An Indiana boy comes into an inheritance and moves to New York City, living it up with his girlfriend until he gets in over his head and someone gets killed.
09-18-1932
1h 3m
THIS
HELLA
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Mervyn LeRoy
Production:
Warner Bros. Pictures
Key Crew
Screenplay:
Lillie Hayward
Screenplay:
Ward Morehouse
Original Music Composer:
Ray Heindorf
Conductor:
Leo F. Forbstein
Theatre Play:
Ward Morehouse
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Joan Blondell
Rose Joan Blondell (August 30, 1906 – December 25, 1979) was an American actress.
After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career. Establishing herself as a sexy wisecracking blonde, she was a pre-Code staple of Warner Brothers and appeared in more than 100 movies and television productions. She was most active in films during the 1930s, and during this time she co-starred with Glenda Farrell in nine films, in which the duo portrayed gold-diggers. Blondell continued acting for the rest of her life, often in small character roles or supporting television roles. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Blue Veil (1951).
Blondell was seen in featured roles in two films, Grease (1978) and the remake of The Champ (1979), released shortly before her death from leukemia.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Joan Blondell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Ned Sparks (born Edward Arthur Sparkman, November 19, 1883 – April 3, 1957) was a Canadian-born character actor of the American stage and screen. Sparks was known for his deadpan expression and deep, gravelly voice.
Born in Guelph, Ontario, Sparks left home at age 16 and attempted to work as a gold prospector on the Klondike Gold Rush. After running out of money, he won a spot as a singer on a traveling musical company's tour. At age 19, he returned to Canada and briefly attended a Toronto seminary. After leaving the seminary, he worked for the railroad and worked in theater in Toronto. In 1907, he left Toronto for New York City to try his hand in the Broadway theatre, where he appeared in his first show in 1912.
While working on Broadway, Sparks developed his trademark deadpan expression while portraying the role of a desk clerk in the play Little Miss Brown. His success on the stage soon caught the attention of MGM's Louis B. Mayer who signed Sparks to a six picture deal. Sparks began appearing in numerous silent films before finally making his "talkie" debut in the 1928 film The Big Noise.
In the 1930s, Sparks became known for portraying dour-faced, sarcastic, cigar-chomping characters. He became so associated with the type that, in 1936, The New York Times reported that Sparks had his face insured for USD$100,000 with Lloyd's of London. The market agreed to pay the sum to any photographer who could capture Sparks smiling (Sparks later admitted that the story was a publicity stunt and he was only insured for $10,000). Sparks was also caricatured in cartoons including the Jack-in-the-Box character in the Disney short Broken Toys (1935), and the jester in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938), a hermit crab in both Tex Avery's Fresh Fish (1939) and Bob Clampett's Goofy Groceries (1941), a chicken in Bob Clampett's Slap Happy Pappy (1940), Friz Freleng's Warner Bros. cartoon Malibu Beach Party (1940), and Tex Avery's Hollywood Steps Out (1940). Sparks also voiced the cartoon characters Heckle and Jeckle from 1947 to 1951.
Sparks appeared in ten stage productions on Broadway and over 80 films. He retired from films in 1947, saying that everyone should retire at 65
Grant Mitchell (born John Grant Mitchell Jr.) was an American stage and screen actor. He is best remembered for his portrayals of fathers, husbands, bank clerks, businessmen, school principals and similar type characters, usually supporting, in films of the 1930s and 1940s.
Mitchell, a Yale post graduate at Harvard Law, gave up his law practice to become an actor, making his stage debut at age 27. He appeared in lead roles on Broadway in such plays as "It Pays to Advertise", "The Champion", "The Whole Town's Talking", and "The Baby Cyclone", the last which was specially written for him by George M. Cohan.
His screen career took off with the advent of sound (years earlier he had appeared in at least two silent films). He appeared primarily in B films, though from time to time enjoyed being a part of A-quality productions such as Dinner at Eight (1933), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).
Grant Mitchell retired from show business in 1948. He died, age 82, in Los Angeles in 1957.
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Inez Courtney (March 12, 1908 – April 5, 1975) was an American actress on the Broadway stage and in films.
Born in New York City, New York, she came from a large Irish-American family. Her father died when she was fifteen so she decided to go onto the stage. A year later she was doing a specialty dance which earned her the nicknames of St Vitis, Mosquito and Lightning.
Courtney's first role as a singer and dancer came in the musical The Wild Rose in 1926. She became well-known among New York theatrical audiences for her work in Good News (1927), a musical comedy about college life. Her other credits include Spring Is Here in 1929 and America's Sweetheart in 1931. In the early 1930s, Miss Courtney left Broadway and went to Hollywood.
Courtney acted in 58 films between 1930 and 1940. She secured her first movie work by asking Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures for his assistance. The red-headed comedian made her screen debut as Cousin Betty in Loose Ankles (1930). The film co-starred Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Loretta Young. Her many movie credits include The Raven (1935), Suzy (1936), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and Turnabout (1940), her last film.
Courtney was married to an Italian nobleman, whereby she acquired the title Marchesa, but did not use it. She died at the Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune, New Jersey in 1975 of undisclosed causes at the age of 67.
Thomas E. Jackson (July 4, 1886 – September 7, 1967) was an American stage and screen actor. His 67-year career spanned eight decades and two centuries, during which time he appeared in over a dozen Broadway plays, produced two others, acted in over a 130 films, as well as numerous television shows. He was most frequently credited as Thomas Jackson and occasionally as Tom Jackson or Tommy Jackson.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Thomas Jackson (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), nicknamed Bogie, was an American film and stage actor. His performances in Classical Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Bogart as the greatest male star of classic American cinema.
Bogart began acting in Broadway shows, beginning his career in motion pictures with Up the River (1930) for Fox and appeared in supporting roles for the next decade, regularly portraying gangsters. He was praised for his work as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), but remained cast secondary to other actors at Warner Bros. who received leading roles. Bogart also received positive reviews for his performance as gangster Hugh "Baby Face" Martin, in Dead End (1937), directed by William Wyler.
His breakthrough from supporting roles to stardom was set in motion with High Sierra (1941) and catapulted in The Maltese Falcon (1941), considered one of the first great noir films. Bogart's private detectives, Sam Spade (in The Maltese Falcon) and Philip Marlowe (in 1946's The Big Sleep), became the models for detectives in other noir films. His most significant romantic lead role was with Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (1942), which earned him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. 44-year-old Bogart and 19-year-old Lauren Bacall fell in love during filming of To Have and Have Not (1944). In 1945, a few months after principal photography for The Big Sleep, their second film together, he divorced his third wife and married Bacall. After their marriage, they played each other's love interest in the mystery thrillers Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948).
Bogart's performances in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and In a Lonely Place (1950) are now considered among his best, although they were not recognized as such when the films were released. He reprised those unsettled, unstable characters as a World War II naval-vessel commander in The Caine Mutiny (1954), which was a critical and commercial hit and earned him another Best Actor nomination. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of a cantankerous river steam launch skipper opposite Katharine Hepburn's missionary in the World War I African adventure The African Queen (1951). Other significant roles in his later years included The Barefoot Contessa (1954) with Ava Gardner and his on-screen competition with William Holden for Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954). A heavy smoker and drinker, Bogart died from esophageal cancer in January 1957.
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Wilfred Lucas (January 30, 1871 – December 13, 1940) was a Canadian-born American stage actor who found success in film as an actor, director, and screenwriter.
Wilfred Lucas made his Broadway debut in 1904, playing in both the The Blue Grass Handicap and The Superstition of Sue. Following his 1906 role in the highly successful play The Chorus Lady, he was recruited to the fledgling Biograph Studios by D. W. Griffith.
At the time, the film business was still looked down upon by many members of the theatrical community. In her 1925 book titled When the Movies Were Young, Griffith's wife, actress Linda Arvidson, told the story of the early days at Biograph Studios. In it, she referred to Lucas as the "first real grand actor, democratic enough to work in Biograph movies." In 1908 Lucas made his motion picture debut in Griffith's The Greaser's Gauntlet, appearing in more than 50 of these short (usually 17 minutes) films over the next two years.
In 1910 while still acting, he wrote the script for Griffith's film Sunshine Sue, which was followed by many more scripts by 1924. Lucas also began directing in 1912 with Griffith on An Outcast Among Outcasts, and directed another 44 films over the next 20 years.
In early 1916 he starred as John Carter in Acquitted, about which Photoplay wrote, "No single performance in the records of active photography has surpassed his visualization of the humble book-keeper in Acquitted." Later in 1916 he appeared in D.W. Griffith's film Intolerance.
Part of the group of Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood, Lucas became friends and sometimes starred with Mary Pickford, Sam De Grasse, and Marie Dressler. Canadian-born director Mack Sennett hired him to both direct and act in a large number of films at his Keystone Studios.
Lucas made the successful transition from silent film to sound. While working in Hollywood, in 1926 he returned to the stage, performing in several Broadway plays. He later appeared as a foil for Laurel and Hardy in their feature films Pardon Us and A Chump at Oxford.
During his long career, Wilfred Lucas appeared in more than 375 films. Although for a time he was cast in leading roles, he became very successful as secondary and minor characters, making a good living in the film industry for more than three decades.
Eric Mayne (April 28, 1865 – February 10, 1947) was an Irish born American actor.
Mayne was born in Dublin and was a star on stage in London in the early 20th century, at the London Lyceum and at Drury Lane. In 1908 and 1910 he played Prince Hildred in The Prince and the Beggar Maid at the Lyceum Theatre in London.
He appeared in the films The New York Peacock, Wife Number Two, Her Hour, Help! Help! Police!, Marooned Hearts, The Conquering Power, Turn to the Right, The Prisoner of Zenda, Pawned, Dr. Jack, My American Wife, The Christian, Suzanna, Prodigal Daughters, Human Wreckage, Her Reputation, Cameo Kirby, The Drums of Jeopardy, Black Oxen, The Yankee Consul, Gerald Cranston's Lady, Her Night of Romance, The Scarlet Honeymoon, Cyclone Cavalier, East Lynne, Hearts and Spangles, Folly of Youth, Money to Burn, Married Alive, The Canyon of Adventure, Rackety Rax, Night of Terror, The Drunkard and Ticket to Paradise, among others.
Mayne died in his sleep in Hollywood, California, on February 10, 1947.
Edward McWade was an American writer and stage and screen actor. He appeared in more than 132 films from 1919 to 1944, mostly in secondary roles. He also wrote 15 stage plays and silent film scenarios.
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Clarence Muse (October 14, 1889 – October 13, 1979) was an American actor, screenwriter, director, composer, and lawyer. He was inducted in the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1973. Muse was the first Negro to "star" in a film. He acted for more than sixty years appearing in more than 150 movies.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Alexander and Mary Muse, he studied at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and received an international law degree in 1911. He was acting in New York by the 1920s, during the Harlem Renaissance with two Harlem theatres, Lincoln Players and Lafayette Players.
Muse moved to Chicago for a while, and then moved to Hollywood and performed in Hearts in Dixie (1929), the first all-black movie. For the next fifty years, he worked regularly in minor and major roles. While with the Lafayette Players, Muse worked under the management of producer Robert Levy on productions that helped black actors to gain prominence and respect. In regards to the Lafayette Theatre's staging of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Muse said the play was relevant to black actors and audiences "because, in a way, it was every black man's story. Black men too have been split creatures inhabiting one body.". Muse appeared as an opera singer, minstrel show performer, vaudeville and Broadway actor; he also wrote songs, plays, and sketches. In 1943, he became the first African American Broadway director with Run Little Chillun.
Muse was also the co-writer of several notable songs. In 1931, with Leon René and Otis René, Muse wrote "When It's Sleepy Time Down South", also known as "Sleepy Time Down South". The song was sung by Nina Mae McKinney in the movie Safe in Hell (1931), and later became a signature song of Louis Armstrong.
He was the major star in Broken Earth (1936), which related the story of a black sharecropper whose son miraculously recovers from fever through the father's fervent prayer. Shot on a farm in the South with nonprofessional actors (except for Muse), the film's early scenes focused in a highly realistic manner on the incredible hardship of black farmers, with plowing scenes. In 1938, Muse co-starred with boxer Joe Louis in Spirit of Youth, the fictional story of a champion boxer which featured an all black cast. Muse and Langston Hughes wrote the script for Way Down South (1939).
Muse performed in Broken Strings (1940), as a concert violinist who opposes the desire of his son to play "swing". From 1955-56, Muse was a regular on the weekly TV version of Casablanca, playing Sam the pianist (a part he was under consideration for in the original Warner Brothers film), and in 1959, he played Peter, the Honey Man, in Porgy and Bess.
He appeared on Disney's TV miniseries The Swamp Fox. Other film credits include Buck and the Preacher (1972), The World's Greatest Athlete (1973) and as Gazenga's Assistant, "Snapper" in Car Wash (1976). His last acting role was in The Black Stallion (1979).
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Joseph Patrick Carrol Naish (January 21, 1896 – January 24, 1973) was an American character actor born in New York City, New York. Naish did many film roles, but they were eclipsed when he found fame in the title role of radio's Life with Luigi (1948–1953), which surpassed Bob Hope in the 1950 ratings.
Naish appeared on stage for several years before he began his film career. He began as a member of Gus Edwards's vaudeville troupe of child performers. In Paris after World War I, Naish formed his own song and dance act. He was traveling the globe from Europe to Egypt to Asia, when his China-bound ship developed engine problems, leaving him in California in 1926.
His uncredited bit role in What Price Glory (1926) launched his career in more than two hundred films. He was twice nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the first for his role in the 1943 film Sahara, then for his performance in the 1945 film A Medal for Benny, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, Motion Picture. He notably played Boris Karloff's hunchback assistant in The House of Frankenstein in 1944.
He was of Irish descent, but never used his dialect skills to play Irishmen, explaining, "When the part of an Irishman comes along, nobody ever thinks of me." Instead, he portrayed myriad other ethnic groups on screen: Latino, Native American, East Asian, Polynesian, Middle Eastern/North African, South Asian, Eastern European, and Mediterranean. Besides his film roles, he often appeared on television later in his career. He spent many of his later years in San Diego studying philosophy and theology.
Naish was married (1929–1973) to actress Gladys Heaney (1907–1987). They had one daughter.
For his contributions to television and film, J. Carrol Naish has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6145 Hollywood Boulevard.
Dennis O'Keefe (March 29, 1908 – August 31, 1968) was an American actor. He was the son of Irish vaudevillians working in the United States. As a small child he joined his parents' act and later wrote skits for the stage.
O'Keefe started in films as an extra in the early 1930s. After a small but impressive role in Saratoga, Clark Gable recommended O'Keefe to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which signed him to a contract in 1937. His film roles were bigger after that, starting with The Bad Man of Brimstone and Burn 'Em Up O'Connor.
O'Keefe left MGM around 1940 but continued to work in mostly lower budget productions. In the 1950s he did some directing, wrote mystery stories and by the mid-1950s found work on television shows such as Justice, The Martha Raye Show, The Ford Show as well as his own series The Dennis O'Keefe Show.
Richard Ewing "Dick" Powell (November 14, 1904 – January 2, 1963) was an American singer, actor, producer, director and studio boss.
Born in Mountain View, the seat of Stone County in northern Arkansas, Powell attended the former Little Rock College in the state capital, before he started his entertainment career as a singer with the Charlie Davis Orchestra, based in the midwest. He recorded a number of records with Davis and on his own, for the Vocalion label in the late 1920s.
Powell moved to Pittsburgh, where he found great local success as the Master of Ceremonies at the Enright Theater and the Stanley Theater. In April 1930, Warner Bros. bought up Brunswick Records which at that time owned Vocalion. Warner Bros. was sufficiently impressed by Powell's singing and stage presence to offer him a film contract in 1932. He made his film debut as a singing bandleader in Blessed Event. He went on to star as a boyish crooner in movie musicals such as 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, Flirtation Walk, and On the Avenue, often appearing opposite Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell.
Powell desperately wanted to expand his range but Warner Bros. wouldn't allow him to do so, although they did (mis)cast him in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) as Lysander. This was to be Powell's only Shakespearean role and one he did not want to play, feeling that he was completely wrong for the part. Finally, reaching his forties and knowing that his young romantic leading man days were behind him he lobbied to play the lead in Double Indemnity. He lost out to Fred MacMurray, another Hollywood nice guy. MacMurray’s success, however, fueled Powell’s resolve to pursue projects with greater range and in 1944, he was cast in the first of a series of films noir, as private detective Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, directed by Edward Dmytryk. The film was a big hit and Powell had successfully reinvented himself as a dramatic actor.
The following year Dmytryk and Powell re-teamed to make Cornered, a gripping, post-WWII thriller that helped define the film noir style. He became a popular "tough guy" lead appearing in movies such as Johnny O'Clock and Cry Danger. But 1948 saw him step out of the brutish type when he starred in Pitfall, a film noir that sees a bored insurance company worker fall for an innocent but dangerous femme fatale, played by Lizabeth Scott. Even when he appeared in lighter fare such as The Reformer and the Redhead and Susan Slept Here (1954) he never sang in his later roles. The latter, his final onscreen appearance in a feature film, did include a dance number with costar Debbie Reynolds.
From 1949-1953, Powell played the lead role in the National Broadcasting Company radio theater production Richard Diamond, Private Detective. His character in the 30-minute weekly was a likable private detective with a quick wit. When Richard Diamond came to television in 1957, the lead role was portrayed by David Janssen.
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Lyle Talbot (born Lisle Henderson, February 8, 1902 – March 2, 1996) was an American actor on stage and screen, known for his career in film from 1931 to 1960 and for his appearances on television in the 1950s and 1960s. He played Ozzie Nelson's friend and neighbor, Joe Randolph, for ten years in the ABC situation comedy The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. He began his movie career under contract with Warner Brothers in the early days of sound film. He appeared in more than 150 films, first as a young matinee idol and later as a character actor and star of many B movies. He was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild and later served on its board. Talbot's long career as an actor is recounted in a book by his youngest daughter, The New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot, entitled The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century (Riverhead Books 2012).
Most notable among Talbot's film work were his appearances in Three on a Match and 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (both 1932). He played a star running back in College Coach (1933) with Pat O'Brien and Dick Powell, romanced opera singer Grace Moore in One Night of Love in 1934, and pursued Mae West in Go West, Young Man (1936). He was a gangster in Ladies They Talk About and Heat Lightning and a doctor kicking a drinking habit in Mandalay. He co-starred with Pat O'Brien in Oil for the Lamps of China (1935).
He appeared opposite Ann Dvorak, Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Astor, Ginger Rogers, Loretta Young and Shirley Temple, as well as sharing the screen with Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and Tyrone Power. Overall, Talbot appeared in some 150 movies.
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Sheila Terry (March 5, 1910 – January 19, 1957) was an American film actress. She was born Kay Clark in Warroad, Minnesota. Terry first studied dramatics at Dickson-Kenwin academy, a school affiliated with London's Royal Academy. Later she moved to New York, where she continued her studies and appeared in a number of plays. While appearing on Broadway in The Little Racketeer, she was spotted by an alert film scout and given a test which led to a contract with Warner Bros.
She played in 1930s for Warner Bros. She appeared with John Wayne in the Western films Haunted Gold (1932); Neath the Arizona Skies and The Lawless Frontier (1934). She appeared with Bette Davis, Louis Calhern and Spencer Tracy in 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932). She appeared with Cary Grant and Sylvia Sidney in Marion Gering's film Madame Butterfly (1932). In 1933 she left Hollywood briefly for the New York stage. She married Major Laurence E. Clark, a wealthy Toronto socialite on August 16, 1928. She divorced him February 16, 1934. In 1937, she married William Magee of San Francisco, and retired from show business. After his death, Terry wanted to return to show business, but couldn't find a job.
In 1947, she said in a newspaper-interview: "I'm going back into show business and I need an act, I can't sing, I can't dance and I can't play the piano. I should be terrific in night clubs". She worked as a press agent for 15 years.
In January 1957, her body was discovered in the third floor apartment, which was both her home and office. A friend and neighbour, Jerry Keating, went to the apartment when he failed to reach her on the telephone. The door was locked, and Terry did not answer the bell. Keating called the police; they broke in and found Terry's body on the bedroom floor, her back leaning against the bed. Five capsules, their contents gone, were on the floor beside her.
Friends told the police that she returned from a trip to Mexico a few days before her death and that she was ill when she came home. It was later discovered that she died broke; she left only a scanty wardrobe. She was buried in Potter's Field in New York City.
