Author Archive: Retro

Destitute woman living at the city dump believes her daughter is the rightful heir of a manufacturing tycoon. After the man’s death, mom must prove she was married to the tycoon so her daughter can claim her inheritance. Dir. Richard Thorpe

After a live orchestra opens the show, master of ceremonies Eddie Garr greets the audience from a theater stage and tells them about his trip to Los Angeles, where out-of-work actors are always “acting” while working in their service-industry jobs. Garr then introduces The Diacoffs, a mother and daughter team who perform bicycle feats. Next, The Johnson Brothers, Duke and Harry, perform a juggling act with pins and hats. After Garr introduces comedian Jackie Coogan, the two provide humorous dialogue; however, Garr steals Jackie’s punch lines. Harmonica players Jimmy and Mildred Mulcay perform next, followed by comedian Al Mardo with a trick pit bull. Next, when magician Ormond McGill performs his East Indian Miracle Show and makes five female baton twirlers appear from behind a trick door in the middle of the stage, Garr tries the trick. BettyJane appears with comedians Boyce and Evans, who are costumed as a horse and perform a comedy and [...]

Dim-witted newspaper editor Joe E. Brown wins a radio contest and invests the money in an invention which uses radio transmissions to control airplanes. Brown encounters smugglers and engages them in a fierce air battle which puts the invention to the test! UNCUT!!

Mine owner forces his employees to work under unsafe conditions and disaster strikes.

Lupino puts up his own money to finance his ward’s newspaper and Gray thinks he’s embezzling money. Dir. Robert North Bradbury.

In this tearjerker, a morally disparate father and son attempt to reconcile their differences. The father is a major construction magnate who has dreamed of his son taking over the lucrative family business. The father’s heart is devastated when the son decides to become a missionary after graduating with an engineering degree and a great rift is formed between them, one that does not heal until a terrible tragedy ensues.

Remarque’s engrossing romantic wartime melodrama. Hopkins, as Ravic, is a German citizen who helped Jewish people escape from the murderous anti-Semitic Fatherland. He spent time in a concentration camp & has a horrible scar as a reminder. He lives without papers in Paris, under a false name, aware always that the minute the gendarmes near him he could be sent away or imprisoned as an illegal alien. He dreams of the day he can revenge himself on the Gestapo officer who sent him away, who tortured his friends & who tortured & raped his only love, Sybil.

Filmmaker G.W. Pabst’s adaptation of Bertoldt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera (Die Dreisgoschenoper) is every bit as good as the stage original, and sometimes even better. Filmed in both German and French versions with different casts (a planned English-language version was abandoned), Threepenny is most readily available today in its German incarnation. Rudolf Forster stars as robber captain MacHeath — aka Mackie Messer, or Mack the Knife — who falls in love with Polly (Carola Neher), daughter of beggar king Peachum (Fritz Rasp). Despising MacHeath, Peachum plots the thief’s downfall with his best friend, corrupt police official Tiger Brown (Reinhold Schunzel). The satirical “happy ending” of the original — MacHeath, en route to the gallows, suddenly and without motivation promoted to knighthood! — is altered somewhat by Pabst and his scenarists to accommodate a swipe against Depression-era bankers. Lotte Lenya, Weill’s wife, brilliantly repeats her stage role as Pirate Jenny. Stylistically, Threepenny Opera is [...]

A deadly feud between sheepherders and cattle ranchers is quelled by romance in this lively western that begins when a cattleman adopts the daughter of the shepherd he is responsible for killing. Both his sons fall for the girl, but only one survives to win her hand.