Author Archive: Retro

Edward Eggleston’s best-selling novel The Hoosier Schoolmaster was brought to the screen in 1935 by Monogram Pictures, which specialized in such bucolic entertainments. Norman Foster plays the title character, an ex-Union soldier named Ralph. After the Civil War, Ralph takes a schoolteacher job in a small Indiana community where resentment against “Damn Yankees” still runs high. Before long, he gets mixed up in local politics, hoping to purge the town of the crooked politicians who’ve been squandering land-grant money on themselves. He is also forced to confront town bully Bud (Fred Kohler Jr.) over the affections of pretty heroine Hannah (Charlotte Henry) and to face down a hooded band of night riders. The film deftly blends small-town charm with vivid melodrama, most notably in a spelling-bee sequence which segues into a near-riot. The Hoosier Schoolmaster was one of the last productions from the “old” Monogram outfit before its absorption by Republic Pictures.

During the bloody French/Indian War, Hawkeye, a white scout raised by Indians is assigned to escort a Colonel’s two daughters through Huron territory, where they’re harrased by an evil Huron named Magua. Arguably the best film adaptation of the Cooper novel. Dir. George B. Seitz

Remarque’s engrossing romantic wartime melodrama. Hopkins, as Ravic, is a German citizen who helped Jewish people escape from the murderous anti-Semitic Fatherland. He spent time in a concentration camp & has a horrible scar as a reminder. He lives without papers in Paris, under a false name, aware always that the minute the gendarmes near him he could be sent away or imprisoned as an illegal alien. He dreams of the day he can revenge himself on the Gestapo officer who sent him away, who tortured his friends & who tortured & raped his only love, Sybil.

Charles Dickens’ favorite child was David Copperfield. His is the tale of success triumphing over adversity. A must-see for the entire family. Stars Robin Phillips as David Copperfield.

Gripping drama based on Richard Wright’s controversial novel about a young black chauffeur who accidentally kills his employer’s daughter. Dir. Victor Halperin.

Adaptation of “La Boheme”. First feature film in TWO-COLOR TECHNIColor.

In a strange blending of reality and fantasy, this is the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s use of the creative process to try to work out and ameliorize his own marital difficulties. While writing the fictional “The Last of the Belles,” Fitzgerald works out his relationship with Zelda during WWI.

In the film Chaney portrays another of the character roles that dubbed him The Man of a Thousand Faces, a Chinese laundry worker who is caught in a tangle of extortion and small-town prejudice.

Faithful adaptation of the Dickens classic with Hicks as the Christmas-hating miser. Dir. Henry Edwards