William Le Baron Movies

Eternal movie juvenile Eric Linden offers perhaps the best performance of his career in RKO's Are These Our Children? In this pioneering Juvenile Delinquent drama, Linden plays a know-it-all high school dropout who falls in with a bad crowd. While burglarizing the delicatessen of a family friend (William Orlamond), Linden accidentally kills the old man. No one can connect him with the crime, and for a while Linden privately gloats as he reads newspaper stories of the killing. But one of his friends (Ben Alexander), who was in on the robbery, spills the beans, and Linden winds up going to the chair. The true impact of Are These Our Children? is Linden's performance as an emotionally immature youth who cannot fully fathom the seriousness of his dilemma: he tries to jolly himself into believing that he hasn't killed anyone, and as he sits on death row he continues displaying a childish bravado, as if expecting to wake up from a bad dream at any moment. Despite its age and the corniness of some of the dialogue, Are These Our Children? is an unforgettably powerful film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A typical pre-code era comedy, Bachelor Apartment was the creation of its leading man, silent screen matinee-idol Lowell Sherman. He plays Wayne Carter, a Park Avenue roué, whose dalliances with a series of women are beginning to catch up with him. Enter a brunette and rather drab Irene Dunne searching for her wayward sister (Claudia Dell). Sherman falls like a ton of bricks for the no-nonsense and seemingly unresponsive Dunne, whom he hires as his executive secretary. For unexplained reasons, Dunne falls in love with her whimsical boss as well and after Sherman shows signs of shaping up, they embrace for a happy ending. Daring in its day, Bachelor Apartment is not really worth a second look except for a next-to-final glimpse of silent screen femme fatale Mae Murray. Playing Sherman's most ardent conquest -- who, as the suave playboy explains, "might commit a sin but never a faux pas" -- Murray has to be seen to be believed. Valiantly attempting to display her trademark bee-stung countenance while at the same time deliver a series of hoary lines, the still svelte Murray -- who is introduced to the strains of an ersatz Merry Widow Waltz lest we forgot -- offers an overripe performance that all but ended her screen career. Sherman used her once more -- in High Stakes, another frothy comedy -- but the aging Murray was obviously not talkie material. Bachelor Apartment offers a glimpse of yet another faded silent screen star, the mustachioed Norman Kerry of Phantom of the Opera fame, here playing the minor role of a theatrical wolf. Like Murray (and Lowell Sherman himself), Kerry's looks and mannerisms belonged to a bygone era. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Originally titled It Ain't No Sin until the censors prevailed, then St. Louis Woman and Belle of New Orleans, until complaints were registered from those two communities, Belle of the Nineties was Mae West's first post-Production Code film. West is cast as cabaret entertainer Ruby Carter, plying her trade along the Mississippi. Having no trouble surviving on her own terms in a man's world, Ruby fends off the unwarranted attentions of a steady stream of libidinous males, reserving her affections for a muscular boxer called The Tiger Kid (Roger Pryor). In keeping with the star's casual liberality, a number of black entertainers and athletes are given ample opportunities in this film, notably Duke Ellington and His Orchestra. The surest sign that the Code had "tamed" West a bit is the fact that she actually marries the hero at film's end. The musical highlights include West's unforgettable rendition of "My Old Flame". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After briefly splitting for a brace of unsuccessful solo ventures, the comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey were reunited in one of their best vehicles, Caught Plastered. Bert and Bob are cast as itinerant vaudevillians Tommy and Egbert, who find themselves stranded in a small Midwestern town. Here they befriend Mrs. Talley (Lucy Beaumont), the sweet old proprietor of a near-bankrupt drugstore. To prevent slimy medicinal wholesaler Harry Waters (Jason Robards Sr.) from buying the store at a ridiculously low sum, the boys decide to help Mrs. Talley drum up business. They set up a soda fountain, novelties counter, book shop and even a radio station ("Y.M.I Broadcasting") in the store, and soon business is booming. But Waters, who secretly moonlights as a bootlegger, sabotages the enterprise by spiking the store's lemon syrup with booze. Things look bad when Tommy's sweetheart Peggy (Dorothy Lee) -- who happens to be the daughter of the police chief -- gets roaring drunk on the "syrup," but our heroes manage to save Mrs. Talley's store and expose Waters as a crook in one fell swoop. Though Caught Plastered has the usual quota of corny Wheeler-and-Woolsey repartee, it also has more "heart" than usual, especially the wonderful scene wherein the boys cheer up Mrs. Talley by performing their gloriously awful vaudeville act. The film re-established the team's box-office popularity, ending up as RKO Radio's biggest moneymaker of 1931. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Consolation Marriage (British title: Marriage in Haste) stars Irene Dunne and Pat O'Brien. When hero and heroine are jilted by their respective sweethearts Lester Vail and Myrna Loy, they marry each other on the rebound. Having already been burned around the heart, Dunne and O'Brien agree that theirs will be a marriage in name only, with no romance in the equation. Only when they're disastrously reunited with their former lovers do Dunne and O'Brien realize how deeply in love they truly are, and always have been. Surprisingly, though Pat O'Brien and Myrna Loy would enjoy long Hollywood careers, they would not work together on-screen again until they were cast as Burt Reynolds's parents in the 1979 comedy The End. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Believe it or not, Betty Bronson, who starred in the title role of Peter Pan, was the first choice to play jazz baby Kittens Westcourt, the part which eventually went to Clara Bow. Kittens was the second lead, but Bow turned her into a sympathetic character and stole the show from the film's star, Alice Joyce. This society drama, based on the Broadway hit by Edgar Selwyn, probably wouldn't have been much without Bow and Joyce, but they raised it above soap opera level and helped make it one of the defining films of the 1920s. Ethel Westcourt (Joyce) is a very nice, still-lovely society matron whose womanizing husband, Hugh (Norman Trevor), is keeping a mistress, Irma (Elsie Lawson). Ethel's daughter, Kittens (Bow), takes after her father and begins carrying on with Jerry Naughton (Conway Tearle), a man about town. Ethel finds out about all this and decides to fight fire with fire. She becomes a bit jazzy herself and steals Naughton away from her daughter. The family has an emotional confrontation in Naughton's apartments. Although Hugh and Kittens eventually decide to reconcile with Ethel, she takes off for Europe and leaves them behind -- quite an independent way for a female character to end a film in 1926. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Hoping to repeat the success of its 1929 musical spectacular Rio Rita, RKO Radio reteamed leading lady Bebe Daniels and the comedy team of Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey for the equally lavish Dixiana. Set in antebellum Louisiana, the film casts Daniels as the title character, a lovely and charming circus entertainer. Dixiana is loved by Carl Van Horn (Everett Marshall), the son of plantation owner Cornelius Van Horn (Joseph Cawthorn). Though Cornelius approves of his son's choice, his imperious wife (Jobyna Howland) orders Dixiana out of her house, much to the delight of crooked gambler Royal Montague (Ralf Harolde), who has his own wicked designs on our heroine. Fired by her circus, Dixiana is forced to go to work at Montague's gambling establishment, and it is here that the love-struck Carl catches up with her. Hoping to bankrupt Carl and force him to relinquish the deed to the Van Doren plantation, Montague engages the young man in a crooked card game, but Dixiana turns the tables on the villain. Elected queen of the Mardi Gras, Dixiana is kidnapped by the disgruntled Montague, who intends to goad Carl into a duel, knowing full well that the boy's guns have been tampered with. Dixiana is the film debut of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who performs a "stair dance" routine during the Technicolor Mardi Gras finale. Incidentally, the film's final color reels were for many years considered lost, with only the black-and-white scenes remaining: thus, many TV prints of Dixiana come to an end long before the plot has been resolved. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Having built up the comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey into a surefire box-office draw, RKO Radio was possessed with the notion to briefly split up the team, showcasing each actor in his own separate vehicle in hopes of doubling their profitability. Woolsey's first (and last) solo effort was Everything's Rosie, which though ostensibly a screen original by Al Boasberg was actually a rip-off of the 1923 W. C. Fields stage vehicle Poppy (in which Woolsey had played a featured role). The bespectacled, cigar-chomping comedian is cast as Dr. J. Dockweiler Droop, a crooked-yet-lovable sideshow medicine man. Rescuing a two-year old urchin named Rosie from her harridan of a mother, Doc Droop raises the girl as his own. By the time she reaches maturity, the lovely Rosie (played as an adult by Anita Louise) is every bit the sharpster that her "father" is. When Rosie falls in love with wealthy Billy Lowe (John Darrow), Doc tries his best to make a good impression at a party given by Billy's mother, only to end up in the calaboose when he's accused of theft. Realizing that he's a millstone around Rosie's neck, Doc quietly shuffles out of her life, but not before smoothing the romantic path for the hero and heroine. Funny though he was in the Wheeler and Woolsey comedies, Bob Woolsey simply wasn't a strong enough performer to carry a picture by himself -- though in all fairness, it should be noted that Bert Wheeler fared almost as badly in his solo RKO effort, Too Many Cooks. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Framed represented the return of Evelyn Brent to her old home studio of FBO, which by 1930 had been rechristened RKO Radio. Brent plays Rose Manning, a sexy nightclub hostess who hopes to avenge the murder of her father. Holding the local police chief responsible (the chief is played by William Holden -- but not that William Holden), Rose sets about to seduce and compromise the chief's patrolman son Jimmy McArthur (Regis Toomey), only to fall in love with the boy. To save Jimmy from being put "on the spot," Rose double-crosses her crooked cohort, bootlegger Chuck Gaines (Ralf Harolde). Both contemporary critics and later film historians noted that Framed borrowed freely from such earlier "slice of life" crime mellers as Broadway (which also starred Evelyn Brent) and The Racket. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 1930 George & Ira Gershwin musical smash Girl Crazy was refashioned for the screen in 1932 as a vehicle for comedians Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. Most of the original play's romantic plotline has been jettisoned, shifting the emphasis to cabdriver Jimmy Deegan (Wheeler) and his larcenous passengers Slick and Kate Foster (Woolsey and Kitty Kelly). After a tortuous cross-country trip, Jimmy, Slick and Kate end up in Custerville, Arizona, where each of the new sheriffs is routinely bumped off by local reprobate Lank Sanders (Stanley Fields) and his gang. When the newly-opened nightclub of city slicker Danny Churchill (Eddie Quillan) proves successful thanks to the singing talents of Kate Foster, Lank Sanders, owner of a rival cabaret, plots to run for the sheriff's office so that he can close down Danny's establishment. Hoping to stave off this eventuality, Danny conspires with Slick to nominate Jimmy as sheriff (Slick figures that a dead man won't be able to collect his gargantuan cab fare!). With the help of his tagalong kid-sister Tessie (Mitzi Green), Jimmy wins the election then has to run for his life when Lank comes a-gunnin' for him. Ending up south of the border in Mexico, Jimmy and Slick manage to get the drop on Lank, and all's right with the world. Contrary to previously published reports, only three of the original Gershwin songs were retained for the film version of Girl Crazy: I Got Rhythm, performed Ethel Merman-style by Kitty Kelly; But Not for Me, rushed through by nominal romantic leads Eddie Quillan and Arline Judge, then parodied by juvenile impressionist Mitzi Green (who does quickie imitations of George Arliss, Bing Crosby and Edna May Oliver); and Bidin' My Time, used as background music for an opening scene in which the camera slowly pans across the tombstones of Custerville's former sheriffs. Bert Wheeler and his perennial screen vis-a-vis Dorothy Lee deliver the film's best number, You've Got What Gets Me, originally written by the Gershwins for their 1927 production Funny Face. Long unavailable thanks to the 1943 MGM remake, Girl Crazy was resurrected in the late 1970s; though it proved a disappointment for Gershwin purists, it won a whole new fan following for Wheeler & Woolsey, who are very funny throughout. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charismatic Polish opera singer Jan Kiepura made his Hollywood debut in Give Us This Night. His thick Slavic accent notwithstanding, Kiepura is cast as Italian fisherman Antonio. In the habit of singing as he fishes, Antonio catches the attention of opera diva Maria (played by real-life operatic soprano Gladys Swarthout, in her second film appearance). Our hero ends up replacing Maria's burned-out leading man Forcellini (Alan Mowbray), leading to a series of duets and, naturally, romance. It was the same formula that MGM would later deploy for their Mario Lanza pictures of the 1950s, except that Lanza was a more persuasive screen presence than Kiepura. The highlight of Give Us This Night is the climactic operatic adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed with the full cooperation of the Golden Gloves Tournament Association, this Paramount programmer stars Richard Denning as promising pugilist Bill Crane. Though tempted to sign up with crooked Joe Taggerty (J. Carrol Naish) for a series of fixed bouts, Crane is saved from himself by sportswriter Wally Matson (Robert Paige), the organizer of the local Golden Gloves program. Taggerty tries to get even by pitting the amateur Crane against a seasoned professional, but to no avail. James Cagney's sister Jeanne Cagney is an appealing heroine, while Crane's duplicitious ring opponent is played by Robert Ryan in his first screen appearance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide