Vincent Sherman Movies
Born Abram Orovitz, the Vienna, GA native Vincent Sherman became a professional actor not long after he graduated from Oglethorpe University. Like many other Broadway regulars, Sherman arrived in Hollywood in the early talkie years, where he appeared in such films as Counsellor-at-Law (1933). In 1938, Sherman signed on at Warner Bros. as a director; he received his first directorial credit for the 1939 Return of Dr. X, starring Humphrey Bogart.Sherman began at the studio's B-unit, and quickly built a reputation for his ability to take any script, no matter how weak or mediocre, and turn it into a five-star blockbuster; this inveterate talent yielded increasingly bankable projects over time, and by 1942 Sherman was helming such A-list pictures as Humphrey Bogart's All Through the Night (1942), Bette Davis' Old Acquaintance (1943) and Mr. Skeffington (1944), and Joan Crawford's Goodbye My Fancy (1950). In the mid-'50s, the inane HUAC damaged Sherman's career (thanks to his WPA involvement, some two decades prior), which forced him onto McCarthy's "Gray List"; this restrained the progress of his career by six or seven years, but Sherman rebounded, with such pictures as The Garment Jungle (1957), The Naked Earth (1958), Ice Palace (1960), Fever in the Blood (1961), and the 1966 Cervantes, which became his final theatrical film. Sherman spent the next three decades in television, directing such made-for-TV movies as The Last Hurrah (1978) and Women at West Point (1979), and helming episodes of such series as The Waltons, Baretta, and Trapper John, M.D.
Despite a long marriage to Hedda Comorau, Sherman engaged in a number of high-profile Tinseltown affairs (which his wife, according to his personal website, accepted unblinkingly, as "part and parcel" of the Hollywood lifestyle); these included a three-year entanglement with the irascible Joan Crawford. A good friend of actor Errol Flynn, the patient Sherman helped see the ever-inebriated Flynn through the arduous production schedule of The Adventures of Don Juan (1949).
In his later years, Sherman published the autobiographical career overview Studio Affairs. He made his final bigscreen appearance in the 1995 retrospective documentary Forever Hollywood. Sherman died eleven years later, at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA on June 18, 2006, one month shy of his 100th birthday. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1951
Based on a play by Fay Kanin, this comedy drama follows a successful congresswoman's emotional journey back to her alma mater. When Agatha Reed (Joan Crawford) is offered an honorary degree at her former college, she is forced to remember the reason she was expelled to begin with. Nearly twenty years prior, Agatha (Crawford) had an affair with Dr. James Merrill (Robert Young), one of her professors. After her departure, Dr. Merrill (Young) slowly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the president of the school. Despite having left under less than desirable circumstances, Agatha is excited to see him and hopes to rekindle their relationship. Meanwhile, newspaper reporter Matt Cole (Frank Lovejoy), not only follow's Agatha to her former university, but unsucessfully proposes marriage. Unfortunately for him, the alumna's eyes are set firmly towards her old flame. However, once Matt (Lovejoy) and Agatha team up in a passionate attempt to update the school's outdated curriculum, she realizes who she truly loves. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
- Starring:
- Joan Crawford, Robert Young, (more)
- 1951
- NR
During the 1845 battle for Texas' independence, a cattle baron (Clark Gable) spars with an evil senator (Broderick Crawford) over the state's future and for the affections of newpaperwoman Ava Gardner. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi
- Starring:
- Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, (more)
A woman's desire to rise above her drab lower middle-class life take her down the road to destruction in this gripping crime melodrama. The story opens as she cowers insider her old home, fearing the inevitable arrival of the murderous gangsters pursuing her. Her tragic tale unfolds via flashback. It all began when she became frustrated by her humble life in a squalid factory town. She was married to a laborer and lived with her parents. Soon after her child accidentally dies, the distraught woman abandons her old life to take a job where she meets an exceptional, but dull as dishwater accountant. He is a bit spineless and so allows the woman to convince him to get involved with a powerful gangster. Though she had promised to marry the accountant, she reneges and becomes the illicit moll of the married gangster. Wanting her to be a bit more elegant so he can pass her off as a Texas heiress to his west-coast rival, the gangster hires an impoverished socialite to teach her social graces. Soon she appears as an elegant, cultured woman. Still, despite her sophisticated exterior, she is conniving and ruthless inside and tries to double-cross both her new lover and his rival. Eventually the two crime lords meet in a bloody confrontation that leaves one mobster dead. Her lover is about to shoot her but the accountant (who still loves her) intervenes and she escapes back to her home town. She waits there through the night and the next morning goes outside and finds her gangster lover waiting to get his revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Joan Crawford, David Brian, (more)
- 1950
Harriet Craig is the third film version of George Kelly's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Craig's Wife. Joan Crawford stars as the title character, a thoroughly selfish woman who prizes her house and her possessions above all else. Harriet Craig is even willing to spoil the business opportunities of her husband Walter (Wendell Corey) to avoid losing her precious home. When her self-involvement causes turbulence in the romantic life of her cousin (K.T. Stevens), and when her husband's eyes are finally opened to his wife's true nature, Harriet Craig is at long last hoist on her own petard. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Joan Crawford, Wendell Corey, (more)
- 1950
When he's discharged from a military hospital, ex-GI Bob Corey (Gordon MacRae) goes on a search for his army buddy Steve Connolly (Edmond O'Brien). A reformed crook, Connolly is on the lam from a trumped-up murder rap, and Corey hopes to clear his pal. Tagging along is Army nurse Julie Benson (Virginia Mayo), who has fallen for Corey. The rest of the film emulates the 1946 noir exercise The Killers, with Julie and Corey interviewing various people with whom Connolly has come in contact. One of those people, of course, is the actual killer, who now adds the GI and the nurse to the "hit list." Warner Bros. used Backfire to test the dramatic potential of singing star Gordon MacRae, who passes that test with flying colors. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Virginia Mayo, Gordon MacRae, (more)
Richard Todd plays an insufferable Scots soldier confined to a World War II military hospital. Ronald Reagan is an all-American patient who befriends the headstrong Scotsman, while Patricia Neal is the compassionate nurse. Gradually the patients grow begrudgingly fond of Todd, and when it is learned that he is suffering from a fatal illness, everyone involved tries to keep his true condition a secret from him. Todd inadvertently discovers the truth, and violently turns against his new buddies. But before the fade-out, friendship wins out over bitterness and self-pity. Filmed in England, Hasty Heart is based on the stage play by John Patrick. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ronald Reagan, Patricia Neal, (more)
Though Errol Flynn was well past his prime (and obviously well lubricated in certain scenes), he rises to the occasion of The Adventures of Don Juan with a spirited, athletic performance. As fabled Spanish swashbuckler/lover Don Juan, Flynn spends the early portions of the film romancing willing young ladies and dueling with jealous husbands. Spain's Queen Margaret (Viveca Lindfors) assigns Don Juan to head the royal fencing academy to keep him out of trouble. When scheming Duke de Lorca (Robert Douglas) plots to topple the monarchy, it is Don Juan's eager young fencing pupils who come to the rescue. Though a troubled production (filming was habitually halted due to Flynn's precarious physical condition and by constant changes and replacements in production personnel),The Adventures of Don Juan moves swiftly and enjoyably from start to finish, abetted by a rousing, semi-satirical Max Steiner musical score, which has since been heard in such 1980s films as Zorro, the Gay Blade and Goonies. Incidentally, Errol Flynn is doubled in the famous leap from the head of a long staircase by stunt expert Jock Mahoney. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Errol Flynn, Viveca Lindfors, (more)
- 1947
Though not readily apparent at first, The Unfaithful is a remake of the 1940 Bette Davis vehicle The Letter, which in turn was adapted from the play by W. Somerset Maugham. The locale of the Maugham original has been shifted from the jungles of Malaya to the cozy confines of a middle-sized American town. Ann Sheridan stars as Chris Hunter, who late one night kills a man who tries to attack her in her own home. At least that's her story: it turns out that the dead man had once had an affair with Chris while her serviceman husband Bob (Zachary Scott) was overseas. When it appears as though Chris might have intentionally murdered her assailant, faithful family friend and attorney Larry Hammaford (Lew Ayres) puts his career and reputation on the line by suppressing a valuable piece of evidence. Shorn of the class and race consciousness -- not to mention the eroticism and bitter irony -- of the Maugham original, The Unfaithful is able to move more logically to a happy (or at least satisfying) denouement. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ann Sheridan, Lew Ayres, (more)
- 1947
In this slick melodrama, a sort of film-noir for women, a nightclub singer has an affair with an unhappily married San Francisco doctor. Though the physician desperately wants to leave his wife, he lacks the courage to ask for a divorce. In retaliation, the singer accepts an offer to move East and start up a new club in New York. Lost without the singer, the doctor is without option until his partner suddenly dies. With a burst of inspiration, he fakes his own death and flees to New York. Later, he is horrified to learn that his death has been officially declared a homicide, and so he goes into hiding in the singer's apartment. To cope with his fear and the increasing success of his lover, the physician begins drinking heavily. This only makes him paranoid and more depressed and he begins to suspect his lover is having an affair. Upon confronting the "lover," a fight ensues, the doctor wins, and thinking he killed his rival, he takes off -- only to end up in a horrible traffic accident that leaves his face unrecognizable. Though plastic surgery gives him a new identity, it is at that time that he is arrested and sent back to California to stand trial for his own murder. Rather than burden his family with the shock that he is still alive, the doctor insists that his lover keep mum, and he stoically goes to trial where he is sentenced to Death Row. Beautifully photographed by James Wong Howe in typically expressionistic style, the film focuses on the desperation and entrapment of the characters and expresses a true bleak, fatalistic film-noir sensibility which makes this film unique in the genre. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, (more)
- 1946
In this sequel to the 1944 teenage comedy Janie, Joan Leslie replaces Joyce Reynolds in the title role, playing the virtuous but amorous daughter of Edward Arnold and Ann Harding. Janie marries the soldier (Robert Hutton) she'd met in the earlier film, hoping to help him set the course of a successful civilian life. Robert Benchley (who'd died the year before this film was released) is a delight as the husband's dry-witted stepfather, doing his best to help the young couple in spite of themselves. Complications ensue when hubby's former girl friend (Dorothy Malone) shows up. Janie Gets Married ends with the old flame extinguished and Janie and her husband in each other's arms. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Joan Leslie, Barbara Brown, (more)
- 1945
Yes, even Ida Lupino occasionally starred in screwball comedies during the 1930s and 1940s. Pillow to Post casts Lupino as free-spirited travelling saleswoman Jane Howard, who has trouble finding suitable lodgings during the wartime housing shortage. In order to secure a room at a motor camp catering exclusively to married servicemen, Jane pretends to be the wife of hapless young lieutenant Don Mallory (William Prince). Misunderstanding piles upon misunderstanding, and before long poor Mallory is facing a general court-martial. While Lupino pushes the envelope a bit in the leading role, the film's comedy content is also in the capable hands of Sidney Greenstreet, Stu Erwin and Willie Best. Pillow to Post is adapted from a stage play by Rose Simon Kohn. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ida Lupino, Sydney Greenstreet, (more)
From a novel of the same name by "Elizabeth", the film begins in 1914, with Bette Davis cast as vain, flighty society woman Fanny Trellis. Informed by Jewish-American financier Job Skeffington (Claude Rains) that her brother Trippy (Richard Waring) has stolen money to pay his gambling debts, Fanny marries Job, securing his promise that he won't prosecute her thieving sibling. Angered by Fanny's agreeing to this loveless union, Trippy runs off to join the army, and is killed during World War I. Fanny holds Skeffington responsible for her brother's death, and demands a divorce with a generous cash settlement. Despite Job's oft-repeated belief that "a woman is only beautiful when she is loved," Fanny uses her coquettish beauty to flit indiscriminately from man to man. While on a sailing trip with her latest beau, Fanny comes down with diphtheria. The disease destroys her facial beauty, and before long the shallow Fanny is left completely alone. Her self-centered efforts to reunite all of her old boyfriends for a party is a failure due to her pathetic middle-aged efforts to be kittenish, and the grotesqueness of the mounds of facial makeup she apples. Meanwhile, Skeffington, who has resettled in Europe with his daughter, is captured by the Nazis and placed in a concentration camp. He manages to escape, returning to the US totally blind and utterly penniless. A chastened Fanny comes back to her husband, promising to care for him for the rest of his life. Most TV prints of Mr. Skeffington run 127 minutes; the videocassette and cable TV versions have been restored to the original length. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Bette Davis, Claude Rains, (more)
- 1944
More a romantic melodrama than the uplifting propaganda piece the producers perhaps envisioned, In Our Time stars Ida Lupino as Jennifer Whittredge, a young antique buyer marrying a Polish count, Stephan Orvid (Paul Henried), after a whirlwind romance in a Warsaw at the brink of World War II. The count's old-fashioned family in general and his aristocratic uncle (Victor Francen) in particular resist the union, but Jennifer brings a breath of fresh air and a sense of good Anglo-Saxon values into the stagnant rooms of the Orvid estate and soon the farm is prosperous once again. When the German military might finally enters Poland, Jennifer and Stephan join the country's scorched earth defense by burning both their property and are soon among the refugees waiting for the day when Poland is once again free from Fascism. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ida Lupino, Paul Henreid, (more)
After the box office success of The Old Maid, Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins were reunited for this catty drama. Kitty Marlowe (Davis) is a well-respected author who returns to the small town of her birth, where she becomes reacquainted with her childhood friend Millie Drake (Hopkins). While Millie is happy as a wife and mother and loves her husband Preston (John Loder), she's envious of Kitty's success, and Kitty's visit prompts Millie to sit down at the typewriter herself. Millie turns out a sexy potboiler that, with Kitty's help, attracts the attention of a publisher. To the surprise of them both, Millie's book is a runaway bestseller, and a decade later she's one of the most successful authors in America, easily eclipsing Kitty's more highbrow work. Preston finds himself growing disenchanted with Millie once success begins to go to her head, and he finds himself attracted to Kitty; while Kitty tries to dissuade Preston's advances, a scorned Millie believes that her old friend has been trying to steal her husband away from her. Old Acquaintance was remade in 1981 as Rich and Famous. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, (more)
- 1942
In this dark drama an iron-willed older sister forcibly thrusts her only modestly talented younger sister into a Broadway career. She does this to desperately try to keep her little sis from falling into the same small-town trap of marriage to a dull working-stiff and endless hours of taking care of babies and household drudgery. The bigger sister gets her chance when two handsome vaudevillians come to town. Seeing that one of the fellows eyes her younger sibling, the elder connives to get the two together. The scheme works and the smitten performer dumps his long-time partner in exchange for a career with his new love. That might have been hunky dory, but the ambitious big sister wants more for her sister and convinces her to become a solo act. So upset is the jilted partner that he commits suicide. Still the big sister refuses to stop pushing until finally the younger girl gets fed up and rebels in a bitter confrontation that only results in more tragedy. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ida Lupino, Dennis Morgan, (more)
- 1941
Humphrey Bogart plays Gloves Donahue, a rough-hewn but essentially decent New York gambler. The Runyonesque plot gets moving when Gloves tries to find out what's holding up his favorite restaurant's daily shipment of cheesecake. Paying a call on the bakery, Gloves stumbles into a Nazi spy ring, masterminded by Conrad Veidt. Mixed up in all this is nightclub singer Kaaren Verne, whose loyalties are in question in her early scenes but who turns out to be as true-blue as the patriotic Gloves. Combining a quick wit with quicker fists, Gloves and his "mob" thwart the Nazis before they're able to skip the country. The cast is a movie buff's dream, ranging from Jane Darwell as Bogart's mom to Peter Lorre as a cynical Nazi flunkey to William Demarest, Frank McHugh, Phil Silvers and Jackie Gleason as Bogie's favorite cohorts. The film's best scene would have us believe that Bogart could confound a gang of erudite Nazis with a steady stream of Manhattan slang. One shudders to think how leaden All Through the Night would have been had George Raft accepted the role of Gloves Donahue. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, (more)
- 1941
In this drama, a terminally ill college professor with only three months to live asks some younger colleagues what he should do with the rest of his life. One advises him to murder someone who deserves to die. The professor likes the idea and chooses to off a conniving seductress who really enjoys destroying the lives and loves of other people, including two of his ex-students. After he kills her, he turns himself into the cops. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Geraldine Fitzgerald, Thomas Mitchell, (more)
Underground is an average Warner Bros. suspenser, given a boost by its unrelenting portrayal of Nazis as verminous scum--several months before America's entry into World War II. Jeffrey Lynn plays an impressionable young European who is intoxicated by the "glories" of National Socialism. Lynn's brother, Philip Dorn, is on the opposite side of the fence as an announcer for an underground Resistance radio station. At first scornful of his brother's activities, Lynn soon learns that Hitler isn't the saint he believed him to be--especially after several of his friends are liquidated by the Gestapo. Lynn belatedly joins his brother's cause and, at the cost of his own life, helps the Resistance thwart a band of fifth columnists. Underground is a solid piece of film craftsmanship, lacking only the big star names that would have made it a box-office hit. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jeffrey Lynn, Philip Dorn, (more)
- 1940
This third film version of Maxwell Anderson's play Saturday's Children stars Claude Rains as the impecunious but proud father of a large brood. Rains' daughter Anne Shirley marries idealistic John Garfield, a would-be inventor who works for Shirley's father. Feeling that he's been tricked into marriage, Garfield gives every indication of turning out to be as much "failure" as Rains. Only when Garfield and Shirley are on the verge of breaking up do they realize that material gain is not the only barometer of success in life. Previous filmizations of this story include Saturday's Children (29), starring Corinne Griffith, and Maybe It's Love (35), costarring Ross Alexander and Gloria Stuart. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- John Garfield, Anne Shirley, (more)
- 1940
This slightly laundered remake of the 1932 courtroom classic The Mouthpiece stars George Brent as brilliant but unprincipled DA Steve Forbes, a character based on legendary lawyer William Fallon. After railroading an innocent boy into the electric chair, Forbes goes on a bender, then cynically builds up a new practice as a criminal attorney. His underhanded legal tactics cause a rift between Forbes and his idealistic younger brother Johnny (William Lundigan), despite the fact that it was Steve's income that enabled Johnny to finish law school. Angered that his brother has enabled big-time gangster J.B. Roscoe (Richard Barthelmess) to continually elude the law, Johnny turns in damning evidence to the FBI. On Roscoe's orders, Steve frames Johnny on a murder charge, but reforms his ways in the nick of time. Based on a play by Frank J. Collins, The Man Who Talked too Much was remade in 1955 as Illegal, with Edward G. Robinson in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- George Brent, Virginia Bruce, (more)
- 1939
Humphrey Bogart makes his first and last appearance in a horror movie in this film. Though the title implies that it is a sequel to the classic 1932 chiller Dr. X it is not. The terror begins when an eager-beaver reporter stumbles across the corpse of a popular actress who turns up, after much media hoopla, not to be dead at all. At least she seems to be alive on a surface level and is eager to sue the reporter's paper. The reporter can't help but notice that here skin is unnaturally pale and that she keeps her face concealed beneath a long-black veil. Suspecting that evil is afoot, he--who by now is unemployed--launches a private investigation to prove that she really was the corpse he saw. His search leads him into the terrifying world of a psycho blood doctor, and into a series of unsolved murders in which all the victims were found with no blood in their veins. Ultimately, the reporter finds himself face-to-face with the nefarious Dr. Maurice Xavier (Bogart), a man executed several years ago for murdering patients while performing Frankensteinian experiments. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, Rosemary Lane, (more)
- 1939
In this touching drama, a young woman cons her father the Colonel to put their colt in the Kentucky Derby. They do, but the horse fails miserably and his rider is suspended. It is then discovered that the horse lost because it is blind. This does not dissuade the girl and her father who work hard to train the horse who goes on to win the Grand National. The jockey too is subsequently cleared of wrong-doing and is again allowed to race. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Edith Fellows, James McCallion, (more)
- 1939
This minor but entertaining screen version of the Monte Barrett-Russell E. Ross comic strip The Adventures of Jane Arden stars Warner contractee Rosella Towne as the title character. Dapper villain Dr. Vanders (James Stephenson) has been using beautiful, gullible young women as pawns in a clever smuggling ring. After rather nastily disposing of socialite Lola Martin (Peggy Shannon), Vanders is virtually a marked man himself: intrepid gal reporter Jane Arden vows to bring the criminals to justice, and never mind that her managing editor sweetheart Ed Towers (William Gargan) warns her off the case. Jane's adventures range from a dangerous ocean voyage to an exciting equestrian chase across the California countryside, with nary a pause for breath (after all, the picture runs only 55 minutes). Benny Rubin and Dennie Moore provide barely relevant comedy relief. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- William Gargan, Rosella Towne, (more)
- 1939
A remake of Dr. Socrates (1935), this middling melodrama features Kay Francis as Carol Nelson, a medical doctor blaming gangster Joe Gurney (Humphrey Bogart) for the death of her husband (John Eldredge) during a police raid. Determined to get even, Dr. Nelson sets up practice in a small town where a couple of Gurney's henchmen are serving time. And sure enough, Gurney is soon in dire need of Carol's help after being wounded in a jailhouse break. Convincing the gang boss and his men that they all suffer from eye infections, the good doctor proceeds to blind the mobsters with adrenaline eye drops and then calls the cops. Warner Bros. used the general idea a third time in Bullet Scars (1942), yet another B-movie. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, James Stephenson, (more)
- 1938
In this North Woods adventure a courageous Canadian Mounted Policeman takes on the outlaws who robbed a freighter heading for Edmonton. After the heist, the crooks got away with furs and gold leaving an innocent trapper to take the blame. Just as the hapless trapper is to be lynched the Mountie shows up and saves him. He then gallops off after the real culprits and by the story's ends fulfills the Mountie's creed. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Dick Foran, Gloria Dickson, (more)
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