Author Archive: Retro

The second of comedian Benny Rubin’s two starring features for Tiffany Studios, Hot Curves is a spoof of baseball manager John McGraw’s publicity-conscious efforts to put a Jewish player on the New York Giants. Rubin plays Benny Goldberg, a soda jerk who joins the Pittsburgh Cougars along with his egotistical pal Jim Dolan (Rex Lease). While Benny works himself up to star-player status, Jim falters badly, thanks mostly to his ever-expanding ego and his romantic misadventures with manager’s daughter Elaine McGrew (Alice Day) and predatory Margie (Natalie Morehead). He pulls himself together in time to lead his team to victory during the World Series, but not before he’s put through the emotional wringer when Benny is reported killed in a plane crash. Featured in the cast as Benny’s Irish-Catholic girlfriend is Pert Kelton, three years before her “official” screen bow in RKO’s Bed of Roses.

After learning how to look inside himself, a poetic bum sells people vivid dreams.

A journalist poses as a doctor’s assistant to infiltrate a railroad magnate’s inner council.

John Dawson loses control of his factory when he is crippled in an accident caused by a rival. Destitute, he travels the country organizing the homeless to help him regain control of his steel mill.

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.

A married woman’s affair with a dashing young officer has tragic results.

A scientist is murdered by foreign agents after having developed a powerful new explosive. The scientist’s brother, an army corporal, goes AWOL to discover the identities of the killers. Army intelligence officers are looking for him, as they believe he has a list of scientists who helped his brother develop the new weapon, putting them in danger. The spy ring is also after him, but they want the list for a different reason.

A heavily fictionalized version of the RMS Titanic story.

A fire in a run-down tenement building injures young Joey Rogers. Wealthy passerby Peter Cortlant rushes the boy and his attractive older sister Mary to the hospital and pays the medical expenses for the poverty-stricken family. Only later does Peter learn that the firetrap tenement is one of his own vast real estate holdings. Faced with his own unwitting complicity in the deaths and injuries resultant from the fire and with his growing attachment to Mary, Peter decides to tear down his tenements and erect decent affordable housing. But his family is aghast at his plan and plots to wreck it.