Author Archive: Retro

Wartime propaganda piece giving the warning “Be like Dad, Keep Mum”. A gossipy housewife is overheard talking about what her son is doing by a Nazi spy.

Greedy oil speculators, led by Morgan, are trying to force Tiger Woman and her band of warriors from their jungle home. Allen Saunders of Inter-Ocean Oil wants to develop the oil, too, but fights with Tiger Woman to stop the bad guys.

A paroled prisoner hits a man attacking a woman. He runs away scared that he may have killed him – he did not. From a book “Woman in the Dark” by Dashiell Hammett.

Madcap society girl June Bolton has a talent for trouble. Trying to evade a subpoena in connection with one of her misadventures, she winds up in jail and has to be bailed out by the family attorney, Dick Clayton. But June is soon in trouble again, this time involved with a mob boss and a shady lady. Exasperated by his wealthy client’s reckless escapades, Clayton determines to quit… until he realizes he has fallen in love with the little madcap.

A pilot carrying a valuable amulet is shot down over China by a ruthless Russian agent, who also wants the amulet.

In Ireland, an IRA man betrays a killer to the police, thinking he is his mistress’s lover.

If the big-time studios could score in the “screwball comedy” genre, then small-time Monogram Pictures could join the club with A Bride for Henry. Warren Hull, fresh from a contract dispute with Warner Bros., played Henry, with fellow Warners refugee Anne Nagel as his bride. Henry Mollison, a newcomer from England, is the third spoke of the romantic triangle which motivates the story. The film slaps a new coat of paint on the old gag about a honeymoon continually being interrupted by a handsome ex-suitor. A Bride for Henry delivered plenty of laughs to a 1937 audience unaccustomed to seeing a comedy emerge from the action- and mystery-oriented Monogram studios.

The tenants of an old boarding house are terrorized by an evil slumlord. One day a strange man arrives at the house and begins to help them with their problems.

In a vacant corner lot off Broadway (by about a yard) is a place called the Lowlands by the tiny community that lives there. Bugs and insects are neighbors and hang out at the Honey Shop of old Mr. Bumble the bee and his daughter Honey. Hoppity the grasshopper arrives to be with Honey, his sweetie. This bugs the crooked C. Bagley Beetle, so do his bunglers Smack the Mosquito and Swat the Fly. The Beetle wants Honey and the Lowlands for himself. But the Human Ones, with their littering and carelessness, pose a threat of destruction to every Lowland home of bug and beetle alike. Despite the doomsaying of Mr. Creeper, the snail, Hoppity finds hope of a new home behind the house of two Human Ones: Mary, who cares for a beautiful garden; and Dick, a struggling songwriter who puts his own hope on a Broadway hit to save his home.