Benjamin Stoloff Movies

As the comic relief in What Price Glory?, Sammy Cohen and Ted McNamara were hits. Unfortunately, when the Fox studios tried to feature them on their own, they weren't anywhere near as successful. Wealthy Dick Wright (Gene Cameron) wants to fight in WWI, but he's turned down by both the army and navy because he is a sleepwalker. He decides to join an ambulance unit, and his chauffeur and valet (Cohen and McNamara) go along to protect him. The three of them, however, wind up on a regular troop train and land in France as privates. They get involved in a lot of wild adventures, and the chauffeur and valet happen upon an enemy detachment. By disguising themselves in German uniforms, which fit almost as poorly as their army uniforms did, they capture the enemy soldiers. As a result, they return home as heroes. Cohen and McNamara were teamed a couple more times, including in director Henry Lehrman's When Sailors Go Wrong, but McNamara died in 1928, ending a partnership that was never very successful to begin with. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Fired for crashing his aeroplane into his employer's ranch, Tom Mix is elected sheriff in a town with, as a title stated, "a high mortality rate among sheriffs." Mix, of course, prevails against almost impossible odds, at one point cornering a gang of cutthroats holding leading lady Dorothy Dwan captive in the crater of a volcano about to erupt. Mix was at his best in fanciful Westerns like this one, although purists everywhere decried the use of fast cars, airplanes and stunts seemingly too impossible to be real. Most of them, amazingly, were all too real, a fact that was actually lost on contemporary audiences. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Tom Mix stars in the "modern" western Horseman of the Plains. Though the story is set in 1928, the plot is as old as the hills, with Mix coming to the aid of a rancher who's on the verge of foreclosure. Falling in love with Sally Blane, the rancher's pretty daughter, our hero vows to win an important cross-country race. And what a race! Starting on foot, the contestants are then expected to commandeer chariots, hay wagons and stagecoaches. By the time Horseman of the Plains has run its 45-minute course, Mix has emerged triumphant, winning the prize money and the girl all at once. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this newspaper drama, a star reporter learns that prominent city officials are covering for a bootlegging crime lord. Naturally the corrupt politicos attempt to prevent him from publishing; this leads the disillusioned reporter to join a small, independent paper. There he is finally able to expose the wicked group and bring them to justice. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Popular Broadway comedian Ted Healy (sort of a Milton Berle without the charm) was tapped for potential movie stardom by Fox Studios, who cast Healy in the wacky semi-musical comedy Soup to Nuts. The film was written by comic-strip artist Rube Goldberg (who also appears in the film), utilizing several of Goldberg's zanier comedy notions, including his incredibly complex "inventions." Healy plays a fireman who comes to the rescue of Mr. Schmidt (Charles Winninger) when the latter's costume shop faces foreclosure. Our hero's get-rich-quick schemes generally come acropper, but all is resolved in the climactic scene wherein Healy and his fellow smoke-eaters rescue Schmidt's daughter Louise (Lucille Browne) and her millionaire sweetheart (Stanley Smith) from a roaring blaze. Only recently made available for reappraisal, Soup to Nuts is of inestimable historical value as the movie debut of Ted Healy's Three "Stooges" Moe Howard (billed as Harry Howard), Shemp Howard, and Larry Fine, here joined for the first and last time by a fourth stooge, the relentlessly unfunny Fred Sanborn. Though somewhat restrained throughout the film, the Stooges enliven several otherwise plodding scenes with their tried-and-true material. The best bits included the gruesome threesome's opening song ("You'll Never Know Just What Tears Are") -- in which they stand stock still and flinch not an inch as Sanborn drops heavy sandbags in their vicinity -- and a hilarious extended routine at a costume party, culminating with Larry's deadpan "elevator dance" ("No steps!"). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the first years of the talkies, every studio drew up plans to release annual "all-star" musical spectacles, but only Fox Pictures truly stuck to the notion. A follow-up to Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, Movietone Follies of 1930 once again offers a maximum of production numbers and the barest minimum of plot. Rich young Conrad Sterling (William Collier Jr.) is in love with struggling actress Mary Mason (Miriam Seeger). To prove his love, he hires Mary and the entire company of the show in which she is appearing to entertain his weekend guests at his lavish mansion (a plot device previously utilized, with variations, in Fox's Sunny Side Up). The lion's share of the footage is devoted to dialect comedian El Brendel, cast as a Swedish butler who poses as a millionaire. Likewise good for laughs are Fox's resident soubrette Marjorie White and comic singer Frank Richardson, doing what they did in every picture they were ever in. Of the mostly forgettable songs, the best is I'd Like to Be a Talking Picture Queen, a blatant imitation of the studio's 1929 hit If I Had a Talking Picture of You. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A remake of Howard Hawks's 1928 effort A Girl in Every Port, Goldie is the sort of film for which the phrase "Male Chauvinist Pig" was invented. Finding a book of girl's addresses, a sailor named Spike (Warren Hymer) learns to his dismay that every one of the girls has been tattooed by her previous sweetheart. Vowing to beat up the man responsible for this, Spike finally tracks the perpetrator down; he turns out to be another sailor named Bill (Spencer Tracy), who winds up as Spike's closest friend. Later on, the boys find themselves in Calais, where Spike falls in love with carnival girl Goldie (Jean Harlow). Bill considers Goldie to be nothing more nor less than a gold-digger, but Spike refuses to believe him. Goldie shows her true colors when she "comes on" to Bill, whereupon the latter leaves behind another tattoo as a warning for the gullible Spike. Geez, ya just can't trust dem dames! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 1932 Tom Mix version of Destry Rides Again bears no more relation to the original Max Brand novel than does the 1939 James Stewart remake. Thanks to his crooked partner (Earle Foxe), Jim Destry (Mix) is thrown into jail. Finally released, he "rides again" to prove his innocence and bring the guilty parties to justice. The action highlights include the hero's leap from a train to his horse and back again (it doesn't look as if doubles were used). Claudia Dell, best known to present-day audiences as Spanky's mother in the "Our Gang" films, is the heroine, while ZaSu Pitts, of all people, supplies the comedy relief. Though Tom Mix expressed displeasure with the film, Destry Rides Again remains one of his best talkies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gabby Denton (Edmund Lowe) is a slightly down-on-his-luck bettor with a taste for alcohol and the ladies. To tide himself over, he takes a job in the garage owned by his brother-in-law, Beef Evans (James Gleason). Unbeknownst to Gabby -- times being what they are in the midst of the Great Depression -- Beef has had to play along with a stolen car ring operating out of one of the upper floors of the same building, where there's also a speakeasy and a mob hangout in the penthouse. Up there, Mr. Jenkins (Alan Dinehart) and his deaf-mute "servant" (George Rosener), who's a lot more than a valet, run the hot-car operation and Jenkins entertains his current ladyfriend, Silver (Wynne Gibson). Gabby meets her one day when her car runs off the road and in the course of hauling in the wreck they strike sparks, leading to a very obvious sexual assignation (complete with cigarettes after) at her place one afternoon. Gabby does fine juggling the cars and the girl until one of the more reckless wheelmen working for the gang critically injures Beef's son (Dickie Moore) while trying to evade capture; Beef is so upset that he tries to have it out with Jenkins and is knocked cold, killed, and put into a runaway car to cover up the murder. Suddenly, Gabby puts the stolen cars together with the operation on the top two floors and Jenkins; he wants a piece of the gang leader, and is willing to go right through Silver to get it. But the "good time girl" (as they called them politely in those days) proves better and more honorable than anyone (even Gabby) expects -- first she tries to warn him off, then convince him she's back with Jenkins, and finally throws in with him directly when it looks like the hoods have the drop on him. And there are still surprises from there, in this briskly-paced picture. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this drama, an immigrant barber becomes a US citizen and works hard to uphold his ideals of personal freedom and rights. He is a total supporter of the system, and when he is held-up, decides to reform the criminal by feeding him and finding him work. Later, a local politician attempts to tell people how to vote, but the barber is not swayed and becomes an example to others in his neighborhood. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on the popular comic strip by Ham Fisher, this fast-paced and funny boxing outing follows the exploits of a boxing manager and the up-and-coming fighter he mentors to. The film is also known as Joe Palooka. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Wallace Ford plays Terry McCall, a small-town baseball star with a monumental ego. Terry's gift for self-aggrandizement alienates him from everyone in town, including his waitress sweetheart May Malone (Barbara Kent). After suffering a concussion during a baseball game, Terry goes blind, whereupon he bitterly retreats from the world. Fortunately, May's kid brother Billy (Dickie Moore), who has always idolized Terry, helps the now-humbled ballplayer to find a reason for living. That Swell-Head was obviously filmed several years before its 1935 release is proven by the presence in the cast of former baseball pro "Turkey" Mike Donlin, who'd been dead since 1933. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide