Kenneth Thomson
Birth : 1899-01-07, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Death : 1967-01-26
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles Kenneth Thomson (January 7, 1899 – January 26, 1967) was an American character actor active during the silent and early sound film eras. Born in Pittsburgh, Thomson along with his wife Alden Gay were founding members of the Screen Actors Guild. The group was founded after meetings held at the Thomsons' home during 1933. During his brief twelve-year career in front of the camera, he appeared in over 60 films. After appearing in several Broadway plays during the early and mid-1920s, Thomson would make his film debut with a starring role in 1926's Risky Business. Over the next four years, he would appear in over a dozen films, in either starring or featured roles. In 1930 alone he would appear in ten films, half of which were in starring roles, such as Lawful Larceny, which also starred Bebe Daniels and Lowell Sherman (who also directed), and Reno, whose other stars were Ruth Roland and Montagu Love; the other half would see him in featured roles as in A Notorious Affair, starring Billie Dove, Basil Rathbone, and Kay Francis. During the rest of the 1930s, he would appear in numerous films, mostly in either supporting or featured roles, such as The Little Giant (1933), starring Edward G. Robinson and Mary Astor, and Hop-Along Cassidy (1935), starring William Boyd; although he occasionally would have a starring role, as in opposite Harold Lloyd in 1932's Movie Crazy.
Master Chan (Jeffrey Chan) is a widely respected martial arts teacher who has several skilled understudies in the Los Angeles area. When one of his students takes part in some shady dealings, Chan becomes unknowingly involved in the situation after a group of gangsters mistakenly point the finger at him for the crime. As Chan works to clear his name with the hoodlums, he also manages to reunite with his estranged son (Yeun Tak).
Self
A multi-studio effort to show the newsreel audience the progress of the Hollywood war effort.
W. B. Elwood
Jim Hanvey is a genial but top-notch detective who has retired to his country home. An insurance company hires him to find a missing emerald so they won't have to pay out the $100,000 for which the jewel is insured. It doesn't take him long to find the emerald, but he discovers that finding it was the easy part; the difficult part is getting it back to its rightful owner, and he winds up involved in a murder in which an innocent man is framed.
Mr. Porter
Dinner party guests become murder suspects when an extortionist they all hated turns up dead.
Jack Anthony
An evil ranch foreman tries to provoke a range war by playing two cattlemen against each other while helping a gang to rustle the cattle. Each cattleman blames the other for missing cattle. With the help of Bill Cassidy (Hop-along, because of an earlier bullet wound) and Johnny Nelson, the warring cattlemen join forces to do in the outlaws.
J. Wesley Hunt
O'Brien is "Whispering" Smith, so named because he speaks softly but knows how to fend for himself. The son of a railroad president, Smith is determined to learn the business from the ground up, so he gets a job as a track walker for his dad's rail line. While going about his duties, he meets Nan Roberts (Irene Ware), who is about to sell her Colorado ranch. Smith finds out that there are valuable tungsten deposits on her land and makes certain she won't be cheated by the villains
Charles T. 'Ritzy' Conrad
A police detective's (Norman Foster) lawyer girlfriend (Judith Allen) works for a crooked criminal lawyer (Sidney Blackmer).
Jim Curson
After Michael Carter's fiancée commits suicide, Michael vows to seek revenge on his wealthy family, who sabotaged their marriage. He drives across the country angrily, and lands up at a saloon, where he is shot by an Indian, Pete. Pete's girlfriend, Tonita nurses Michael's wound and falls in love with him. Michael realizes this, proposes marriage to Tonita - a perfect revenge for his prejudice family. They marry and he takes her to New York, in full Indian dress hoping to embarrass the family.
Matt Korber - alias Mr. Chandler
Gangster Chandler and his accomplice Tracy arrive at a dude ranch. Cowboy Kentucky arrives at the same time. When Tracy double-crosses his boss and has the stage robbed, Kentucky finds the outlaws and brings them in. Tracy frames him for the murder of the driver but his pal Cactus gets him out of jail. He returns just as Chandler shoots Tracy and Kentucky finds himself arrested for another murder.
Himself (uncredited)
A parade highlights the Screen Actors Guild's Film Stars Frolic, hosted by Walter Winchell as Master of Ceremonies.
Mort Talbot
A man falls in love with a young woman, only to discover that she's the daughter of an ex-girlfriend who jilted him almost 20 years before.
Motion Picture Director
Gracie Allen assumes the "management" of the shop owned by her papa Horatio Allen, turning it into a radio station and then an aviary---with the usual Gracie Allen logic---while distracted Papa is trying to get younger daughter, beauty contest winner Florence, married before she can head to Hollywood and get into the movies.
Howard Jackson
Catherine and Mack and their close friends Chris and Madge graduate from a West Coast college and fly to New York City to find work.
Williams
A lovesick fool bumbles into espionage and finds a stolen plane.
Red
Alison Drake, the tough-minded executive of an automobile factory, succeeds in the man's world of business until she meets an independent design engineer.
Gordon Bates
When a Broadway playboy is found dead, it's up to detective Jim Stevens to pick the murderer out of several likely candidates.
John Stanley
Prohibition is ending so bootlegger Bugs Ahearn decides to crack California society. He leases a house from down-on-her-luck Ruth and hires her as social secretary. He rescues Polly Cass from a horsefall and goes home to meet her dad who sells him some phony stock certificates. When he learns about this he sends to Chicago for mob help.
Alan Preston
A savvy city girl tries to protect her naive sister, who has just moved from the country, from the temptations--and men--of big-city life.
John Franklin
Four survivors of a ship wreck are stranded on a deserted island, including a woman and the man she believes is responsible for the murder which her brother is in prison for.
Dr. Frank Gresham
Idealistic attorney Anton Adam makes headlines when he successfully prosecutes a prominent New York racketeer named Gilmurry. Adam's sudden renown attracts the attention of high-profile legal eagle Granville Bentley, who asks Adam to become a partner in his law firm. But Adam's rising career takes a nosedive when he's framed by Gilmurry and a sexy actress in a trumped-up breach of promise suit. The only constant in Adam's life is the loyalty and unrequited love of his secretary Olga.
Mr. Williams
Two sailors (William Haines and Cliff Edwards) are leaving the US Navy after 10 years. In their spare time, one of them (Haines) invents a carburetor that should increase the speed that powered boats will run, but all they succeed in doing is sinking the Admiral's barge. After discharge, broke and out of work, they find work with a boat builder who wants the fastest race boat in the world. They design the boat, carburetor and the engine but lack of money and the foreclosure of the business hinders their efforts to prove the new design.
Schuyler Durkin
A woman is accused of murdering a man who molested her young daughter.
Vance
After a mix-up with his application photograph, an aspiring actor is invited to a screen test and goes off to Hollywood.
Thirteen women who were schoolmates ask a swami to cast their horoscopes. The news they receive are not good for any of them.
Dr. Collins
College football player is asked to dope a star teammate by his crooked gambler brother. He refuses, but they player is doped anyway and collapses and dies. A detective has the whole game re-enacted to find important clues.
Chambers
A man tries to hide aboard a moving train after murdering a jewelry magnate.
Fred Ames
A female editor of a magazine falls in love with her male secretary.
Bob Parks
A foreword warns against the peril of yellow journalism, and the story illustrates it by following events in the upstate New York town of Cornwall after prominant financier George Ferguson is killed. Two types of New York City journalists descend on Cornwall, one interested in facts, the other in getting sensational "news". Mrs. Ferguson is known to have been friendly with a local banker. The Fergusons quarrel the evening he is killed (by "burglers", his wife tells the police later), and she is arrested, spurred on by the "bad" journalists, who also manage to badger the banker's wife into the hospital. Meanwhile, young Bruce Foster runs the Cornwall Courier, and shows the big city reporters how to dig out real news while they attempt to subvert justice for their own ends.
Leonard Temple
This film, believed lost, was based on William Vaughn Moody's 1906 play The Great Divide. The story was filmed as a silent film by MGM as The Great Divide (1925) and as an early silent/sound hybrid by First National also called The Great Divide (1929). Judith Temple has come West to Arizona for some excitement. As she says goodbye to her brother and his wife, who are returning to the East, Dr. Neil Cranford, who is in love with her, is called away to tend the broken ribs of a man injured in a barroom brawl.
Captain of Academy
A vicious crime lord decides that he has had enough and much to the shock of his colleagues decides to give the business to his second in command and retire to Florida after marrying his moll. Unfortunately, he has no idea that she and the man are lovers.
Richard Belden
A film by George Crone
Andrew Dorsey
When Marion Corsey's husband, Andrew, is conned out of a small fortune by Vivian Hepburn, she dedicates herself to recovering the money.
Hendricks
Helen and Nita work in a department store to make ends meet while they search for millionaire husbands. They meet Bill and Hank, who make them reconsider whether they really need millionaires to be happy.
Joe Palmer
A young girl falls in love with a member of a gang of crooks. She determines to bring the rest of the gang to justice so she can save the man she loves.
Joe Hardy
The son of a wealthy politician falls in with a notorious gangster planning to rob a night club.
Rod Peck
A successful songwriter, dazzled by high society, falls for a society girl who is just playing around.
Dr. Alan Pomeroy
A scheming musician seduces a wealthy woman for love and money.
George Wilson
He Trumped Her Ace is a black-and-white comedy short.
Nort Larrison (as Kenneth Thompson)
The Other Tomorrow, a love-triangle drama, is a lost American Pre-Code film, directed by Lloyd Bacon and produced by First National Pictures, a subsidiary of Warner Bros.
William Dane
Joan Anders, a girl detective for a jewelers' protective association, poses as a chorus girl in a musical comedy troupe to capture a gang of jewel thieves.
Owen
Directed by John Griffith Wray. With Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Carmel Myers, Holmes Herbert, Kenneth Thomson.
Arthur Phillips
Joe Lane, radio entertainer and songwriter, learns that the manager of the studio, Arthur Phillips, has made improper advances to his wife, Katherine. Infuriated, Lane engages him in a fight, and the encounter results in Phillips' accidental death. Joe goes to prison for a few years, and when he is released he visits his son, Little Pal, at school and is begged by him to run away together.
Dr. Donald Ross
A woman tells a girl who's just been rescued from a notorious rake, four stories of men from her own life, one of whom she had to kill to protect herself.
Jock Warriner (uncredited)
The vaudeville act of Harriet and Queenie Mahoney comes to Broadway, where their friend Eddie Kerns needs them for his number in one of Francis Zanfield's shows. When Eddie meets Queenie, he soon falls in love with her—but she is already being courted by Jock Warriner, a member of New York high society. Queenie eventually recognises that, to Jock, she is nothing more than a toy, and that Eddie is in love with her.
Stephen Bellamy
The Bellamy Trial is a 1929 American drama film directed by Monta Bell and written by Monta Bell and Joseph Farnham.
Joe
An Elderly fruit grower sends a photo of his foreman, not himself, to a waitress he wishes to marry. She falls in love with the foreman.
John Livingston
John Livingston is a rich mama's-boy, who owns a blooded dog named Paul. Paul meets Maggie Mutt, and Paul, being a pedigree canine and somewhat of a cad, lures trusting Maggie to the barn to have his way. He then departs for his palatial doghouse at the Livingston estate. Meanwhile Maggie is broken-hearted and also finds that she is in a "family way", and gives birth to a pup she names Hank. Maggie tells Hank to find his "human ", and departs the scene. Hank goes to the park, meets a "human" named Mary Kelly, who is a homeless waif and sweetheart of poverty, and the two adopt each other. Later on in the park Paul comes strolling along with his 'human', John. A child falls into the lake and Paul and Hank team up to save her.
Lazarus
The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into a silent-era blockbuster. Featuring text drawn directly from the Bible, a cast of thousands, and the great showman’s singular cinematic bag of tricks, The King of Kings is at once spectacular and deeply reverent—part Gospel, part Technicolor epic.
Alec Carson
A sheep farmer brings his new wife to his father's ranch and the old man takes an instant dislike to her.
Gerald Sanford
Silent romantic comedy...
Jack
Frequently cited as one of the first war films to feature the female angle, “Corporate Kate” is the story of a pair of Brooklyn manicurists who go to France during WWI to entertain the troops with a song-and-dance act. Both girls struggle not only with the brutalities of war but also with their love for the same man.
Ted Pyncheon
A domineering mother sets out to break up the romance and possible marriage of her daughter, Cecily Stoughton, with Ted Pyncheon by several contrived devices and bringing in other candidates more to her liking.
