J. Walter Ruben Movies

The tumultuous presidency of 17th-president Andrew Johnson is chronicled in this biopic. The story begins with Johnson's boyhood and covers his early life. During the Civil War, Johnson stays a staunch Unionist and upon Lincoln's reelection in 1864, becomes his Vice President. After Lincoln's assassination, Johnson becomes the President. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

In this, the third screen adaptation of the musical revue Sailor Beware, William Holden plays Casey Kirby, a shy sailor who through a series of misunderstandings develops a reputation as a world-class lady-killer. In order to save face, Casey has to persuade "The Countess of Swingland" (Dorothy Lamour), a popular Big Band vocalist, to give him a big kiss in public. But the Countess is no pushover and has little sympathy for sob stories, so Casey soon learns his work is cut out for him. The Countess' best friend, Bessie Dale (Betty Hutton), is a bit less shy around the menfolk and sets her sights on Casey's buddy Barney Waters (Eddie Bracken). Betty Hutton made her screen debut in this movie, and she sings the novelty number "Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry." Hutton is backed by Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra, who also perform several other numbers, including their hit "Tangerine." ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

No one will ever know what possessed MGM's reigning screen queen Norma Shearer to select the tired old stage farce Her Cardboard Lover as her final film. Set in Florida, the creaky plotline finds Consuelo Croyden (Shearer) attempting to make her disinterested sweetheart Tony Barling (George Sanders) jealous. To this end, Consuelo orders her personal secretary, Terry Trindale (Robert Taylor) to pretend to be her lover. This suits Terry fine, since he's always been crazy about Consuelo. And on and on it goes, with the three stars trying to make this wearisome old yarn worth watching. Of the three film versions of Her Cardboard Lover, this one isn't anywhere near as entertaining as the 1932 Buster Keaton vehicle The Passionate Plumber (which was no great shakes itself!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lionel Barrymore and Ronald Reagan star, respectively, as grandfather Henry Jones and grandson Gil Jones, two proprietors of a Mexican ranch, in The Bad Man. Gil is overjoyed to discover that his childhood sweetheart, Lucia (Laraine Day) has returned to town, but feels slightly dismayed by her marriage to Morgan Pell (Tom Conway), a Manhattan businessman. Later that day, Mexican outlaw Pancho Lopez (Wallace Beery rides into town and causes trouble for the good folks by rustling all of their cattle and injuring Gil. Meanwhile, Morgan admits to Lucia that he's worried about the possibility of her still being in love with Gil, but she reassures him that this isn't the case, and reminds him of her undying commitment to their marriage. One month later, Mr. Hardy (Henry Travers, a banker, arrives at the ranch, and acts suspiciously by revealing his overeagerness to foreclose. In a desperate move, Henry makes a feeble attempt to stave off Hardy's actions by trying to convince Gil to marry Hardy's daughter, Angela (Nydia Westman). Meanwhile, "Red" Giddings (Chill Wills secretly pines for Angela, who is the great love of his life.
Morgan then crops up and offers $20,000 for the ranch, alerting Henry to an ulterior motive -- he gets Morgan and Hardy to confess their suspicion of oil on the property. Gil hastily signs the deed that gives the ranch over to Morgan. Just when matters cannot seem to get any worse, Lopez turns up once again and takes everyone hostage, except for Gil, who has trekked off to the barn. Lopez makes none-too-subtle advances to Lucia and indicates his warm feelings toward Henry, as well as his innate dislike of Morgan and Hardy. When Henry decides to play off of this dislike by informing Lopez of both men's attempts to wrangle the ranch away from him, a bidding war ensues, and Lopez craftily attempts to determine how much ransom he can get for his captives. Gil then draws a gun on him, but is overcome by Lopez's men; Lopez prepares to hang Gil, but suddenly recognizes Gil as the same man who saved his life several years earlier. He then works toward fixing the financial problems that are plaguing the Joneses, and the romantic problems that are plaguing Gil, Lucia, Red and Angela. Based on a war-horse stage play by Porter Emerson Browne, The Bad Man had been previously filmed in 1923 and 1930; Boris Karloff starred as a Chinese warlord in a thinly disguised 1937 reworking of The Bad Man, titled West of Shanghai. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Out of work as usual, showgirl Maisie Revier (Ann Sothern) takes a job as the maid for a wealthy family. She wins over the young man of the household (Lew Ayres), but the rest of the family is too wrapped up in its own problems to benefit from Maisie's good-natured personality. The daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan) tries to kill herself when her engagement breaks up, prompting Maisie to instill a sense of purpose and self-confidence in the shallow lives of her employers. Maisie Was a Lady is enjoyable "B" fare, given substance by the battle of wits between down-to-earth Maisie and imperious family butler C. Aubrey Smith. This film was the fourth in MGM's "Maisie" series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

