Lester Cole
Birth : 1904-06-19, New York City, New York, USA
Death : 1985-08-15
Screenplay
At a national park in Kenya, English game warden George Adamson and his wife, Joy, care for three orphaned lion cubs. After the two larger lions are shipped off to a zoo in the Netherlands, the smallest of the three, Elsa, stays with the couple. When Elsa is blamed for causing an elephant stampede in the nearby village, head warden John Kendall demands the young lion either be trained to survive in the wilds of the Serengeti or be sent to a zoo.
Writer
Writer
Drama about the life Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer responsible for the deaths of countless Jewish people during World War II.
Theatre Play
Story
Former World War II flying ace Matt Brennan takes a position as a test pilot for a commercial aircraft corporation and bumps into his old girlfriend, Jo Holloway, who now works as a receptionist for the company.
Self
A brief look at The Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters and directors charged with contempt of court after challenging the House Un-American Activities Committee and their controversial and self-incriminatory questions during the red scare. With that act of defiance, they were sentenced to one year in prison simply for speaking their minds and exercising their constitutional rights as concerned citizens. This is their story, their version of the facts, and their opinions.
Screenplay
Steven Kenet, suffering from a recurring brain injury, appears to have strangled his wife. Having confessed, he's committed to an understaffed county asylum full of pathetic inmates. There, Dr. Ann Lorrison is initially skeptical about Kenet's story and reluctance to undergo treatment. But against her better judgement, she begins to doubt his guilt.
Screenplay
A mysterious Civil War veteran courts a Missouri farmer's daughter amid postwar unrest.
Screenplay
When a matador leaves town to focus on his music, his twin sister takes on his identity in the bullfighting ring.
Story
Two doctors try to find the cure for a fatal disease, while battling each other for the affection of a beautiful woman doctor.
Adaptation
Singer/Dancer Peggy Ryan neither sings nor dances in this comedy in which she plays a secretary, whose life has no romance because she devotes all of her time to her attractive older sister. But she does keep a diary that contains some fact and many fictional entries. One such is read by the wife of her boss who promptly sues for a divorce. Virginia Grey stars in a musical produced by Hall and sings (possibly dubbed) "Makin' a Million" and "Keep Your Chin Up." No spoiler to add that Ryan gets a boyfriend and Hall and Allbritton are reunited before this one runs it course.
Writer
Nick Condon, an American journalist in 1945 Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination. Reaction from the understandably upset Japanese provides the action, but this is overshadowed by the propaganda of the time.
Screenplay
A group of men parachute into Japanese-occupied Burma with a dangerous and important mission: to locate and blow up a radar station. They accomplish this well enough, but when they try to rendezvous at an old air-strip to be taken back to their base, they find Japanese waiting for them, and they must make a long, difficult walk back through enemy-occupied jungle.
Writer
Through flashbacks, the story of a Nazi war criminal is exposed.
Writer
After the mysterious disappearance of a German soldier from a Prague cafe, the staff and customers are held captive by the Nazis accused of murder and collusion with the Czech resistance.
Writer
Without lights and in a driving rain, a bus is lumbering along the muddy Assam Road en route from Chunking to the Indian border. Passengers include a European of unknown nationality, a missionary a French officer, and a White Russian. There is also an ancient Chinese lady on an important diplomatic mission to Indian and her traveling companion. The trip is halted when Japanese planes bomb the road and hit a munitions truck and kill many Chinese soldiers. The Chinese commander puts the wounded soldiers on the bus and directs it to a nearby secret airport where the officer in charge is an American attached to the Chinese Air Force.
Screenplay
Falsely convicted of murder, young Robert Draper (Robert Preston) escapes custody during a practice blackout drill. Under cover of darkness, Draper hopes to find the real killer, who turns out to be a member of a Nazi sabotage ring. Completed shortly before America entered WW2.
Story
A mentally unstable man, who has been kept in isolation for years, escapes and causes trouble for his identical twin brother.
Screenplay
A high-society gent has a secret life - he writes murder mysteries and hangs out with the police attempting to solve crimes. This causes him no end of problems when his wife wants to know about his little disappearances and exceptionally late nights out.
Writer
In 1828, the bankrupt Pyncheon family fight over Seven Gables, the ancestral mansion. To obtain the house, Jaffrey Pyncheon obtains his brother Clifford's false conviction for murder. Hepzibah, Clifford's sweet fiancée, patiently waits twenty years for his release, whereupon Clifford and his former cellmate, abolitionist Matthew, have a certain scheme in mind.
Screenplay
The owner of a coal mining operation, falsely imprisoned for fratricide, takes a drug to make him invisible, despite its side effect: gradual madness.
Writer
A man is given the choice between having fabulous wealth or saving an innocent man from the death penalty.
Story
A cabbie and petty thief dreams of the big heist that will end his thieving ways.
Screenplay
A divorced glamour girl keeps warm with a professor amid sports and romance at Dartmouth College's Winter Carnival.
Story
Cafe waitress Barbara Whitney refuses to acknowledge her marriage to Air Policeman Nick Conlon until he upgrades his career. He does so by infiltrating a hi-jacking gang, posing as passengers, that robs airplanes carrying valuable items and money, and parachuting their escape from the scene of the crime.
Screenplay
This Universal programmer was based on a Collier's Magazine story by journalist Quentin Reynolds. This story in turn was ostensibly based on a true incident, in which a gangster "returned from the dead" to save an innocent young man from the electric chair. The nurse of the film's title is Katharine McDonald, who falls in love with her prizefighter-patient Lee Burke as he recovers from a beating received in a fixed prizefight. Katharine must fend off the advances of criminal attorney John Dodge, another patient who also loves her and becomes jealous of Lee. But when Lee is framed for the murder of his disgruntled manager, Slice, by a henchman of the fight-fix leader, Joe Largo, Dodge takes on his defense and works with Katherine to discover the real killer. Convicted and sentenced to death, Burke is about to walk the "last mile", as Katharine encourages mortally wounded Largo to a deathbed confession.
Writer
The survivors from a plane crash are washed up on an island where the only inhabitants are Mr. Taylor and his servant, Ping. The mismatched group must learn to get along and work together if they are to convince Taylor to let them borrow his boat and return to the main land.
Story
Doctor in jungle works on cure for fever.
Screenplay
Doctor in jungle works on cure for fever.
Screenplay
A former actor poses as the son of a wealthy man and gets involved in a murder in which the real son is the suspect.
Screenplay
A reporter covering a murder trial guesses that the murderer of a ruthless businessman is her ex-fiancé and persuades him to confess and clear the innocent man on trial.
Story
A reporter covering a murder trial guesses that the murderer of a ruthless businessman is her ex-fiancé and persuades him to confess and clear the innocent man on trial.
Writer
"Iron Man" Mason is a talented but rather dimwitted prizefighter. Against the advice of his crusty old manager George Regan, Mason dumps his ever-loving girlfriend Judy Williams in favor of sexy blonde Rose Whitney.
Additional Writing
Complications ensue after a radio producer insults a sponsor.
Screenplay
Cappy Ricks, a crusty old sea captain, returns home from a long voyage to discover that his family and his business are in chaos--his daughter is set to marry a nitwit that he can't stand, and his future mother-in-law has taken over everything and is set to merge his business with that of a rival company. Worst of all, though, is that she--in the interests of "progress"--has completely automated his beloved ship, "Electra"!. He sets out to put an end to all this foolishness and comes up with what he thinks is a foolproof plan.
Screenplay
The screenplay for this mystery is based upon a story suggested to Liberty Magazine by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is the tale of a prominent lawyer who shocks his snooty friends, family and colleagues by abruptly abandoning his successful practice and his wife to find true happiness. He soon falls in love with another woman and continues to keep a low profile until he learns that his first wife stands accused of murdering him
Writer
An eccentric musical family is kept in order by a talented daughter with modest ambitions.
Screenplay
A no-nonsense engineer is hired to oversee construction of the Whitney Tunnel, a project that has been plagued by a series of mysterious--and often fatal--accidents.
Screenplay
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.
Writer
A young man desperately in love with a nightclub singer sees an opportunity to spend some time alone with her when they're traveling through the Nevada gold country, and he takes the carburetor off her car and throws it in the river, stranding them there. They wind up staying at the cabin of a crusty old prospector, and soon the manager of a nightclub act shows up with his bevy of beautiful showgirls.
Writer
No good deed goes unpunished for Lena Karelson (Wynne Gibson), hooker with a heart of gold trying to go straight in the big city. Covering a bachelor party for a friend in need, Lena winds up at a gambling house where she is the sole witness when Mayor Wentworth's drunken lout of a son shoots the owner. Wentworth's political machine wants Lena to falsely incriminate mob boss Callahan to bolster their re-election campaign. Callahan's mouthpiece nabs Lena first, conveying her stealthily by train from Toledo to New York to prevent her from testifying against the big boss. A midnight special smash-up, a tense courtroom finale and true love triumphant round out this typical Fox pre-Code programmer, released just before the Legion of Decency dropped the hammer in 1934.
Screenplay
A career woman marries her boyfriend's rich uncle when the boyfriend marries her sister.
Writer
When a good-for-nothing man named Dan is stabbed to death and his arm broken, Charlie Chan is on the case. His first clue comes from the victim's sister, who noticed a prowler wearing a glow-in-the-dark wristwatch.