Author Archive: Retro

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.

The first of three Pine-Thomas productions for Chester Morris finds him as wise-cracking private detective Humphrey Campbell who impresses his boss, Oscar Flack, no end by not only finding a missing girl but also marrying her in the process. So Flack sends him to celebrate his honeymoon in the Divorce Capital of the world, Reno, Nevada, to find a missing man. Along the way, in a mixture of big city crime and old-west settings, Humphrey encounters a large assortment of suspicious characters, all of whom are also suspicious of the others. A comedy that also includes some killings along the way.

Oliver Boggs, a typical office drone, with no success in sight, who can spout statistics about anything and everything, wins $1500 in a bean-guessing contest at the movie theatre, quits his job and sets forth for the seedy, down-at-the-heels town of Peckham Falls. There he buys a barrel factory and falls in love with Irene Lee, the snobbish niece of crusty old Morton Ross, the town’s only rich man and owner of the closed canneries. Oleander Tubbs and her inventor father Angus, who sold Oliver the factory, tell him it has no future but he disagrees and says he will have everything booming again. Oleander thinks he is daffy but she and her father agree to help him. Angus invents a collapsible barrel and Oliver, seeing fame and fortune just ahead, spends all of his money just keeping the factory going. Oliver persuades old man Ross to re-open the canneries and to use the ground-breaking [...]

The grandparents, Daniel Mason(William Halligan) and Mrs. Mason (Laura Treadwell) of Danny Mason (Robert ‘Buzz’ Henry)), an orphaned boy, are trying to have him put into their custody rather than that of his uncle, Jim King (James Seay), a racetrack veterinary, as they object to the track environment in which he is being raised. Their destinies become entwined with that of former silent-film stars Francis X. Bushman) and Clara Kimball Young) and ex-heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries), and that of a broken-down race horse named “Mr. Celebrity.” The tagline tells it all.

A criminal plot to control produce and dairy products during the wartime emergency is foiled by an courageous undercover city market official.

A young couple making plans to elope are overheard by a jewel thief, who sees a chance to turn the situation to his advantage.

Deep in debt, the Honorable James Mallory plots to murder his cousin, Lord Rollestone, so he claim the earldom and inheritance.

The Cotton Club in London’s Soho district is operated by American gangster Steve Marco who, when Joe Lane threatens to tell the police of his past, has no qualms about killing him as he figures if he could outwit America’s G-Men, he has little to fear from Scotland Yard. Joe’s body is found in Greek Street, and Inspector Hammond questions everybody employed at Steve’s club where Joe was last seen. The investigation yields nothing until dance hostess Ruby Lane, wife of the murdered man gives away a vital clue – a priceless string of pearls he had been teasing her with that Hammond decides is now in possession of the killer. Ruby, acting on orders and with Steve watching her, breaks a string of imitation pearls which Steve promptly offers to replace, much to the chagrin of newspaper reporter Roy Barnes who is in love with her. Steve takes Ruby to dinner at his flat [...]