Charles Bickford

A look at actresses who starred in films with thought-provoking subjects made between 1930 and July 1934, before the Hollywood Production Code —the infamous Hays Code— was enforced.

A naive traveler in Laredo gets involved in a poker game between the richest men in the area, jeopardizing all the money he has saved for the purpose of settling with his wife and child in San Antonio.

Ken Murray narrates his 16mm home movies shot over 35 years in Hollywood.

Della Chappell is a very wealthy and incredibly reclusive woman. When a big company wants to develop some land that Della owns, the town sends out Barney Stafford to talk to her. She invites Barney over to negotiate the proposal. Barney soon takes a liking to Della's equally reclusive daughter Jenny Chappell. After spending some time with Jenny, he realizes that Della has a dark secret, one that keeps them from the outside world.

An alcoholic falls in love with and gets married to a young woman, whom he systematically addicts to booze so they can share his "passion" together.

Young Swedish-American Katrin "Katie" Holstrom leaves her family farm in Minnesota, headed for nursing school. After her tuition money runs out, she is forced to take a job as a maid in the home of Congressman Glenn Morley. Holstrom endears herself to the genteel Morley, and begins to show a surprising aptitude for politics herself. She launches a campaign for Congress, and, as right-wing reactionaries plot against her, a romance develops.

The neighbors of a frontier family turn on them when it is suspected that their beloved adopted daughter was stolen from the Kiowa tribe.

Pilot episode, directed by Dick Powell.

An alcoholic falls in love with and gets married to a young woman whom he systematically addicts to booze so they can share his "passion" together.

Retired wealthy sea captain Jim McKay arrives in the vast expanse of the West to marry fiancée Pat Terrill. McKay is a man whose values and approach to life are a mystery to the ranchers and ranch foreman Steve Leech takes an immediate dislike to him. Pat is spoiled, selfish and controlled by her wealthy father, Major Henry Terrill. The Major is involved in a ruthless civil war, over watering rights for cattle, with a rough hewn clan led by Rufus Hannassey. The land in question is owned by Julie Maragon and both Terrill and Hannassey want it.

An opportunistic young man from the slums gambles his way to wealth, power and high society.

A reporter stumbles on a runaway heiress whose story could salvage his career.

Why are so many B-99 bombers from Hibiscus Air Base crashing or simply disappearing? Colonel Price comes up with a terrifying explanation, but will anyone believe him?

A young girl, played by Pamela Beaird, normal in every way is affected with severe epilepsy. What happens, in regard to her parents and school friends and their reactions, is shown. In addition, an explanation of the affliction and a demonstration of the treatment involved, both physically and psychologically, are detailed.

A dramatization of the American general and his court martial for publically complaining about High Command's dismissal and neglect of the aerial fighting forces.

Lucas Marsh, an intern bent upon becoming a first-class doctor, not merely a successful one. He courts and marries the warm-hearted Kristina, not out of love but because she is highly knowledgeable in the skills of the operating room and because she has frugally put aside her savings through the years. She will be, as he shrewdly knows, a supportive wife in every way. She helps make him the success he wants to be and cheerfully moves with him to the small town in which he starts his practice. But as much as he tries to be a good husband to the undemanding Kristina, Marsh easily falls into the arms of a local siren and the patience of the long-sorrowing Kristina wears thin.

Prince of Players is a biographical film about the 19th century American actor Edwin Booth.

A movie star helps a young singer-actress find fame, even as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.

A posse's pursuit of bank robbers ends with loot missing and a sheriff (Broderick Crawford) wounded.

Two sets of parents frantically race to stop their eloping children's wedding.

A San Francisco hood is rubbed out by rival Bruno Felkin, who himself reports the crime to Homicide Lt. Kelsey in an alibi scheme which fails. To escape, he stows away on a fishing boat. At sea, skipper Hamil Linder receives Bruno kindly, teaching him fishing; Bruno enlists Hamil's wayward son Carl to tend his slot machines. Then Carl takes an interest in Bruno's girl Connie. Climax in a storm at sea.

The triumph and tragedy of Native American Jim Thorpe, who, after winning both the pentathlon and decathlon in the same Olympics, is stripped of his medals on a technicality.

A gunfighter takes part in a scheme to bilk a wealthy cattle family out of half a million dollars by pretending to be their son, who was kidnapped as child.

A horse trainer who has fallen on hard times looks to his horse, Broadway Bill, to finally win the big race.

The story of Cardinal Josef Mindzhenty, a Roman Catholic cardinal from Hungary who spoke out against both the Nazi occupation of his country during World War II and the Communist regime that replaced it after the war.

The wife of a psychoanalyst falls prey to a devious quack hypnotist when he discovers she is an habitual shoplifter. Then one of his previous patients now being treated by the real doctor is found murdered, with her still at the scene, and suspicion points only one way.

It's the Hatfields vs. the McCoys in this 1949 film, with Farley Granger and Joan Evans as the hillbilly Romeo and Juliet whose forbidden romance rekindles a long-standing feud between their respective families.

High-ranking officers struggle with the decision to prioritize bombing German factories producing new jet fighters over the extremely high casualties the mission will cost.

The baseball player goes from wayward youth to Boston Red Sox pitcher to New York Yankees home-run hero.

A small-town doctor helps a deaf-mute farm girl learn to communicate.

Cowboy Ross McEwen arrives in town. He asks the banker for a loan of $2000. When the banker asks about securing a loan that large, McEwen shows him his six-gun collateral. The banker hands over the money in exchange for an I.O.U., signed "Jefferson Davis". McEwen rides out of town and catches a train, but not before being bitten by a rattler. On the train, a nurse, Miss Hollister, tends to his wound. A posse searches the train, but McEwen manages to escape notice. However a mysterious Mexican has taken note of the cowboy, and that loudmouthed brat is still nosing around. Who will be the first to claim the reward for the robber's capture?

Timeworn Joe Collins and his fellow inmates live under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey. Only Collins' dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains?

A sailor suffering from post-traumatic stress becomes involved with a beautiful and enigmatic seductress married to a blind painter.

After leaving her family's farm to study nursing in the city, a young woman finds herself on an unexpected path towards politics.

Beautiful half-breed Pearl Chavez becomes the ward of her dead father's first love and finds herself torn between her sons, one good and the other bad.

An unemployed drifter, Eric Stanton wanders into a small California town and begins hanging around the local diner. While Eric falls for the lovely waitress Stella, he also begins romancing a quiet and well-to-do woman named June Mills. Since Stella isn't interested in Eric unless he has money, the lovelorn guy comes up with a scheme to win her over, and it involves June. Before long, murder works its way into this passionate love triangle.

WWI flyer Eddie Rickenbaker remembers his life which brought him from a car salesman, race driver and pilot in WWI, to an important person in the early years of civil airline service, after his plane crashed in the South Pacific in late 1942.

An aircraft carrier is sent on a decoy mission around the Pacific, with orders to avoid combat, thus lulling Japanese alertness before the battle of Midway.

In 1858 France, Bernadette, an adolescent peasant girl, has a vision of "a beautiful lady" in the city dump. She never claims it to be anything other than this, but the townspeople all assume it to be the virgin Mary. The pompous government officials think she is nuts, and do their best to suppress the girl and her followers, and the church wants nothing to do with the whole matter. But as Bernadette attracts wider and wider attention, the phenomenon overtakes everyone in the the town, and transforms their lives.

A conman poses as a war relief fundraiser, but when he falls for a charity worker, his conscience begins to trouble him.

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.

The Florida Keys in 1840, where the implacable hurricanes of the Caribbean scream, where the salvagers of Key West, like the intrepid and beautiful Loxi Claiborne and her crew, reap, aboard frail schooners, the harvest of the wild wind, facing the shark teeth of the reefs to rescue the sailors and the cargo from the shipwrecks caused by the scavengers of the sea.

A truck convoy traveling the Burma Road is menaced by a group of smugglers.

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.

The owner of an Alaskan gambling boat and her business partner help thwart a crooked businessman who attempts to steal claims from local miners.

Passengers bound to an African copper mine at Karanga to quell a native uprising encounter murder and intrigue on the way.

Jim Holden, a young doctor practicing in Alaska, eagerly awaits the arrival of his new nurse, Anne Webster. All of his previous left within a few weeks by the rigors of the Alaskan winter....

Thou Shalt Not Kill (1939)

An intellectually disabled giant and his level headed guardian find work at a sadistic cowboy's ranch in depression era America.

Gangsters and police cross each other, including murder, in an attempt to cover up crimes.

A young man forges a check in order to help his mother, but is caught and sentenced to 14 years in prison...

Lem Schofield, a lawyer in a one-time small-town turned industrialized big city, runs his firm on examples set by Abraham Lincoln and is a friend to the poor. Clay Clinton, his late partner's son joins the firm but is anxious for fast success and considers Schofield's old-fashioned principles antiquated. Being in love with Schofield's daughter and impatient for success he moves to offices supplied by the city's most powerful industrialist, J.T. Tapley, who has plans to use Clay's good family lineage as a stepping stone to political power. The unscrupulous Tapley precipitates a strike in his factory mill which causes a rupture between the former partners. Schofield sets out to bring Tapley and his political henchmen to justice.

An ex-con vows vengeance on the newspaper responsible for putting him behind bars, but has a change of heart when another racketeer threatens to bring the paper down..

June Martin is a dishwasher in a California logging camp boarding house. Steve Blake fights Jed Malone for her and loses, thus casting suspicion on himself when Malone dies under cloudy circumstances.

A southern aristocrat clashes with a driver transporting stolen slaves to freedom.

A passenger ship unexpectedly runs into a typhoon.

A lumberman takes on a sleezy corporate giant wanting to move in and do whatever it takes to drive everyone else out of business.

An undercover cop infiltrates a powerful New York based crime syndicate.

A Chinese-American woman tries to expose an illegal alien smuggling ring.

When Dr. Ernest Tindal's wife is murdered, evidence mounts to convict her lover, Frank Marian. But Frank knows he didn't do it.....

A wagon train is robbed by a gang of bandits who kill everyone but a pair of young brothers. Years later, the brothers join force to bring the bandits' leader to justice.

The setting is a small town in 1870s Pennsylvania. Sally Waterson and her father have stopped in town with their traveling medicine show, but when their wagon catches fire, they find themselves stranded. They're taken in by Mrs. Cortlandt and her grandson, Peter, who is trying to set up a pipeline that will supply oil throughout the state. Sally and Peter soon fall in love and marry. Neither their marriage nor Peter's pipe dreams flow too smoothly.

Cornell employs clips from 1931's jungle melodrama East of Borneo – more specifically, clips of its lead actress, Rose Hobart – to disquieting effect. Through Cornell's collage editing, Hobart becomes a singular object of desire and dread, trapped in an exotic paradise.

Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill go up against Indians and a gunrunner.

A Marine sacrifices his adopted son and his girlfriend so that they might find a new and more prosperous life.

It is California in 1852 that only recently being surrendered by Mexico to the United States and admitted into the union. Most of the land-owners of California were the descendants of the Dons who had colonized it a hundred years before and whose title deeds bore the signature and seal of a long-dead Spanish king. But, by a loop-hole in the law, the title-deeds of the Dons could not be recognized, and this opened the door of organized gangs of land-grabbers, such as the one led by Joe Kincaid, to operate with a prime excuse for legitimate plunder and robbery. In most cases the law was unable to cope with the situation. Then Rosita Castro, the daughter of Don Pasqual Castro, masked and disguised as a man, organized a band of vigilantes to fight against the tyranny of the outlaws, aided by an undercover federal agent, Jim Kearney.

Survivors of a shipwreck find refuge on a tropical island--but so do the ship's cargo of lions and tigers.

A farmer tries to convince a girl to leave her life on a canal boat to live with him on his farm.

Two members of a crew of "sandhogs", men who work on an underwater tunnel project, battle each other over the same woman and a rival team of sandhogs to see who will finish their half of the tunnel first, with the winning team getting more money and guaranteed future work.

A lawyer sets out to commit the perfect murder.

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.

Big Steve Halloway, gambler and proprietor of New York's Horseshoe Cabaret, where his girl, Bangles Carson sings, is in desperate need of money. He arranges for his fellow bookies, especially Sorrowful Jones, to each pay him $1,000 for his racehorse, Dream Prince, to lose. With all bets being placed at the window, Sorrowful encounters a gambler, having lost $500, wanting to place his bet but is unable to come up with $20. Instead, he places his daughter, Marthy Jane (Shirley Temple), as security, or in bookie's terms, a "marker". Having lost his bet, he commits suicide, leaving "little Miss Marker" under the care of Sorrowful Jones. As Steve hides out in Chicago to avoid investigation for his crooked bets, he entrusts Sorrowful to watch over Bangles during his absence, at which time the "gold digger" helps "tight-wod" with his trouble. When Big Steve learns Bangles is involved with Sorrowful, he returns to New York to do something about it.

Adapted from Lady Eleanor Smith’s novel, this 1934 feature tells the story of Joe Prince, an orphan child of circus people who, after many struggles, achieves his life-long ambition of owning a circus.

A nightclub singer marries the rich owner of a rubber plantation. When she returns with him to his estate in Malaysia, she finds out that he is cruel, vicious and insanely jealous. She and the plantation's overseer develop a mutual attraction, but are terrified at what will happen if her husband finds out.

A modern-day tale of gangsterism and revenge. After a notorious mobster murders a Jewish tailor and is let off for the crime, a band of outraged high-school students turns into vigilante crusaders hell-bent on punishing the wrongdoers. Memorable pre-Code moment: the students torturing a gangster by dangling him over a pit filled with rats.

This drama centers on the fight for certain post-Prohibitionist groups to gain total control over the liquor industry. Much of the tale is focused upon a family endeavoring to keep their little brewery.

A steelworker and his aspiring wife make millions when they become partners in a dyeworks. Unfortunately, success does not bring happiness.

A New York policeman helps a hungry and penniless young woman start life anew by arranging to get her a job in "The Follies".

Tallulah Bankhead's first Hollywood movie was this romantic-drama, in which she plays Susan, the unhappy wife of oil rigger Walt (Charles Bickford), who labors in a Central American oil field. The bored Susan falls in love with Walt's good friend Ken (Paul Lukas) but keeps her husband in the dark about her feelings... until he's plunged into darkness for real when he loses his eyesight. Susan finds her attentions then wandering yet another man, Davis (Ralph Forbes), and Ken urges her to return to Walt.

A man is promised $25,000 if he can bring the circulation of a newspaper up to one million.

An engineer makes a thieving entertainer work off her debts as a housekeeper at his jungle mining camp.

A wealthy ex-bootlegger comes to the rescue of a formerly rich society girl after her gold-digging fiancé leaves her stranded when he finds out she's broke. The bootlegger proposes a deal: he will settle her debts if she teaches him how to be "a gentleman".

Dot starts out as a bartender in Havana when in walks Dingo Mike (Charles Bickford) and orders up a drink that sounds like something you'd consume on a dare. He drinks the concoction down in one swallow and also manages to outsmart Dot's boss and his rum-running hooligans. You see, Dingo is a bootlegger himself. He literally sweeps the lady off her feet and they set up housekeeping in a tropical hotel full of colorful characters, some of whom are in the bootlegging business too.

Jim Wyngate, an English aristocrat, comes to the American West under a cloud of suspicion for embezzlement actually committed by his cousin Lord Henry. In Wyoming, Wyngate runs afoul of cattle rustler Cash Hawkins by rescuing the Indian girl Naturich from Hawkins. Wyngate marries Naturich, but then learns that his cousin Lord Henry has been killed and has cleared his name before dying. As Wyngate has long loved Lady Diana, Lord Henry's wife, he is perplexed at his situation. But fate takes a hand and resolves matters as Wyngate could not have predicted.

Mrs. Linda Randolph treks through darkened jungles to the land of Maradu to find her missing husband Allan, who'd left her years before when he believed she was in love with another. She finds Allan the drunken court physician to a devious prince-- Whose designs on the pair don't include a happy ending.

A bored society woman invites scandal and heartache when she falls in love with her low-born chauffeur.

Sgt. Conniston and his alcoholic guide O'Toole are on the trail of an escaped murderer named Keith. When they catch up with him in the farthest reaches of Northern Canada, Keith turns out to be a dead ringer for Conniston. On the way back, the sled overturns, Keith grabs the gun and leaves them to die in the snow. After second thoughts he comes back and brings them to safety at an RCMP emergency cabin. Conniston dies of a frozen lung.

The sister of a sponge diver killed by a stingray loves an escaped convict posing as a priest.

Old sailor Chris Christofferson eagerly awaits the arrival of his grown daughter Anna, whom he sent at five years old to live with relatives in Minnesota. He has not seen her since, but believes her to be a decent and respectably employed young woman. When Anna arrives, however, it is clear that she has lived a hard life in the dregs of society, and that much of spirit has been extinguished. She falls in love with a young sailor rescued at sea by her father, but dreads to reveal to him the truth of her past. Both father and young man are deluded about her background, yet Anna cannot quite bring herself to allow them to remain deluded.

Three bank robbers on the run happen across a woman about to give birth in an abandoned covered wagon. Before she dies, she names the three bandits as her newborn son's godfathers.

Wealthy Cynthia is in love with not-so-wealthy Roger, who is married to Marcia. The threesome is terribly modern about the situation, and Marcia will gladly divorce Roger if Cynthia agrees to a financial settlement. But Cynthia's wealth is in jeopardy because her trust fund will expire if she is not married by a certain date. To satisfy that condition, Cynthia arranges to marry Hagon Derk, who is condemned to die for a crime he didn't commit. She pays him so he can provide for his little sister. But at the last minute, Derk is freed when the true criminal is discovered. Expecting to be a rich widow, Cynthia finds herself married to a man she doesn't know and doesn't want to.

A French girl raised in the south seas is brought to prim and proper New England by her New England born and bred sea captain husband. She wears short skirts and shocks the puritanical New Englanders in her new home with her wild candid ways...