Nat Perrin Movies

In this romantic comedy, a rebellious East German athlete forgoes her dowdy uniforms in favor of daring miniskirts. Soon the leggy track star attracts a lustful villain. To escape, she pole vaults over the Berlin Wall. There she is befriended by a broke black marketeer who has secretly agreed to return her to the communists in exchange for badly-needed money. He hides her in the apartment of an old army buddy of his who secretly works for the CIA. The smuggler is preparing to turn the girl over when he realizes that he is in love. The fellow is still busted and so tries to convince his pal to let her work for the CIA. When the athlete learns about this, she is crushed and decides to return to East Germany. Later, to prove he does love her, the smuggler dresses in drag and sneaks into East Berlin to see her. The woman is bowled over and together, they creep back into West Germany. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Not a remake of the 1934 Helen Morgan vehicle of the same title, Frankie and Johnny stars Elvis Presley as Johnny, a Mississippi gambler, and Beverly Hillbillies regular Donna Douglas as his girl friend Frankie. In keeping with the old ballad, the romance of Frankie and Johnny is threatened by the intervention of seductress Nellie Bly (Nancy Kovack). Nellie brings Johnny luck at the gaming tables while Frankie sees red. Frankie and Johnny was written by onetime Marx Brothers contributor Nat Perrin and directed by future Tonight Show helmsman Fred de Cordova. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

1950's Emergency Wedding is a remake of 1940's You Belong to Me. The later film stars Larry Parks, who'd had a bit role in the original. Parks plays wealthy Peter Kirk, a playboy, while Barbara Hale co-stars as female doctor Helen Hunt. When Peter marries Helen, it is a "given" that he'll stay home while she works. Unfortunately, Peter becomes jealous of the amount of time Helen spends at the hospital with her patients. Out of pique, Peter makes the supreme sacrifice and offers to get a job himself. All sorts of misunderstandings and remonstrations ensue before the title Emergency Wedding is explained at the very end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lucille Ball is Miss Grant, an efficient but naïve secretary hired by William Holden. Ostensibly a legit real estate salesman, Holden is actually the brains of a bookie ring. It takes forever for Ball to tumble to what's going on, but when she does she settles matters in the same fashion as her later I Love Lucy character would--by adopting a disguise and a line of snappy patter. The chastened Holden marries Ball and agrees to devote his life to running an honest real-estate firm on behalf of the deserving homeless. Among the contributors to the success of Miss Grant Takes Richmond are producer S. Sylvan Simon, director Lloyd Bacon and scenarist Frank Tashlin, all of whom would later team up again for the zany Lucille Ball vehicle The Fuller Brush Girl. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Alias a Gentleman is impeccably tailored to the slovenly talents of MGM star Wallace Beery. He's cast as Jim Breeden, an ex-convict who finds himself wealthy overnight when oil is discovered on his property. His first order of business as a man of means is to locate his long-lost daughter. Hoping to get a piece of the financial action, several of Breeden's disreputable buddies try to palm off Elaine Carter (Dorothy Patrick) as his daughter -- and he falls for the ruse hook, line and sinker. Touched by Breeden's efforts to "do right" by her, Elaine comes to love the old soak and refuses to go through with his jailmates' shakedown scheme. They retaliate by kidnapping the girl, forcing Breedin to rely on his prison instincts to affect a rescue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It's The Champ all over again, with Wallace Beery as a down-and-out prizefighter and Dean Stockwell as the small boy whom he adopts. Mighty McGurk also borrows from Beery's earlier The Bowery (33) by placing its story in that New York neighborhood in 1900. The final echo from Wally Beery's movie past is Aline McMahon, who costarred with Beery in Ah, Wilderness (35). The plot of Mighty McGurk involves Beery's rescuing of the orphaned Stockwell, an English lad, from the clutches of his evil guardian Edward Arnold. The boy in turn inspires Beery to return to the boxing ring after several years of boozy grub work as a Bowery waiter. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The last of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's three MGM features, Abbott & Costello in Hollywood is a loose remake of Buster Keaton's Free and Easy. Bud and Lou play a pair of Tinseltown barbers who dream of becoming high-priced showbiz agents. Their first clients are Frances Rafferty and Robert Stanton, whose careers may be over before they begin when A&C manage to antagonize powerful producer Donald MacBride and stuck-up film star Carleton Young. The plot serves only as a clothesline upon which to hang several sidesplitting comedy routines: Abbott teaching Costello how to give a shave, Lou vainly trying to get a good night's sleep, a "stunt man" bit involving the tremulous Costello and hulking Mike Mazurki, and a wild roller-coaster finale. MGM contractees Lucille Ball, Jackie "Butch" Jenkins, Preston S. Foster and Robert Z. Leonard make guest appearances. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In most of his movie vehicles, bandleader Kay Kyser played a bandleader named Kay Kyser. In Swing Fever, however, Kyser is cast as aspiring songwriter Lowell Blackford. Though he isn't too successful at peddling his songs, Blackford does have one unique talent: The ability to hypnotize boxer Killer Kennedy (Nat Pendleton) into winning fights. Blackford is coerced into using his "whammy" on Kennedy by Ginger Gray (Marilyn Maxwell). On the night of the championship bout, Blackford finds out he's being used, but goes through with his hypnosis to save Ginger from gangsters. The whole thing ends rather incongruously with a patriotic floor show, a specialty of MGM films of the period. Several guest performers lift Swing Fever out of the ordinary, including Lena Horne and the Merrill Abbott Dancers. Also appearing is an uncredited Ava Gardner as a sarcastic receptionist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This second entry in MGM's "Whistling" series is more elaborate than the first (Whistling in the Dark) and equally as funny. Red Skelton returns as radio sleuth Wally Benton, aka "The Fox", while Ann Rutherford is back as his ever-patient fiancee Carol Lambert (Ann Rutherford). After receiving a sorority pin in the mail, Carol heads southward to help out her old college chum Ellamae Downs (Diana Lewis), who's enmeshed in a local mystery. Wally tags along, only to find himself up to his neck in intrigue and murder. The climax finds our hero and heroine trapped in the basement of an old Civil War fort, which is rapidly filling with water-a sequence that's as thrilling as it is hilarious. Best line: "Got a hanky, Panky?" Rag Ragland, who played the comic villain Chester in Whistling in the Dark, returns in Whistling in Dixie as Chester and his less odious twin brother, thereby permitting this lovable character player to "redeem" himself and qualify to appear in the third and last "Whistling" epic, Whistling in Brooklyn. Little Billie Thomas, "Buckwheat" in the Our Gang comedies, shows up in an uncredited bit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the last of the Marx Brothers' MGM films, The Big Store, Groucho Marx plays two-bit detective Wolf J. Flywheel, hired by department-store owner Martha Phelps (Margaret Dumont) to act as bodyguard for Martha's nephew and sole heir, Tommy Rogers (Tony Martin). Crooked store manager Grover (Douglas Dumbrille) is anxious to take over the operation and to hide the fact that he's been juggling the books; to expedite this, he has arranged several "accidents" to put Tommy out of the way. Despite his monumental ineptitude, Flywheel manages to protect Tommy from harm, with the help of his mute assistant, Wacky (Harpo Marx), and Tommy's music-teacher pal, Ravelli (Chico Marx). After a series of yawn-provoking complications, Grover tries once more to kill Tommy during a musical reception given in honor of the store's merger with the Hastings Brothers. When this also fails, he kidnaps Tommy's girlfriend, Joan (Virginia Grey), a bit of skullduggery captured on film by camera-wielding Ravelli. Grover's efforts to get his hands on the incriminating photo leads to a zany slapstick chase through the department store, culminating in the villain's capture ("I told you in the first reel he was a crook," observes Flywheel) and a happy ending for Tommy and Joan. The opening routine in Groucho's seedy office and Harpo's harp solo (in which, through trick photography, he accompanies himself on flute and bass violin) are the only scenes truly worth watching in The Big Store; the big-chase finale is compromised by the fact that the Marx Brothers' stunt doubles do all the work, while the film's major production number, "Tenement Symphony," is downright embarrassing. The Marxes were so disappointed with The Big Store that they vowed to quit moviemaking altogether -- only to return to the screen five years later in A Night in Casablanca. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Radio humorist Bob Burns plays the title role in Alias the Deacon. Based on a stage play by John B. Hymer and LeRoy Clements (previously filmed in 1927 with Jean Hersholt), the story concerns a philosophical drifter named Deke Caswell (Burns) who is mistaken for the new deacon of a small town. A gambler by nature, Caswell decides to continue the clerical pose so that he can divest the locals of their hard-earned dollars. Instead, he turns honest, eventually solving all of the town's problems. A subplot concerns the "scandalous" (but wholly innocent) relationship between truck driver Johnny Sloan (Dennis O'Keefe) and hitchhiker Phyllis (Peggy Moran). This being a Universal film of the early 1940s, it was all but mandatory for Mischa Auer to show up in an incongrous but amusing supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A longtime fan of comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen, "Philo Vance" creator S. S. Van Dyne wrote a tailor-made screenplay for the team, which emerged on-screen as The Gracie Allen Murder Case. The Paramount studio executives decided to dispense with the services of George Burns, leaving scatterbrained Gracie on her own to match wits (?) with urbane private detective Philo Vance (Warren William). The story proper gets under way when Bill Brown (Kent Taylor) stumbles onto a murder scene and is accused of the crime. Fortuitously, Gracie Allen was also in the vicinity when the killing took place, but her garbled version of what she witnessed (or thinks she witnessed) is of no help whatsoever to the authorities. Philo Vance offers to protect Gracie from the murder and to try to make heads or tails of her "assistance", but even he is driven to distraction by our heroine's relentless stupidity, especially when she insists upon referring to him as Fido Vance. As enjoyable as she is in small doses, Gracie Allen is a bit much to take in this film; fortunately, the basic mystery is good one, even if the identity of the murderer is fairly obvious from the start (the actor in question played so many "surprise killers" during his career that, by 1939, the bloom was off the rose). After The Gracie Allen Murder Case ran its course in the theaters, S. S. Van Dine published a novelized version of the story, restoring George Burns to the proceedings and wisely cutting back on Gracie Allen's imbecilities. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Guy Kibbee, moviedom's archetypal small-town bigshot, stars in RKO Radio's Don't Tell the Wife. On this occasion, Kibbee, playing Malcolm Winthrop, has greatness thrust upon him when he buys a few shares of supposedly worthless mining stock. Though it looks as though he and the entire town will be ruined financially, Winthrop emerges triumphant when he manages to outwit up a gang of stock swindlers. Lynne Overman has some good moments as one of the crooks, Steve Dorset by name, who intends to go straight for the sake of his spouse Nancy (the "wife" of the title, played by Una Merkel), but he can't resist trying to pluck a fat goose like Winthrop. The supporting cast of Don't Tell the Wife is filled to overflowing with familiar faces, none more familiar than RKO contractee Lucille Ball. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide