Author Archive: Retro

After a good-natured Irish cop is framed for a diamond robbery and murder and presumed dead in a train wreck, he gets plastic surgery and returns to expose the real killers.

In his first western, former football star Reb Russell plays Clint Mason, a young parolee returning to Bonanza City intent on proving that he was framed in a stage holdup. The sheriff (Murdock MacQuarrie) tends to believe the youngster but is hamstringed by the local marshal (Jack Rockwell), who is in the pocket of town czar Rance McCloud (Fred Kohler). The latter threatens to destroy Colonel Campbell (George Hayes) unless his daughter Nancy (Ann D’Darcy) agrees to marry him. But Clint has learned that McCloud is really Kelso, an escaped convict, and the villain is forced to flee into Mexico with Nancy.

The constant battling over the same woman gets two detectives demoted to what’s considered the toughest job in the Police Department–the Riot Squad.

In this western, Billy the Kid has been wrongfully arrested for robbing a train. In order to prove his innocence, the Kid breaks out of jail and hits the trail to search for the real robbers. Along the way, he discovers that an outlaw band has been impersonating upstanding ranchers.

Colonel Ransome comes to the rescue when impoverished Rose Wentworth poses as a streetwalker in order to get arrested to secure food and lodgings.

In Hungary, a rich baron discovers that there are extensive oil deposits underneath nearby properties owned by villagers. He manages to convince all the property owners to sell to him, except for a few properties owned by Jewish families. Infuriated at their refusal to sell to him, he attempts, with the help of some corrupt local police, to have the men charged with the murder of a local woman, who in reality actually committed suicide.

A shopgirl and a pediatrician find romance thanks to a series of unlikely adventures in this romantic comedy. The trouble begins when the girl’s mother is mistakenly arrested during a burlesque house raid, leading to an escalating series of confusions and misunderstandings.

A comical crime drama directed by Tay Garnett, featuring William Boyd.

Judith Allen stars as Telephone Operator Helen in this Monogram actioner. Most of the story is built around newsreel footage of the recent Ohio and Tennessee Valley floods. As telephone linemen Red (Grant Withers) and Shorty (Warren Hymer) race against time to hook up phone wires to a huge dam, the storm clouds gather and the weather gets really rough. Even so, Red and Shorty pause every so often to romance local telephone gals Helen and Dottie (Alice White). When the inevitable flood arrives, Helen’s courage and stamina during the crisis leaves a lasting impression on Red, who gives up his minor flirtations and proposes marriage. Telephone Operator was one of several comeback attempts for onetime silent-screen favorite Alice White, who was still trying to recapture her former glory as late as 1948’s Flamingo Road.