Winfield R. Sheehan Movies
Studio executive Winfield Sheehan was closely associated with 20th Century Fox studios. A native of Buffalo, NY, Sheehan served in the Spanish-American War as a teen. After working as a cub reporter he became a police reporter for New York's Evening World in the early 1900s. In 1910, Sheehan became the fire commissioner's secretary and in 1911 performed similar duties for the police commissioner. In the latter capacity, he helped the newly established studio of William Fox stay afloat in the face of increasing pressure to fold from the Motion Picture Patents Company, which routinely absorbed, intimidated, and ultimately destroyed most fledgling studios. The Fox case played a vital role in the destruction of the Motion Picture Patents Company's absolute control. Afterward, Sheehan became William Fox's personal secretary and two years later became the studio's general manager and vice president. He then served as Fox's chief of production until 1935 when the studio became part of 20th Century. After that, Sheehan became an independent producer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
This energetic direct-to-video effort rises above its severely limited budget thanks to a fairly enthusiastic script, fraught with the kind of goofy paranoia that would later propel The X-Files to cult status. The later years of the Cold War set the stage for a plot involving a diabolical, far-reaching government conspiracy, linked to the testing of new high-tech defense equipment that uses technology cannibalized from a downed alien spacecraft. It seems there's a ghost in the machine -- an artificial alien intelligence has come to life in the circuitry of the central defense computer A.S.M.O.D.S. (Automatic Systems Monitoring Offensive/Defensive Strategy), through which it manipulates much of the Defense Department's equipment and personnel. It's ultimately up to a conspiracy-hungry tabloid reporter (Hans Bachmann) to convince Pentagon officials of the impending danger and stop A.S.M.O.D.S. from ordering a massive nuclear strike. Modestly entertaining if not particularly original, the screenplay owes a tremendous debt to Colossus: The Forbin Project, but still manages to take the concept in some interesting directions. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- 1945
Famed WW1 aviator Eddie Rickenbacker once more entered the public's consciousness during WW2 when, while serving as an Air Force officer, he and several other pilots crashed into the Pacific. While the world anxiously awaited news of his fate, Rickenbacker and a handful of survivors floated for 19 days in a tiny rubber raft. Captain Eddie recreates this incident, using it as a framework for a series of flashbacks in which Rickenbacker (Fred MacMurray) reminisces on the high points of his life. He is seen experimenting with aviation in his backyard, working in an auto factory to finance his earliest flights, and wooing and winning the lovely Adelaide (Lynn Bari). When America enters WW1, Rickenbacker immediately signs up, eventually shooting down more enemy planes than any other American aviator. Back in "the present", Rickenbacker and his comrades (including Lloyd Nolan and Richard Conte as Lt. Whittaker and Private Bartek) struggle to stay alive while awaiting rescue. Darryl Hickman plays Rickenbacker as a boy, while Charles Bickford portrays his father William. The huge supporting cast includes amusing unbilled contributions by Grady Sutton ("The schottische is my fav-or-ite dance!") and George Chandler. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fred MacMurray, Lynn Bari, (more)
- 1940
Winfield Sheehan, former head of Fox studios, owned the only Austrian Lippizan horses in the U.S. In 1940, MGM bought the rights to the Felix Salten novel Florian, all about the Lippanzers. When the film was made, the producer was Winfield Sheehan. Coincidence? We don't think so. At any rate, the story, set in the 1880s, tells of how hero (Robert Young) and heroine (Helen Gilbert) are brought together through their love of horses. Just so we don't forget that Florian is set in Austria, Reginald Owen shows up as emperor Franz Josef. For another filmic treatment of the fabulous Lippanzer show horses, we refer you to Disney's The Miracle of the White Stallions (63). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Young, Helen Gilbert, (more)
- 1935
Henry Fonda made his screen debut in this filmization of his Broadway success The Farmer Takes a Wife. The story is set along the Erie Canal in the 1850s. Fonda plays a farmer who takes a river job to make ends meet. He falls in love with Janet Gaynor, daughter of a canal-boat cook, who thinks very little of farmers. Nonetheless, Fonda and Gaynor marry, much to the displeasure of canal skipper Charles Bickford, who'd assumed that Janet was his girl. When Fonda avoids a fight with Bickford, Janet believes that he's yellow, but he eventually proves otherwise. It is said that during his first day on the set, movie novice Henry Fonda, noting the camera direction "dolly with Dan and Molly" in the script, asked director Victor Fleming who Dolly was. Adapted from the play by Frank B. Elser and Marc Connelly, The Farmer Takes a Wife was remade with Betty Grable and Dale Robertson in 1955. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Janet Gaynor, Henry Fonda, (more)
This adaptation of the oft-filmed Jean Webster novel Daddy Long Legs has been tailored to the talents of Shirley Temple. The orphaned daughter of vaudeville entertainers, Elizabeth Blair (Temple) is the most precocious charge at super-strict Lakeside Orphanage, regularly disrupting protocol with her extemporaneous performance of such songs as "Animal Crackers in My Soup" at the dinner table. While paying a visit to the orphanage, wealthy trustee Edward Morgan (John Boles) is enchanted by cute little Elizabeth -- and even more so by the girls more mature sister Mary (Rochelle Hudson). He secretly arranges for the sisters' release from the institution, sets them up in a lavish mansion, and finances their education. When Mary almost falls in love with another man, it is miss-fixit Elizabeth who brings Mary and Edward together, capping this bit of cupidity with her trademarked exclamation "Oh, my goo'ness!" The first Shirley Temple vehicle specifically aimed at children, Curly Top contains some wonderful character bits from its adult cast, notably Etienne Girardot, Rafaela Ottiano and Jane Darwell as the orphanage officials and by Arthur Treacher and Billy Gilbert as the hero's household servants. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shirley Temple, John Boles, (more)
- 1935
This tragic melodrama is a remake of Griffith's 1920 film, Way Down East. The story centers upon a starving, impoverished gamin who lost everything after a wicked millionaire tricked her into a marriage and impregnated her. The baby doesn't survive the ordeal and the poor girl ends up sheltered by a puritanical farm family. While there, she falls in love with the son. Unfortunately, as soon as they learn of her checkered past, the woman is tossed out. The distraught young woman is trying to cross a frozen river when a sudden thaw strikes, stranding her upon the treacherous floes. As they drift inexorably towards a deadly waterfall, her lover tries to save her. Unfortunately he cannot, and as the film ends, she is seen tumbling over the falls to certain doom. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rochelle Hudson, Henry Fonda, (more)
- 1935
One More Spring is a laundered version of Robert Nathan's whimsical Depression-era novel. Left destitute by the Wall Street crash are an odd assortment of lost souls: Former antique dealer Otkar (Warner Baxter), concert violinist Rosenberg (Walter Woolf King) and unemployed actress Elizabeth (Janet Gaynor). Kindly Central Park street cleaner Sweeney (Roger Imhof) allows the threesome -- later a foursome when they're joined by suicidal banker Sheridan (Grant Mitchell) -- to live in an abandoned tool shed. Chastely, the three men and the girl survive a tough winter, remaining hopeful that things will be better in the Spring (as indeed they are!) At one point, Elizabeth manages to raise enough money for a week's worth of food, leading the men to conclude that she's taken to streetwalking. But, no, our heroine remains chaste and pure to the very end (in the novel, Elizabeth was a streetwalker, but that's another story). The most indelible image in One More Spring is the sight of Otkar and Rosenberg blithely roasting a tiny pigeon over an open fire. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Janet Gaynor, Warner Baxter, (more)
- 1934
Inasmuch as the film was based on a novel by Swedish author Sigrid Boo, Fox's Servant's Entrance is logically set in Sweden. Heiress Hedda Nillson (Janet Gaynor) certain that her family is about to lose all its money, takes a job as a maid. After the usual trials and tribulations, Hedda falls in love with humble chauffeur Eric Landstrom (Lew Ayres). When it turns out she's not going to go broke after all, Hedda despairs, believing that she will be forced to give Eric up -- but of course nothing like that ever happens. The highlight of Servant's Entrance is an animated nightmare sequence, courtesy of Walt Disney studios, wherein poor Hedda is "attacked" by a barrage of anthropomorphic pots and pans (Disney's previous contribution to Fox Studios was a futuristic television sequence in the 1933 Lilian Harvey vehicle My Lips Betray). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Janet Gaynor, Lew Ayres, (more)
- 1934
Though the names have been changed to protect the guilty, this romantic crime drama offers a relatively factual account of the life of Arnold Rothstein, an infamous bookie and is based upon a story by his widow. The story tells how he gambled his way to the top of his profession. Though he originally promised his wife that he would stop gambling once he made $200,000, he became addicted and decided he had to make $300,000 more before he could be happy. Soon his greed leads him to crooked gambling. Things get worse when he openly carries on an affair with a singer. The bookies dirty dealings get him into trouble and his wife is kidnapped while he is out of town. While rushing back to save her, he has a car accident and his lover is killed. By the time she is rescued, the wife has decided enough is enough and takes off to get a European divorce. The greedy gambler finds himself utterly lost without his two lovers and so after selling his wife's jewels takes out a large insurance policy upon himself. On an interesting footnote: Inez Norton, Rothstein's real-life widow, has a bit part in the film, as does then-ingenue Susan Fleming, AKA Mrs. Harpo Marx. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Spencer Tracy, Helen Twelvetrees, (more)
Based on an idea by Will Rogers, the story concerns the efforts by the President of the United States to get the public's mind off the Depression. To this end, he appoints Broadway impresario Lawrence Cromwell (Warner Baxter) to the new cabinet position of "Secretary of Amusement." Wasting no time, Cromwell sets about to nationalize the entertainment industry, organizing singers, dancers, actors and other variety artists into batallion-like touring units. Cromwell is fought at every turn by a cartel of wealthy industrialists, who've been profiting from the Depression and have no desire to see America pull itself upward. Happily, every effort to bribe or cajole Cromwell into giving up his mission is thwarted and the Department of Amusement goes on to help the the country at a time when its citizens most needed it. Among the highlights are an energetic "revival-meeting" musical number by Aunt Jemima (Theresa Gardella), and 6-year-old Shirley Temple's rendition of "Baby Take a Bow." Originally released at 80 minutes, Stand Up and Cheer was edited to 69 minutes for reissue, then to 65 minutes (removing most of Stepin Fetchit's scenes) for television: it was this last version which was computer-colorized in 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Warner Baxter, Madge Evans, (more)
- 1934
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
- Starring:
- Madeleine Carroll, Franchot Tone, (more)
- 1934
Four courageous college graduates become heroes when they successfully complete a 15-hour coast-to-coast plane flight. Alas, things don't go so well for the foursome when they return to earth to seek out employment. Chris Thring (Charles Farrell) has a particularly rough time of it, but his sweetheart Catherine Furness (Janet Gaynor) remains faithful through thick and thin. Trouble brews in the form of Chris and Catherine's mutual friends Mack McGowan (James Dunn) and Madge Rountree (Ginger Rogers): Catherine thinks Chris is in love with Madge, while Mack falls in love with Chris? and on and on it goes. Shirley Temple shows up in the early scenes as a plane passenger, while that grand old trouper Gustav von Seyfertitz sheds his usual villainous image as the film's avuncular last-minute problem-solver. Change of Heart is based on a novel by Kathleen Norris. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, (more)
Movie newcomer Ketti Gallian plays Marie Gallante, who is abducted by a most ungallant drunken sea captain. He leaves her stranded in Yucatan, where she gets a job as a cafe singer in hopes of paying her way to the Panama Canal zone. While en route, she meets the two-fisted Crawbett (Spencer Tracy), who unlike most of the other men she's encountered believes the kidnapping story. Crawbett, a secret agent, comes to Marie's rescue when she gets inadvertently mixed up in a plot to sabotage the Canal. His job done, Crawbett decides to stick around in Panama for a while when he falls in love with Marie. Based on a novel by Jacques Devel, Marie Gallante was intended to make a star out of Ketti Gallian, but it was the reliable Spencer Tracy who attracted the crowds and earned the critical plaudits. Elements of the film's plotline would later resurface in the 1940 programmer Charlie Chan in Panama. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Spencer Tracy, Ketti Gallian, (more)
- 1933
