Author Archive: Retro

Highlights two love stories: a working-class girl’s romance, and the affair of a beautiful society debutante.

Joan Crawford. A puritanical minister attempts to reclaim a “lost woman” on the isle of Pago Pago. Based on play by Somerset Maugham.

Conte, a Mexican boxer, uses his winnings to buy arms in an effort to overthrow the dictator who murdered his family.

A lowly BBC employee pulls a prank at the studio and finds himself transferred to an isolated island where he is to set up a weather station at a lighthouse. As if in a fantasy, a ship carrying a bevy of beautiful models is shipwrecked off the coast and the models wind up on the island. However, when the models begin disappearing, the “back-room boy” investigates and finds a sinister scheme involving spies and Nazi battleships.

A man takes on the identity of his partner to bring the killers of his partner’s father to justice. Dir. William Christy Cabanne.

The film begins in a BBC studio with the 100th edition of “In Town Tonight”. Flotsam and Jetsom open with a “topical number”. Then there is an interview with a distinguished actor, which dissolves into a performance of one of his famous melodramas about a wicked moneylender etc.

The only feature Joe Louis ever made. Louis supports his family with menial jobs until he proves himself a fighter. Dir. Fritz Lang.

Produced by Himan Brown (of radio’s Inner Sanctum) and directed by John Newland (of TV’s One Step Beyond), The Violators stars Arthur O’Connell as a rule-bound probation officer. When O’Connell refuses to loan $500 to his prospective son-in-law Fred Beir, the latter cooks up a swindling scheme to raise the money. This rash act causes O’Connell to realign his thinking insofar as his strained relationship with daughter Nancy Malone is concerned. The plight of the central character is subjugated to the film’s central “juvenile delinquent” storyline, involving Beir and his youthful cohorts. Produced by RKO Radio, The Violators was distributed by Universal-International.