismay of land owner J.W. Carson (Karl Hackett). Carson, along with henchmen Wilson (George Chesebro) and Jingo (Lynton Brent), had orchestrated the raid in the first place in an attempt to scare settlers away from a valuable parcel of land. Tex, meanwhile, is falsely accused of murdering one of the settler's, Ames (Del Lawrence), whose daughter, Suzannah (Wanda McKay), Carson has been courting. Ritter narrowly escapes a lynching party to hook up with his pal Red Foley. Together with Slim and Doye O'Dell (of radio fame), they manage to save Suzannah from a fate worse and death and the settlers in general from Carson's evil machinations. Making their screen debuts, country and western performers Red Foley and Doye O'Dell "played" themselves, a rather odd choice for what was ostensibly a Fenimore Cooper adaptation. Ritter, who had just married his former co-star Dorothy Fay, left Finney in favor of a more steady paycheck from Columbia Pictures. The Pioneers, alas, was the former radio performer's final solo starring vehicle. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

After several dismal Westerns, Tex Ritter found a winner in Arizona Frontier, which was filmed in glorious locations near Prescott, Arizona. Ritter played Tex Whitedeer, a white boy reared by the Indian Grey Cloud (real-life native American sports legend Jim Thorpe). Tex's ancestry becomes an issue when as an agent for the government he is charged with deciding where the East and West branches of the railroad shall meet. Joe Lane's (Hal Price) freight company is being raided by what appears to be Indians, but Tex suspects the criminals to be white men in disguise. He is soon falsely accused by a rival army lieutenant (John Merton) of leading the marauders himself. Further investigation, however, discloses that the raiders are indeed a gang of white villains headed by Graham (Tristram Coffin), who is ultimately caught by Ritter and Grey Cloud's Indian braves. Despite his fame as an athlete, Jim Thorpe was sadly misused by Hollywood who usually saw him only in stereotypical terms. Thorpe's personal friendship with Ritter landed him the role of Grey Cloud in Arizona Frontier and he gave what was perhaps his best performance. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Speed Limited is an apt title; the speed in this quickie is limited to that of the proverbial tortoise. Ralph Graves heads the All-Hasbeen cast, playing an FBI agent. Graves spends most of the film's molasses-slow 52 minutes chasing down a vicious kidnapping ring. He also juggles with the affections of a mystery woman (Evelyn Brent) and a dizzy heiress (Claudia Dell). Filmed in 1936, Speed Limited gathered dust for four years before it was picked up for distribution by the fly-by-night Regent corporation. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After a couple of Westerns with barely any singing, former radio crooner Tex Ritter was back to form in this his fifth Monogram oater of 1940. Apart from his own and Frank Harbord's Gold Is Where You Find It, Ritter also performed Donohue's Done It Again, by Jack Frost and Johnny Lange and Lew Porter's They're Hanging Pappy in the Morning. Tex and bucolic sidekick Slim Andrews are prospectors in Boom Town, a community terrorized by a band of claim jumpers known as "The Ceegaret Gang" due to their practice of leaving the intended victim with a death threat written on cigarette paper. When Tex and Slim strike pay dirt, the former is falsely accused of being the leader of the gang. The real criminals plan to blow up the jail, but Tex and Slim escape. Seeking shelter in a cave, they discover Rawls (Forrest taylor), the only man alive able to identify the leader of the gang. Returning to town, Tex is reveals that the culprit is Prader (Stanley Price), a particularly unpleasant specimen who is in cahoots with the local county clerk. Little Sugar Dawn, a precocious child actress who had helped ruin Ritter's previous Pals of the Silver Stage with her sugary presence, returned for an encore in The Golden Trail, but her screen time was mercifully brief. (Rival Western hero Tom Keene was not so lucky; the irritating child would appear in no less than five of his Monogram oaters 1941-1942.) ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Featuring even more musical numbers than usual, this Tex Ritter Western from Monogram marked the feature film debut of the "King of Western Swing," Bob Wills, and his Texas Playboys, a group that also included Wills' brother Johnnie Lee Wills. The group performed no less than four numbers in a row -- including Wills' own Good Old Oklahoma, Lone Star Rag and {&The Bob Wills Special. Surrounding all this harmonizing, screenwriter Robert Emmett Tansey crafted a rather commonplace Western fable of Ritter and sidekick Slim Andrews rescuing a stage line owned by leading lady Terry Walker. The line is being sabotaged by rival operator (Karl Hackett). To get rid of the pesky Ritter, Hackett hires a notorious outlaw, Olin Francis. But Ritter has befriended Francis' young son and the scheme fails miserably. Ritter, whose pugilistic fervor always seemed more authentic than that of most singing cowboys, injured his knee in a fight with Hackett and production had to be suspended for two weeks, a rather expensive development for low-budget Monogram. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Tex Ritter, Monogram' low-budget answer to Republic's Gene Autry, got himself a new sidekick in rangy Nelson McDowell in the otherwise dull Roll, Wagons, Roll. Executive producer Edward F. Finney only allowed two songs -- Roll Wagon Wheels, by Dorcas Cochran and Charles Rosoff, and Oh, Suzannah, by Stephen Foster -- and the Western included enough stock footage -- some dating back to the silent era -- that it barely qualified as a new feature film. Ritter and McDowell played army scouts attempting to lead a wagon train safely through hostile territory. The Indians, as it turns out, are under the influence of an evil white fur trader, Coleman (Reed Howes). The wagon master, Grimes (Tom London), who is in cahoots with Coleman, has Ritter and McDowell fired on a trumped-up charge of conspiring with the Indians but the two friends manage to alert the cavalry and the wagon train is saved in the nick of time. Muriel Evans. Ritter's blond leading lady, also appeared in his next film, Westbound Stage (1940). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

In this mildly entertaining Tex Ritter music Western, a crooked attorney, Watkins (Harry Harvey), attempts to drive the ranchers off their land by depriving them of water. Rancher Lawson (Herbert Corthell) takes matters into his own hands and aligns himself with Tex. In retaliation, Watkins' patsies Haines (Charles King) and Sheriff Slim (Hank Worden) accuse Tex of murder but he manages to get away with the assistance of Betty Lawson (Dorothy Fay). The villains quickly seize Lawson, who is also accused of a non-existent crime. About to be lynched, Lawson is rescued in the nick of time by Tex and his sidekick, Missouri (Horace Murphy), who force Watkins to confess his misdeeds. Rollin' Westward was the third of four Westerns teaming Ritter with his future wife, Dorothy Fay. A former radio crooner, Ritter sang Westward, by Ted Choate and Bert Pellis; Back in '67, by Johnny Lange and Lew Porter, and Out in the Golden West, by Rudy Sooter. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi