Ted Tetzlaff

A selection of excerpts from the first Cinerama films.

An American gunslinger kills a Mexican man in California immediately after the Mexican-American war. The killer is arrested and put on trial for murder with the Hispanic population waiting to learn of American justice.

Seven Wonders of the World is a 1956 film in Cinerama. Lowell Thomas searches the world for natural and man made wonders and invites the audience to try to update the ancient Greek list of "Seven Wonders of the World."

Legendary pirate and adventurer Sinbad is in single-minded pursuit of two things: beautiful women and a substance called Greek Fire--an early version of gunpowder.

When a saboteur places an explosive device on a train full of sea mines, the authorities call for bomb expert Peter Lyncort to diffuse the situation, unaware that he has explosive problems of his own.

Young David, orphaned en route to California, falls into the hands of medicine-show rascal Baltimore Dan. Years later, now a trained thief, he's adopted by eccentric 'Doc' Brown, retired miner and pharmacist. Doc and David become fast friends in their scenic outdoor rambles. But when they discover a hidden treasure, the idyllic interlude gives way to more troubles and a strange coincidence.

A convicted racketeer becomes prison trustee when an inmate whom he persuaded to escape is killed.

A gambler faces deportation when he gets mixed up with murder.

Mountain climbers in the Swiss Alps mull over past problems while trying to conquer a perilous peak.

A cop-turned-bail bondsman gets involved in a murder investigation.

Treasury Department officials recruit a florist (Raft) to lead them to a wanted criminal (Macready); but once he gets too close, he finds he's the hunted.

An imaginative boy who frequently makes things up witnesses a murder, but can't get his parents or the police to believe him. The only people taking him seriously are the killers - who live upstairs, know that he saw what they did, and are out to permanently silence him.

A dedicated priest tries to reform a group of homeless boys in turn-of-the-century St. Louis.

A private detective foils the plans of villains attempting to take over Panamanian oilfields when he hides a valuable map in plain sight.

In order to help bring Nazis to justice, U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin recruits Alicia Huberman, the American daughter of a convicted German war criminal, as a spy. As they begin to fall for one another, Alicia is instructed to win the affections of Alexander Sebastian, a Nazi hiding out in Brazil. When Sebastian becomes serious about his relationship with Alicia, the stakes get higher, and Devlin must watch her slip further undercover.

A soldier loses his girlfriend to his best buddy.

A homely maid and a scarred ex-GI meet at the cottage where she works and where he was to spend his honeymoon prior to his accident. The two develop a bond and agree to marry, more out of loneliness than love. The romantic spirit of the cottage, however, overtakes them. They soon begin to look beautiful to each other, but no one else.

It's World War II and there is a severe housing shortage everywhere - especially in Washington, D.C. where Connie Milligan rents an apartment. Believing it to be her patriotic duty, Connie offers to sublet half of her apartment, fully expecting a suitable female tenent. What she gets instead is mischievous, middle-aged Benjamin Dingle. Dingle talks her into subletting to him and then promptly sublets half of his half to young, irreverent Joe Carter - creating a situation tailor-made for comedy and romance.

An Argentine heiress thinks a penniless American dancer is her secret admirer.

Rocksford, New England, 1672. Puritan witch hunter Jonathan Wooley is cursed after burning a witch at the stake: his descendants will never find happiness in their marriages. At present, politician Wallace Wooley, who is running for state governor, is about to marry his sponsor's daughter.

When the Holmes Woolen Mill burns down, political activist Leopold Dilg is jailed for arson and accidental murder. Escaping, Leopold hides out in the home of his childhood sweetheart Nora Shelley... which she has just rented to unsuspecting law professor Michael Lightcap.

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.

Former child star Jackie Cooper headlines this sentimental behind-the-scenes comedy drama. He plays an ex-child star who now jerks sodas for a living in Hollywood. He gets back into the movie business when he overhears a conversation between producers discussing their newest prodigy. Cooper butts in and suggests the producers remake Skippy (a real-life 1931 film that made young Cooper a star). The bigwigs like the idea and then hire Cooper to become the boy's acting coach. Once back on the backlot, Cooper finds both trouble and romance while helping the young boy adjust to life as a movie star.

A movie-making publicity man screwball comedy about a movie producer who wants to create publicity for his latest project. He decides to have three men pose as spies, disrupting the opening, but things don't go quite as planned...there are actual spies also present!

New York chorus girl Cindy Lou Bethany becomes frustrated when she prepares for an audition for a Broadway musical, but the auditions close and her roommate, Gwen Abbott, is hired to be secretary to Top Rumson, the show's financial backer. Gwen tells Cindy that the director, Lloyd Lloyd, and composer, Dick Rayburn, have been sent to the South on a talent search for a classic Southern belle type to star in the show, although their shows usually feature Myra Stanhope, an actress whose style is hopelessly inappropriate for this show. Desperate for work, Cindy returns to her aunt Lily Lou and uncle Jefferson Davis Bethany's home in the South and schemes to get Lloyd and Rayburn to audition her.

Stranded in Africa, Chuck and his pal Fearless have comic versions of jungle adventures, featuring two attractive con-women.

Capitalizing on the famous radio 'feud' between comedians Jack Benny and Fred Allen. The two stars play versions of themselves, constantly at each other's throats due to real and imagined slights.

A reporter sleuths the mystery behind an oft-married Viennese doctor whose wives met mysterious fates.

Comedy about newlyweds wondering if their marriage was a mistake.

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.

Millionaire Baron de Courland and his fiancée Linda Stewart employ Jim Logan as a guide for their hunting trip in the jungle. Linda finds unplanned adventure in her sudden love for Jim, ultimately forsaking her future with the Baron for the joys of true love.

When Jack, an assistant District Attorney, takes Lee, a shoplifter caught in the act, home with him for Christmas, the unexpected happens and love blossoms.

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.

Producer Bob Temple, who's brought an American show to London, loves his star Diana, but she won't take him seriously as a lover. To show her, he picks up stranger Lady Arlington, whose financier husband neglects her. On a weekend at the Arlington country house, Bob is used by both Lady A. and her friend to make their husbands jealous; this works all too well, and Bob is in danger from both husbands.

A pampered heiress (Madeleine Carroll) elopes with a shipboard reporter (Fred MacMurray) just to get her name in a society column.

The further adventures of Twain's most beloved fictional characters of Tom Sawyer and his friend, Huckleberry Finn.

Buck Boswell and his all-girl troupe are stranded in Paris, but Buck manages to con the manager of the 'Hotel de Navarre' in furnishing accommodations for his group, but the proprietor's wife locks them out. In his search for funds, Buck meets Patricia Harper, the fourth-richest girl in the world, but he isn't aware of that and thinks she is penniless. Patricia joins his troupe as a lark, and her father, James Harper, also pretends he is broke. Through some chicanery, Buck gets jobs for the girls as models at the Palace of Feminine Arts at the Paris International Exposition. James Harper borrows the priceless Napoleaon necklace to have a copy made for his daughter, but Buck thinks he stole it.

The invention of a machine that can cause remote explosions brings the attention of Scotland Yard and Bulldog Drummond.

A screenwriter falls in love with a Mexican woman while searching for a story line south of the border.

An incognito Hollywood star (Carole Lombard) in Paris meets a penniless nobleman (Fernand Gravet) who follows her to London.

A writer takes a job as a secretary because her scrupulous husband isn't bringing in the dough as an attorney. When her new employer is murdered, she can't seem to make up her mind as to whether she "dunnit" or not.

Reformed jewel-thief Sophie Lang, tired of being questioned by the New York City police every time a jewel disappears, decides to head for California only to get into more trouble.

J.B. Ball, a rich financier, gets fed up with his free-spending family. He takes his wife's just-bought (very expensive) sable coat and throws it out the window, it lands on poor hard-working girl Mary Smith. But it isn't so easy to just give away something so valuable, as he soon learns.

Department store owner J. Elliott Dinwiddy has waited ten years for the perfect astrological moment to propose to his secretary, Myrtle Tweep. His astrological advisor, Dr. Wakefield, has told him that if he can unite a boy and a girl in true love before midnight, he can propose to Myrtle the following night at 3:15 a.m. and she will accept. Fate brings unemployed dancer Caroline Wilson into the music department of Dinwiddy's, where she meets handsome songwriter Terry Keith. Keith has been writing music for Dinwiddy's Silver Jubilee show and has allowed Dinwiddy's nephew, Truelove Spencer, to take all the credit. That night, Terry comes into Dinwiddy's to work on the music and finds Caroline asleep in the Honeymoon Cottage, the section of the department store Spencer supervises. Posing as a man named "Pinky," Dinwiddy promises Caroline that Spencer will hire her as the bride of the Honeymoon Cottage and invites her to live there.

In Panama, Maggie King meets soldier Skid Johnson on his last day in the army and reluctantly agrees to a date to celebrate. The two become involved in a nightclub brawl which causes Maggie to miss her ship back to the States. Now stranded, she's forced to move in with Skid and his pal Harry. She soon falls in love with Skid. Skid gets a job playing the trumpet at a local club and becomes a big success. Fame and fortune go to his head which eventually destroys his relationship Maggie and his career.

Suspected crime boss Nate Girard beats a murder rap, and newspaper photog Kent Murdock is on the story. Girard and lawyer Redfield throw a party for the news men where Murdock romances a mystery woman who confronted Girard in front of him, but Murdock's fiancée Hester shows up. After they return to his apartment, have a fight, and she leaves, the mystery woman slips in and begs for his help. Police Inspector Bacon and the cops show up, looking for the mystery woman; Murdock hides her. Murdock goes with the cops to discuss the murder the woman is suspected of. Bacon explains (in flashback) how some photogs were setting up a shot with Girard and Redfield. When the flashbulbs popped, Redfield keeled over dead and the woman, Meg Archer, fled while the newsmen ran out to phone their papers. The newsmen (who were rounded up later as thoroly as possible) are taken into police custody, except for Murdock (who wasn't at the scene), who is given a cap on the sly by rival McGoogin. Altho ...

Fifth Avenue socialite Irene Bullock needs a "forgotten man" to win a scavenger hunt, and no one is more forgotten than Godfrey Park, who resides in a dump by the East River. Irene hires Godfrey as a servant for her riotously unhinged family, to the chagrin of her spoiled sister, Cornelia, who tries her best to get Godfrey fired. As Irene falls for her new butler, Godfrey turns the tables and teaches the frivolous Bullocks a lesson or two.

A Swedish princess boards an ocean liner in Europe en route to an acting career in America, and finds herself getting inconveniently attached to a bandleader returning home. To complicate matters, a blackmailer on board apparently knows she is not who she claims to be - and he has his sights set on other passengers with secrets of their own. In the meantime an escaped killer has stowed away under someone else's identity, and is killing again to cover his tracks; five international police detectives on board are heading the investigation to find him. When evidence points to the princess and bandleader, they must find the killer themselves - before he finds them.

Scott is a very rich businessman who hangs out with a snooty, silly Countess, but has the hots for Kay who is already engaged to Bill. Scott pursues Kay like crazy, going so far as to buy Bill's oil company so that he can banish him to Japan, leaving Kay unmoored.

Because of a very unhappy affair she had earlier in her life, a woman shuts herself off from the rest of the world.

A manicurist and an engaged loafer, both planning to marry money, meet and fall in love.

Afraid of marriage, Simone (Mary Ellis) breaks off her long term engagement with her fiancé Paul de Lille (Tullio Carminati). Paul heads to the top of The Eiffel Tower with thoughts of suicide. In another part of Paris and also afraid of marriage, Mignon (Ida Lupino) breaks it off from her young lover (James Blakely). Despairing, Mignon also climbs to the top of the The Eiffel Tower intending to leap to her death. There she meets Paul and the two compare stories. After discussion, Paul dissuades her from leaping and the two conspire to make their respective partners jealous by pretending to have an affair with each other.

The story deals with the college rivalry of a piccolo player and an All-American halfback on the football team who both love the same co-ed. After graduation they carry their their feud and collegiate ideas over into the department store business.

Underworld king Lee Lother has been killed aboard a ocean liner, several people could have been the murderer. There is his mistress Anya Roysen, a married woman, who was jealous of his flirtations with his old moll, night club singer Sally Marsh, who had agreed for one last night with Lother, to get her younger brother Ned out of the Lother's clutches because he has faked Lother's name on a check to pay his gambling debts. Then there is Sally's new flame Jimmy Brett, a con man and gentlemen thief, who has out-tricked Lother in a fixed poker game, and is, together with shorty, after the ladies jewels. Inspector McKinney suspects Joe Saunders, a recently released convict, who was arrested due to some tips by Lother, but Ned and Sally insist that they committed the crime alone.

To improve her image, a fan dancer "adopts" an old woman to be her mother.

A man escapes from jail in France to free his daughter from her mother's hold.

A middle-aged houseguest causes romantic turmoil when he falls in love with his host's teenage daughter. Director Harry Beaumont's pre-code comedy stars Lionel Barrymore, Alice Brady, Godfrey Tearle, Mary Carlisle, William Janney, Katharine Alexander and Halliwell Hobbes.

A high living society playboy marries a nightclub singer, and she soon realizes that, though they're genuinely in love, the husband's endless partying completely dominates and is destroying their marriage.

Newlyweds experience marital problems when the wife's highly successful job as an attorney overshadows her husband's stagnant career.

A blowhard cowboy talks himself into a job as a movie stunt man.

Paul Vanderkill is extraordinarily wealthy because his grandfather happened to buy farmland in what was to become Midtown Manhattan. The Loveland Dance Hall is one of the tenants of the Vanderkill estates. To reassure his aunt Sophie, Vanderkill visits Loveland to determine whether it is as disreputable as Sophie suspects. There he meets a dime-a-dance girl, Madeleine MacGonagal, who charms him with her quaint proletarian accent. They begin a secret affair, which turns into a secret marriage when pregnancy ensues. When the baby fails to survive, Madeleine decides that since he had married her only for the baby's sake, she should make haste to Mexico to secure a divorce. There she meets Panama Canal Kelly, a former suitor who now owns a silver mine. Her plans for divorce and quick remarriage are complicated when Vanderkill arrives to confront her.

Button Gwinett Brown is a freshman congressman on a mission to rid Washington of corruption. He quickly runs afoul of the powerful Senator Norton...

Opportunistic film seeking to capitalize on a scandal in New York mayor Jimmy Walker's office before his name was out of the newspapers. Tracy plays a mayor who has a penchant for the night life, sports, the theater, and an actress, Knapp. When scandal rocks his administration, Tracy has his girl friend marry Dillaway, a writer friend, so that the press will leave him alone.

A man tries to hide aboard a moving train after murdering a jewelry magnate.

A lawyer is haunted by a previous case in which he manipulated evidence and convicted an innocent man.

A Secret Service agent nabs a scalpel-happy doctor who runs drugs in caskets.

Romantic comedy drama about three friends in New York. Cassie has come to New York and goes to work as a model where her friend Gladys works. She falls in love with wealthy young Jerry who is already married. Gladys has the same probelm with her man Phelps.

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".

A West Point graduate jilts his girlfriend but runs into her later at an Army outpost.

A woman's former association with a gangster threatens to destroy her marriage to an upstanding young man.

A dying Jack makes Bob and Flash promise not to tell his sister that he was an outlaw. When Bob confronts Flash with his muffler found at the stage holdup, Flash tells Mary that Bob killed her brother. Believing he can now marry Mary, he plans one more robbery. But the jealous Tiana overhears and runs for the Sheriff.

Goss, Mason, and Kelly force Joaquin Murieta to watch as they hang his brother Juan for a crime he did not commit. To exact his revenge on the three, Joaquin becomes the notorious Black Shadow.

After young Robert Graham commits a murder while drunk and defending his girlfriend, he is prosecuted by ambitious Mark Brady and sentenced to 10 years. Six years later, Brady becomes the prison warden and offers the beleaguered Robert a job as his chauffeur. Robert cleans up his act, but, on the eve of his pardon, his cellmate drags him back into the world of violence, and he faces a difficult choice that could return him to prison.

Tol'able David is a 1930 sound film directed by John G. Blystone and produced and released by Columbia Pictures. It is a remake of a famous 1921 silent film Tol'able David starring Richard Barthelmess and Ernest Torrence. Young David Kinemon is a good-natured, easy-going lad in a mountain village. Circumstances force him to take his brother's place as mailman for the community, and this brings him into deadly contact with the vicious Hatburn brothers.

Directed by James Tinling. With Jack Mulhall, Sally Starr, Elliott Nugent, Margaret Livingston.

Captain Clive Branch, United States Marine Corps, is stationed at a Marine base in Haiti, and is having affairs with two women, Brenda Ritchie and Helen Arnold, each of whom is married to a Marine Captain. One of the husbands is murdered, and Branch, Helen and Brenda each find themselves high on the list of suspects.

The owner of a border town gambling saloon falls in love with a promiscuous young girl. When she has an affair with another, he tosses her out of town. She gets revenge by marrying his younger brother.

A doctor is wrongly convicted of murder and sent to prison.

Captain Black and his motley crew of pirates are shipwrecked on a South Sea island, where they hold several shanghaied sailors captive. Black observes the ship commanded by Hurricane Martin approaching and conspires to get his men aboard the vessel and seize the cargo.

Released in both a silent and a sound version: Mitch Moran, a veteran WWI pilot and now a commercial pilot, takes his young irresponsible brother, Steve, under his guidance. Steve heeds little of what Mitch is selling but does find time to steal Mitch's sweetheart Sally.

Rita Martin, the partner of a phony spiritualist who uses information supplied by her to gull and astonish the rubes, gets work as private secretary to John Clayton, a wealthy man who has just disinherited his worthless son, Frank, and left his entire fortune to his upright stepson, Bob Williams. At Frank's request, the spiritualist later performs for the elder Clayton a seance during which Rita impersonates the late Mrs. Clayton and arranges for a reconciliation between Frank and his father. Rita falls in love with Bob, however, and, in order to protect Bob's interests against Frank's, exposes the spiritualist as a faker. Frank is disgraced in his father's eyes, and Bob quickly forgives Rita for her past complicity in Frank's schemes.

The naive newspaper cub Clem lands a scoop when he's sent out to cover a murder. In his enthusiasm he writes that the main suspect is Jane. When she confronts Clem, she convinces him to help her prove her innocence.

An underworld story about a boy (Charles Delaney) suspected of being a stool pigeon but in reality, he is only stealing to give his mother a better life. His devoted girlfriend Goldie (Olive Borden) tries to help him turn his life around.

A bumbling grocery-store employee must deal with such job-related problems as a conniving boss, unruly customers, a baby alligator and an escaped lunatic, all of which culminates in a wild melee involving hurled cakes, pies, buckets of jam and bags of flour.

Jimmy and May, young lovers, run away from their dreary farm lives to live in the city, though they don't marry. Soon Jimmy finds things aren't working out and has little ambition to work or affection for May left. In desperation he sells May into the hands of a pimp and a madam in a brothel. They don't meet again until, wounded while running from the police, he runs into a hospital ward where she's being treated for the ravages of social diseases she's accrued in the course of her degradation.

A wealthy banker wants to tear down a tenement slum to build a factory, but a charming girl who lives there begins to persuade him otherwise.