Irving G. Reis Movies

MGM's Invitation to the Dance was the fruition of Gene Kelly's long-standing dream to create a plotless "concert" feature. Eschewing dialogue, Kelly tells three stories entirely through the medium of dance. The first sequence is a mime-like Pagliacci story, with Kelly as the Clown and Igor Youskevitch and Claire Sombert as the Lovers. The second vignette, "Ring Around the Rosy," tells the story of a bracelet as it is passed from owner to owner. The best is saved till last: "Sinbad the Sailor," wherein Kelly shares screen time with a plethora of animated cartoon characters, courtesy of MGM house cartoonists William Hanna and Joe Barbera. Carol Haney appears briefly as Scheherezade, and also posed for the writhing cartoon serpent. Considered totally unsellable by the MGM higher-ups, Invitation to the Dance was shelved upon its completion in 1952, and didn't see the light of day for nearly four years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cooked up by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, It's Always Fair Weather could well have been titled On the Town Ten Years Later. Like 1949's On the Town (also a Comden/Green collaboration), this MGM musical follows the exploits of three servicemen buddies, played by Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd. The difference here is that the threesome has just been discharged from service. The boys agree to get together again exactly ten years after their parting. Flash-forward to 1955: Kelly, who'd dreamed of being a show biz entrepreneur, is a small-time boxing promoter, heavily in debt to the Mob; Dailey has abandoned his plans of becoming an artist in favor of a stuffy, grey-flannel existence as an ad executive; and Kidd, who'd aspired to being a master chef, is running a modest diner. On behalf of TV-personality Dolores Gray, network-staffer Cyd Charisse contrives to reunite the three men on a This is Your Life style TV special, but all three are hostile to the notion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed in Ansco Color (a fancy name for Eastmancolor), New Mexico stars Lew Ayres as Capt. Hunt, a U.S. Cavalry Captain stationed in Indian territory. Sympathetic to the plight of the long-suffering Native Americans, Hunt sets out to sign a peace treaty with the local chief (Ted de Corsia). En route, he rescues saloon girl Cherry (Marilyn Maxwell) from an Indian attack. Cherry remains by Hunt's side when he is forced to defend an Army fortress from the enraged chief, whose son was accidentally killed by a soldier. The supporting cast includes such TV favorites as Raymond Burr, Andy Devine, Verna Felton, and, as President Lincoln, Hans Conreid. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Inspired by the 1949 hit A Letter to Three Wives, this takes the other side of the coin with a deceased playboy leaving letters to the husbands accusing their wives of having had affairs with him. Although the 1949 hit was done as a dramatic treatise on the reactions of the wives to the revelations, this movie is played strictly for laughs as the husbands stumble all over themselves trying to dig out the truth behind the allegations. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

The saga of the Hatfield-and-McCoy feud is romanticized in Samuel Goldwyn's Roseanna McCoy. Newcomer Joan Evans stars as the title character, whose elopement with Johnse Hatfield (Farley Granger) serves to further fuel the flames of the deadly mountain feud. The opposing patriarches, Devil Anse Hatfield and Old Randall McCoy, are vividly realized by Charles Bickford and Raymond Massey. In West Virginia and Kentucky, the debate still rages over what started the hostilities, but there's no question that the end result was tragedy for all concerned. In Goldwyn's version, the feud comes to a halt because Roseanna and Johnse demand it; would that real life were this simple and clear-cut. Based on a novel by Alberta Hannum, Roseanna McCoy was released through the distribution channels of RKO Radio. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Most of the story in this five-hanky British melodrama takes place over a 50 year period within a single London home, 99 Wiltshire Place, the birth place of a noted general who has not been back since he was a young man and had a terrible wrenching fight with his sister over his love for their adopted sister. Just before he stormed out, he vowed that he would never return until the troublesome sibling, who was always jealous of the beautiful orphan girl, died. Many years pass and the general now sits there alone with his old butler musing about his lost love. His American granddaughter, an ambulance driver for the war effort, shows up distraught. It seems she has fallen in love with the Canadian nephew of the general's old flame and is undecided whether she marry him right away or wait until after the war. He then tells her his tragic tale in hopes that she will change her mind. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Judge Myrna Loy decides that the best way to curb the excesses of playboyish art teacher Cary Grant is to force him to do what he does best--romance a willing young lady. In this instance, the girl is Loy's own sister, played by a blossoming Shirley Temple. Aware that Temple has a serious crush on Grant, Loy orders him to date the teen-aged Temple until the girl gets him out of her system; he is also ordered to keep his hands to himself lest he wind up in the pokey. Grant finds the irrepressible Temple rather wearisome, but he throws himself into his sentence full-force, donning teenaged clothes, speaking in nonsense slang ("Voodoo! Who Do? You Do!" etc.) and participating in the athletic events at a high school picnic. Grant eventually divests himself of Temple by arranging for her to fall for a boy her own age; meanwhile, Loy realizes what we've realized all along--that it is she who is truly smitten by Grant. Adding to the frothy fun of Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer are the supporting performances of Ray Collins as a sagacious psychologist and Rudy Vallee as a stuffy district attorney. The film's screenplay won an Academy Award for Sidney Sheldon, who went on to create I Dream of Jeannie and to matriculate into a best-selling novelist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paramount's Pine-Thomas production unit continued its unbroken string of box-office successes with Gambler's Choice. Pine-Thomas perennial Chester Morris plays turn-of-the-century gambler Ross Hadley, owner of a posh gaming establishment in the heart of New York. Hadley's chief antagonist is his boyhood chum Mike McGlennon (Russell Hayden), now a police lieutenant determined to put the gambler out of business. Adding to the rivalry is the fact that both Hadley and McGlennon are in love with cabaret singer Vi Parker (Nancy Kelly). The whole thing sounds a lot like the 1936 MGM film San Francisco, though not enough to spark a lawsuit, of course. Despite its tiny budget, Gambler's Choice is successful in recreating a bygone period and its color characters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This modestly produced film version of Gregor Ziemmer's book Education for Death surprised everyone at RKO--and in the film industry--by becoming one the biggest hits of 1943. The "children" invoked in the title are borne on behalf of Adolf Hitler; according to the film, it is standard operating procedure in Nazi Germany for young girls to willingly submit to being impregnated by Aryan men (with or without the benefit of clergy) in order to sustain the "Master Race." Those who refuse are ticketed for sterilization, or worse. One of the holdouts is Bonita Granville, a German girl raised and educated in America whose taste of democracy has made her utterly resistant to Nazism. In the film's key scene, the near-naked Bonita is publicly flogged for her defiance, whereupon Bonita's lover, "good Nazi" Tim Holt, suddenly has an awakening of conscience and stops the whipping. This act of courage results in the executions of both Holt and Granville, but they willingly go to their deaths rather than accede to Hitler's demands. It is true enough that many people flocked to see Hitler's Children because of the sensational, censor-provoking aspects of the film, but equal numbers of filmgoers and critics also recognized the above-average artistic contributions of director Edward Dmytryk and scriptwriter Emmet Lavery (both of whom received substantial cash bonuses for their work on this film). Hitler's Children was the second biggest moneymaker of RKO's 1943-44 season, only slightly behind the Cary Grant vehicle Mr. Lucky. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When the film rights to its "Saint" series proved too expensive to renew, RKO Radio came up with a lookalike property in the form of "The Falcon", even engaging George Sanders, the best of the "Saint" impersonators, to play the studio's newest gentleman detective. The Gay Falcon opens as Gay Lawrence (Sanders) -- aka the Falcon -- is hired to guard a priceless diamond. When the owner of the gem is murdered, suspicious immediately falls upon Lawrence's ex-con chauffeur Goldie (Allen Jenkins). Two more killings occur before Lawrence is able to uncover the insurance scam behind it all. Along the way, he romance a pair of toothsome leading ladies, Helen (played by series regular Wendy Barrie) and Elinor (Anne Hunter). Hans Conried contributes a sparkling bit as a snide police sketch artist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This second entry in RKO Radio's "Falcon" series begins with Gay Lawrence (George Sanders), aka the Falcon, promising to give up his private-eye activities for the sake of fiancee Helen Reed (Wendy Barrie). This resolves lasts for about eight minutes, whereupon Lawrence tackles the case of a missing scientist named Waldo Sampson (Alec Craig), the inventor of a synthetic-diamond process. Kidnapped by Sampson's abductors, Lawrence manages to escape, only to be kidnapped again and later accused of murder. The resolution of the plot hinges on the old mistaken-identity device (one of the principal characters has an identical twin, and that's all that can be said without giving the game away). Carryovers from the first "Falcon" film include Allen Jenkins as Lawrence's dimwitted sidekick Goldie and character actor Hans Conried, here cast as a snotty hotel night clerk. A Date with the Falcon was unofficially remade as The Falcon's Adventure, the final entry in the RKO series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This romance chronicles the relationship between a stuntman and his movie star wife. When a colleague of his is killed on a movie set, his wife becomes afraid for her husband. This creates marital tension and the two separate. Eventually his buddies conspire to reunite them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Akim Tamiroff plays the title role, an underworld leader who controls all illicit operations in Chinatown. Tamiroff is toppled from power by two members of his own mob (Anthony Quinn and J.Carroll Naish). He is left for dead, but is saved by a dedicated Chinese-American doctor (Anna May Wong). In gratitude, Tamiroff turns over his fortune to a Chinese war relief fund. King of Gamblers was directed with flair by the otherwise unimaginative Nick Grinde, who seems to have borrowed several artistic touches from fellow Paramount contractee Robert Florey. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide