Jack Pennick Movies

Tip-Off Girls is a worthwhile entry in Paramount's "FBI" series, based on the various writings of
J. Edgar Hoover. The title refers to a group of pretty young women who are ordered by their gangster bosses to pick up tips on incoming merchandise shipments, thereby expediting a sophisticated hijacking operation. The girls are also expected to keep the freight drivers occupied while the crooks go about their business. G-Man Bob Anders (Lloyd Nolan) eventually smashes the racket with the help of decoy Marjorie Rogers (Mary Carlisle). Equipped with a Greek accent this time out, J. Carrol Naish plays the supposedly respectable head of the hijackers, while the rest of the cast is populated with such reliable Paramount stock-company players as Roscoe Karns, Buster Crabbe, Anthony Quinn, Benny Baker, Evelyn Brent, Irving Bacon and Stanley Andrews. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this lovely John Ford film, Joyce Williams (June Lang) and her young daughter, Priscilla (Shirley Temple), travel to India to live on a British Army base with Joyce's father, Colonel Williams, Aubrey C. Smith). Once there, sweet, young Priscilla manages to win the love and affection of the soldiers and her curmudgeonly grandfather, and she plays an important role in easing a local rebellion. One of the best Shirley Temple movies, Ford allows her to be sweet without being cloying and moves the action at a good pace. A wonderful cast of some of Hollywood's best supporting actors add charm to this film which is appealing to both children and adults. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

In this lively musical, an eccentric philanthropist's will dictates that four people receive $5,000 with the stipulation that the first one who can double the amount-- without dishonesty-- will win a cool million. Hindering the four are the avaricious relatives of the late millionaire. Songs include: "It's On, It's Off," "Double or Nothing," "Listen My Children," "Smarty," "The Moon Got in My Eyes" and "After You." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Warner Baxter plays Dr. Samuel Mudd, American history's most famous victim of circumstance. In 1865, Dr. Mudd, a known Confederate sympathizer, sets the broken leg of a mud-caked stranger who stumbles into his home. The injured man turns out to be John Wilkes Booth, and Mudd is accused of conspiring to murder President Lincoln. Sentenced to hang with the genuine conspirators, Mudd finds his sentence commuted to life imprisonment at the very last moment. He is shipped to Shark Island, a brutal penal colony. Subject to the cruelties of a guard (John Carradine) who hates Mudd because of his "complicity" in Lincoln's death, the doctor suffers the torments of the damned, while outside Shark Island his wife (Gloria Stuart) campaigns desperately to get her husband pardoned. During a Yellow Fever breakout on Shark Island, Dr. Mudd performs heroically to save the survivors. For his humanitarian efforts, Mudd is finally released and reunited with his wife. While the script glosses over the fact that Dr. Mudd had never been officially pardoned by the US government (the pardon wouldn't be granted until years after this film was made), Prisoner of Shark Island strives long and hard to exonerate the man for whom the phrase "your name is mud!" was coined. Dr. Samuel Mudd's story was retold in the 1952 feature Hellgate, with Sterling Hayden as a (fictional) doctor, and in the 1980 TV movie The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd, starring Dennis Weaver in the title role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It was standard operating procedure at MGM to cast their favorite singing team of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in new versions of old operettas, then retain only the music, drastically altering the plotlines to conform to popular tastes. This was the treatment afforded the Rudolf Friml-Herbert Stothart-Oscar Hammerstein-Otto Harbach musical Rose Marie--and thank heaven that MGM decided to jettison the original's creaky libretto about a woman who offers her body to the villain to save the hero from a trumped-up murder charge (this chestnut seemed old-fashioned even in 1928, when Joan Crawford starred in the silent version). In lieu of this wearisome storyline, the Eddy-MacDonald version casts MacDonald as a spoiled, temperamental Canadian opera star who learns that her uncontrollable brother (James Stewart), serving a prison sentence, has escaped to a cabin in the North Woods and needs someone to tend his wounds. MacDonald travels to northern Canada incognito, where in a hilarious sequence she tries and fails to pass muster as a dance-hall girl. Upon meeting likeable mountie Nelson Eddy, who unbeknownst to her has been assigned to locate her brother, MacDonald fabricates a story about needing an escort for a rendezvous with her lover. Such latter-day parodies as Dudley Do-Right notwithstanding, the Eddy-MacDonald sequences are often deliberately played for laughs, even when Nelson is uttering such lines as "Heavy? Why, I could carry you for hours!" Gradually, Nelson and MacDonald fall in love, only to fall out of love when Nelson tracks down and captures MacDonald's brother. Despite this rift, a happy--and logical--ending is not long in coming. It might be hard to watch such Eddy-MacDonald duets as "Rose Marie" and "Indian Love Call" with a completely straight face; it is reassuring, however, to find out that the filmmakers knew that "Rose Marie" was ripe for ridicule, and decided to laugh at themselves first in order to disarm the audience. To avoid confusion with the 1955 remake, the 1936 Rose Marie was retitled Indian Love Call for TV showings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Two silent film versions preceded this 1936 Hollywood adaptation of the 19th century novel by the writer Ouida Bergere. It is set in Saharan Africa but was filmed in the Arizona desert. Ronald Colman is Corporal Victor, a man who has taken the rap for a crime committed by his younger brother. Victor has joined the French Foreign Legion to escape his past, taking with him his valet Rake (Herbert Mundin). His commander is the ruthless Major Doyle (Victor McLaglen), who becomes jealous when Cigarette (Claudette Colbert), a nightclub singer with a yen for men in uniforms, sets her sights on Victor. Victor, however, lusts after a more refined Englishwoman named Lady Venetia (Rosalind Russell), and he eventually dumps Cigarette for Venetia. McLaglen sends Victor off on a difficult mission from which he hopes that he won't return. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

