(archive footage)
Film clips highlight the funniest scenes and brightest comic stars in MGM's history.
Dr. Elder
A drunken ex-cop gets a shot at redemption when his young son is kidnapped after a smuggling deal goes belly up.
Willis J. Watson
This is 1947 biography movie about how Alexander Graham Bell and his partner Thomas Augustus Watson invented the first discernible speech, transmitted over a telephone.
Mack Steward
Steve Bell, Tommy, Pig, Ape, and String are run of town. Steve, while hopping a freight card and trying to avoid the brakeman, is killed. The boys meet Steve's mother, Alice Bell and Tommy is given a job in the storage garage which she owns jointly with Mack Steward. Steve's brother Don Bell is working with some gangsters by tipping them off on valuable merchandise that can be hijacked. Pig, Ape and String overhear Don's plans to use Tommy as the fall guy in the next hijacking.
Councilman Bell
In this entry in the "Weaver Family" series, the town of Farmington is being plagued by a crime wave. The angry citizens are ready to impeach the mayor, June Weaver, and the police chief, Leon Weaver. To end the crime and preserve her career, June feigns corruption and hires a real gangster to get rid of the local mobs. Unfortunately, a bona fide crooked councilman intervenes and makes real mob connections causing an earnest journalist to launch a front page attack.
The Judge
A washed up baseball player returns to Brooklyn to manage his old team but an old sports reporter is eager to prove that he is a loser.
Mr. Van Pelt
When Martin Knox, a friend of Scattergood's who owns a horse-breeding farm, is killed in a harness race Scattergood tells Martin's son Dan that he will send him to college if he forgets about taking over his father's business, which was heavily mortgaged and has been put up for auction after Knox's death. The boy reluctantly agrees, but when he discovers that his favorite horse Starlight is sick, he decides to bring the animal back to health and then enter him in the Governor's Race, whose $5000 prize would enable Dan to pay off his father's mortgage and keep the business in the family.
Judge Rufus
A woman attempts to shelter a young girl from the publicity surrounding her socialite parents' divorce.
Maxwell B. Titus
A New York radio personality travels to the small town of Fernville to oversee a contest to identify retired safecracker Jimmy Valentine, believed to be living there under an assumed name. The close-knit town of upstanding citizens is understandably upset by this venture, all the moreso when some of its citizens begin to be murdered. The radio personality and the local newspaper's young daughter collaborate on solving the murders while revealing Valentine, who has become one of the suspects.
Judge Harmon
A young woman arrives in the western town of Headstone and helps the locals outsmart a gang of outlaws.
Mayor
Fibber McGee enlists the help of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy in enticing an aircraft manufacturer to build a factory in the small town of Wistful Vista. Based on the "Fibber McGee and Molly" radio series
Sanderson
An elderly gentleman comes to a young woman's aid by pretending to be her uncle. Comedy.
J. B. Matthews
Story concerns railroad tycoon J.B. Matthews (Jed Prouty) taking over a rival line, being sent on an R&R vacation by his doctor, falling off his private train-car and landing in a hobo jungle occupied by Faylen and Hall, and being cured of all his ills, while reporter Jimmy Dugan (Frank Albertson) poses as a doctor in order to get an exclusive story about the railroad takeover.
C. J. Chase
The lives of three bachelors is disrupted when one of them is left with a baby.
Gordon MacEwan
While on their honeymoon, a reporter and his new bride stumble upon a ring of fifth columnists.
J.K. Louderman
Jimmy, the owner of a failed music shop, goes to work with his uncle, the owner of a food factory. Before he gets there, he befriends an Irish family who happens to be his uncle's worst enemy because of their love for music and in-house band who constantly practices. Soon, Jimmy finds himself trying to help the band by getting them gigs and trying to reconcile the family with his uncle.
Vanderveer
A small town doctor suspects the stranger in town is promoting an oil swindle. The fourth entry in the "Dr. Christian" series of six films.
Captain Moon
Complicated plot involving missing stamp collection and kidnapped businessman, with the Lone Wolf keeping one step ahead of the police in Havana trying to solve the crime and make a profit.
Sam Spitz
A country orphanage puts on a show with some musicians to save their 4H club from being shut down by greedy politicians.
John Jones
Father sells his drugstore and the Jones family heads for New York to enjoy sophisticated city life. They lose all their money before deciding to go back home.
John Jones
The Jones family females decide to teach Father a lesson. He's neglecting the family business to run for mayor, so they decide to neglect their household chores.
Keystone Cop Police Chief
Starting in 1913 movie director Connors discovers singer Molly Adair. As she becomes a star she marries an actor, so Connors fires them. She asks for him as director of her next film. Many silent stars shown making the transition to sound.
John Jones
In Hollywood the Jones family runs into crooks who convince them they have inherited a gold mine at the Grand Canyon.
John Jones
Father goes to an American Legion convention in Hollywood and the family goes along, visiting a studio a causing havoc on the set.
Uncle Ambrose
The zany plot follows nitwit Gracie Allen trying to help master sleuth Philo Vance solve a murder.
Hanley
A San Francisco reporter and a lab assistant foil spies on an East-bound deportation train.
John Jones
The Jones family encounters new theories of childrearing when an author arrives in town to lecture on the topic.
Joseph Burton
This 40-minute short, produced for MacFadden Publications, is basically a plug for the selling power of ads placed in the pages of "Liberty Magazine," a MacFadden publication.
Sonny's Father
A cocky new West Point cadet from Cambridge is given the cold shoulder by his classmates because of his rule-breaking antics.
John Jones
Excitement runs high when a family's farm is chosen as the site for a big cornhusking contest.
Jerome Lawson
Jane breaks into the film business while also reviving the flagging career of her film director uncle and getting him hooked up with his secretary.
Harry Jones
Trouble begins when a hated cad of a sponsor is found murdered during the climax of a live radio show. A radio engineer then tries to solve the murder.
John Jones
The Jones family patriarch, also mayor (Prouty), is swindled into thinking the town swamp is a rich mineral deposit.
John Jones
The Jones Family heads to Gay Paree in celebration of the 25th wedding anniversary of Pa and Ma Jones. It doesn't take long for the Joneses to be victimized by clever Parisian con artists.
J.A. Higgins
Pat and Molly Malloy, once famed vaudeville and Broadway performers, arrive to play the small town of Hamilton, Conn. with a troupe of dancers, singers, a trained dog and an educated seal. Harry Clark, the clerk at the rundown Swanzey Hotel, insults Pat and the latter uses the $4000, that he and Molly have been saving for years to buy a retirement farm, to buy the hotel so he can fire Harry. Local skinflint, J.A. Higgins wants the hotel as he knows the state has intentions to buy it for a museum, but Pat won't sell.
F.R. Randall
Five closely knit showgirls sign a pact to reunite one year after the closing of their Broadway production, but the lives of all five take many different turns, often for the worse.
John Jones
This late entry in the popular "The Jones Family" series of '30s comedies has the family contending with a troublesome (and possibly crooked) uncle while trying to cut household expenses.
John Jones
The Jones family drugstore is robbed and it looks like the culprit is a boy the family has taken a liking to.
Oliver Stearns Sr.
When a wealthy Indian student endows the college so they can keep the football coach rumor has it the Indian has played professionally and can't be on the team.
John Jones
The Jones family is in an uproar when Dad's campaign for mayor appears sabotaged by an anonymous newspaper article.
Otis Armstrong
Henry Armstrong was past being a spring chicken, still believes in Santa Claus and the maxim that "honesty is the best policy", but lack of money keeps him from marrying Molly and buying a little home, and his is threatened with the loss of the petty job he has had for four years with old Curtis French, Molly's uncle, because he can not sell enough insurance policies. And, then, he finds a thousand dollar bill. His honesty makes him advertise the find, but no one claims the money. When he is convinced that the owner will not turn up and that the money is his to keep, he becomes a changed, more aggressive and self-confident person. He begins to make sales as fast as he can make the pitch and he insists that he and Molly be married at once. While getting dressed for the ceremony, he places the $1000 bill in one of his father's old suits, and Pa Armstrong, trying to raise money to buy his son a wedding present, sells the suit to a passing junk man.
J.H. Blaine
Reformed jewel-thief Sophie Lang, tired of being questioned by the New York City police every time a jewel disappears, decides to head for California only to get into more trouble.
Bitters
The daughter of a struggling musician forms a symphony orchestra made up of his unemployed friends and through persistence, charm and a few misunderstandings, is able to get Leopold Stokowski to lead them in a concert that leads to a radio contract.
Mr. Whiteman
Starving playwright Judith Wells meets playboy writer of musicals, George Macrae, over a plate of stolen spaghetti. He persuades producer Sam Gordon to buy her ridiculous play "North Winds" just to improve his romantic chances, and even persuades her to sing in the sort of show she pretends to despise. But just when their romance is going well, Gordon's former flame Lulu reveals the ace up her sleeve...
John Jones
A small town drugstore owner (Jed Prouty) hopes to strike it rich by investing his savings in an oil well. Comedy.
Gifford
A young violin prodigy is assumed kidnapped after he runs away from home.
Artie Carver (uncredited)
Esther Blodgett is just another starry-eyed farm kid trying to break into the movies. Waitressing at a Hollywood party, she catches the eye of her idol Norman Maine, is sent for a screen test, and before long attains stardom as newly minted Vicki Lester. She and Norman marry, though his career soon dwindles to nothing due to his chronic alcoholism.
William Underhill
Three playwrights (Lew Ayres, Eugene Pallette, Benny Baker) develop a plot around a drunk who gets killed in their apartment.
John Jones
The Jones family's uncle George enters his trotting horse in the fair grounds race. The family helps raise the entrance fee and care for the horse.
Sheriff Trimble
College students rally to save a struggling hotel from closing. Comedy.
Charles Gorham
A singer in Shanghai looks exactly like a missing flyer who went missing, and is feared to have sold the experimental airplane that he was flying. Foreign gangsters, the missing flyers girlfriend, and the U.S. military wants him, dead or alive.
Ed Grant
A young girl and her uncle who run a traveling medicine show lend their efforts to salvage an old plantation.
Mr. Twerp
A famous singer, bored with music and fans, goes to live in Mexico. His manager sends a woman to bring him back. They fall in love.
Dickson (uncredited)
When a major newspaper accuses wealthy socialite Connie Allenbury of being a home-wrecker, and she files a multi-million-dollar libel lawsuit, the publication's frazzled head editor, Warren Haggerty, must find a way to turn the tables on her. Soon Haggerty's harried fiancée, Gladys Benton, and his dashing friend Bill Chandler are in on a scheme that aims to discredit Connie, with amusing and unexpected results.
District Attorney Dave Twitchell
Two down-on-their-luck former outlaws volunteer to be Texas Rangers and find themselves assigned to bring in an old friend, now a notorious outlaw.
John Jones
The Jones family goes to a convention traveling in a trailer. The oldest daughter gets involved with a convict, the oldest son has a love affair, and the youngest son gets into photography.
Bill Arnold
Epidemiologist Cliff Claybourne falls in love with Rita Wilson in a gambling house. They want to marry but Cliff's brother is convinced Rita is no good and forces Cliff to fulfill his agreement to do research in Africa in exchange for paying gambling debt. Rita, Cliff and brother are furious with each other, but Rita and Cliff are still in love.
Hector Smythe
A runaway orphan is befriended by a kind-hearted pet store owner with a criminal past.
John Jones
Jones family romp with father trying to convince son to follow him as a druggist, rather than becoming a pilot, until the son's piloting skills come in handy.
Dr. Reynolds
A lawyer changes from defending public enemies to bringing them to justice after his brother is killed.
Quinn
The story is told in flashback. Backers want a gambler to marry a rich girl for her dowry.
Mr. Evers
First of the Jones family movies with kids who ignore father and get consolation from mother through a series of family episodes.
Dr. Barratt
A Hawaiian naval nurse weds a widowed officer partly because he has a crippled daughter.
Orville Schmelling
On an ocean liner crossing a professional gambler comes to the aid of a naive young man victimized by a jewel thief. The young man turns out to be his son he's not seen since infancy.
Charles Beagle
A small-town newspaper publisher finds himself in opposition to the local banker on the return to town of a lad jailed possibly wrongly for a theft from the bank.
Mr. Finch
When the romance between radio-singer Eddie Blake and Bessie Dunn goes sour through a series of misunderstanding, Bessie packs to take a week-end trip with the station boss,Stephen Barclay, and Eddie proposes to Hazel, who appears to be open to any kind of proposal. With all of the principals involved and in the office elevator, a cable breaks and the elevator is suspended between floors...and the resolvements begin.
Kirschner
A songwriter's young daughter (June Lang) begins to dream of stardom when she's offered the lead role in a new operetta.
Roulette Player (uncredited)
A man escapes from jail in France to free his daughter from her mother's hold.
Dr. Levine
There are plenty of guilty secrets at the school where Hildegarde Withers teaches. When she finds the body of the pretty music teacher, she calls in her old friend Inspector Piper, who promptly arrests the obvious suspect. Clues multiply and everyone looks suspicious as Piper and Miss Withers continue their battle of the sexes.
Joe Long i.e. Lang
an aspiring writer and her boyfriend, a professional agitator head off to the Big Apple in search of good fortune. Unfortunately, the agitator soon finds himself in trouble with the cops. Meanwhile the writer attempts to become a Greenwich Village Bohemian type. She and her new friends are all starving for their art until a kindly gent offers them financial assistant. They refuse on principle. Tragedy pays a call when the writer learns that her boyfriend has been untrue.
In order to show up a rival, a snobbish woman throws a party and hires an actor to pretend to be from British royalty who is an "old friend".
E.W. Marlowe
Jimmy is a wiseguy press agent whose efforts to promote a meat-packing firm come to naught. Our hero is fired from his job, whereupon his sweetheart Sally steps in, immediately succeeding where Jimmy had failed.
Calvin Baker
A cocky young pilot, at the urging of his girlfriend, takes a nice, "safe" job at the bank where her father is president.
Mr. Goran (uncredited)
Florence Denny is Tommy Nelson's girlfriend and secretary at a clothing manufacturer during the Great Depression. In order to boost sales they have been using professional female entertainers to keep their clients very happy, but the clients are getting bored of them. Tommy convinces management to replace the professionals with "volunteers" from the pool of stenographers. Inevitably some clients expectations are greater than their "dates", boyfriends become unhappy, and the "voluntary" duty becomes less so over time. At first, Tommy prevents Florence from being a volunteer, but eventually the prospect of a bonus becomes too great and he encourages her to volunteer. Afterwards, Tommy considers Florence a loose woman.
Stubby (Uncredited)
A murder trial reunites a former chorus girl and her son, a grandson of an English aristocrat.
Mr. Hoyt
The lives of the residents of a Manhattan apartment building are intertwined with the actions of a crooked investor.
Newspaper Editor (uncredited)
College football player is asked to dope a star teammate by his crooked gambler brother. He refuses, but they player is doped anyway and collapses and dies. A detective has the whole game re-enacted to find important clues.
Lynwood Warden Charles Clark
Two yokels are framed and sent to prison, but wind up playing football on the warden's championship team.
Elks Crossing Jeweler (uncredited)
Nightclub singer Joan Gordon runs away from her gangster boyfriend to become a mail-order bride to a struggling North Dakota farmer. Their relationship has a rocky start, but just as Joan realizes she's developing feelings for her husband, her old boyfriend arrives to win her back.
Ben Wackstle
On a Mediterranean cruise, Earl Tinker, a manufacturer of razor blades, is the target of a femme fatale in the pay of a business rival, and he becomes embroiled in a feud between two Arab tribes.
Floyd Evans
A comedy-drama about marriage and divorce. A wife does not want children, her husband leaves her and marries a woman who does.
Jim Neligan
The Secret Call is adapted from The Woman, a play by William C. DeMille (brother of Cecil B.) Peggy Shannon plays Wanda Kelly, the daughter of a disgraced politician. Reduced to working as a switchboard operator, Wanda is privy to the many secrets and indiscretions of the clients of a big-city hotel. She also finds romance in the form of handsome Tom Blake (Richard Arlen). The huge cast of characters comes in handy for the film's multitude of subplots, none of which ever get their wires crossed. Peggy Shannon acquits herself nicely in her first major role, but by the end of the decade her career was in decline.
Harry
After years of fighting off the advances of her old flame Steve, Lisbeth settles into a steamy, casual romance with journalist Alan. Against the advice of her happily married aunt Celia -- who encourages her to demand a serious commitment -- Lisbeth continues to see Alan, even after she hears he may have a wife in France. When Alan's work sends him abroad, a lovesick Lisbeth struggles to understand her feelings.
Officer Williams (uncredited)
Mary Turner gets a three years prison sentence for a crime she didn't commit. Once released, she plots to get back at the man responsible for her conviction.
Old Man Dell
A chorus girl gets bad advice from her fellow chorines in handling a rich suitor who assumes she is a gold digger.
Dance Hall Manager
Ruby is a counter girl at the San Diego Soda Shop with a habit of being a girlfriend to Sailors stopping by. Things get a little zany when she sets her eyes on Bull's Eye McCoy a gunner who refuses to settle down.
Kent Carr
Beautiful manicurist Hallie Hobart sets her sights on handsome David Stone, the son of wealthy wheat farmer Ezra Stone. Professing to hate men, Hallie is only interested in luring David in for a lucrative business deal. David easily falls in love, but older brother Mark brands Hallie a gold-digger. To get even with the straight-laced Stone family, Hallie accepts David's marriage proposal.
Mr. David Parker
Casey and Babe are sisters who work in a department store and each year the store puts on a show. As expected, things are going wrong with every act until Casey comes out to help Babe with her song. They are a hit, but in the final act, Casey again comes out and this time the president sees her act and fires both her and Babe on the spot. Benny is able to book Casey, Babe and Dean into Vaudeville and their act is popular. But before they have their shot at stardom, Dean and Babe leave Casey and the act.
George
Fox musical.
Newton Wampler
In this drama, a traveling troupe of actors find themselves in danger of becoming unemployed when their manager up and leaves. Two of the actors decide to marry and settle down. The lead actor helps set up the rest of the troupe with some performances. He then destroys the new marriage. Later the woman and the head actor fall in love. He then gives her the lead role in his newest show.
Tom Ford Sr
The Fall of Eve
Harry
Frances, a salesgirl, is planning a summer vacation at the beach with a girlfriend, who also works at her store. Just as she is getting ready to leave home, Dave, a handsome young plumber, arrives to repair a leaky faucet. Her vacation turns into a bust when it rains at the beach, but a hunky lifeguard shows up to brighten her day. Then, of all people, Dave the plumber shows up, too. Complications ensue.
Phil
Sonny Boy's parents are in the midst of a bitter divorce when the boy's mother talks her sister into kidnapping him because she is terrified that her husband will take the boy out of the country after the divorce.
Uncle Jed (uncredited)
The vaudeville act of Harriet and Queenie Mahoney comes to Broadway, where their friend Eddie Kerns needs them for his number in one of Francis Zanfield's shows. When Eddie meets Queenie, he soon falls in love with her—but she is already being courted by Jock Warriner, a member of New York high society. Queenie eventually recognises that, to Jock, she is nothing more than a toy, and that Eddie is in love with her.
Cabaret dancer Anna Janssen kills her sugardaddy and escapes to a South Seas island on the yacht of a wealthy admirer. Stolid, conscientious Tom McCarthy, a New York detective, is sent after Anna and arrests her, chartering a steamer to bring her back to the United States. The steamer sinks, and Anna and Tom are stranded on a small island. They fall in love, and Tom's influence brings about a benign change in Anna's character. They are rescued, however, and Anna is placed on trial for her life. Tom takes the stand in her defense and informs the judge of Anna's conversion in the solitude of the island. The judge instructs Tom to marry Anna and then sentences them to life--on the island where they found happiness together.
Uncle Edgar
Starry-eyed heiress Mary Astor yearns for a "cave man" who will treat her rough and make her like it.
Katie O'Doone is left a worthless, run-down estate and a thoroughbred race horse. She mortgages the property in order to get the money needed to enter her horse in the Derby. Dennis Reilly, a wealthy sportsman, also has a horse in the race and his jockey accidentally runs Reilly's horse into Kate's horse, causing her horse to lose. She swears vengeance on O'Reilly. She is forced to go to work for a crooked bookie, Jake Trumbull, and a crooked competitor of Reilly's,Tod Cuyler, who plan on switching a dead-ringer horse for Reilly's favored-to-win horse, and clean up betting against Reilly's horse.
Bridwell Potter
Doris Poole, whose parents were theatrical people, was orphaned as a child, and four members of the troupe adopted and raised her. When grown, she has become the leading lady in a San Francisco stock-company. She meets and falls in love with Ted, the millionaire son of a rich widow, but she thinks he is only a tax-cab driver. His mother objects to the romance and looks into Doris' past. She learns that her father had murdered, in a fit of jealousy, her mother, and tells Doris what she has found out. The four actors who had raised her had never told her how she happened to become an orphan. They persuade Ted's mother to send him on a voyage to the Orient in order to get him away from Doris. But they neglected to tell the mother they had also booked passage for Doris on the same ship.
Lippi
A concert pianist who is popular with women tries to discourage a teenage admirer.
The Farmer
The father of an heiress dies broke leaving her destitute without inheritance. She falls in with a group of hobos traveling incognito cross country dressed as a man.
Mayor
Poor Ella Cinders is much abused by her evil step-mother and step-sisters. When she wins a local beauty contest she jumps at the chance to get out of her dead-end life and go to Hollywood, where she is promised a job in the movies. When she arrives in Hollywood, she discovers that the contest was a scam and the job non-existent. But through pluck, luck, and talent, she makes it in the movies anyway, and finds true love.
Mr. Tridon
Heroine Fidele Tridon has grown up with the knowledge that her father has promised her in marriage to Baron Kurt Badeau. When Fidele comes of age, the Baron shows up expecting to claim his young bride. In the interim, however, Fidele has fallen in love with wealthy horseman Philip Collett.
Silent film drama...
'Mac' MacMahon
A Lambert Hillyer silent romantic love triangle boxing sports lumberjack logging melodrama about a world champion boxer who must retire due to an arm injury. He becomes a lumberjack, and becomes involved with the daughter of the owner, but rivals sabotage their operation, and the boxer has to return to the ring to save the owner from bankruptcy and win the hand of the daughter.
Barney Barnett
Stephen Lee doesn't want his nephew Wally Sanders to marry chorus girl Violet Dayne, because he believes all chorus girls to be ruthless gold diggers, always chasing after the men's money. Violet's friend Jerry La Mar decides to 'gold dig' Stephen, to show him what a nice and unselfish girl Violet is, but then she realizes that she's really in love with Stephen Lee....
Magnus (uncredited)
A young woman hits Hollywood, determined to become a star.
Jimmy Monahan
After serving time in Sing Sing, Chic Hewes wants to go straight, but when he refuses to be a stool pigeon for the cops, they hound him mercilessly. Hewes witnesses a car accident in which Jerry Brandon, the son of the district attorney, runs over a child. He also meets Molly, the D.A.'s daughter. Because he feels the child's mother was treated unfairly, Hewes decides to pull one last heist to square things.
Good Nature
Youth meets Ambition and leaves Love, his mother, and his small-town roots for the big city. There, in his search for Experience, he meets Pleasure and hangs out at the Primrose Path with the likes of Temptation and Intoxication. Back home, Youth's mother dies, and Love tries unsuccessfully to reach him. When Youth's money runs out his newfound friends all leave him and he sinks into a life of drug addiction, aided by Habit.
Norbert Flintcroft
Joe Louden is an outcast in the small town of Canaan, and is especially disliked by Judge Pike. There is one inhabitant, however, who is fond of Joe -- the pretty but poor Ariel Tabor. But she inherits some money and goes to Paris with her father.
Mr. Witt
An artist pretends to be a valet to escape a woman's advances. He marries another woman but must keep painting in secret to make enough money.
James Wakeley
Society miss Sadie Love has just wed Prince Luigi Pallavincini when she gets a phone call from Jimmie Wakely, a suitor she has not seen in a year. She allows him to come by and declare his love but doesn't bother telling him she has just gotten married. Without giving it much thought, she decides she likes Wakely better and runs off with him.
