Stephanie Bachelor Movies

In this thriller, a young couple gets married while the groom is on a weekend furlough with the Navy. The newlyweds have only thirty-six hours to honeymoon and they have no place to stay. A mysterious stranger on her way to elope, offers them her apartment. Unfortunately, the suite had been let by three show girls who had sent a gang of mobsters to jail. The gangsters are now out and are looking to exact their revenge. They head straight for the apartment. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The beauteous blonde Wilde Twins -- Lynn and Lee -- star in the Republic musical programmer Campus Honeymoon. Richard Crane and Hal Hackett co-star as a pair of GIs who offer to pose as the sisters' husbands so as to qualify for a couple of bungalows in a Veterans' housing project. The relationship is supposed to be platonic, of course, but it doesn't remain that way for long. The laughs really begin to roll in when the ersatz honeymooners are obliged to produce their marriage licenses. Republic contractee Adele Mara contributes a zesty performance as a former WAC sergeant. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The all-purpose title Blackmail was again revived for this breezy Republic comedy-mystery. William Marshall (not the African American star of Blacula) plays private eye Dan Turner, assigned to shield playboy Ziggy Cranston (Ricardo Cortez) from a pair of clever blackmailers (Adele Mara, Richard Fraser). As a result of Turner's interference, the extortionists up the ante from $50,000 to three times that amount. A few murders and plot twists later, Turner emerges triumphant; still, one wonders if Cranston wouldn't have been better off handling his persecutors by himself. Originally 67 minutes, Blackmail was trimmed to 54 minutes for its earliest TV showings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Stephanie Bachelor, Republic's answer to Ann Sheridan and Bette Davis, stars in Undercover Woman. The story takes place on a dude ranch, where female private eye Marcia Conroy (Bachelor) has been sent to gather evidence for a divorce case. Instead, she becomes involved with murder when philandering Gregory Vixon (Richard Fraser) turns up dead. None of the ranch's guests is above suspicion so far as sheriff Don Long (Robert Livingston) is concerned, even though Long has a crush on Marcia. Teaming up with Long to solve the killing, Marcia follows the trail of clues to the proverbial least-likely suspect. Originally released at a mere 56 minutes, Undercover Woman was trimmed down even farther for its TV release. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy-mystery, an advertising executive begins looking into a touchy situation involving two brothers who are embezzling from his company. Also involved are two vicious thugs who are pursuing the brothers. When the ad man releases his new campaign, "The Three Springs," the brothers, whose surname is Spring, believe he is attempting to blackmail them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

As with his previous music Western vehicle, Moon over Montana (1946), former radio crooner Jimmy Wakely composed the title song for this film. With Wesley Tuttle and His Texas Stars as his backup group, Wakely also warbled Paul Westmoreland's Detour, De Camptown Ladies, by Stephen Foster, and I Miss You Since You've Been Gone by Arthur Smith. The girl Wakely "missed" was Jean Carlin, whose prospector grandfather (Budd Buster) is being harrassed by an unknown force. Wakely and his usual sidekick Lee "Lasses" White investigate and soon determine that the mystery villain is actually a villainess, Flora Carter (Iris Clive), a ruthless lady rancher who holds the mortgage to grandpa Buster's property. In between crooning the aforementioned tunes and winning the big race on his wild mustang, Wakely manages to discover enough evidence to convict the unscrupulous Ms. Carter. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Broadway producer Earl Carroll was a Ziegfeld-like entrepreneur who staged lavish revues featuring attractive young ladies. Carroll's annual "Vanities" provided story material for three Hollywood films: Murder at the Vanities (34), A Night at Earl Carroll's (40) and Earl Carroll Vanities (45). This last film was produced by Republic Pictures, a bread-and-butter studio specializing in Westerns and serials; Republic had made musicals before, but few of them were expensive enough to allow for lavish production numbers. Earl Carroll Vanities is likewise rather threadbare, though some of the individual musical highlights aren't bad. The plot, such as it is, concerns financially strapped nightclub owner Eve Arden, who finagles Earl Carroll into staging one of his revues at her club. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Republic programmer is based on a true story, though its plot complications are anything but founded in reality. Set in London, the story is motivated by master criminal Carl Hoffmeyer (Erich Von Stroheim), who cooks up an intricate, apparently foolproof scheme to steal the Mona Lisa, on loan to the National Art Gallery. Upon pulling off the crime, Hoffmeyer discovers that the Da Vinci masterpiece is a forgery, the original having previously been swiped by a mercenary antiques dealer (Forrester Harvey, in his final film appearance). Meanwhile, crusty Scotland Yard man Sir James Collison (Sir C. Aubrey Smith) tries to solve both robberies. Reasonably well-produced, Scotland Yard Investigator is of little real interest outside of veteran character actors Erich von Stroheim and C. Aubrey Smith, who seem to enjoy having all the footage to themselves for a change. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this musical romance, an ice skater comes to America to represent her country at a Lake Placid carnival. Unfortunately, while she is there the war breaks out and she is unable to go home. While in America, she is cared for by her rich uncle. She soon falls in love with his handsome junior partner who is already engaged to another. When she discovers this, the skater runs away. Her lover follows and true love ensues. Songs include: "Deep Purple", "My Isle of Golden Dreams", "National Emblem March", "Winter Wonderland", "Intermezzo", "Waiting for The Robert E. Lee", "When Citrus is in Bloom", "Drigo's Serenade", "While Strolling in the Park". ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this crazy comedy, a casino worker writes a book about headhunters and finds himself the target of the leader of an anthropological society who is determined to prove that the book is phony. The writer tricks the woman into going on a head-hunting expedition to prove his claims. He dresses up as a headhunter, and allows her to capture and return him to her society for study. Dressed as a native, the writer also manages to secure a $10,000 advance from his publisher to write an expose of the wealthy society-leader's life. Meanwhile, another heiress pursues the writer to collect on a $10,000 debt. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Secrets of Scotland Yard is Republic's spin on a plotline first elucidated in the old E. Phillips Oppenheim novel The Great Impersonation. After losing WW I, the German high command, with remarkable foresight, prepares for the next war by planting a spy in the British Admiralty. Edgar Barrier plays the dual role of the German spy and his British twin brother. When one twin is killed, the other assumes his identity. The question: is the surviving brother the "good" one or the bad? It is up to C. Aubrey Smith, cast as Scotland Yard inspector Sir Christopher Belt, to sort out the mystery. Though it owes a great deal to the aforementioned Oppenheim yarn, Secrets of Scotland Yard is actually based on a novel by Denison Clift, who also wrote the screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Barbara Stanwyck shines in her second portrayal of a showgirl in less than two years (the first was in Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire in 1941). In Lady of Burlesque -- which, at times, has a Hawksian edge to the dialogue -- she portrays Dixie Daisy, a striptease artist at a Broadway theater in New York at the end of the 1930s. In the course of fending off the unwanted advances of brash comic Biff Brannigan (Michael O'Shea), with whom she is teamed in several numbers, and staying clear of the dressing room feuds of her fellow dancers -- including a very nasty dispute between Dolly Baxter (Gloria Dickson) and Lolita La Verne (Victoria Faust) -- she finds herself up to her neck in trouble when one of the women is found strangled with her own G-string. The police don't know what to make of it, especially as the victim was already dying of a fatal dose of poison, which means that there are two murderers somewhere in the theater; and when a second woman turns up strangled inside a prop that Dixie was supposed to be hiding in onstage, she looks like a good suspect. Between the backstage comedy-drama, and the songs, dances, and on-stage comic routines, with the police breathing down both their necks at different times, Dixie and Biff manage to solve the mystery and find each other in this briskly paced, funny, yet amazingly gritty comedy-thriller. Lady of Burlesque was allowed to fall out of copyright in 1971, and since then it was seen in substandard editions until the May 2001 DVD release from Image Entertainment. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide