Author Archive: Retro

Classic story of Queen who wanted a child and was cursed to sleep for 100 years.

A meek reporter (Jack Haley) happens upon murder, an escaped gangster (Barton MacLane) and a stolen jade chess set.

A happily married couple has been trying to have a baby with no luck. They discover that the husband is sterile. Their family doctor suggests that they think about artificial insemination, which at the time was considered a scandalous choice.

A racketeer’s (Barton MacLane) younger brother (Tom Brown) quits college to join him and ends up killed by a rival gang.

Young man from a well-to-do family takes a job as a servant for a rich art collector. Dir. William Beaudine.

War Crimes tribunal sets a Nazi thug free in the hopes that he will lead them to his superior. Dir. Orson Welles.

Heiress falls in love with an FBI agent, but refuses to help him in his search for gangsters.

An ambitious girl dancer is spotted by a Ziegfeld talent scout. Adapted from a Florenz musical.

John Ford directed this emotional drama, which was a considerable change of pace from the westerns and war pictures for which he was best known. Hannah Jessop (Henrietta Crosman) fears being abandoned by her son Jim (Norman Foster), and she doesn’t approve of his romance with Mary Saunders (Marian Nixon). When Hannah discovers that Jim and Mary plan to wed, she sends her son off to fight in WWI, unaware that Mary is carrying his child. Jim is killed in combat just as Mary is giving birth, and while Hannah is crushed by the loss of her son, she cannot forgive Mary or abide her grandson, Jim, Jr. (Jay Ward). Years later, Hannah is prodded into joining a group of women who lost their sons in the war on a visit to the battlefields of Europe; en route, she meets Mrs. Hatfield (Lucille La Verne), whose warmth and gracious acceptance of her misfortune forces Hannah [...]