Charles Kenyon Movies

In this low-budget adventure, a gangster and his spouse are stranded on a lonely tropical island. They soon discover that a band of castaway Nazis also inhabit the place. Trouble erupts when uranium is discovered. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A scientist discovers that he can live forever by receiving gland transplants every ten years. Unfortunately, the unwilling donors must be killed for him to survive, something that doesn't bother the scientist until he falls in love. The girl, innocent of his grisly secret, falls for him too. Unfortunately, he is due for a new transplant and the endocrinologist who has been doing the operation gets a guilty conscience and refuses to help him any more. Desperate to remain young, the scientist finds someone else. This time though, Scotland Yard gets wind and begins investigating. The girl finds out, and remains true to the scientist causing him to abandon his mad quest for eternal youth. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

It Comes Up Love was typical of teenaged songstress Gloria Jean's Universal vehicles: good songs and a strong cast squandered on a low-budget B effort. Jean and Mary Lou Harrington play Victoria and Constance, the precocious daughters of big-city businessman Tom Peabody (Ian Hunter). Long separated from his girls, who've been raised in the country, the widowed Peabody brings them to live with him in New York. Hopelessly out of step with her new "hep" friends, Victoria is introduced to the pleasures of swing music by brash Manhattanite Ricky (Donald O'Connor, teamed with Gloria Jean for the third time). Meanwhile, the girls try to expedite the romance between their father and pretty secretary Edo Ives (Louise Allbritton). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The notoriously temperamental Miriam Hopkins is ideally cast as equally contentious theatrical prima donna Mrs. Leslie Carter in The Lady With Red Hair. As rapidly paced as any Warner Bros. gangster picture, the film charts Caroline Carter's rise to fame on Broadway through the auspices of impresario David Belasco (Claude Rains). The screenwriters take great pains to cast Carter in a sympathetic light, suggesting that she turned to the lucrative world of the theater to regain custody of her son (Johnnie Russell), won by her husband in their acrimonious 1889 divorce settlement. Though at first she meets with nothing but failure, our heroine perseveres, and by 1904 she is the idol of millions throughout the world. Along the way, she marries visionary producer Lou Payne (Richard Ainley), but by film's end she is reunited with her mentor Belasco. A young Cornel Wilde makes his screen debut as an aspiring actor in a boarding-house sequence. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this drama, a former college football hero and his college sweetheart get married. Marital turmoil ensues as her criminal law practice soars while he cannot get his career as an architect off the ground. They separate, and the man begins making extra money by singing in a nightclub. When he is unjustly accused of murder, it is his estranged wife who saves him. A tearful reconciliation ensues, but can the marriage be saved? Songs include the Oscar nominated "A Mist Over the Moon", "That Week in Paris", "Home in Your Arms", "When You're in the Room", "Sky High", "Naughty, Naughty", and "Victory Song". ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A handful of German soldiers readjust to civilian life in the bitter wake of World War I in this follow-up to the classic All Quiet On The Western Front, which like the first film was based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque. After the signing of the armistice, Capt. Von Hagen (John Emery) dismisses what is left of his troops, who march home to an uncertain future. Tjaden (Slim Summerville) finds himself helping to fend off rioters demanding food from a shop owned by the town's mayor (Etienne Girardot); the grateful mayor in turn offers Tjaden his daughter's hand in marriage. Weil (Larry Blake) becomes a political activist and finds himself acting as a spokesman for another group of citizens demanding precious food; this time, Weil is shot by troops led by his former commander, Capt. Von Hagen. Willy (Andy Devine) visits his former schoolteacher, who presents him with an ironic gift -- a toy gun he took away from Willy when he was a boy. And Albert (Maurice Murphy) comes home to discover his fiancée has wed another man, a man who avoided the war but found ways to profit from it at home. In a fit of rage, Albert kills the man, and finds himself on trial for his life. Combining a strong anti-war message with prescient warnings about the dangers of the rising Nazi regime, The Road Back was intended to be a powerful and controversial picture, and Universal entrusted it to their finest director, James Whale. However, by the time shooting was completed, new management had taken over the studio, and Nazi officials began applying pressure to Universal (as well as members of the film's cast) to delete the material critical of the Nazis, threatening to scuttle European distribution of future Universal product if their demands were not met. Universal bowed to their wishes, and the film was partially reshot with another director, and the remainder extensively re-edited, leaving the final product a pale shadow of what Whale had originally intended. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Bette Davis plays a facial cream heiress in this middling comedy, which Warner Bros. filmed partially in Florida. Mistaking George Brent for a fellow socialite, Bette quickly marries him only to discover that he is a penniless reporter searching for peace and quiet to finish the great American novel. As it turns out, Bette is not who she claims to be, either, but a waitress hired by the perfume company as a sort of advertising gimmick. Fearing she may lose George if he learns the truth, she goes out of her way to hide her true identity, to the point where the exasperated young man finds solace with Carol Hughes, a true blue blood. Everything works out in the end, of course, and the couple is reunited. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

In this bedroom farce, an ex-wife overhears her former hubby's new wife and her lover planning a tryst for the weekend while the husband is away on a business trip. Hoping that the husband will catch them in the act, the ex creates an elaborate scheme whereby the lovers' plans are foiled and they must spend the weekend at her house. She then arranges for her former husband to drop by so he can see for himself the kind of hussy he married. Unfortunately the whole plot goes terribly awry when two fugitive jewel thieves wind up stranded at the ex-wife's house too. Things get really mixed up when the ex-wife discovers that she is in love with the second-wife's lover. Meanwhile second wifey recovers the jewels from the thieves just as her hubby returns. He gets there just as his ex-wife and the lover are married. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Max Reinhardt's legendary Hollywood Bowl production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was transferred to the screen by Warner Bros. in 1935. Like most of Shakespeare's comedies, the story contains several seemingly unrelated plotlines, all tied together by a single unifying event, in this instance the impending wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. One story thread concerns the mistaken-identity romances of four young Athenians; another involves a group of "rude mechanicals" who plan to stage a production of "Pyramus and Thisbe" in honor of the wedding; and third plot strand is motivated by the mischievous misbehavior of invisible fairies Oberon, Titania, and Puck. While one of the members of Reinhardt's original stage cast, Olivia De Havilland (Hermia) was retained for the film version, the remainder of the roles went to Warners' ever-reliable stock company. Some of the casting is inspired: James Cagney is brilliant as vainglorious amateur thespian Bottom, while Joe E. Brown is ideal as the reluctant female impersonator Flute. As the four lovers, De Havilland and Jean Muir far outshine the smirking and simpering Dick Powell and Ross Alexander. In the dominion of the fairies, Mickey Rooney is a bit too precious as Puck, but Anita Louise is a lovely Titania and Victor Jory a suitably menacing Oberon (his opening line "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!" still sends shivers down our spines). Cagney and Brown's fellow "mechanicals" are an odd mixture of the sublime (Frank McHugh) and the just plain silly (Hugh Herbert). While the performances and direction (by Reinhardt and William Dieterle) are uneven, the art direction and special effects (especially the nocturnal dance of the fairies) are breathtakingly beautiful. Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" incidental music is masterfully orchestrated by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, while the cinematography by Hal Mohr earned the first write-in Academy Award in Hollywood history (Mohr had not been nominated due to hostilities arising from a recent industry strike). Considered a brave failure at the time of its first release, on a purely visual level A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the more satisfying Shakespearean cinemadaptations of Hollywood's golden age. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

All but forgotten today, Warner Bros.' The Firebird was based on a once-popular stage mystery by Lajos Zilhany. Prohibited from seeing her actor sweetheart Herman Brandt (Ricardo Cortez) by her tyrannical parents, sweet young Vienesse lass Mariette (Anita Louise) defies authority by regularly visiting Brandt's downstairs apartment. The lovers' signal is a song called "The Firebird," which Brandt sings whenever he wants Mariette to visit him. When the actor is murdered, poor Mariette and her parents are prime suspects. But the truth is a bit more complicated than that, involving as it does a haughty aristocrat (Veree Teasdale), a powerful diplomat (Lionel Atwill) and a most unusual "candid camera" device. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The second of three Kay Francis films in which the star was cast as a dedicated lady physician, Doctor Monica was adapted from a Polish play by Marja Morozowicz Szezepkowska. Francis plays obstetrician Dr. Monica, whose husband John (Warren William) cheats on her with young Mary (Jean Muir). When Mary becomes pregnant, the selfless Monica befriends her, provides her with advice, and delivers the baby. The good doctor even offers to give up John so that the child will have a father. But after giving birth, Mary calmly tells John to go back to Monica -- even though there's every indication that he'll never give up his philandering ways! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this drama, the owner of a Chicago meat-packing company falls in love with a beautiful opera singer. Unfortunately, his selfish, social climbing wife refuses to divorce him. He continues the affair on the sly. As his lover's career begins to ascend, so does his business when he becomes the leader of a meat packing trust that sends cured beef to the troops fighting in Cuba. Later, the newly elected president, Theodore Roosevelt indicts him, but then the charges are dropped. By this time, the opera singer has become a star. Her lover too tries to find success, but instead, his business ends up going bankrupt. He then leaves for Greece. When his lover finds out, she too drops everything and follows him. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In her first film under contract to Warner Bros., Kay Francis plays Lois Ames, a magazine editor whose husband Fred (Kenneth Thomson) is too busy with his polo friends to pay her much attention. But when her secretary (Charlotte Merriam) suddenly leaves, Lois hires handsome Tom Sheridan (David Manners), who has arrived to demonstrate a new rowing machine. Sharing work brings boss and employee closer together and they soon fall in love. Tom's dumbbell fiancée, Ruth (Una Merkel), does not take this development very well and threatens to tell Fred. But the latter is discovered making love to the uppity Ann Le Maire (Claire Dodd) and Lois is able to obtain a divorce. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi