A former government agent in France, who has failed at an assignment and been disavowed, is deported back to the USA, where he can only find work at a low-rent detective agency. He soon gets involved with a woman with ties to a crooked gambling club owner, who is a client of his agency.
06-10-1933
1h 6m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Michael Curtiz
Production:
Warner Bros. Pictures
Key Crew
Screenplay:
Rian James
Director of Photography:
Tony Gaudio
Conductor:
Leo F. Forbstein
Assistant Director:
Gordon Hollingshead
Costume Design:
Orry-Kelly
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
William Powell
William Horatio Powell (July 29, 1892 – March 5, 1984) was an American actor. A major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the Thin Man series based on the Nick and Nora Charles characters created by Dashiell Hammett. Powell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times: for The Thin Man (1934), My Man Godfrey (1936), and Life with Father (1947). After high school, he left home for New York and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at the age of 18. In 1912, Powell graduated from the AADA, and worked in some vaudeville and stock companies. After several successful experiences on the Broadway stage, he began his Hollywood career in 1922, playing a small role as an evil henchman of Professor Moriarty in a production of Sherlock Holmes with John Barrymore. His most memorable role in silent movies was as a bitter film director opposite Emil Jannings' Academy Award-winning performance as a fallen general in The Last Command (1928). This success, along with Powell's pleasant speaking voice, led to his first starring role as amateur detective Philo Vance in the "talkie" The Canary Murder Case (1929). Powell's most famous role was that of Nick Charles in six Thin Man films, beginning with The Thin Man in 1934, based upon Dashiell Hammett's novel. The role provided a perfect opportunity for Powell, with his resonant speaking voice, to showcase his sophisticated charm and witty sense of humor, and he received his first Academy Award nomination for The Thin Man. Myrna Loy played his wife, Nora, in each of the Thin Man films. Their on-screen partnership, beginning alongside Clark Gable in 1934 with Manhattan Melodrama, was one of Hollywood's most prolific, and they appeared in 14 films together. Loy and Powell starred in the Best Picture of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, with Powell in the title role and Loy as Ziegfeld's wife Billie Burke. That same year, he also received his second Academy Award nomination, for the comedy My Man Godfrey. In 1935, he starred with Jean Harlow in Reckless. A serious romance developed between them, and in 1936, they were reunited on screen and with Loy and Spencer Tracy in the screwball comedy Libeled Lady. However, Harlow surprisingly and quickly became ill, and died from uremia at the age of 26 in June 1937 before they could marry. His distress over her death, as well as a cancer diagnosis of his own, caused him to accept fewer acting roles. Powell's career slowed considerably in the 1940s, although he received his third Academy Award nomination in 1947 for his role as the cantankerous Clarence Day, Sr., in Life with Father. His last film was 1955's Mister Roberts. Powell died in Palm Springs, California, on March 5, 1984, at the age of 91 from heart failure, nearly 30 years after his retirement. He is buried at the Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California, near his third wife Diana Lewis, and his only child, his son William David Powell.
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Margaret Lindsay (born Margaret Kies; September 19, 1910 – May 9, 1981) was an American film actress. Her time as a Warner Bros. contract player during the 1930s was particularly productive. She was noted for her supporting work in successful films of the 1930s and 1940s such as Jezebel (1938) and Scarlet Street (1945) and her leading roles in lower-budgeted B movie films such as the Ellery Queen series at Columbia in the early 1940s. Critics regard her portrayal of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hepzibah Pyncheon in the 1940 film adaptation of The House of the Seven Gables as Lindsay's standout career role.
Arthur Hohl (May 21, 1889 – March 10, 1964) was an American stage and motion-picture character actor. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and began appearing in films in the early 1920s. He played a great number of villainous or mildly larcenous roles, although his screen roles usually were small, but he also played a few sympathetic characters.
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Ruth Donnelly (May 17, 1896 – November 17, 1982) was an American stage and film actress. Her father was the mayor of Trenton, New Jersey.
She began her stage career at the age of 17 in 1913, in The Quaker Girl. Her Broadway debut brought her to the attention of George M. Cohan, who proceeded to cast her in numerous comic-relief roles in such musicals as Going Up (1917). Though she made her first film appearance in 1913, her Hollywood career began in earnest in 1931 and lasted until 1957. In her films she often played the wife of Guy Kibbee (Footlight Parade, Wonder Bar, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). Among her roles was the part of Sister Michael in The Bells of St. Mary's, starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Irving Bacon (September 6, 1893 – February 5, 1965) was an American character actor who appeared in almost 500 films.
Bacon played on the stage for a number of years before getting into films in 1920. He was sometimes cast in films directed by Lloyd Bacon (incorrectly named as his brother in some sources) such as The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938). He often played comical "average guys".
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, he played the weary postman Mr. Crumb in Columbia Pictures' Blondie film series. One of his bigger roles was as a similarly flustered postman in the thriller Cause for Alarm! in 1952.
During the 1950s, Bacon worked steadily in a number of television sitcoms, most notably I Love Lucy, where he appeared in two episodes, one which cast him as Ethel Mertz's father.
Heinie Conklin (born Charles John Conklin; July 16, 1880 – July 30, 1959) was an American actor and comedian whose career began in the silent film era.
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Edward Frank Dunn (March 31, 1896 – May 5, 1951) was an American actor best known for his roles in comedy films, supporting many comedians such as Charley Chase (with whom he co-directed several short films), Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, and Laurel and Hardy. Dunn also appeared as Detective Grimes in several of The Falcon series of films in the 1940s which starred George Sanders and later on Sanders' brother Tom Conway, and in many small and uncredited parts in many feature films until his death in 1951 aged 55.
Charles Lane (born Charles Gerstle Levison; January 26, 1905 – July 9, 2007) was an American character actor and centenarian whose career spanned 77 years. Lane gave his last performance at the age of 101 as a narrator in 2006. Lane appeared in many Frank Capra films, including You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Riding High (1950). He was a favored supporting actor of Lucille Ball, who often used him as a no-nonsense authority figure and comedic foe of her scatterbrained TV character on her TV series I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour and The Lucy Show. His first film of more than 250 was as a hotel clerk in Smart Money (1931) starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
From Wikipedia
Georges Renavent (April 23, 1894 – January 2, 1969) was an American actor in film, Broadway plays and operator of American Grand Guignol. He was born in Paris, France.
His first American film appearance was in The Seven Sisters (1915). Fourteen years later he played an impressive starring role as the Kinkajou in the musical spectacular Rio Rita (1929). Renavent also starred in East of Borneo (1931), a film that went on to achieve latter-day fame when avant-garde filmmaker Joseph Cornell spliced together all of the leading lady's close-ups and came up with a surrealistic exercise titled Rose Hobart (1936). Renavent's final film, Mara Maru, was made in 1952.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Charles Cahill Wilson (July 29, 1894 – January 7, 1948) was an American screen and stage actor. He appeared in numerous films during the Golden Age of Hollywood from the late 1920s to late 1940s. Born in New York City in 1894, the white-haired, burly actor was often typecast as an earnest police officer, newspaper editor or principal. He appeared in over 250 films between 1928 and 1948, mostly playing small supporting roles with a few sentences. Charles Wilson began his acting career at the theatre, including roles in six Broadway plays between 1918 and 1931. In 1928, he directed the Hollywood comedy Lucky Boy (1928), where he also made his film debut. According to the Internet Movie Database, Lucky Boy was Wilson's only film as a director.
His most notable role was probably Clark Gable's "wonderfully aggravated" newspaper boss in Frank Capra's comedy It Happened One Night, which won five Academy Awards in 1935. He was also cast in small roles in other Capra movies such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Shortly before his death, Wilson appeared as the boss of the Three Stooges in the two-reel comedy Crime on Their Hands (1948).
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Wild Bill Elliott (October 16, 1904 – November 26, 1965) was an American film actor. He specialized in playing the rugged heroes of B Westerns, particularly the Red Ryder series of films. By 1925, he was getting occasional extra work in films. He took classes at the Pasadena Playhouse and appeared in a few stage roles there. By 1927, he had made his first Western, The Arizona Wildcat, playing his first featured role. Several co-starring roles followed, and he renamed himself Gordon Elliott. But as the studios made the transition to sound films, he slipped back into roles as an extra and bit parts, as in Broadway Scandals, in 1929. For the next eight years, he appeared in over a hundred films for various studios, but almost always in unbilled parts as an extra.
Elliott began to be noticed in some minor B Westerns, enough so that Columbia Pictures offered him the title role in a serial, The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1938). The serial was so successful, and Elliott so personable, that Columbia promoted him to starring in his own series of Western features, replacing Columbia's number-two cowboy star Robert "Tex" Allen. Henceforth Gordon Elliott would be known as Bill Elliott. Within two years, he was among the Motion Picture Herald's Top Ten Western Stars, where he would remain for the next 15 years.
In 1943, Elliott signed with Republic Pictures, which cast him in a series of Westerns alongside George "Gabby" Hayes. The first of these, Calling Wild Bill Elliott, gave Elliott the name by which he would be best known and by which he would be billed almost exclusively for the rest of his career.
Following several films in which both actor and character shared the name Wild Bill Elliott, he took the role for which he would be best remembered, that of Red Ryder in a series of sixteen movies about the famous comic strip cowboy and his young Indian companion, Little Beaver (played in Elliott's films by Bobby Blake). Elliott played the role for only two years but would forever be associated with it. Elliott's trademark was a pair of six guns worn butt-forward in their holsters.
Elliott's career thrived during and after the Red Ryder films, and he continued making B Westerns into the early 1950s. He also had his own radio show during the late 1940s. His final contract as a Western star was with Monogram Pictures, where budgets declined as the B Western lost its audience to television. When Monogram became Allied Artists Pictures Corporation in 1953, it phased out its Western productions, and Elliott finished out his contract playing a homicide detective in a series of five modern police dramas, his first non-Westerns since 1938.
Elliott retired from films (except for a couple of TV Western pilots which were not picked up). He worked for a time as a spokesman for Viceroy cigarettes and hosted a local TV program in Las Vegas, Nevada, which featured many of his Western films.
Theresa Harris (December 31, 1906 [some sources indicate 1909] – October 8, 1985) was an American film and television actress, singer and dancer.
In 1929 Harris traveled to Hollywood, where she embarked on an acting career. She made her film debut in Thunderbolt, singing the song "Daddy Won't You Please Come Home". As she entered the 1930s she found herself playing maids to fictitious Southern belles, socialites and female molls. These parts were sometimes uncredited. She also floated around studios doing bit parts, usually at Warner Bros. or MGM. Aside from maids, she specialized in playing blues singers, waitresses, tribal women, prostitutes, and hatcheck girls.
Harris had a featured role as a friend of Jean Harlow in MGM's Hold Your Man (1932). In 1933 she appeared as Chico in the Warner Bros. pre-Code production of Baby Face, starring Barbara Stanwyck. That same year Harris starred in a substantial role opposite Ginger Rogers in Professional Sweetheart. As Rogers' character's maid, Harris' character subs for Rogers' character as a singer on the radio. Despite the fact that Harris' character was a major point for the story's plot development, she was uncredited for the role.
Throughout the 1930s, Harris played many uncredited parts in films such as Horse Feathers (1932), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Mary Stevens, M.D. (1933) and Morning Glory (1933). She also played Bette Davis's maid Zette in the film Jezebel (1938). In 1937 she appeared in the race film Bargain With Bullets opposite Ralph Cooper for Million Dollar Productions. While doing promotion for the film, Harris spoke about her frustration over the difficulty African American actors faced in the film industry, stating, "I never had the chance to rise about the role of maid in Hollywood movies. My color was against me anyway you looked at it. The fact that I was not "hot" stamped me either as uppity or relegated me to the eternal role of stooge or servant....My ambition is to be an actress. Hollywood had no parts for me."
Harris continued to lobby for better parts but found few opportunities within Hollywood. In the 1939 movie Tell No Tales she was credited for her part as Ruby, the wife of a murdered man. Harris played an emotional scene with Melvin Douglas at the funeral. She appears in a small but vivid role as Kathie Moffat's ex-maid Eunice Leonard in Jacques Tourneur 1947 Out of the Past.
In addition to films, Harris performed in many radio programs. She was often paired with Eddie Rochester Anderson, who portrayed her on-screen boyfriend. She also appeared in several prominent roles for RKO Pictures as she was a favorite of RKO producer Val Lewton who routinely cast African American actors in non-stereotypical roles. In 1942 Lewton cast Harris as a sarcastic waitress in Cat People, followed by roles in I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Phantom Lady (1944), and Strange Illusion (1945).
During the 1950s Harris appeared several times on television shows. She made her last film appearance in an uncredited role in The Gift of Love in 1958.
Harris later married a doctor and retired from acting, living comfortably after having carefully invested the money she made during her career in the movies.
On October 8, 1985, Harris (then known as Theresa Robinson) died in Inglewood, California.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rolfe Sedan (January 20, 1896 – September 15, 1982) was an American character actor, best known for appearing in bit parts, often uncredited, usually portraying clerks, train conductors, postmen, cooks, waiters etc. He began his career in show business as a nightclub and vaudeville performer and began acting in East Coast theatre. Sedan debuted on Broadway in 1916 and appeared in his first motion picture for Metro Pictures Corporation in 1921.
He became a prolific character actor and is probably best remembered by movie buffs as the hotel manager in Ninotchka (1939) starring Greta Garbo. Around the same time, he appeared in an uncredited role as the Emerald City's Balloon Ascensionist in The Wizard of Oz (1939). He returned to Broadway, performing in several different shows during the first half of the 1940s and in the 1950s began a sequence of guest roles in television series such as The Jack Benny Show. His most frequent TV work came from recurring roles as put-upon mail carriers (25 episodes as Mr. Beasley on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show; 4 episodes as Mr. Briggs on The Addams Family). He was also seen as the train conductor in the film Young Frankenstein (1974). Rolfe Sedan remained active throughout a career that spanned more than six decades.
Joan Standing (21 June 1903 – 3 February 1979) was an English actress best known for playing Nurse Briggs in the 1931 horror film Dracula. She appeared in more than 60 films from 1919 to 1940.