The 1933 State Fair was the first of three film versions of the Phillip Stong bestseller. Some consider it the best of the three because of its stricter adherence to the source material and the presence of star Will Rogers. Rogers plays Abel Frake, patriarch of a family whose individual members are affected by the upcoming Iowa State Fair in various fascinating ways. Abel hopes to enter his prize hog Blue Boy and win the blue ribbon. His wife Melissa (Louise Dresser) wants to enter her mincemeat in a food competition, his son Wayne (Norman Foster) wants to get even with a carnival sharpster who'd outsmarted him during the last state fair, and daughter Margery (Janet Gaynor) just wants to get out of the house for a little fun. The parents win their prizes (though it looks for a while that Blue Boy will succumb to a serious illness) the children have brief romances (one happy, one cautionary), and everyone goes home a little wiser for the experience. Footnote: Fox studios offered to butcher Blue Boy and sell his meat to Will Rogers, but Rogers declined, noting that he wouldn't feel right eating his costar. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Will Rogers, Janet Gaynor, (more)
- 1933
The only Academy Award winning picture for Fox Studios (in its pre-20th Century-Fox era), Cavalcade is a stately film adaptation of the pageant-like stage hit by Noel Coward. The film concentrates on the years 1901 through 1933, as seen through the eyes of an upper-class British family and its servants. Clive Brook and Diana Wynyard portray the "upstairs" Marryots, while Herbert Mundin and Una O'Connor represent the "downstairs" Bridges (the incidents and characterizations in Cavalcade are very, very close to those seen in the popular 1970s BBC series Upstairs, Downstairs). The triumphs and tragedies of both masters and servants are placed in context with the death of Queen Victoria, the Boer War, World War I, the Jazz Age, and the Depression. Both classes have their troubles with their children, what with their offsprings' predilection for opposing authority, marrying the wrong people, and dying at the least opportune moments. The film's highlight was also the most talked-about scene in the original play: newlyweds Edward Marryot (John Warburton) and Edith Harris (Margaret Lindsay), discussing their future while on their honeymoon cruise, reveal at the scene's fadeout that they've been standing in front of a life preserver bearing the name "TITANIC". On the whole, however, Cavalcade creaks a bit when seen today, and is best viewed from a historical perspective. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook, (more)
The first "epic" western of the talkie era, The Big Trail is motivated by a hero's search for the murderer of his father. Twenty-three-year-old John Wayne, hitherto limited to bit parts, was thrust into the difficult leading role, a young mountaineer put in charge of a huge California-bound wagon train. Over the next several months, Wayne and his fellow pioneers face every imaginable hazard and disaster, from blistering desert heat to blinding snowstorms, negotiating steep cliffs, treacherous rivers, uncharted forests and other such natural obstacles. Meanwhile, Wayne's tentative romance with heroine Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill) is continually thwarted by a charming but duplicitous gambler (Ian Keith), and all-around villain Red Flack (Tyrone Power Sr.) and his henchman Lopez (Charlie Stevens) ceaselessly plot to double-cross the other wagon-trainers for their own financial gain. The Big Trail was a box-office disappointment, a fact which some have attributed its expensive production methods. Each scene was lensed twice, once in 35-millimeter and then in the 65-mm "Fox Grandeur" wide-screen process. And then, each dialogue scene was filmed in French and German, with totally different casts. Even if Big Trail has been a big hit, it would have lost money thanks to the time-consuming shooting and reshooting of virtually every scene. Whatever the case, it was John Wayne who suffered most from the film's failure; instantly demoted to "B"-westerns, it took him nearly a decade to rebuild his stardom. Long believed lost, The Big Trail was made available for exhibition again in the early 1970s -- and in the 1990s the original widescreen version was at last restored for public view. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, (more)
- 1929
In this early talkie from director John Ford, a Scottish captain and his regiment are sent to India during WW I and assigned to quell a native uprising in the Northern mountains. Unfortunately, soon after arriving, he gets drunk and seemingly kills another officer during a barroom fight. He escapes capture and disappears into the crowd. Now wanted as a renegade, he involves himself with a beautiful but sadistic native princess, a direct descendant of Alexander the Great. He cozies up to her and learns that she is planning to send her troops to attack the British through Khyber pass. Though she correctly suspects that the fugitive soldier is really a spy, she cannot help but fall in love with him, thereby sparing him the usual torture and castration she forces upon other captured British soldiers. Unfortunately her love causes her downfall in the exciting conclusion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Victor McLaglen, Myrna Loy, (more)