MGM had a tendency to overglamorize the sort of rough-hewn film fare that Warner Bros. offered to its public without adornments. Such was the case of Flight Command. Instead of Warners' streetwise James Cagney, the MGM film stars pretty-boy Robert Taylor as the obligatory hotshot cadet who chafes at the authority and discipline of a naval flight squadron. While Warners might have done without a romantic subplot, MGM contrives to have Taylor fall for the wife (Ruth Hussey) of squad commander Walter Pidgeon. And whereas Warners would have told this story compactly in 90 minutes, MGM lolls around for nearly two hours before Taylor's anticipated redemption and "make good" scene. MGM newcomer Red Skelton shows up in Flight Command for comedy relief, which turns out to be neither. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

As indicated by the title, 20 Mule Team is all about pioneering borax miners in territorial Arizona. Wallace Beery goes through his usual paces as Skinner Bill Bragg, a fugitive from justice who forms an uneasy alliance with slick outlaw Stag Roper (Douglas Fowley). The two scoundrels plot to jump a valuable borax claim in Death Valley, but Bragg changes his minds when Roper begins to have unsavory designs on virginal heroine Jean Johnson (Anne Baxter, in her film debut). Ever on the prowl for a new Wallace Beery-Marie Dressler screen team, MGM pairs up Beery with Marjorie Rambeau this time out, with mixed results. 20 Mule Team was originally released in Sepiatone, a tinting process MGM had previously utilized in the "Kansas" scenes of The Wizard of Oz. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Thunder Afloat is set during the first world war. Wallace Beery plays an veteran tugboat captain who harbors a grudge against younger ex-pal Chester Morris. When Morris joins the navy as an officer, he runs across Beery, who resparks the feud. Both men bury the hatchet and work shoulder to shoulder when German U-boats threaten innocent shippers. Though the action takes place in 1918, the film was intensely topical in 1939 given the renewal of maritime hostilities in Europe and the Far East. Thunder Afloat made money by the bushel basket, as did most of Wallace Beery's formula vehicles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this interesting drama, a highly respected straight-arrow Irish cop is pleased when his son follows him onto the force. Unfortunately, the son is more interested in promotions than in upholding the law and he makes few friends among his peers. When he shoots a child caught stealing, the others frame him and he is sent to prison where his attitude becomes even worse than before. Upon his escape, the bad seed goes on a crime spree. He then learns that his wife has just borne him a son. When he goes to the hospital to see the babe, his father, who set this trap, arrests him and sends him back to the pokey, proving that in this case, justice is thicker than blood. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Good Old Soak was based on a story by Don Marquis, creator of the immortal "Archy and Mehitabel." Wallace Beery is well-cast as town drunk Clem Hawley, a blot on the escutcheon of a small Prohibition-era Midwestern town. When a large sum of bank money is stolen, Clem immediately falls under suspicion. His previously spineless son Clemmie (Eric Linden) rushes to his dad's defense, insisting that he, and not Clem, is the thief. But the "good old soak" manages to recover the money and expose the thief, a respectable "social" drinker and stock-market swindler whose hypocrisy is in stark contrast to Clem's bibulous honesty. In one of his last film roles, Ted Healy manages to steal quite a few scenes from Beery (no small feat) as a cheerful bootlegger. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this remake of the 1920 Will Rogers comedy Honest Hutch, Wallace Beery stars as the eponymous Hutch, the ne'er-do-well patriarch of a large and needy family, who unexpectedly becomes rich when he stumbles upon $100,000 worth of hidden swag. Ironically, because Hutch has become so notorious as the town layabout, he must now reform into a responsible, hard-working member of the community, in order to provide an excuse for the excessive funds suddenly available to him. The money just as abruptly becomes unavailable again when it's stolen by bank robbers, but the yarns Hutch spins to explain away the missing cash wind up leading to the arrest of the thieves. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide

The stringent censorship imposed upon Hollywood of the mid-1930s dictated that gangsters could no longer be the "heroes" in any crime film. Public Hero No. 1 reflects this restriction. G-Man Chester Morris poses as a crook to infiltrate the notorious Purple Gang, a band of hoodlums which preys upon other hoodlums. Orchestrating the jailbreak of the Gang's leader (Joseph Calleia), Morris joins him in a Dillinger-like flight across the country. The bloody denouement, which occurs in a vaudeville theatre, is likewise drawn from the Dillinger saga (that particular gentleman was of course killed in front of a movie house). Also featured in Public Hero No. 1 is Jean Arthur as the heroine (a comic role) and Lionel Barrymore as a drunken gang doctor. The film was remade as The Getaway in 1942. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide