Sam Nelson Movies

The launching pad for Billy Wilder's comedy classic was a rusty old German farce, Fanfares of Love, whose two main characters were male musicians so desperate to get a job that they disguise themselves as women and play with an all-girl band in gangster-dominated 1929 Chicago. In this version, musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) lose their jobs when a speakeasy owned by mob boss Spats Columbo (George Raft) is raided by prohibition agent Mulligan (Pat O'Brien). Several weeks later, on February 14th, Joe and Jerry get a job perfroming in Urbana and end up witnessing a gangland massacre in a parking garage. Fearing that they will be next on the mobsters' hit lists, Joe devises an ingenious plan for disguising their identities. Soon they are all dolled up and performing as Josephine and Daphne in Sweet Sue's all-girl orchestra. En route to Florida by train with Sweet Sue's band, the boys (girls?) make the acquaintance of Sue's lead singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe, in what may be her best performance). Joe and Jerry immediately fall in love, though of course their new feminine identities prevent them from acting on their desires. Still, they are determined to woo her, and they enact an elaborate series of gender-bending ruses complicated by the fact that flirtatious millionaire Osgood Fielding (Joe E. Brown) has fallen in love with "Daphne." The plot gets even thicker when Spats Columbo and his boys show up in Florida. Nominated for several Oscars, Some Like It Hot ended up the biggest moneymaking comedy up to 1959. Full of hilarious set pieces and movie in-jokes, it has not tarnished with time and in fact seems to get better with each passing year, as its cross-dressing humor keeps it only more and more up-to-date. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The highly variable Tab Hunter delivers his best film performance in the grim western Gunman's Walk. Hunter plays Ed Hackett, the son of gunslinger-turned-land baron Lee Hackett (Van Heflin). Out of respect (and fear) of his father, the hotheaded Ed is given a wide berth by the resentful townsfolk. The elder Hackett doesn't make things any better when he tacitly approves of Ed's violent behavior, all the while giving short shrift to his law-abiding younger son Davy (James Darren). Inevitably, Ed goes one step too far, forcing his father to make a devastating decision. Kathryn Grant, future wife of Bing Crosby, registers well as the half-breed girl with whom Davy falls in love. Gunman's Walk is seen at a disadvantage on television; director Phil Karlson's inventive use of the CinemaScope lens will be largely lost on a 22-inch screen. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Rudolphe Maté directs the western The Violent Men, based on the novel Rough Company by Donald Hamilton. Edward G. Robinson plays Lee Wilkison, the bad-guy owner of Anchor Ranch with a plan to buy out all the smaller ranches to gain control of the valley. Barbara Stanwyck plays his wife Martha, who secretly has an affair with his brother, Cole (Brian Keith). Meanwhile, Cole hangs out with hired gun Wade Matlock (Richard Jaeckel) and his other girlfriend, Elena (Lita Milan). Glenn Ford plays ex-military man John Parrish, the good-guy small ranch owner who is willing to sell until one of his ranch hands turns up dead. He fights back with a vengance using his military training and sets his eyes on Wilkison's daughter, Judith (Dianne Foster). ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men is a roman à clef inspired by the career of Louisiana governor Huey Long. Broderick Crawford won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Willie Stark, a backwoods Southern lawyer who wins the hearts of his constituents by bucking the corrupt state government. Journalist Jack Burden (John Ireland) is impressed by Willie's seeming sincerity, and aids Stark on the road to political power. Once he's reached the governor's mansion, however, Willie proves himself to be as dishonest and despotic as the crooks whom he's replaced. He also cheats shamelessly on his wife with both his campaign manager (Mercedes McCambridge, another Oscar winner) and with Anne Stanton (Joanne Dru), the sister of idealistic doctor Adam Stanton (Sheppard Strudwick). Fiercely protective of his power, Willie organizes a fascistic police force and arranges for "accidents" to befall those who oppose him; even so, he retains the love of the voters by lowering the poverty level, improving the school system, and financing building projects. Even when Willie all but orchestrates the suicide of Anne's uncle, a highly respected judge (Raymond Greenleaf), those closest to him are unable to escape his power and the charismatic hold he has over people. Stockton, CA, stands in for the unnamed state capitol where most of the film's action occurs. In addition to its Oscars for Crawford and McCambridge, All the King's Men won the Best Picture prize. Warren's novel would later be adapted into a stage play, a TV special, and even an opera. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A precursor of sorts to the 1999 Julia Roberts vehicle The Runaway Bride, It Had to Be You stars Ginger Rogers as Victoria Stafford, a wealthy girl who has been engaged three times, and has three times chickened out at the altar just before saying "I do." Determined to wed her fourth fiancé, Oliver H.P. Harrington (Ron Randell), Victoria is on the verge of saying those two little words, when suddenly she sees the vision of her "dream lover," George (Cornel Wilde), whom she has envisioned since childhood. Ultimately our heroine meets an in-the-flesh lookalike for her imaginary sweetheart: a no-nonsense fireman named Johnny Blaine, who indeed was a childhood friend of Victoria's. So, do wedding bells finally ring? Not on your life. Though Victoria is ga-ga over Johnny, the feeling is far from mutual -- and besides, there are several reels to go before the end title. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Barbara Stanwyck shines in her second portrayal of a showgirl in less than two years (the first was in Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire in 1941). In Lady of Burlesque -- which, at times, has a Hawksian edge to the dialogue -- she portrays Dixie Daisy, a striptease artist at a Broadway theater in New York at the end of the 1930s. In the course of fending off the unwanted advances of brash comic Biff Brannigan (Michael O'Shea), with whom she is teamed in several numbers, and staying clear of the dressing room feuds of her fellow dancers -- including a very nasty dispute between Dolly Baxter (Gloria Dickson) and Lolita La Verne (Victoria Faust) -- she finds herself up to her neck in trouble when one of the women is found strangled with her own G-string. The police don't know what to make of it, especially as the victim was already dying of a fatal dose of poison, which means that there are two murderers somewhere in the theater; and when a second woman turns up strangled inside a prop that Dixie was supposed to be hiding in onstage, she looks like a good suspect. Between the backstage comedy-drama, and the songs, dances, and on-stage comic routines, with the police breathing down both their necks at different times, Dixie and Biff manage to solve the mystery and find each other in this briskly paced, funny, yet amazingly gritty comedy-thriller. Lady of Burlesque was allowed to fall out of copyright in 1971, and since then it was seen in substandard editions until the May 2001 DVD release from Image Entertainment. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

A courageous cowboy dons the guise of a Texas Ranger to keep murderous cattle rustlers from harming a beautiful young woman, the daughter of the dead lawman whose clothes he wears. This western follows his adventures. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The second of Columbia Pictures' four "Wild Bill Saunders" westerns, Pioneers of the Frontier features William Elliott as the title character who discovers that his uncle Mort (Lafe McKee) has been murdered by an unscrupulous ranch foreman, Matt Brawley (Dick Curtis). But before he can right Brawley's wrongs, Wild Bill is arrested for a murder he didn't commit. Sidekick Cannonball Sims (Dub Taylor) and disgruntled girl rancher Joan Darcy (Dorothy Comingore) plot to break Wild Bill out of jail but Brawley is wise to their plan. Wild Bill nevertheless manages to escape and concocts a plan to trap Brawley and his men. The scheme succeeds but before he can settle down, Wild Bill heeds the call of a friend in trouble and rides off to bring law and order to another violent part of the Old West. Preceded by Taming of the West (1939), Pioneers of the Frontier was followed by two additional "Wild Bill Saunders" westerns: The Man from Tumbleweeds and The Return of Wild Bill (both 1940). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

An average Columbia B-Western, Prairie Schooners once again features William Elliott as a highly fictitious Wild Bill Hickock. When local farmers are ready to string up nasty banker Dalton Stull (Kenneth Harlan), who had taken advantage of a drought to foreclose on their loans, Wild Bill agrees instead to negotiate on their behalf. When that fails, the hero suggests that the farmers sell their property and move to the hopefully more congenial Colorado. En route, the wagon train guided by Bill is attacked by Sioux Indians, who have been armed by Stull and his chief henchman Wolf Tanner (Ray Teal). Lovely Virginia Benton (Evelyn Young) is taken hostage by Stull, but Wild Bill and sidekick Cannonball (Dub Taylor) finally convince Chief Sanche (Jim Thorpe) to join the forces of good and the villains are rounded up. Prairie Schooners, which premiered in October of 1940, was based on a 1930 magazine story by George Cory Franklin. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Former outlaw Charles Starrett goes straight and becomes a sheriff. In this capacity, he tries to bring his old partners in crime to justice. They don't cotton to this, and thereby hang the conflict. Everything is solved in a climactic fistfight with all-around villain Dick Curtis. Iris Meredith is the heroine, Hank Bell is the comedy relief, Edward LeSaint is the local authority figure, Bob Nolan provides the musical interludes, and Sam Nelson directs. In other words, Thundering West is virtually indistinguishable from the previous entries in Columbia's Charles Starrett western series. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this western, a brave hero stops a range war from erupting between homesteaders who are encroaching upon ranchers' land. Much of the trouble is stirred up by greedy outlaws. The hero brings them all to justice, romances a pretty girl and even has time to sing "Serenade to the Night Bird" and "Westward, Ho" (Bob Nolan, Tim Spencer). ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The popular Lee Falk-Phil Davis comic strip Mandrake the Magician first came to the screen by way of a 12-chapter Columbia serial. Warren Hull stars as the top-hatted, splendidly caparisoned Mandrake, who "gestures hypnotically" to thwart his various enemies. The head villain is a mystery man known as "The Wasp," who'll stop at nothing to steal the radium-energy machine invented by kindly Professor Houston (Forbes Murray). But no matter how hard he tries, The Wasp is always one step behind the resourceful Mandrake and his hulking assistant Lothar (Al Kikume). After facing numerous perils alone and in the company of Houston's daughter Betty (Doris Weston), Mandrake ascertains the true identity of The Wasp. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi