Self
Documentary and interviews with the cast of Petticoat Junction and stories of the show's production.
Regent Yarborough
By accident, the content of a computer encyclopedia is transferred into the brain of Dexter Riley, a less than average college boy. Because of his newly acquired knowledge he competes in a quiz show between various universities, where he sweeps all the points. A wiz kid from another university finds out about his cheated wisdom and does everything to discredit Dexter.
Bellhop
An erotic thriller actress becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a B-movie producer, leading her to hide out and engage in sexual thrills with a pair of innocents.
Van der Graaf
A Los Angeles psychiatrist testifies for the prosecution in the trial of an accused child molester. Later the defendant, who is out on bail, is found dead in the psychiatrist's office, in what appears to be a suicide. Shaken, the psychiatrist moves to the mountains outside of L.A. Not long afterwards a detective he knows comes to him for help. A seven-year-old girl saw someone kill both of her parents, but is so traumatized by the event that she can't remember anything, and the detective wants the doctor to help jar her memory. Soon, however, the doctor and the detective discover that the parents' murder and the pedophiles "suicide" may be linked to a shadowy group of wealthy and influential pedophiles, and that the child isn't the only one whose life is in danger.
Amos Abbott
Emma, a divorced single mother seeking to start her life over, moves to a small town in Arizona. She befriends Murphy, the older local pharmacist, but things turn complicated when her ex-husband shows up.
Reinhammer
Alan O'Black is a comic who wants to hit it big. But his endless attempts at stardom have worn down his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Julie. Thinking she'll give him another chance if he gets a real job, Alan gets a gig as a limo driver, which promptly lands him in a slew of trouble when he meets and gets involved in the hijinks of a crooked entrepreneur, Bradley Coleman.
Prof. Hollister
Charlie's ex-wife disappears, and he goes to where she grew up--a rural town in the midwest--to look for her. But, surprisingly, nobody knows about her or any of her many relatives, the Newmans. He meets aliens; but when he contacts the FBI, they don't believe him. He tells his story to a tabloid; and suddenly, he is chased by the aliens.
Donovan
When the teenagers in a small Illinois town start getting murdered, the police chief makes a connection to the mysterious scientific experiments being done at the local university and must stop them before his own son is dragged into the deadly scheme.
Chief
Jed Clamplett and his backwoods family help solve an energy crisis in their own rustic ways for their Beverly Hills neighborhood they still cannot adjust to.
J.J.
Karate experts attempt to rescue a girl who was kidnapped by a mother and her two psycho sons.
Judge / Mr. Pennington
Three movie genres of the 1930s, boxing films, WWI aviation dramas, and backstage Broadway musicals, are satirized using the same cast.
The Holvak family house the escaped convict named Craw that the son befriends. Reverend Holvak's faith is tested and young Ramey faces a choice between a friendship and his family.
Mr. Beeman
A young businessman goes to a magic expert to learn hardness and skill with his cynical and greedy collaborators. He becomes a very good tap dancer, but will he be able to get free of his old boss?
Mr. Pfeiffer
As ratings for Jack Crandall's lifeless airborne traffic reports plummet, a super-size St. Bernard on the lam stows away in his chopper. Crandall's new co-pilot helps send ratings sky-high, but the canine's chronic kleptomania generates girl trouble, jewel thievery, and loads of laughs.
Dr. Shapiro
A new infection that simply makes people feel happy is treated as a threat by the authorities while its "victims" work to spread it to others.
Dr. Scoggins
An eccentric millionaire and his grandchildren are embroiled in the plights of some forest gnomes who are searching for the rest of their tribe. While helping them, the millionaire is suspected of being crazy because he's seeing gnomes! He's committed, and the niece and nephew and the gnomes have to find him and free him.
Judge
The Garrisons are the "proud parents" of three adorable dachshund pups - and one overgrown Great Dane named Brutus, who nevertheless thinks of himself as a dainty dachsie. His identity crisis results in an uproarious series of household crises that reduce the Garrisons' house to shambles - and viewers to howls of laughter!
Whitlow
Luther Heggs, a typesetter for the town newspaper, pitches an idea for a story about a local haunted house where a famous murder/suicide occurred 20 years earlier. After the editor assigns Luther to spend one night alone in the mansion, Heggs has a number of supernatural encounters and writes a front page story that makes him a hometown hero...until the nephew of the deceased sues him for libel.
Coach Jones
A 16-year-old tomboy and high school athlete becomes embroiled with the lives around her boyfriend whose conservative father is running for mayor.
Editor
During the Cold War, John Goldfarb crashes his spy plane in the Middle East and is taken prisoner by the local government. His captor, King Fawz, soon discovers that Goldfarb used to be a college football star. So he issues him an ultimatum: coach his country's football team, or Fawz will surrender him to the Russians. Goldfarb teams up with undercover reporter Jenny Ericson, and together they plot to escape their dangerous situation.
Interviewee
This documentary, the final film directed by Frank Capra, explores America's plans for the future of space exploration. It was produced by the Martin-Marietta Corporation for exhibition in the Hall of Science at the 1964 New York World's Fair.
Director
An aspiring young singer unexpectedly gets her big break by inventing a specialized clothes rack.
Jack Bailey
To help his divorced neighbor claim a substantial inheritance, a family man poses as her husband. The ruse spills over into his career in advertising, and his recent promotion relies on his wholesome and moral appearance.
Connors
Young doctors mix romance with their careers in a big-city hospital.
Eugene Denby
When playboy Jonas inherits his father's industrial empire, he expands it by acquiring an aircraft factory and movie studio. His rise to power is ruthless. He marries and then quickly abandons sweet, bubbly Monica, turns his young, attractive stepmother Rina into a self-destructive actress and manages to disappoint even his closest friend, cowboy movie star Nevada. Is Jonas beyond redemption?
Judge (uncredited)
Henry J. Tyroone leaves Texas, where his oil wells are drying up, and arrives in New York with a lot of oil money to play with in the stock market. He meets stock analyst Molly Thatcher, who tries to ignore the lavish attention he spends on her but ...
Airport Manager
A group of strangers come across a man dying after a car crash who proceeds to tell them about the $350,000 he buried in California. What follows is the madcap adventures of those strangers as each attempts to claim the prize for himself.
Mr. Cosgrove
A jolly, family-oriented railroad superintendent tries to get his act together when his love for the bottle starts to alienate him from his wife and oldest daughter. His younger daughter, however, still remains unflinchingly loyal to him, and they share many fun misadventures over the course of the movie.
Constable
A con man comes to an Iowa town with a scam using a boy's marching band program, but things don't go according to plan.
Al Atwood
Out of hit ideas and seemingly in the twilight of his career, Broadway producer Russ Ward decides to give up the game. But when Russ lays off his nubile secretary, Ellie Brown, she shocks him with a declaration of love. Inspired, Ward commands playwright MacDonald to rewrite his latest show as a May-December romance starring Brown herself. Ward struggles to make a comeback as his ex-wife, Kathryn, plots to end his new relationship.
Standard Bates
In one of his rare performances without Bud Abbott, Lou Costello plays a delivery boy who invents a machine which turns his girlfriend into a giantess.
Inspector General Bigelow
Tax collector Lorenzo Charlton comes to the Larkins' farm to ask why Pop Larkins hasn't paid his back taxes. Charlton has to stay for a day to try to estimate the income from the farm, but it isn't easy to calculate when the farmer has such a lovely daughter.
Roy
A rugged city editor poses as a journalism student and flirts with the professor.
Judge Warner
A retired surgeon starts giving away money to religious causes and his family tries to file suit, claiming that he's incompetent.
Prof. Obispo
Grainbelt University has one attraction for Dobie Gillis - women, especially Pansy Hammer. Pansy's father, even though and maybe because she says she's in dreamville, does not share her affection for Dobie. An English essay which almost revolutionizes English instruction, and Dobie's role in a chemistry lab explosion convinces Mr. Hammer he is right. Pansy is sent off broken-hearted to an Eastern school, but with the help of Happy Stella Kolawski's all-girl band, several hundred students and an enraged police force, Dobie secures Pansy's return to Grainbelt.
Delapp
A singer and her apartment manager get mixed up in a creepy Park Avenue murder and find themselves facing danger at every turn.
Rosenberg
A Holocaust survivor moves to Israel and experiences difficulty adjusting to life.
Loud Drunk at Club
Eddie Miller struggles with his hatred of women, he's especially bothered by seeing women with their lovers. He starts a killing spree as a sniper by shooting women from far distances. In an attempt to get caught, he writes an anonymous letter to the police begging them to stop him.
Ralph Burchard
Foreign correspondent Pete Garvey has 5 days to win back his former fiancée, or he'll lose the orphans he adopted.
Frederick Waterman
A drunken attorney tries to sober up in order to defend a friend in murder case.
Herman Pulvermacher (uncredited)
A ruthless fashion designer steps on everyone in her way in order to reach the top of her profession. Eventually she is forced to choose between her ambition and the man she loves.
Mr. Westcott
A homely girl is seriously injured in a car crash. When she eventually wakes up in the hospital, she's astounded to see that plastic surgery has transformed her into a world-class beauty. When she finds out that a mysterious "benefactor" has paid for her surgery, she sets out to find out who he is and why he did it.
Erickson
A horse trainer who has fallen on hard times looks to his horse, Broadway Bill, to finally win the big race.
L.A. Casualty Co. Executive (uncredited)
Pirdy is accident prone. He has been denied insurance from every company in town because he is always getting hit or hurt in some way. On the day that he meets the lovely Ellen of the Yellow Cab Co., he also meets the crooked lawyer named Creavy. Pirdy is an inventor and when Creavy learns about elastic-glass, his new invention, he makes plans to steal the process. With the help of another con man named Doksteader, and the boys, he will steal this million dollar invention no matter who gets hurt.
Apartment Manager (uncredited)
Dave Joslin, the managing editor of a big-city newspaper, is demoted and moved to the Miss Lonely Hearts column-writing department by the newspaper's publisher, J. B. Grennell, because Joslin refuses to desist in printing stories linking a gangster, Matthew Keever, to a murder. But Joslin, aided by Kit Williams, a newspaper woman with whom he is in love, investigate the murder case on their own time.
Producer (uncredited)
A young woman, Jill Young, grew up on her father's ranch in Africa, raising a large gorilla named Joe from an infant. Years later, she brings him to Hollywood to become a star.
Mr. Eddie Pflum
In 1924, stage-struck Boston blueblood Hannah Adams picks up musical star Tim O'Connor and takes him home for dinner. One thing leads to another, and when Tim's show rolls on to Chicago a new Mrs. O'Connor comes along as incompetent chorus girl. Hollywood beckons, and we follow the star careers of the O'Connor family in silents and talkies.
Prof. Collins (uncredited)
Professor Henry Barnes decides he's lived long enough and contemplates suicide. His attitude is changed by Peggy Taylor, a chipper young mother-to-be who charms him into renting out his attic as an apartment for her and her husband Jason, a former GI struggling to finish college.
Switchboard Operator Clerk (uncredited)
A night club owner takes on the crooks who killed his best friend.
Mr. Evans
Donald Lewis is a low-paid clerk in a high-profile shipbuilding firm. When the company is robbed in broad daylight, Lewis gathers up $100,000 on his own and skeedaddles, figuring that the lost funds will be attributed to the holdup. Before his girlfriend Ginny can persuade him to go straight, the hapless Lewis finds himself hotly pursued by cops and crooks alike.
Fenmore
Security guard, wounded in a robbery of furs, arouses the suspicions of an insurance investigator.
Reporter
A crusading DA falls for a defense attorney with a criminal past.
Blink Moran
An industrialist is urged to run for President, but this requires uncomfortable compromises on both political and marital levels.
Prosecuting Attorney (uncredited)
In 1932, a cop is killed and Frank Wiecek sentenced to life. Eleven years later, a newspaper ad by Frank's mother leads Chicago reporter P.J. O'Neal to look into the case. For some time, O'Neal continues to believe Frank guilty. But when he starts to change his mind, he meets increased resistance from authorities unwilling to be proved wrong.
Hotel Desk Clerk
Dishonorably discharged from the Army Air Corps, Brad Dunham (George Raft) disconsolately decides to try his luck with Shanghai's postwar black market. Teaming with the treacherous Tamara Baranoff (June Havoc), Dunham prospers in his newly-found illicit profession, much to the dismay of his best friend, reporter Mark Andrews (Tom Tully). When Tamara has the troublesome Andrews murdered, Dunham realizes the folly of his behavior and works overtime to squash the black market for good and all.
Lipton
A crooked crime boss tries to put a crony into office.
Brighton
A woman watches her own funeral, then sets out with her lawyer to learn who was in the casket.
Hawkins (uncredited)
A World War II pilot (Gene Kelly) comes home to a bride (Marie McDonald) who, spoiled by her father (Charles Winninger), now wants a divorce.
Landlord (uncredited)
A New Yorker hobo moves into a mansion and along the way he gathers friends to live in the house with him. Before he knows it, he is living with the actual home owners.
Real Estate Salesman
A holiday favourite for generations... George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George's modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business's $8,000 is lost and George's troubles begin.
Nick Steele
An aristocratic but destitute southern family attempts to swindle an insurance company by faking the theft of a valuable emerald necklace. The company assigns operatives Eve Rogers and Mike Regan to the case.
Detective Burns
A private detective is hired to find a young heiress but finds himself accused of murder.
Dr. Steiner (uncredited)
In the 7th film of the "Crime Doctor" series based on the radio program, Dr. Robert Ordway is summoned to take attend a diabetic, and gives an injection of insulin taken from a bottle in the patient's pocket. The man dies and Ordway discovers that what he thought was insulin was really poison. Oops! Two other people are murdered before Ordway discovers who replaced the insulin with poison and what the motive was
Hack Hagen (uncredited)
Blackie runs into a woman he formally loved who now is married with a kid. When her husband gets out of prison he's killed in Blackie's apartment and of course the police thing Blackie pulled the trigger. Blackie must set out to prove his innocence as well as capture the real killers.
Reporter at Marriage License Office
Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright, and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!
Man in Kitchenin Montage (uncredited)
Ambassador Joseph Davies is sent by FDR to Russia to learn about the Soviet system and returns to America as an advocate of Stalinism.
Bus Company Superintendent (uncredited)
A pair of bus drivers accidentally steal their own bus. With the company issuing a warrant for their arrest, they tag along with a playboy on a boat trip that finds them on a tropical island, where a jewel thief has sinister plans for them.
Braun
During World War I, two German men friends who emigrated to the US and become millionaires agree on most things, with one major difference: one has taken the US side against Germany regarding the war, while the other stays stubbornly loyal to "the old country". His stubbornness results in tragedy for his old friend and a lesson in the consequences of blind loyalty.
Mott
A celebrated district attorney reflects on the way circumstantial evidence impacted a famous murder case.
Government Man
A psychiatrist's patient, a nutty heiress, travels west to find gold in her grandfather's abandoned mine. The psychiatrist, unable to talk her out of it, decides to follow her out there.
Spotter
Margaret Drew runs her trucking company single-mindedly, if not ruthlessly. The only thorn in her side is writer Michael Holmes who is writing a book on some of her tough ways. With no time for men, the effect an attractive stranger has on her at her sister's wedding is unnerving. When it turns out this is the hated writer, she starts seriously to lose her bearings. Surely it can't become Maggie and Mike?
Virgil Hickling
A girl tries to pay the mortgage on a Nob Hill home and gets involved in selling her father's art treasures.
Ringside spectator at Ole's first fight (uncredited)
Ma Galestrum (Connie Gilchrist) is a boardinghouse owner whose tenants are a group of aspiring boxers. When her young niece, Judy (Jean Rogers), comes to stay for a visit, college dropout Ken Burke (William Lundigan) and Swedish janitor Ole (Dan Dailey Jr.) immediately fall for her charms. Ken considers going back to college for Judy, but his fight promoter is less than thrilled with this idea. Meanwhile, Ole is determined to meet Ken in the ring to vie for Judy's heart.
Hungry Harry
Gangsters, nightclubs and the Roaring '20s.
Sargent's Lawyer Gould Beaton
Circus owner Buck Rand kidnaps Boy to perform in his show. He forces a pilot to fly him, Boy and his animal trainer out of the jungle. Tarzan and Jane follow them to New York.
Newspaper Editor
Radio star Gene Autry returns to his home town of Gold Ridge at the request of his old friend Pop Harrison, who wants Gene to straighten out his wayward son, Tex Harrison, whose gambling and drinking threaten to bankrupt the rodeo organization which he heads. News photographer Clementine "Clem" Benson and reporter Hack Hackett are ordered to follow Gene. The group finds quarters at the "Bar Nothing" dude ranch, winter quarters for Tex's rodeo group, and Tex soon tangles with Hackett in a quarrel.
Rental Car Manager
Two Army sergeants disrupt a bar, a party and an Army-Navy dance.
Pierce (uncredited)
In Hoyt City, a statue of founder Ethan Hoyt is dedicated, and 100 year old Hannah Sempler Hoyt (who lives in the last residence among skyscrapers) is at last persuaded to tell her story to a 'girl biographer'. Flashback: in 1848, teenage Hannah meets and flirts with pioneer Ethan; on a sudden impulse, they elope. We follow their struggle to found a city in the wilderness, hampered by the Gold Rush, star-crossed love, peril, and heartbreak. The star "ages" 80 years.
Private Detective Smith
A woman attempts to shelter a young girl from the publicity surrounding her socialite parents' divorce.
Mr. White
Author writes about his experiences sailing at sea, struggles to get his work published.
K.D. Reynolds
J. P. Courtney wants to update the music on the radio program he sponsors, but his wife, Agatha Courtney, is the final authority and addicted to the classics and won't allow him to replace Professor Bistell and his symphonic orchestra. Conspiring with his daughter Sue and her friends, Marvo the Great, the Andrews Sisters, Anne Payne and bandleader Woody Herman, they devise a sabotage plot that gets rid of Professor Bistell, and a new sound is soon heard on the program.
Johnny
A group of children put on a show in order to prove that a down and out musician was the real composer of a Broadway show's songs.
Martin Manning (uncredited)
Two peanut vendors at a rodeo show get in trouble with their boss and hide out on a railroad train heading west. They get jobs as cowboys on a dude ranch, despite the fact that neither of them knows anything about cowboys, horses, or anything else.
K.K. Miller
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.
Coroner
Two mysterious seamen come from Alan Rogers' past to blackmail him as he seeks to locate his missing daughters. Ellery Queen is called in by Stewart Cole, Rogers' secretary. Queen goes to the estate and finds one daughter already there and the second one expected. When she arrives, it is Ellery's secretary Nikki Porter posing as the daughter as Ellery had her intercept the real heiress after learning of a plot to swindle Rogers. The blackmailing seamen are killed at a waterfront café after getting the blackmail money, Rogers is suspected and Inspector Queen arrives to arrest him, but he is also found dead.
Holloway
After inheriting a New York City art gallery, bookie Milton Berle and his partner Cesar Romero decide to go into the art forgery business. Director Ray McCarey's 1942 comedy also stars Carole Landis, J. Carrol Naish, Steven Geray, Richard Derr, Rose Hobart, Elisha Cook Jr., Chick Chandler, Francis Pierlot and Jerome Cowan.
Attorney Emanuel 'Manny' T. Dixon
There's something very odd about Romano, a notorious gangster serving time in the federal pen. For one thing, Romano doesn't sound much like himself. For another, he always seems to be hiding something. Detective Lee suspects that something's amiss, and he's probably right!
Larsen
A group of academics have spent years shut up in a house working on the definitive encyclopedia. When one of them discovers that his entry on slang is hopelessly outdated, he ventures into the wide world to learn about the evolving language. Here he meets Sugarpuss O’Shea, a nightclub singer, who’s on top of all the slang—and, it just so happens, needs a place to stay.
Wilbur - Theater Manager (uncredited)
Jeff grows up near Basin Street in New Orleans, playing his clarinet with the dock workers. He puts together a band, the Basin Street Hot-Shots, which includes a cornet player, Memphis. They struggle to get their jazz music accepted by the cafe society of the city. Betty Lou joins their band as a singer and gets Louie to show her how to do scat singing. Memphis and Jeff both fall in love with Betty Lou.
Smith (uncredited)
Charming Andre Cassil woos physician Jane Alexander and the two impulsively get married. The honeymoon ends very quickly when Jane voices her progressive views on marriage which include the two having separate apartments. Andre then tries to make his wife jealous in order to lure her into his bedroom.
Census Taker (uncredited)
Victor Ballard, a happy-go-lucky albeit impoverished sidewalk photographer, shares a New York City studio apartment with Polish immigrant painter Stefan Janowski. The big city doles out joy and misery indiscriminately: In the apartment below Victor and Steve, Gus Nelson learns that his wife has given birth to quintuplets, while the lonely tenant in the apartment below Gus has given up on life and committed suicide.
Keating- Florist
A young promoter is accused of the murder of Vicky Lynn, a young actress he "discovered" as a waitress while out with ex-actor Robin Ray and gossip columnist Larry Evans.
Mortician
Faith and Hope Banner, sisters, are "convention hostesses" in a hotel. A body is discovered next door as the magician's convention is leaving and the mortician's convention is arriving, and the sisters, with help from manager Wilburforce Puddle, try to hide it. Complicating matters, Hope's boyfriend, Tommy, is a newspaper reporter in the hotel covering some labor negotiations.
J. Montague Gainsborough
A gangster and his mob buy a small-town in this warm comedy. They, tired of trying to make it as big city hoods, buy the town to use as a hideout. The leader of the gang begins to have a change of heart after he begins falling for a local girl.
Dr. Prouty (coroner)
Ralph Bellamy makes the third of four appearances as "master detective" Ellery Queen in Columbia's Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime. The principal villain is crooked stockbroker John Mathews, whose Wall Street manipulations render Ray Jarden penniless. Mathews' chicanery seems particularly coldblooded, inasmuch as his daughter Marian is engaged to Jarden's son Walter. When the latter disappears, Mathews asks Ellery Queen to locate the young man.
Finance Company Man (uncredited)
A detective is hired to protect the life of a singer, who has recently inherited a department store, from the store's crooked manager.
Mayor's aide
An unsophisticated farm girl enrolls in college and stars in the campus musical.
Auctioneer
A fishing boat captain searches for romance in hopes of improving his financial picture.
Clarence Morgan
Everyone in a large department store knows that a rising star is married to the owner's daughter, except her husband.
Doc Prouty
Like the first entry in Columbia's "Ellery Queen" series, Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery depicts its amateur-criminologist hero as an oafish ignoramus. This time around, Chinese ventriloquist Gordon Cobb (Noel Madison), is murdered by a gang of jewel thieves. Baffled by the contradictory clues, Inspector Queen (Charles Grapewin) asks his son Ellery (Ralph Bellamy) to help out.
Reporter for Associated News
Previously filmed in 1932, and remade a third time in 1961, this second film version of Fannie Hurst's novel stars Margaret Sullavan as a fashion designer in love with a married banker (Charles Boyer). Directed by Robert Stevenson, the film also stars Richard Carlson, Tim Holt, Frank McHugh, Esther Dale and Cecil Cunningham.
Growley
Kitty Carroll, an attractive store model, volunteers to become a test subject for a machine that will make her invisible so that she can use her invisibility to exact revenge on her ex-boss.
Train Passenger (uncredited)
With thousands of cattle being rustled from White Sage ranch the 1930's Texas Rangers are called in. They manage to get one of their agents into the gang by making them think he is the Pecos Kid on the lam.
Dr. Prouty
The mysteriously ill John Braun makes a new will, leaving out his daughter Barbara, over the protests of his wife. The trouble began when the daughter wanted to marry Mr. Braun's doctor, James Rogers. Mrs. Braun asks Inspector Queen to help find the long-missing Barbara. The inspector's son, Ellery, works on the case. He goes to a home frequently visited by Dr. Rogers where the bell is answered by Nikki Porter who Ellery mistakes for Barbara and insists she return to the Braun home. Nikki does, to protect Barbara, and a short time later finds herself alone in a room outside Braun's bedroom. She finds him dead - his throat cut. No weapons are found and the door to the room where Nikki had been is locked, and she is suspected. Ellery hides Nikki in his apartment. Braun's body, sent for an autopsy, disappears and in its place is a life-sized statue of the dead man.
Freeman Taylor
Director Ted Brooks and comedians Jack Norcross, Dandy Joslyn and Phil Miller are part of a troupe of promising young players rehearsing for a WPA show at the Garrick Theater in New York and are stunned when the government withdraws their funding on the day of the show's dress rehearsal. Destitute, the troupe plans to return home when Mac, the stage doorman, offers to allow four of the men, Phil, Dandy, Jack and Ted, to use the theater for a boardinghouse. After accepting Mac's offer, the men improvise bedrooms out of the set pieces and meet amateur actress Lorie Fenton from Cleveland, who is eager to audition for them. When the men learn she recently received a small inheritance, they allow her to audition, hoping she will back the show.
Train Conductor (uncredited)
The Bumstead family is off to see relatives in the country when Blondie runs into Charlie and Millie, an eloping couple needing her help.
Al - Dance Team Manager (uncredited)
The heartbreaking but hopeful tale of Danny Kenny and Peggy Nash, two sweethearts who meet and struggle through their impoverished lives in New York City. When Peggy, hoping for something better in life for both of them, breaks off her engagement to Danny, he sets out to be a championship boxer, while she becomes a dancer paired with a sleazy partner. Will tragedy reunite the former lovers?
Henry 'Mitch' Mitchell
A shifty boxing promoter places an amateur in fixed fights, then hands his contract over to an suspicious female investigative reporter as a raffle prize. He later regrets his actions, however, when the boxer becomes an honest champion.
Director
An alcoholic film star attempts a comeback. Director Walter Lang's 1940 comedy stars John Barrymore, Mary Beth Hughes, Anne Baxter, John Payne, Lionel Atwill and Edward Brophy.
Bernard Schwartz
Popular songwriter Oliver Courtney has been getting by for years using one ghost writer for his music and another for his lyrics. When both writers meet at an inn, they fall in love and then try to sell their songs under their own name. The problem is every song publisher thinks they're copying Courtney's style.
Perkins
A man violates company policy by getting married.
Horace Grimley
Ma Webster (Blanche Yurka) and her boys rob a bank on Christmas Eve; G-men stop them with Tommy guns.
Charlie Graham
Radio star Jack Benny, intending to stay in New York for the summer, is forced by the needling of rival Fred Allen to prove his boasts about roughing it on his (fictitious) Nevada ranch. Meanwhile, singer Joan Cameron, whom Jack's fallen for and offended, is maneuvered by her sisters to the same Nevada town. Jack's losing battle to prove his manhood to Joan means broad slapstick burlesque of Western cliches.
Salesman
Longtime school sweethearts discover married life, thanks to a disagreeable live-in mother-in-law and pressing business obligations, is more rocky than idyllic.
Johnson
The Jones family (without father) head for California to open a bungalow court. To increase business they advertise for families with children and pets. A neighbor threatens to sue.
Second Lecturer
In flashback, fifty years after inventing the light bulb, an 82-year-old Edison tells his story starting at age twenty-two with his arrival in New York. He's on his way with the invention of an early form of the stock market ticker.
Phil Wesner, Defense Attorney
A blackmail threat from an old prison buddy compels a man who has gone straight to consider yet another crime.
Reporter
A best-selling author of women's issues and a medical academic find it is to their mutual advantage to falsely claim that they are married.
Assistant D.A.
Wall Street broker Robert Cain, Sr., is jailed for embezzling. His college graduate son Bob then turns to crime to raise money for his father's release. As assistant to mobster Mickey Dwyer, then falls for Dwyer's girl Lucky. He winds up in the same prison as his father.
Mr. 'Smitty' Smith / Hawkins (uncredited)
Ellie Mae lives on Primrose Hill with her good-hearted and fancy free mother, her drunken father, her younger sister and a mean-spirited grandmother. The Hill is not a good part of town, however. When she meets and falls for a hard-working man, they marry and she hides her past from him. When he discovers the truth it jeopardizes their marriage.
Mr. Horner (uncredited)
An aspiring actress is offered the lead in a major new play, but discovers that her mother, a more seasoned performer, expects the same part. The situation is further complicated when they both become involved with the same man.
Charlie's Doctor
Scotty Hamilton is a reporter who works for a crooked editor. Bill Banning is another reporter who is about to expose the editor's ties to the mob. When the editor is killed, both reporter Banning and mobster Tony Garcia are suspected.
Moore (uncredited)
A bumbling detective chases an escaped convict in an amusement park haunted house in Coney Island.
Mr. Adler
A scientist invents a television device called the Iconoscope. Foreign agents hear about it and try to steal it.
Nosey
Naive and idealistic Jefferson Smith, leader of the Boy Rangers, is appointed to the United States Senate by the puppet governor of his state. He soon discovers, upon going to Washington, many shortcomings of the political process as his earnest goal of a national boys' camp leads to a conflict with the state political boss.
Photographer (uncredited)
Bill Burnett, a resident of Bali, visits New York City, meets and falls in love with Gail Allen, the successful manager of a Fifth Avenue shop, who is determined to remain free and independent. Bill proposes, Gail declines and Bill goes home to Bali. But a young girl, Rosie, and Tony the Window Cleaner, who dispels advice on every floor, soon have Gail thinking maybe she was a bit hasty with her no to Bill's proposal. Ere long she discovers that she does love Bill and can't live without him. She goes down to Bali to give him the good news. He learns that he is soon to marry Noel Van Ness. She goes back to New York City.
Union Representative (uncredited)
A wealthy man hires a poor girl to play his mistress in order to get more attention from his neglectful family.
Reporter Drake
Despite his talent as a musician, a city boy decides to become a boxer. He's successful as a fighter — much to the dismay of his parents. When gangsters try to by a piece of him, he begins to have second thoughts.
Fleetwood Apartments Desk Clerk
A maker of illusions for magicians protects an ingenue likely to be murdered.
Psychiatrist
A down on his luck young man stumbles into a gang of robbers who all get landed in prison. Will he be reformed, or is he ensnared into a life of crime?
District Attorney Rufe Reynolds
Newspaper editor (Foster) will do almost anything to increase circulation. He campaigns to free a condemned man while accusing a wealthy ex-criminal of a string of murders.
Studio Chief
Studio publicist discovers Minnesota skating teacher and takes her to Hollywood. She goes back to Minnesota but he follows her.
Sam Kress
Rose Sargent, a Roaring '20s singer, becomes a Ziegfeld Follies star as her criminal husband gets deeper in trouble.
Carpenter
Cora, an heiress who gives it all up for the excitement of looking for a job and living on her own, meets up with unemployed and flat broke Dick. The two of them embark on a wild night of gambling and winning, where everything they touch turns to gold. Pretty soon they're in love and, to the horror of Cora's father, married.
Auto Show Salesman (uncredited)
When a confused eyewitness identifies New York City cabbie Brick Tennant as a killer, he is sentenced to death for a murder that he wasn't involved in. Though no one is willing to listen to the innocent prisoner's pleas for freedom, Brick's faithful fiancée, Mary, knows that her lover is innocent because she was with him when the crime was committed. As the scheduled execution draws ever nearer, Mary begins to investigate the murder herself.
District Attorney
A good-hearted reporter attempts to find the loneliest woman in New York so he can give her an old-fashioned Christmas on a farm..
Albee
Social drama of Depression-era homeless children who turn to crime and are sentenced by a judge to a rehabilitation "labor camp".
Auctioneer
Young lovers Jack and Sally are from families that compete to send horses to the 1938 Kentucky Derby, but during the Civil War, her family sided with the South while his sided with the North--and her Uncle Peter will have nothing to do with Jack's family.
Furniture Salesman (uncredited)
Blondie and Dagwood are about to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary but this happy occasion is marred when the bumbling Dagwood gets himself involved in a scheme that is promising financial ruin for the Bumstead family.
Donald Gower
Jane's dad (Tombes) is an oil field worker who comes into a fortune and is then pushed into society by his wife.
Cleaning Store Manager (uncredited)
A small-town country homebody goes to New York to find her missing fiancé and gets romantically involved with two sophisticated men.
Henderson
Alice, the only relatively normal member of the eccentric Sycamore family, falls in love with Tony Kirby, but his wealthy banker father and snobbish mother strongly disapprove of the match. When the Kirbys are invited to dinner to become better acquainted with their future in-laws, things don't turn out the way Alice had hoped.
Joe - Photographer
Egyptologist, Dean Lambert, accused of car-theft, skips bail and begins a cross-country trek to join a group in New York headed for Egypt. With the police close on his trail he gets in and out of scrapes along the way.
Department Head (uncredited)
Nicole has no job and is several weeks behind with her rent. Her solution to her problems is to try and snare a rich husband. Enlisting the help of her friend Gloria and the maitre'd at a ritzy New York City hotel, the trio plot to have Gloria catch the eye of Bill Duncan, a millionaire staying at the hotel. The plan works and the two quickly become engaged. Nicole's plan may be thwarted by Bill's friend, Jim Trevor, who's met Nicole before and sees through her plot.
Weaver
Band tries to get an audition for a job at a prestigious nightclub.
Fan in Margaret's Dressing Room (Uncredited)
Falling in love with the voice of Broadway chanteuse Margaret Garret, cocksure young tycoon Daniel Brewster decides to rescue the star from her hectic lifestyle of frenzied fans and mooching relatives. When Margaret has her ardent suitor arrested, the judge appoints her as Daniel's probation officer, forcing the duo to spend time together. As Daniel teaches Margaret to let her hair down and enjoy life, she begins to fall for her fun-loving admirer.
Rubenstein (uncredited)
When a small-town girl is incorrectly diagnosed with a rare, deadly disease, an unknowing newspaper columnist turns her into a national heroine.
Doctor
While visiting Hollywood a starstruck movie fan (Eddie Cantor) fantasizes about himself cast in an Arabian adventure. Director David Butler's comedy--with many songs--also features Tony Martin, Roland Young, Gypsy Rose Lee (billed as Rose Hovick), John Carradine, June Lang, Virginia Field, Charles Lane, The Peters Sisters and many big-name guest stars playing themselves.
Gilroy, an attorney
A New York City lawyer finds himself falling in love with the daughter of a screwball South Carolina family.
Grayson (uncredited)
The Jones family is in an uproar when Dad's campaign for mayor appears sabotaged by an anonymous newspaper article.
Fingers
Granite-jawed Jack Holt performs a dual role in Columbia's Trapped by G-Men.
Attorney
A power-company troubleshooter has his brother get him out of prison by running high voltage to the bars of his cell.
Webb
A female journalist travels to a new neighborhood after getting a (false) lead and is surprised by what she finds.
Barnes's lawyer
Racketeer Jim Barnes is trying to force the independent taxicab-drivers to join his "protection service" at the cost of five bucks a day. Champion race-car driver, Bob Kane, joins with his friends Lee and "Dad" Martin in a fight for the street rights of a big city.
Webster - Bank Representative
A small town drugstore owner (Jed Prouty) hopes to strike it rich by investing his savings in an oil well. Comedy.
District Attorney
A fast-talking, street-wise con-man forsakes the tank-towns of Pennsylvania for the greener pastures in Manhattan, and gains fame-and-fortune as New York City's number one merchandise promoter. A model and a society girl provide some complications along the way.
Grote
Dr. Kildare treats and falls for impoverished ex-con Janet Healy, widow of a bank robber, who can't find her baby. Later she helps Kildare sew up gangster Hanlon in a tavern back room. Kildare pursues Janet and enlists Hanlon to help her; the gangster's solution, not surprisingly, is violent.
Horace Smith
A juror at a murder trial is convinced the defendant is innocent.
Attorney
Barry Brandon, a criminal lawyer, visits the night club of Denny Larkin, his primary client, with Betty Walker, a spoiled society girl. The police raid the club and Brandon pleads that the whole group is guilty, just to get even with Larkin for a rebuke. On the same night in court, Madge Carter is on trial for disorderly conduct, and Brandon volunteers to defend her, and proves the case against her if a frame-up. Finding that she is penniless, Brandon hires her as his secretary, and falls in love with her. Brandon is appointed district attorney and has ambitions of becoming the state governor. Having dinner at Betty's home, she maneuvers him, while he is drunk, into marrying her. Later, Madge is a witness when Larkin shoots down a fellow gangster. By threatening Brandon's life, he forces her to commit perjury at his trial, and say he fired in self-defense. Brandon, the prosecuting attorney (who has had his marriage to Betty annulled) knows she is lying but doesn't know why.
Skip
To boost the ratings of a kiddie show, the host agrees to take guardianship of of a bratty boy who has a lovely older sister.
Feinberg
New York manicurist Mamie Murphy plans to marry a rich man, so she repeatedly turns down the proposals of honest reporter David Haines. When she is announced the winner of $2,500 and a ticket worth $150,000 for champion horse Lady Luck, if the horse wins an upcoming race, Mamie is pursued by wealthy sportsman Jack Conroy and nightclub owner and racketeer Tony Morelli.
Joe Gordon
Mickey, is a prizefighter whose bright career hits the skids when he comes under the guidance of Ginger, a female fight promoter, when he becomes involved with June Prentice and her high-society crowd.
Lawyer Rickert
Duke and Jeanie Benson, an outlaw couple hiding out under assumed names. Duke realizes that he has a winning sweepstake ticket and will win $150,000 if he can cash it in without getting apprehended
Hallor (uncredited)
Longfellow Deeds lives in a small town, leading a small town kind of life. When a relative dies and leaves Deeds a fortune, Longfellow moves to the big city where he becomes an instant target for everyone. Deeds outwits them all until Babe Bennett comes along. When small-town boy meets big-city girl anything can, and does, happen.
Willard
Timid milkman, Burleigh Sullivan, somehow knocks out a boxing champ in a brawl. The fighter's manager decides to build up the milkman's reputation in a series of fixed fights and then have the champ beat him to regain his title.
Man in Front Row (archive footage)
A 12-episode serial in which scholastic sports star Frank Merriwell leaves school to search for his missing father. His adventures involve a mysterious inscription on a ring, buried treasure, kidnaping and Indian raids. He saves his father and returns to school just in time to win a decisive baseball game with his remarkable pitching and hitting.
Writer
A songwriter has to come up with a full-length theatrical piece within a few days.
Mr. Scurry
In this musical, a songwriter goes to court to claim the rights to his song that was stolen by an unscrupulous music publisher. He brings his girlfriend with him. Also going to court are the Jubilee singers, hillbillies, and some cowboys and Indians who demonstrate that the composer wrote his song by rearranging four folk tunes. He wins his song back and $50,000 in damages. Songs include: "Heading Home," "Roll Along Prairie Moon," "Tender Is the Night," "You're My Thrill," "I'm Bound for Heaven," and "The Army Band."
Defense Attorney Herman (uncredited)
Just after a jury finds Ann Grey guilty of murder, the car carrying her to prison crashes into another car. Ann escapes and ends up in lawyer Tony Baxter's car. Tony realizes Ann is innocent, so he vows to help her prove it, risking his neck in the process. Tony and Ann are pursued by the police and by Smiley Gordon, a mob boss who engineered Ann's escape thinking that she can lead him to a $250,000 stash.
Judge (uncredited)
Ginger, an orphan, is living with her foster-uncle, Rexford Whittington, a broken-down Shakesperian actor. Although denied the love of a mother and father, Ginger looks after her uncle, gives him lectures, loves him, defends him and keeps house for him. But, through a meddling do-gooder, she is placed in the home of the Parkers, and clashes immediately with the pampered young son, Hamilton.
Man in Front Row (archive footage)
A playwright descended from the Borgias family becomes a murder suspect.
Representative
Three people live together in the maintenance shed at Central Park as an alternative to living on the streets.
Shyster Lawyer
A judge hands four wayward boys to a college football coach who turns them into backfield stars.
Defense Attorney Beardsley (uncredited)
A woman and her children escape severe poverty and abuse. She successfully betters her family's condition while living with the secret that she killed her abusive husband in order to protect her children from him.
Morgan's Henchman (uncredited)
Tycoon J.L. Higgins controls his whole family, but one of his sons- in-law, Dan Brooks and his daughter Alice are fed up with that. Brooks quits his job as manager of J.L.'s paper box factory and devotes his life to his racing horse Broadway Bill, but his bank- roll is thin and the luck is against him, he is arrested because of $150 he owes somebody for horse food, but suddenly a planed fraud by somebody else seems to offer him a chance...
Al Nathan
A power-broker ward-heeler, Bill Grimes, wields more power than the elected politicians and has no problem in getting matters-of-the-city handled in which ever way is best for his needs. But when he tries to fix his adored kid brother's place on the school football team, he meets his match in school-teacher Anne Barry.
Reporter
A young sailor saves a woman from drowning. The woman turns out to be a rich heiress; unfortunately for the sailor, she was only pretending to be drowning so that another young man she had her eye on would save her.
Reporter (uncredited)
Unscrupulous agent Rush Blake makes singing waiter Buddy Clayton a big radio star while Peggy Cornell, who has lost her own radio show, helps Buddy.
Max Jacobs
A temperamental Broadway producer trains an untutored actress, but when she becomes a star, she proves a match for him.
Switchboard Operator
Joe and Casey trouble-shoot for the phone company. They try to prove that Joes's girl Ethel's boss Dan is a crook but are trapped by criminals and left in a burning building.
Mr. Weitzenkorn
Aubrey cons Amy into thinking he's a railroad bigwig. When he loses his job he takes one wearing a sandwich board. After he helps Joe sell his patent for a good price and an old railroad deal comes through, he's back on top and ready to marry Amy again.
Hotel Clerk
After losing their Missouri home during the Great Depression, the Skitch family pulls up stakes and heads west to California to begin life anew. Comedy, released in 1933.
Columnist #2
Racketeer Frank Rocci is smitten with Joan Whelan, a dancer at Texas Guinan's famous Broadway night spot. He uses his influence to help her get a starring role in the show, hoping that it will also get Joan to fall in love with him. After scoring a hit, Joan accepts Frank's marriage proposal, more out of gratitude than love. The situation gets even stickier when she falls for a handsome band leader during a trip to Florida. Can she tell Frank she's in love with someone else?
Doctor (uncredited)
"In the Gay Nineties New York had grown up into bustles and balloon Sleeves ... but The Bowery had grown younger, louder and more rowdy until it was known as the 'Livest Mile on the face of the globe' ... the cradle of men who were later to be famous.
Conn
A devoted wife helps her husband achieve success as a radio comic, but stardom comes at a price.
Mr. Bernstein (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.
Process Server (Uncredited)
A former government agent in France, who has failed at an assignment and been disavowed, is deported back to the USA, where he can only find work at a low-rent detective agency. He soon gets involved with a woman with ties to a crooked gambling club owner, who is a client of his agency.
Society Reporter (uncredited)
Things get tough for Carol and her showgirl pals, Trixie and Polly, when the Great Depression kicks in and all the Broadway shows close down. Wealthy songwriter Brad saves the day by funding a new Depression-themed musical for the girls to star in, but when his stuffy high-society brother finds out and threatens to disown Brad, Carol and her gold-digging friends scheme to keep the show going, hooking a couple of millionaires along the way.
Amarillo Radio Operator (uncredited)
Aviator Jim Blaine and his brother Neil are rivals not only as daredevil flyers, but also for the love of parachutist Jill Collins.
Playwright (uncredited)
A producer puts on what may be his last Broadway show, and at the last moment a chorus girl has to replace the star.
Cashier (uncredited)
A Depression-downtrodden waif uses her brains instead of her body to rise from tyro con artist to crime boss.
Waiter at Nicolai Restaurant
A Russian waiter in New York City becomes a national celebrity after he develops a "system" for winning at contract bridge.
Shoe Salesman (uncredited)
Kurt Anderson is the tyrannical manager of a New York department store in financial straits. He thinks nothing of firing an employee of more than 20 years or of toying with the affections of every woman he meets. One such victim is Madeline, a beautiful young woman in need of a job. Anderson hires her as a salesgirl, but not before the two spend the night together. Madeline is ashamed, especially after she falls for Martin West, a rising young star at the store. Her biggest fear is that Martin finds out the truth about her "career move."
Kane
A New York gossip columnist feuds with a singer and enjoys the power of the press.
Hotel Desk Clerk (Uncredited)
A prosecutor quits his job and becomes a defense attorney when he finds out that a man he got convicted and executed was actually innocent.
Luggage Checkroom Clerk (uncredited)
Among the travelers of varied backgrounds that meet and interact on one night at Union Depot, a metropolitan train station, are Chick and his friend Scrap Iron, both newly released from prison after serving time for vagrancy. Hungry and desperate for a break, Chick fortuitously comes across across a valise abandoned by a drunken traveler. In it he finds a shaving kit and a suit of clothes with a bankroll, which help transform the affable tramp into a dashing gent. After buying himself a meal, Chick seeks some female companionship among the many hustlers who walk the station. He propositions Ruth Collins, a stranded, out-of-work showgirl and takes her to the station's hotel.
Desk clerk
Director Lloyd Bacon's 1931 drama takes a different look at the Broadway arena by focusing on the owners of a theatrical costume shop.
Hotel Desk Clerk (uncredited)
Adventures of a cocky con man and his beautiful accomplice.
Desk Clerk at Club
A woman's life falls to pieces when she's caught cheating on her husband.
Hotel Desk Clerk (uncredited)
Two brothers' trip to the big city to do a little gambling results in a fateful turn of events.
Man at Train Station (uncredited)
A waitress from Chicago falls in love with a man from rural Minnesota and marries him, with the intent of living a better life - but life on the farm has its own challenges.
Elizabeth's father
Albert Leroux, headwaiter at an exclusive Paris hotel, falls hopelessly in love with Elizabeth Foster, an American heiress, though he is convinced that she will never admire a waiter.
