A headstrong young girl falls completely for a writer of trashy novels, and insinuates herself into his household, all to the chagrin of her erstwhile fiancé.He conspires with the author’s wife to show the girl how foolish she’s been.
Cast: Clara Bow, Jean Arthur, James Hall, Jean Arthur, Edna May Arthur, Charles Sellon, Ethel Wales, Jean Harlow
63 min
The Saturday Night Kid is a 1929 American Pre-Coderomantic comedy film about two sisters and the man they both want. It stars Clara Bow, Jean Arthur, James Hall, and in her first credited role, Jean Harlow. The film was based on the play Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em (1926) by George Abbott and John V. A. Weaver. The movie still survives. The film was preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding by Clara Bow biographer David Stenn.
Plot
Set in May 1929, the film focuses on two sisters – Mayme (Clara Bow) and Janie (Jean Arthur) – as they share an apartment in New York City. In daytime, they work as salesgirls at the Ginsberg’s department store, and at night they vie for the attention of their colleague Bill (James Hall) and fight over Janie’s selfish and reckless behavior, such as stealing Mayme’s clothes and hitchhiking to work with strangers.
Bill prefers Mayme over Janie and constantly shows his affection for her. This upsets Janie, who schemes to break up the couple.
One day at work, Bill is promoted to floorwalker, while Janie is made treasurer of the benefit pageant. Mayme, however, is not granted a promotion, but gets heavily criticized for constantly being late at work by the head of personnel, Miss Streeter (Edna May Oliver).
Cast: Colin Clive, Ian Maclaren, David Manners, Billy Bevan, Anthony Bushell, Robert Adair, Charles K Gerrard, Tom Whiteley
120 min
Journey’s End is a 1930 British-American war film directed by James Whale. Based on the play of the same name by R. C. Sherriff, the film tells the story of several British army officers involved in trench warfare during the First World War. The film, like the play before it, was an enormous critical and commercial success and launched the film careers of Whale and several of its stars.
On the eve of a battle in 1918, a new officer, Second Lieutenant Raleigh (David Manners), joins Captain Stanhope’s (Colin Clive) company in the British trench lines in France. The two men knew each other at school: the younger Raleigh hero-worshipping Stanhope, while Stanhope has come to love Raleigh’s sister.
But the Stanhope whom Raleigh encounters now is a changed man who, after three years at the front, has turned to drink and seems close to a breakdown. Stanhope is terrified that Raleigh will betray Stanhope’s decline to his sister, whom Stanhope still hopes to marry after the war.
An older officer, the avuncular Lieutenant Osborne (Ian Maclaren), desperately tries to keep Stanhope from cracking. Osborne and Raleigh are selected to lead a raiding party on the German trenches where a number of the British forces are killed, including Osborne. Later, when Raleigh too is mortally wounded, Stanhope faces a desperate time as, grief-stricken and without close friends, he prepares to face another furious enemy attack.
When Howard Hughes made the decision to turn Hell’s Angels into a talkie, he hired a then-unknown James Whale, who had just arrived in Hollywood following a successful turn directing the play Journey’s End in London and on Broadway, to direct the talking sequences; it was Whale’s film debut, and arguably prepared him for the later success he would have with the feature version of Journey’s End, Waterloo Bridge, and, most famously, the 1931 version of Frankenstein. Unhappy with the script, Whale brought in Joseph Moncure March to re-write it. Hughes later gave March the Luger pistol used in the film.[1]
With production delayed while Hughes tinkered with the flying scenes in Hell’s Angels, Whale managed to shoot his film adaptation of Journey’s End and have it come out a month before Hell’s Angels was released. The gap between completion of the dialogue scenes and completion of the aerial combat stunts allowed Whale to be paid, sail back to England, and begin work on the subsequent project, making Whale’s actual (albeit uncredited) cinema debut, his “second” film to be released.[citation needed]
Curtis, James. James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters. Boston: Faber and Faber,1998. ISBN0-571-19285-8.
Dolan, Edward F. Jr. Hollywood Goes to War. London: Bison Books, 1985. ISBN0-86124-229-7.
Hardwick, Jack and Ed Schnepf. “A Viewer’s Guide to Aviation Movies”. The Making of the Great Aviation Films, General Aviation Series, Volume 2, 1989.
Orriss, Bruce. When Hollywood Ruled the Skies: The Aviation Film Classics of World War II. Hawthorne, California: Aero Associates Inc., 1984. ISBN0-9613088-0-X.
Osborne, Robert. 65 Years of the Oscar: The Official History of the Academy Awards London: Abbeville Press, 1994. ISBN1-55859-715-8.
“Production of ‘Hell’s Angels’ Cost the Lives of Three Aviators.” Syracuse Herald, December 28, 1930, p. 59.
A movie producer offers a nightclub singer a role in his latest film, but all he really wants to do is bed her. She knows, but accepts anyway. Meanwhile, a patron at the club gets a note saying that she’ll soon get another note, and that she will be killed ten minutes after that.
Cast: Norman Foster, Carole Lombard, Richard Skeets Gallagher, Eugene Pallette, Lucien Littlefield, Judith Wood, Louise Brooks, Morgan Wallace, Tom Kennedy, Frank Tuttle
Rodney Martin sets up a soap business to rival his father. With the help of an advertising expert and his secretary, Mary, he develops a successful marketing campaign. His father ends up buying the company from him, while Rodney and Mary fall in love.[2]
A copy has been preserved at the Library of Congress.[3]
In 1931, a German-language version called Die Männer um Lucie was released starring Liane Haid and Lien Deyers. This film is considered lost.
Plot
Peggy is a Follies dancer who forsakes her life of carefree attachments in order to meet her goal of marrying a millionaire. Alas, her elderly husband, broker C. Morton Gibson, is a well-meaning bore, and soon Peggy begins seeking entertainment elsewhere.
A year after their marriage, three significant events occur almost simultaneously. Peggy’s former boyfriend, Paul Lockridge, a composer and pianist who is in love with her and seems to have a funny quip for every occasion, returns from Paris.
She reunites with him as he offers her his companionship as a diversion from her stuffy life. Also, Ralph Le Saint, a young devil-may-care sculptor who is still in love with Peggy, plans his suicide in a mood of bitterness, and Gibson’s daughter, Marjorie, returns from schooling abroad. Marjorie is soon paired with Ralph, and the romance that develops between them is paralleled by the adult affair between Peggy and Paul.
Ralph and Marjorie’s escapades result in considerable trouble for Morton, while Paul implores Peggy to go to Paris with him, declaring “You are rich–dirty rich. You are dying. You need laughter to make you clean,” but she refuses. When Marjorie plans to elope with Ralph, Peggy exposes the sculptor as a fortune hunter; and, dejected, he commits suicide. As a result, Peggy confesses her unhappiness to Gibson, then joins Paul and laughter in Paris.
Jump up^Catalog of Holdings The American Film Institute Collection and The United Artists Collection at The Library of Congressp.101 c.1978 by the American Film Institute
The plumber Mendel Marantz, a passionate inventor, hasn’t much luck and a family that doesn’t understand him. He finally strikes it rich with a dishwashing machine he invented.
He finds an investor, Gassenheim, and begins to make his way up in the world. But Mendel’s troubles are not over; his family doesn’t share his dream to become the landlord of the house where they live on New York’s Lower East Side.
They prefer to move uptown to Park Avenue and adapt to how rich people live. Mendel’s ideas for the house are not forgotten. The men he once told how he wished to transform the building take on the work of renovating it, with every detail he planned.
Neighbours and visitors come to see the house and the new, beautiful penthouse. His wife and his children are still in Park Avenue and when Gassenheim stops paying royalties to Mrs. Marantz, she and the children come home, to find that Mendel is close to losing everything.
New York Citystreetwalker Mae (Carole Lombard) is placed on a train by a policeman and told not to come back. However, she gets off, taking the cab of Jimmy Doyle (Pat O’Brien), who doesn’t think much of women. She slips away without paying the fare. Her friend and fellow prostitute, Lil (Mayo Methot), advises her to find honest work.
The next day, Mae goes to the cab company to pay Jimmy. They start arguing, but they are attracted to each other. He gets her a job as a waitress. By coincidence, Gert (Shirley Grey), another former prostitute who knows her, also works at the restaurant.
Jimmy and Mae soon marry, but Mae doesn’t tell her new husband about her past. After a honeymoon at Coney Island, the happy couple are met at Mae’s apartment by a policeman who mistakes Jimmy for Mae’s latest “client”. Jimmy shows him their marriage license to clear up the trouble, then leaves to think things over. He returns the next day, ready to try to make the marriage work.
Jimmy has saved $420 of the $500 he needs to become a partner in Flannagan’s gas station. However, Gert begs Mae to lend her $200 for a doctor. Despite her misgivings, Mae gives it to her. The next day, she learns that Gert has lied to her. When Jimmy tells her that the gas station owner needs money and is willing to settle for what he already has, Mae begins searching desperately for Gert.
Mae finally finds her and slaps her around until she promises to get her the money the next night. However, Gert has given the money to her boyfriend Toots (Jack La Rue), who is also Lil’s pimp. When Gert tries to steal the $200 from his wallet, Toots catches her and accidentally kills her. He hides the body, then watches from hiding as Mae shows up, finds the money and leaves.
The police arrest Mae for the crime because she left her bag behind in Gert’s apartment. However, a distrusting Jimmy had been following Mae and knows a man was with Gert. He learns that it was Toots, but when he confronts him, Lil gives Toots an alibi. Jimmy goes to the district attorney to report what he knows. Lil convinces Toots to go to the district attorney to lodge a complaint against Jimmy. Lil reveals herself to be Mae’s true friend, admitting that Toots lied and exonerating Mae.
Jimmy goes to the gas station to tell Flannagan he no longer wants to buy into the partnership. He sees Mae pumping gas under a Doyle & Flannagan sign. They argue and reconcile.
Cast: Glenn Tryon, Evelyn Brent, Merna Kennedy, Thomas E Jackson, Robert Ellis, Otis Harlan, Paul Porcasi, Marion Lord, Fritz Field, Leslie Fenton, Arthur Housman
This was Universal’s first talking picture with Technicolor sequences. The film was released by the Criterion Collection on Blu-ray and DVD with Paul Fejo’s Lonesome on August 2012.
Roy Lane and Billie Moore, entertainers at the Paradise Nightclub, are in love and are rehearsing an act together. Late to work one evening, Billie is saved from dismissal by Nick Verdis, the club proprietor, through the intervention of Steve Crandall, a bootlegger, who desires a liaison with the girl.
“Scar” Edwards, robbed of a truckload of contraband liquor by Steve’s gang, arrives at the club for a showdown with Steve and is shot in the back. Steve gives Billie a bracelet to forget that she has seen him helping a “drunk” from the club. Though Roy is arrested by Dan McCorn, he is later released on Billie’s testimony.
Nick is murdered by Steve. Billie witnesses the killing, but keeps quiet about the dirty business until she finds out Steve’s next target is Roy. Billie is determined to tell her story to the police before Roy winds up dead, but Steve isn’t about to let that happen and kidnaps her. Steve, in his car, is fired at from a taxi, and overheard by Pearl, he confesses to killing Edwards. Pearl confronts Steve in Nick’s office and kills him; and McCorn, finding Steve’s body, insists that he committed suicide, exonerating Pearl and leaving Roy and Billie to the success of their act.
Director Fejos designed the camera crane specifically for use on this movie, allowing unusually fluid movement and access to nearly every conceivable angle. It could travel at 600 feet per minute and enlivened the visual style of this film and others that followed.
Preservation status
Both the silent version and the talking version of Broadway are extant, but the surviving talking version is incomplete. The color sequence at the end survives in color and in sound. In 2013, Broadway was restored by The Criterion Collection and released on DVD and Blu-ray.
Cast: Bob Hope, Leah Ray, Frances Halliday, Jules Epailly, Vicki Cummings, William Edmunds, Godoy’s Spanish Band
19 min
Going Spanish (1934) is an American short comedy film featuring the film debut of Bob Hope and directed by Al Christie. The short comedy co-stars Leah Ray and Jules Epailly. Released by Educational Pictures, the film premiered on March 2, 1934, and is also known as Bob’s Busy Day (American recut version).[1]
While on vacation in the South America nation of Los Poachos Eggos, Bob (Bob Hope) passes through the village of Los Pochos Eggos. His car collides with that of the mayor of the village. The mayor becomes enraged and he begins tearing Bob’s car to pieces. Bob retaliates and takes his car apart as well.
According to the village tradition, on one day each year, any crime is forgiven provided that the criminal sing a song afterward. Bob could have been arrested, but instead he happened to appear in town on the appropriate day. Later in the film, Bob woos Senorita (Leah Ray) and begins to make the mayor jealous. Each time an offense is committed, the mayor declares “This means war.”
The film was very unsuccessful and was panned by critics. Shortly after it was released, the bank robber John Dillingerwas at large. Hope told Walter Winchell that he had starred in the film and then added “When they catch Dillinger, they’re going to make him sit through it twice.”
After Hope made this comment, Christie and Educational terminated Hope’s contract. Hope then starred in his second and third short films, Soup for Nuts (Universal Studios, 9 July 1934) and Paree, Paree (Warner Brothers, 8 September 1934).
The studio originally wanted actress Jean Harlow for the lead after her success in Red-Headed Woman (1932), but she was under contract to Howard Hughes, and he refused to loan her out.
Jean, Polaire, and Schatze are ex-showgirls who put their money together in order to rent a luxurious penthouse apartment. They are out to get wealthy boyfriends by dressing and acting like millionaires themselves. Jean shows herself to be determined and ruthless, leaving the other girls behind. The other two are more sensitive and trustworthy but only one woman will be able to find a rich husband. Which is she?
Director: Dorothy Davenport AKA Mrs Wallace Reid and Melville Shyer
Cast: Helen Foster, Nell O’Day, Glen Boles, Robert Quirk, Paul Page, Richard Hemingway, Virginia True Boardman, Richard Tucker, Donald Kerr
62 min
Road to Ruin is a 1934 Pre-Code, exploitation film directed by Dorothy Davenport, under the name “Mrs. Wallace Reid”, and Melville Shyer, and written by Davenport with the uncredited contribution of the film’s producer, Willis Kent. The film, which is in the public domain, is about a young girl whose life is ruined by sex and drugs.
The Road to Ruin is a sound re-make of a 1928 silent film of the same name, written and produced by Willis Kent and also starring Helen Foster.[1] Foster, reprising her role as a high school girl, was 27 years old at the time, and six years older than her on-screen boyfriend, Glen Boles.
The titles and composers of the three songs performed in the film are not recorded.[1]
To promote the film, the producers advertised that it was not to be shown to anyone under eighteen, implying that it contained salacious material. Film censors in Virginia required a “record number” of cuts in the film before clearing it for release, according to Film Daily, while in Detroit, the film was boycotted by the Catholic Church, but was cleared by the local censors after some cuts.[1]
A novelization of the film was put out by the producers, apparently intended for use by school and civic groups as an aid to discussion of the social problems presented in the film: teenage drinking, promiscuity, pregnancy and abortion.[1]
Reception
The reviewer for Variety found the film “restrained” in comparison to the more “hotly sexed” silent version, while other reviewers found it to be an improvement over the earlier film, and “sensational”.[1] A modern critic called the film “[A] sordid drive down the path of moral and physical degradation, capped off with just enough of a moral lesson to alleviate any guilt the viewer might feel for watching such a decadent display.”[2]
Two fast-talking insurance salesmen — Wilbur Boswell and J. Addington Ganzy — help penniless socialite Mary Marsh to turn a dilapidated hotel, which was willed to her, into a thriving success. They soon run into trouble, however, in the form of two sets of rival gangsters who want to break into the hotel safe; also, Mary’s mother, Rebecca Marsh, wants her to marry wealthy lawyer John Blackwell, although Mary has fallen in love with Wilbur.
And while she takes an instant dislike to Wilbur, Rebecca falls for Ganzy. Adding to the complications is the fact that Blackwell is actually in league with the gangsters. The finale involves nighttime runarounds and a shoot-out in the hotel. During the pitched battle between the rival gangs and the police, Boswell and Ganzy save the jewels, after which Ganzy marries Rebecca, and then gives away Mary at her marriage to Wilbur.
The Sin Of Nora Moran (1933) AKA Voice From The Grave
Director: Phil Goldstone
Cast: Zita Johann, John Miljan, Alan Dinehart, Paul Cavanagh, Claire Du Brey, Sarah Padden, Henry B Walthall, Otis Harlan, Aggie Herring, Cora Sue Collins, Ann Brody
65 min
The Sin of Nora Moran is a 1933 American film directed by Phil Goldstone. The film is also known as Voice from the Grave (American reissue title).
The painting for the movie poster was by Peruvian Alberto Vargas, who was working in the United States and later became known for his images of the “Vargas Girls.” This poster is frequently named as one of the greatest movie posters ever made.[1]
Nora Moran, a young woman with a difficult and tragic past, is sentenced to die for a murder that she did not commit. She could easily reveal the truth and save her own life, if only it would not damage the lives, careers and reputations of those whom she loves.
Molly Gilbert won’t accept a marriage proposal from Bill McCaffery unless he promises to quit betting money on horse races. He gives her his word, but Molly is miffed when she realizes he wants to honeymoon in Saratoga, New York due to its proximity to the racetrack.
Behind her back, Bill unethically uses money from his dad Pop McCaffery’s plumbing business to continue gambling. He gets on a hot streak, winning $50,000, then buys a horse of his own, cheats by disguising a faster horse as his, then loses all his money. Bill agrees to become a plumber, pleasing Molly.
The script was adapted by Luther Reed from a story by Anne Caldwell. The Technicolor sequences were considered lost for years but were re-discovered in 1988 and subsequently included in the restored DVD. At the end of 1958, the film entered the public domain (in the USA) due to RKO’s failure to renew their copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.[3]
This is the film in which composer Max Steiner received his first screen credit for orchestration. Additionally, it was Wheeler & Woolsey‘s third film; however, as they were not yet an official “team”, they were still billed separately.
Dixiana Caldwell and her friends, Peewee and Ginger, are circus performers in the antebellum South. When Dixiana falls in love with a young Southern aristocrat, Carl Van Horn, she leaves the circus where she is employed and, with Peewee and Ginger, accompanies Carl to his family’s plantation in order to meet Van Horn’s family. At first thrilled with the news of their impending nuptials, Carl’s father and stepmother, Cornelius and Birdie Van Horn, throw a lavish party for the couple. However, Peewee and Ginger inadvertently disclose Dixiana’s background as a circus performer, creating a scandal for the elder Van Horns.
Asked by the stepmother to leave in disgrace, Dixiana and her friends return to New Orleans, seeking to gain re-employment from her former employer at the Cayetano Circus Theatre, but they are regretfully refused by him, due to way she had departed. Desperate, she takes employment at a local gambling hall, run by Royal Montague, who also has personal designs on Dixiana. As part of his plan, he intends to financially ruin Carl and his family and use Dixiana to accomplish that purpose.
Things come to a head when Dixiana is crowned Queen of the Mardi Gras. When Montague absconds with her, Carl challenges him to a duel, but, when a disguised Dixiana shows up in his stead, she tricks Montague into revealing his nefarious plans. Carl and Dixiana are reunited.[4]
Reviewer Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times wrote of the singing, “…one wishes there was more of it and less of the somewhat futile attempt at a story” and noted that Bill Robinson “…gives an excellent exhibition of tap dancing, which won a genuine round of applause” and concluded, “The early glimpses of the circus theatre … lead one to expect more than one is apt to get out of this production.”[5]
The film reunited the director and most of the cast of RKO’s most successful film of the year before, Rio Rita, but lackluster performances and direction, as well as a glut of movie musicals led to the film being one of RKO’s biggest disappointments of 1930. The film lost an estimated $300,000.[2][6]
Michael R. Pitts. Poverty Row Studios, 1929–1940: An Illustrated History of 55 Independent Film Companies, with a Filmography for Each. McFarland & Company, 2005.
Film Collectors Corner
Watch The World Accuses Now – You Tube Instant Video
Michael Carter (Gene Raymond) a young socialite returns drunk home telling the butler, that he will marry the next day. The butler talks to his parents and the next morning his sister Diana (Juliette Compton) pays a visit to see the young lady Mary White (Ann Sheridan) and to tell he a story about the brother having left for France, he always falls in love promises to marry and than leaves. Mary White can’t believe it, but at his home nobody lets her talk to him.Diana offers her a cheque and a ticket to California.
But when she walks out, triumphant about her victory, she hears a scream and the body of Mary White has landed under the window on the hard street. When returning home she tries to make up a strategy for Michael, this one notices that they have strange behavior, unless they tell him what happened. In his despair about the loss of Mary White and his own family thinking about being disgraced by him, he takes the car and drives from one state to another drinking at every station he stops.
At one bar he meets an Apache Man, very tall and very drunk and he invites him to drink from his bottle as the barman knowing him, don’t want to give him any. A little Woman comes into the bar and tries to tear away the Indian. But Mr. Carter still wants to have him on his side drinking. The indian girl Tonita (Sylvia Sidney), tells Carter he is no good and other things, meantime the drunken indian pulls out his pistol and starts shooting at bottles and things. Carter wants to shoot as well and tries to take away the pistol from the indian. In the fight he is shot in the shoulder. Tonita operates him from the bullet, to save her indian friend, and Carter asks her to marry him, as he thinks to disgrace his family. At the station the family is awaiting him with a lot of reporters and newspaper men. All the town knows about Michael and Tonita.
The family at first desperate is again guided by Carter’s sister Diana. She proposes her parents to give a big reception ball for the newly weds and invite every important person in town. The evening of the ball she sneaks in Tonita’s room and convinces her to wear a beautiful night dress, whereas Michael wanted to dress her in her indian clothes to make a scandal. Tonita descends the stairs, beautiful and everybody is allured by her presence. She even answers to impertinent people, and finally wins them all. Michael is furious because he feels his family triumphs always over him. She is introduced to Mr. Prentice, the secret lover of Diana. When Tonita finds Michael, he tells her about his rage against his family. She realizes that he married her only because of his fight against his family and leaves him going away with Prentice. Diana follows them in his apartment and tells Prentice she left her husband to stay with him. He doesn’t want her back, as he says she is no good. Diana finds a revolver and shoots him.
Tonita proposes to take the blame as she hasn’t any reason to live any more. And while she goes to the police station to give herself up, Michael comes to Prentice’s apartment to search for her. He finds the body of Prentice, and while the police officers arrive to see if the girl told the truth, Michael hides in a closet. Through a noise he makes, they find him and he confesses that he did it. At the police station, the inspector tells him that his wife said that she did it. When left alone, he tells her that she has to shut her mouth and let them think he did it, as she was said to claim guilt to save him. The scene ends up being the one love scene between Michael and Tonita, while the police officers are enthusiastic about their new bugging device through which they can hear even their kisses.
The plot of the United Artists release centers on fashion designer Geraldine Trent (Swanson), who takes up with novelistTony Blake (Lyon) after leaving her former beau Jim Woodward because of his many indiscretions with other women.
Tony has indicated he has no interest in dating a woman with a past, so Geraldine remains mum about her affair with Jim, until her younger sister Joan arrives and announces she’s engaged—to Jim. Madcap complications ensue as Geraldine tries to keep her secret from Tony while convincing her sister to rid herself of her womanizing fiancé in favor of simple country boy Buster Collins.[2]
It may have its off moments so far as the few serious incidents are concerned, but when it stoops to farce, there is no denying its jollity . . . on the whole, it is a well-worked out entertainment, wherein gusts of merriment cause one to overlook its occasional flaws . . . Now and again the film sobers up, but the director and the authors have solved a way of inoculating it with further mirth, and even at the end there is a streak of fun that is almost Chaplinesque.[3]
Marie Morgan (Ginger Rogers) has been lured to an old abandoned house by a false note from a friend, and is in jeopardy although she doesn’t yet realize it. As she sits at the table inside, she thinks back to the banquet held there 13 years earlier, when she was a little girl.
Only 12 of 13 guests had attended, and the manor’s owner, the Morgan family patriarch, who was then dying, has since passed on. The chance to claim the bulk of the estate fortune has resulted in an ongoing campaign of murder by someone targeting the original 12 guests, whose dead bodies are being left at the table in the same seats they had occupied originally.
Klondike is a 1932 American Pre-Code film directed by Phil Rosen. The film is also known as The Doctor’s Sacrifice in the United Kingdom. It was silent film star Priscilla Dean‘s final film.
A doctor, Lyle Talbot as Dr. Robert Cromwell, is charged with murder, when a patient dies, after an experimental operation to remove a brain tumor.
His pilot friend, Frank Hawks as Donald Evans, convinces him to start a new life; and, they plot their course, across the Bering Strait. The weather blows them off course; and, they end up in Alaska.
There the doctor is faced with a new dilemma. Mark, Henry B. Walthall as Mark Armstrong, the Father of Jim, Jason Robards Sr. as Jim Armstrong, a man crippled by a similar brain tumor, begs the doctor to attempt the operation. When the doctor refuses, he accuses him of wanting his son to die, because he’s in love with Jim’s fiancée, Thelma Todd as Klondike.
“Doc” acquiesces, at Klondike’s insistence. Although, having none of the facilities of a hospital. He believes that the operation is less likely to succeed, the longer it is delayed.
The operation seems to be a partial success. But, now, Jim will do anything to keep “Doc” from taking Klondike back to the States with him, even using his genius, with electricity, to electrocute him.[1]
Ruth (Betty Grable) is a minor who is running with an uptown, older man; Ruth’s brother Nick, (John Darrow), is unaware of kid sisters activities.
Ruth is turned into the Juvenile authorities by the well meaning Mrs. Humphries, (Clara Kimball Young). Nick finds the man in their apartment and proceeds to be arrested for beating up the man, who runs away before Nick is arrested.
Nick is taken to Night Court and remanded to the custody of the judges, (J. Farrell MacDonald), niece, Janet, for six months as her chauffeur. Janet, (Sally Blane), is the fiancé of Allen, (Eddie Phillips), who is coincidentally the man who was beaten up by Nick.
Betty Grable is on the verge of becoming a superstar, in the 1940s.[2][3]
Louis Wolheim plays the boss of the railroad yard in Miles City, Montana. The film opens with a landslide across the tracks in Montana, and a repair crew is dispatched to clear the tracks. Several hobos are lounging nearby and are put to work helping the repair crew. One of the hobos, played by Robert Armstrong, is discovered to have been a former railroad engineer who lost his job due to insubordination. He is given a new job for the railroad by the yard boss, but quickly falls in love with the boss’s fiancée, played by Jean Arthur.
Jealousy grows between the two over the affections of Arthur with both of them attempting to win her in marriage. Things come to a head during a fight in the railroad yard between the two, during which Wolheim is hit by a train and injured. To save his life, Armstrong must transport him in record time to Chicago for surgery.
Danger Lights was filmed during a period when some movie studios were experimenting with various widescreen film formats. As part of this trend, two versions of the film were created. One used standard 35mm film and Academy ratio, the other used an experimental 65mm widescreen format at a 2:1 aspect ratio. This latter process was called “Natural Vision” and was invented by film pioneers George Kirke Spoor and P. John Berggren. The Natural Vision print of the film was reportedly screened at only two theaters (the only two with the equipment necessary to show the film), the State Lake Theater in Chicago and the Mayfair Theater in New York, and no copies of it are known to exist today. Danger Lights would be the only film created using this process, and the entire effort to move to wide screen would be shelved for several decades due to the increased costs of both production and presentation.[1][2][3]
Historically significant footage
Danger Lights features rare footage of a tug of war between two steam locomotives, actual documentary footage of the activities in the Miles City yard, and what is believed to be the only motion picture footage of a dynamometer car from the steam railroad era in the USA. Similar footage may have existed in MGM’s Thunder(1929), with Lon Chaney but that film is now lost.
The portion of the film that was filmed in Montana was part of the electrified Rocky Mountain Division of the railroad, with the 3000 volt direct current trolley and the 100,000 volt alternating current “highline” plainly visible in several shots. Despite the fact that the railroad often touted the power and reliability of its straight electric locomotives, none are seen in the film.
Danger Lights was edited down to 55 minutes for television broadcast; this version is freely available for download. In 2009 Alpha Video released the original 74 minute version[1] on DVD.
Cast: Irene Dunne, John Boles, June Clyde, George Meeker, Zasu Pitts, Shirley Grey, Doris Lloyd, William Bakewell, Arletta Duncan, Maude Turner Gordon, Walter Catlett, James Donlan, Jane Darwell, Betty Blyth, Russell Hopton, Gloria Stuart
Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Fannie Hurst, it tells the story of a woman who spends her life as the secret mistress of a wealthy married man.
This was the first of three film versions of Hurst’s novel; remakes were released in 1941 and 1961.
Plot
In early 1900s Cincinnati, young and beautiful Ray Schmidt (Irene Dunne) works in her father’s shop by day and stays out late drinking beer and dancing with various men by night, although her stepmother disapproves. Ray dates for fun, mostly going out with traveling salesmen passing through town, and neither she nor her dates are interested in any permanent attachment. An exception is Kurt Shendler, who owns a bicycle shop near Mr. Schmidt’s shop and aspires to get into the automobile business. Kurt is in love with Ray and asks her to marry him, but she refuses because while she likes Kurt, she doesn’t return his romantic feelings.
While visiting the train station with Kurt, Ray meets Walter Saxel (John Boles) and the two fall for each other at first sight. Walter soon confesses to Ray that he is actually engaged to another woman in town, Corinne, who comes from a wealthy background and whose mother is friends with his own mother. Nevertheless he has fallen in love with Ray, and asks her to meet him at a local band concert that he will be attending with his mother.
Walter hopes to introduce Ray to his mother and perhaps get her approval of the relationship. On the day of the concert, Ray is late arriving because her younger half-sister Freda is suicidal over her boyfriend, Hugo, leaving town. Freda begs Ray to go after Hugo and stop him, threatening to throw herself out a window if Ray does not help.
By the time Ray has dealt with Freda’s situation and gotten to the concert, it is over, and Ray cannot find Walter or his mother in the departing crowds. Walter, thinking she stood him up, writes her an angry letter and marries Corinne.
Several years later, Walter, now a rising young financier on Wall Street, runs into Ray who is single and working in New York City. The two renew their acquaintance and realize they still love each other, although Walter is still married and has two children. Walter sets Ray up in an inexpensive apartment and gets her to give up her job so she will be free to see him when he has time.
However, his work, family and social commitments sometimes keep him away for long periods of time, causing Ray to feel lonely and isolated. After Walter takes an extended trip to Europe with his wife, leaving Ray alone with insufficient money to live on, she breaks up with him and accepts a proposal from Kurt, who has become a rich automobile manufacturer. Walter goes to Cincinnati to convince her not to marry Kurt and they resume their previous relationship.
Years pass, and Walter has become a wealthy and prominent financier. When he travels he now brings Ray along, although they must keep their relationship hidden and avoid being seen in public together, meaning Ray spends much of her time alone. Ray is the target of gossip and is hated by Walter’s adult children, who regard Ray as a gold digger.
Walter’s son Dick tells Ray to get out of his family’s life, but his father Walter walks in on the conversation and tells his son to be more understanding or at least to mind his own business. That night, Walter suffers a massive stroke and dies shortly thereafter. Just before Walter dies, he asks Dick to telephone Ray’s number and hears her voice over the phone one last time.
Dick, who now understands his father’s feelings for Ray, goes to see her and offers to continue to support her. He finds her distraught over Walter’s death and also learns that his father had been paying her only a very small amount per month, thus proving that she stayed in the relationship for love, not money. After Dick leaves, Ray dies looking at Walter’s picture.
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Film Dialogue 
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