Norman Krasna Movies

A young football hero learns valuable life lessons on the way to becoming a pro in this sports drama. Tommy is a promising player who is working his way through college. He quickly becomes a star on the campus grid-iron, but when he gets entangled in a stock swindle, he nearly destroys his budding career. Fortunately, Tommy smartens up and pays back all of the money he gained when he inadvertently cheated some innocent investors. The USC national championship football team of 1931 appears in the film. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this romantic drama, a woman inadvertently assists a con artist in his scheme to rob a store manager and ends up in prison. After helping to put out the very fire she herself started in the prison shop, the woman receives early parole and heads back to the con-artist. She then returns to the store manager to make peace, but finds herself falling in love with him. Unfortunately their affair is interrupted when the manager's wife is also sprung from prison. The girl immediately bows out, but when the wife tells him that she divorced him in prison, the girl comes running back, and happiness ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Ginger Rogers and Francis Lederer share equal billing -- and near-equal screen time -- in this amiable RKO programmer. Lederer plays Karel Novak, an incredibly naïve Czech immigrant who is taken under the wing of streetwise New York chorus girl Sylvia Dennis (Rogers). With the help of lovable cop-on-the-beat Murphy (J. Farrel McDonald), Sylvia hides Karel from the immigration authorities and ultimately falls in love with him. In addition to Karel's illegal-alien status, the plot is complicated by a crooked lawyer (Arthur Hohl) and a group of well-meaning welfare workers who endeavor to place Sylvia's kid brother Frank (Jimmy Butler) in a foster home. Usually cast in insincere roles, Francis Lederer is at his most sympathetic and likable in Romance in Manhattan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After nearly a decade of nominal "leading lady" roles, Carole Lombard landed her first genuine starring vehicle with Hands Across the Table. Reasoning that the way to a man's heart is through his cuticles, Regi Allen (Carole Lombard) takes a job as a manicurist at a fancy barbershop, unabashedly admitting that she hopes to use this position to snag a rich husband. Sure enough, Regi's charms prove irresistable to Allen Macklyn (Ralph Bellamy) a wealthy and charming invalid, who knows that the girl is a golddigger but doesn't care. The other man in Regi's life is Theodore "Ted" Drew III (Fred MacMurray), who though born into a wealthy family is stone broke, and on the verge of marrying a rich debutante (Astrid Allwyn) to replenish his lost fortune. Hoping to briefly escape this fate and his other financial problems, Theodore hides out in Regi's apartment. It is, of course, a platonic relationship: Having been burned in the past, Regi doesn't want to get romantically entangled with a pauper, while Ted is already promised to someone else. But, as is often the case in 1930s comedies, things don't quite turn out the way that either Regi or Ted expect. Full of delightful, unexpected touches, Hands Across the Table proved to be a major boost for Carole Lombard's career, and didn't exactly do any harm to up-and-coming Fred MacMurray either. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Fritz Lang's first American film is a vigorous and perceptive indictment of mob law, starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney. Katherine (Sidney) leaves her boyfriend, Joe Wilson (Tracy), behind in their Midwestern hometown when she takes a job in another city. Joe is a decent, hard-working soul, who wants to save up to buy a gas station and looks forward to the future when he and Katherine can get married. A year later, Joe is traveling to meet Katherine so that they can be married. Driving through a small town, Joe is stopped by a deputy sheriff waving a shotgun. Apparently there has been a kidnapping, and the fact that Joe has peanuts in his pocket circumstantially incriminates him in the crime. Joe is arrested and jailed. As Joe sits in his jail cell, the local townspeople begin to talk and whisper and spread rumors. Finally, a lynch mob forms and heads toward the jail. The mob tries to storm the jail and frustrated over their inability to penetrate the prison walls, they set the jail on fire. Joe barely manages to escape ("I could smell myself burning"), but the mob thinks that Joe has been burned to death. Behind the scenes, and with the help of his brothers, Joe tries to rig the verdict in the impending trial of the 22 vigilantes. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

The Big City is an improbable urban melodrama which takes place during a "taxi war" between honest independent cabdrivers and graft-ridden taxi monopolies. Looking for a scapegoat for a recent gangland bombing, crooked city officials deport the foreign wife (Luise Rainer) of rabble-rousing cabbie Spencer Tracy. Desperately seeking a reprieve for his wife, Tracy goes to the mayor, who is in the process of addressing a banquet of retired boxers. The ex-pugilists take Tracy's side, head down to the wharf to pummel the gangsters responsible for the bombing, and rescue Tracy's wife from being shipped back to her homeland. To avoid confusion with a 1948 MGM film of the same name, the 1937 Big City has been retitled Skyscraper Wilderness for television. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Nancy, a jilted bride-to-be, is played by Janet Gaynor in one of her last starring films. The three loves are novelist Robert Montgomery, publisher Franchot Tone, and gormless nebbish Grady Sutton (Sonny TUFTS??). In New York to find her runaway groom Sutton, Janet runs across Montgomery and Tone. More selective since her unfortunate near-wedding, Gaynor decides to have the two swains demonstrate their worthiness, leading to a brief (and chaste) menage-a-trois in which all three are under the same roof. Three Loves Has Nancy is a sedate screwball comedy, carried completely by the charm of its stars. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ginger Rogers slipped off her dancing shoes to play one of her best comic roles as Polly Parish, a salesgirl at a large department store. Single and with no steady beau, Polly leads a quiet life until she discovers a baby left at her doorstep. While puzzled by this development, Polly feels for the child and decides to adopt the baby. However, most of her co-workers raise their eyebrows at Polly's new status as a single mother, believing that she's actually the mother. The owner of the store where Polly works, J.B. Merlin (Charles Coburn), is taken aback, and his son David (David Niven), who has a reputation as a ladies' man, is dispatched to lead Polly back to the straight-and-narrow. Bachelor Mother was remade in 1956 as Bundle of Joy, a vehicle for then-married Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The Devil and Miss Jones is a social comedy with left-wing undertones. John P. Merrick (Charles Coburn), the world's richest man, gets word that someone is trying to unionize a department store that he owns. To thwart this blatant act of democracy, Merrick changes his name and takes a menial job at the store, the better to catch the union activists without detection. Once he himself is subjected to the humiliating treatment afforded his employees, Merrick starts to wise up -- and soften up. As things develop, it is Merrick himself who spearheads the union movement after discovering how duplicitous his hand-picked executives can be. The film also introduces Jean Arthur and Robert Cummings as fellow employees who fall in love before fadeout time. Keeping with the film's insistence upon equal treatment for everyone, Merrick himself is permitted a romance in the person of Elizabeth Ellis (Spring Byington). The Devil and Miss Jones was written by Norman Krasna and directed by Sam Wood. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In Hitchcock's rare foray into comedy (courtesy of a wittily risque script by Norman Krasna), Mr. Smith (Robert Montgomery) makes the mistake of telling Mrs. Smith (Carole Lombard) that if he had it to do all over again, he might not have married her. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Smith discovers that his marriage is invalid. Rather than say goodbye, the newly aroused Mr. Smith attempts to entice Mrs. Smith into the bedroom, thrilled at the prospect of an "illicit" romance. But Mrs. Smith has also been apprised that her marriage is no more--and, remembering Mr. Smith's "second thoughts", she kicks him out of the house. This comedy of misunderstanding rolls merrily along from this point onward, accommodating an uproarious scene at a fancy restaurant, a near-liaison between Mrs. Smith and new beau Gene Raymond on the World's Fair parachute jump, and a farcical denouement at a ski lodge, with Mrs. Smith's conjugally crossed skis symbolizing the carnal pleasures ahead for both Mr. and Mrs. Smith. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A princess finds love with a regular American Joe in this patriotic romantic comedy. A European diplomat (Charles Coburn) is named an ambassador to the U.S., and when he relocates to Washington D.C., he's accompanied by his niece, Princess Maria (Olivia de Havilland). Maria's uncle hopes that she'll meet an eligible American bachelor during her visit, since potential husbands are in short supply at home. Maria tires of her uncle's attempts at matchmaking, and when he suggests that she take a side trip to San Francisco, she leaps at the chance. However, Maria has a fear of flying, and when she's given tranquilizers to settle her nerves, she passes out in mid-flight. Maria is down for the count when bad weather forces the flight to return to Washington, and pilot Eddie O'Rourke (Robert Cummings) volunteers to put her up for the night. When Maria comes to, she's struck by Eddie's decency and charm, and it's love at first sight for them. However, Maria's uncle was hoping for someone higher up the social ladder than a pilot, and the lovebirds have an uphill battle getting him to consent to their wedding. No one seems sure if it's actually President Franklin D. Roosevelt appearing in the film's final scenes or just an impersonator, but apparently FDR's dog Fala did actually play himself. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide