Mary Ellis

Sherlock Holmes' problem with disturbing dreams proves to be both an impediment and an aid in the search for a missing woman.

Doctor Gulliver is poor, so nothing - not even his charming fiancée Elisabeth - keeps him in the town he lives. He signs on to a ship to India, but in a storm he's washed off the ship and ends up on an island, which is inhibitated by very tiny people. After he managed to convince them he's harmless and is accepted as one of their citizens, their king wants to use him in war against a people of giants. Compared to them, even Gulliver is a gnome.

Now old, ill, poor, and largely forgotten, William Freise-Greene was once very different. As young and handsome William Green he changed his name to include his first wife's so that it sounded more impressive for the photographic portrait work he was so good at. But he was also an inventor and his search for a way to project moving pictures became an obsession that ultimately changed the life of all those he loved.

Based on Ivor Novello's hit stage play: an opera singer and her gypsy friends try to rescue their king from the clutches of a would-be dictator.

On her debut as an opera star, Marion Stuart is interrogated and possibly implicated in the death of a male acquaintance. Released, although thoroughly shaken-up, Marion attempts to perform but loses her voice onstage. Humiliated, but driven to sing, she travels to South America under the assumed name of Maria Delasano, and works in an opera company under the tutelage of Feodor Glinka, who wants her to shun men and save herself for her art. Mary resists the persistent attentions of wealthy young Phil Roberts, who follows the company in hopes of marrying her. ...

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.

Paramount Pictures decided in 1935 to create a new romantic team, thus cast singing stars Carl Brisson and Mary Ellis in the frothy operetta All the King's Horses. Brisson does the "Prisoner of Zenda" bit as a movie star who is forced by circumstances to impersonate a look-alike king. Ms. Ellis is the highborn lady who seems to be fooled by the ruse. The plots roll merrily onward while various and sundry musical-comedy character actors (including Edward Everett Horton and Eugene Pallette) fuss and fume in the background. Danish singer Carl Brisson had created a minor sensation by introducing "Cocktails for Two" in Paramount's Murder at the Vanities (34), but the studio's attempts to turn him into a Scandinavian Maurice Chevalier were unsuccessful.

That old theatrical war-horse Bella Donna (previously filmed in America by Alla Nazimova) was resurrected by Britain's Twickenham Studios in 1934. Conrad Veidt stars as sinister Egyptian Mahmoud Baroundi, who even before the film gets under way has left a long trail of ruined women behind him. His latest victim is American girl Mona Chepstow (Mary Ellis), whom Baroundi treats like dirt and makes her like it. The plot centers around a murder by poison, as evidenced by the film's deliberately exotic title. Critics in 1934 praised newcomer Mary Ellis for underplaying her role, but many film fans preferred Nazimova's arm-waving histrionics in the earlier version.