After retiring from a boxing career, Johnny Cave (James Cagney) accepts an appointment to serve as head of the Bureau of Weights and Measures. However, when he discovers that his organization is full of corruption and lies, he sets out to uncover the scam, much to the dismay of his girlfriend, Janet (Mae Clarke), and his underhanded coworkers. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Mae West is Goin' to Town in this elegant post-Production Code vehicle. West plays Cleo Borden, a nouveau riche cattle rancher who hopes to crash into high society. Though she is willing to subject herself to "refinement" lessons, she still has a high old time puncturing the pretensions of those around her: when aristocratic Ivan Valadov (Ivan Lebedeff) haughtily announces that he is the backbone of his family, West gives him the once-over and replies "Then your family'd better see a chiropractor." Through the connections of her husband-by-convenience Fletcher Colton (Monroe Owsley), Cleo is able to move freely among the glitterati of Southhampton but is forced to rely on her tried-and-true "street smarts" when she crosses swords with haughty villainess Grace Brittony (Marjorie Gateson) at a Buenos Aires race track. Through it all, aristocratic British engineer Edward Carrington (Paul Cavanaugh) awaits the opportunity to claim Cleo for his own -- as if anyone could ever "own" our fiercely self-reliant heroine. The film's highlight is a society operatic gala, in which Mae West delivers a serious (and most effective) rendition of "My Heart at Thy Still Voice" from Samson and Delilah. In a more characteristic vein, the star gets down and dirty (well, at least semi-dirty) with "He's a Bad Bad Man, But He's Good Enough for Me." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the tradition of Fox Studios' Oscar-winning Cavalcade, The World Moves On covers over one hundred years in the lives of two Louisiana families: The Girards, of French extraction, and the Warburtons, formerly of Manchester. Forming an alliance by marriage in 1825, the families rapidly corner the cotton business in the South. Years later, three of Girard/Warburton sons split up to head business operations in England, France and Germany: as a result, descendants of the original families find themselves fighting on opposite sides during WW I (this episode is similar to a memorable sequence in the 1928 silent Four Sons, which like World Moves On was directed by John Ford). Surviving the war, Richard (Franchot Tone), the last of the descendants becomes a sharkish Wall Street speculator in the 1920s, ultimately losing his fortune in the Wall Street Crash. Bloody but unbowed, Richard and his wife Mary (Madeleine Carroll) cut their losses and return to their ancestral home, to start all over again. Both The World Moves On and the subsequent Fox production Road to Glory rely to a considerable extent upon stock footage from the grim 1931 French antiwar drama Wooden Crosses. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marie Dressler plays the title character, tugboat captain Annie Brennan, in this 1933 Hollywood box office hit. Her husband Terry (Wallace Beery) is a lazy, bragging drunk. Robert Young plays their son Alec, who has big ambitions and winds up as captain of a fancy ocean liner. The ocean liner's owner is Red Severn (Willard Robertson), whose daughter Pat (Maureen O'Sullivan) is the object of Alec's longings. Young tries to get his mother to leave his father and join him on the ocean liner, but she refuses out of love for her husband and her tugboat. Terry crashes the tugboat while drunk one night, and it is sold at an auction, then repaired and converted into a garbage boat. Sequels were made in later years, with Marjorie Rambeau and later Jane Darwell in the title role, and it was made into a TV series in the 1950s. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Clark Gable was officially elevated to stardom with this airborne MGM action-adventure, but good old Wallace Beery (whom Gable disliked in real life) ended up with more screen time. They played Naval officers training in the newfangled art of dive bombing while spending a great deal of time squabbling over who is more macho. The two rivals, of course, end up crashing on a deserted atoll only to discover that behind the tough veneer they share a common goal. In the end, the gruff but lovable Beery sacrifices himself so that Gable and the stolid Conrad Nagel may live. As usual in this kind of testosterone-driven action fare, the girls are given short shrift and have to literally shout to be heard above the din. Dorothy Jordan is forgettable as Gable's love interest, but both Marjorie Rambeau and Marie Prevost, as a couple of goodhearted floozies, make the most of their all too brief moments. Hell Divers is the kind of film where action in the skies makes up for the lack of any real drama and where characters are constantly uttering such lines as "Gee honey, I'm just goofy about you!" The film was produced with full co-operation from the U.S. Navy on-location at San Pedro and in Panama. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

It is all but impossible to dislike a film as gloriously corny as The Phantom Express. The title is derived from an early scene in which veteran engineer Smokey North (J. Farrell McDonald) wrecks his own train while trying to avoid a head-on collision with another. Suddenly, the other train disappears into thin air -- or at least that's Smokey's story. No one believes this incredible tale, and the old man is unceremoniously fired. For the sake of Smokey's pretty daughter (Sally Blane), the railroad-company president's son (William Collier Jr.) does some investigating of his own, ultimately uncovering a diabolically clever scheme hatched by the villains. Even those viewers who are inclined to laugh out loud at the film's ridiculous dialogue will be held in thrall by the pulse-pounding climactic train chase. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide