W. Franke Harling
Birth : 1887-01-18, London, England, UK
Death : 1958-11-22
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
W. Franke Harling (January 18, 1887 – November 22, 1958) was a composer of film scores, operas, and popular music.
Born William Franke Harling in London, he was educated at the Grace Choir Church School in New York City. After working as an organist and choir director at the Church of the Resurrection in Brussels, he spent two years at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and composed both its hymn, called "The Corps," and its official march, "West Point Forever." In 1918, Harling contributed incidental music to the Broadway production of the 1898 play Pan and the Young Shepherd by Maurice Hewlett. In 1926, he collaborated with Laurence Stallings on Deep River, a voodoo-themed opera set in New Orleans in 1835. It opened on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre on October 4 and ran for 32 performances.
Harling began his Hollywood career in 1928. His film credits include The Vagabond King, This Is the Night, So Big!, A Bill of Divorcement, Blonde Venus, A Farewell to Arms, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Monte Carlo, Souls at Sea, and Penny Serenade.
Harling won the Academy Award for Best Music Scoring for Stagecoach (1939) and was nominated for Souls at Sea (1937) and Three Russian Girls (1944).
Harling's popular songs include "Beyond the Blue Horizon" (with Richard A. Whiting) popularized by Jeanette MacDonald in 1930 and Lou Christie thirty years later, and "Sing, You Sinners", originally performed by Lillian Roth in 1930 and a hit for Tony Bennett in 1950.
Harling won the Bispham Memorial Medal Award for his jazz-oriented opera A Light from St. Agnes.
Harling died in Sierra Madre, California and is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills.
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A newsman tracks down a phantom killer of murder-trial jurors.
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Bold, eccentric Broadway performer Elizabeth Madden befuddles her handlers by coming home with a baby she picked up on the street. She wants to keep the baby but has to find a husband to make adoption viable. She offers her new obstetrician Dr. McBain help with his research on rabbits in exchange for marriage - and he accepts. The marriage of convenience turns into a marriage of real love until Dr. McBain's ex-wife comes looking for money.
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Dagwood brings home a pedigreed Great Dane which an important company client wants and which Blondie enters in the big dog show. A highlight of this film is the canine burping display.
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The Saturday matinee crowd got two cowboy stars for the price of one in this lavishly budgeted western serial starring former singing cowboy Dick Foran and Buck Jones. The latter contributed deadpan humor to the proceedings, making Jones perhaps the highest paid B-western comedy relief in history. The two heroes defend the Death Valley borax miners from an outlaw gang headed by Wolf Reade. An extraordinarily strong cast -- for a serial, at least -- supported the stars, headed by Charles Bickford as Reade, Leo Carillo, Lon Chaney, Jr., and silent screen star Monte Blue. Leading lady Jeanne Kelly later changed her name to Jean Brooks and starred in the atmospheric RKO thriller The Seventh Victim (1943). Universal claimed to have spent $1 million on this serial and made sure to get their money's worth by endlessly recycling the action footage in serials and B-westerns for years to come.
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A troubled youth is offered the opportunity to serve as a Senate page in Washington, DC.
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While listening to a recording of Penny Serenade, Julie Gardiner Adams begins reflecting on her past. She recalls her impulsive marriage to newspaper reporter Roger Adams, which begins on a deliriously happy note but turns out to be fraught with tragedy. Other songs remind her of their courtship, their marriage, their desire for a child, and the joys and sorrows they have shared. A flood of memories come back to her as she ponders on their present problems and how they arose.
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Emilie has been hired to care for the four sons of wealthy Adam Stoddard and his wife, Molly. After Molly dies, Adam and the boys grow to depend on Emilie even more. At the same time, Emilie falls in love with Adam. The boys grow up, but Adam insists that Emilie stay on as part of the family. Her relationships with both the boys and Adam become strained after one son marries a gold-digging viper named Hester. Written by Daniel Bubbeo
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Reporter Nicholas Ranson is jubilant when, on 17 Dec 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright take their first airplane flight. Back home in Underwood, Maryland, however, his uncle Hiram F. Jenkins, owner and editor of the local newspaper, refuses to print the story. Nicholas quits and continues to work on his own airplane, with the devoted help of his little daughter Peggy. Peggy is actually the first in her family to fly when her friends, Patrick Falconer and Scott Barnes, induce her to get inside a large kite they have made, and run with it in a field until she is airborne. The kite is caught in a tree, however, and Peggy gets a black eye. Later, Nicholas dies when his experimental airplane crashes, leaving his wife and children alone. By Peggy's adulthood, planes are capable of flying at an altitude of 11,000 feet, and speeds of nearly 100 m.p.h. Peggy continues her father's obsession with flight by helping Scott and Pat to build a plane.
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When a hard-working machinist loses a promotion to a Polish-born worker, he is seduced into joining the secretive Black Legion, which intimidates foreigners through violence.
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An island fugitive and his bride make room for a shipwrecked detective.
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During the American Civil War, Valette Bedford waits patiently for her husband Duncan Bedford, to return home, praying that she will not become a widow.
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When his mother dies, young Peter Ibbetson leaves Paris and his best friend, Mary, behind to live with a severe uncle in England. Years later, Peter is an architect with little time for women, until he begins a project with the Duke and Duchess of Towers. When Peter and the duchess become great friends, she reveals that she is Mary — but the duke soon suspects his wife of infidelity and challenges Peter to a duel, threatening the pair's second chance.
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When a meek secretary goes to work for her new boss, she becomes a sophisticated lady.
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A young lady leaves her brutal husband and meets another man on board a ship.
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A young lady leaves her brutal husband and meets another man on board a ship.
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A beautiful woman mistakes a Prince's butler for the Prince.
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An unemployed man turns to crime when he gets his girlfriend pregnant.
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In a deeply cloistered convent, nun Dorothea Wieck (Mädchen in Uniform) raises a foundling to be Evelyn Venable. But at 17, what if, guided by a kindly doctor, she sees the world and finds love?
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When a famous doctor kills his adulterous wife, he is defended by his best friend, an attorney who suspects that his own wife is having an affair.
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When a famous doctor kills his adulterous wife, he is defended by his best friend, an attorney who suspects that his own wife is having an affair.
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A private eye specializing in divorce cases falls for the woman he's been hired to frame.
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An American missionary is gradually seduced by a courtly warlord holding her in Shanghai.
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Pinkerton marries Cho-Cho San in Japan, whilst on shore leave. When he leaves, she keeps his Japanese home as he left it. He returns three years later, having married again in America, and tells Cho-Cho that their affair is over. She has had a child in his absence, who is sent to her family, before she kills herself.
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A tale of the World War I love affair, begun in Italy, between American ambulance driver Lt. Frederic Henry and British nurse Catherine Barkley. Eventually separated by Frederic's transfer, tremendous challenges and difficult decisions face each as the war rages on.
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Thief Gaston Monescu and pickpocket Lily are partners in crime and love. Working for perfume company executive Mariette Colet, the two crooks decide to combine their criminal talents to rob their employer. Under the alias of Monsieur Laval, Gaston uses his position as Mariette's personal secretary to become closer to her. However, he takes things too far when he actually falls in love with Mariette, and has to choose between her and Lily.
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Linda Gault is a luxury loving wife who casually seduces other men while getting investment tips from one of her lovers.
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Hilary Fairfield returns home after fifteen years in an asylum with his sanity restored. But he is disturbed to find that everything has changed: his daughter grown and about to marry; his wife divorced and also about to marry.
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American chemist Ned Faraday marries a German entertainer and starts a family. However, he becomes poisoned with Radium and needs an expensive treatment in Germany to have any chance at being cured. Wife Helen returns to night club work to attempt to raise the money and becomes popular as the Blonde Venus. In an effort to get enough money sooner, she prostitutes herself to millionaire Nick Townsend.
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Overworked boxer Jim goes to a health ranch in New Mexico to recover where he falls in love with Peggy and her sickly son. Once recovered, Jim leaves to return to the ring. Can their romance survive the distance?
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Crickle is a tenacious small-town grocer who stubbornly resists the efforts of a monopolistic chain-store firm to purchase his establishment. The chain manager retaliates by cutting off Crickles' supply of produce, whereupon his friends and neighbors save his business by supplying him with goods from their own farms.
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A condemned murderer, in the process of being executed, relives the events that led to his being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Told in flashback, we witness a sleazy dancehall girl (Vivienne Osborne) dupe a high rise riveter (Edward G. Robinson) into marriage so she can live off of him. But when he loses his job and his marbles, she ends up supporting him with money from her side man--and misses no opportunity to rub it in Robinson's face that she's now supporting him in his emasculated state. As the animosity grows and things get more and more unbearable for Robinson, he is eventually driven to desperate measures.
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A wealthy couple's marriage is falling apart due to the man's infidelity. The wife's male friend has long loved her and sees his big opportunity.
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An ultra-efficient Plain Jane secretary blossoms when she accompanies her boss on a business trip to Paris.
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When Stephen, the husband of Gerald’s mistress, Claire, discovers a pair of tickets for their planned trip to Venice, Gerald must invent a wife to cover their tracks. He is then forced to hire a woman to play “his wife” when Stephen insists he and Claire accompany them to Venice.
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Andre and Colette Bertier are happily married. When Colette introduces her husband to her flirtatious best friend, Mitzi, he does his best to resist her advances. But she is persistent, and very cute, and he succumbs. Mitzi's husband wants to divorce her, and has been having her tailed. Andre gets caught, and must confess to his wife. But Colette has had problems resisting the attentions of another man herself, and they forgive each other.
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A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.
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A young French soldier in World War I is overcome with guilt when he kills a German soldier who, like himself, is a musically gifted conscript, each having attended the same musical conservatory in France. The fact that the incident occurred in war does not assuage his guilt. He travels to Germany to meet the man's family.
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A woman who is a member of a gang of con artists impersonates the mother of a wealthy blind man.
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The dream of Paul Dombey, the wealthy owner of the shipping company, is to have a son to continue his business. Tragically, Dombey's wife dies shortly after giving birth to their son.
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Confirming his principle that no one escapes the news, a tabloid editor prints a scathing story about his wife.
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A woman becomes estranged from her daughter when the girl learns that she is illegitimate.
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A countess fleeing her husband mistakes a count for her hairdresser at a Monte Carlo casino.
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Gardoni, a down-on-his-luck vaudeville performer, is taken in by a fellow performer, a clown who has a bicycle riding act. Gardoni shows his appreciation by stealing the clown's act and his girlfriend, whom he marries.
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The queen of mythical Sylvania marries a courtier, who finds his new life unsatisfying.
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In this comedy, a Yiddish fellow cannot keep from kibitzing into other people's lives. Trouble ensues when he is mistakenly given a huge fortune in stocks that he can spend any way he pleases. At the same time, his daughter has fallen in love with an impoverished, but good hearted boy. When the kibitzer suggests he bet all his money on a dog of a racehorse, the lad does it. Against all odds, the horse wins, and suddenly the young man is quite wealthy.
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Chorus girl Barbara Pell (Nancy Carroll) inherits a school for boys, and uses her position to sabotage the football career of the boy who jilted her.
