A young woman inherits a newspaper whose editor refuses to hire lady reporters.
09-17-1937
1h 14m
THIS
HELLA
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
George B. Seitz
Production:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Key Crew
Screenplay:
Herman J. Mankiewicz
Art Direction:
Cedric Gibbons
Music:
David Snell
Assistant Art Director:
Edwin B. Willis
Sound Director:
Douglas Shearer
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Edna May Oliver
Edna May Oliver (November 9, 1883 – November 9, 1942) was an American stage and film actress. During the 1930s, she was one of the best-known character actresses in American films, often playing tart-tongued spinsters.
She was born Edna May Nutter in Malden, Massachusetts. The daughter of Ida May and Charles Edward Nutter, Edna was a descendant of the 6th American president John Quincy Adams. Miss Oliver took an early interest in the stage, and she would quit school at the age of 14 to pursue her ambitions in the theater.
Despite abandoning traditional schooling, Edna continued to study the performing arts, including speech and piano. One of her first jobs was as pianist with an all female orchestra which toured America around the turn of the century. By 1917 she had achieved success on Broadway in the hit play "Oh, Boy". By 1923 she had appeared in her first film. Edna May Oliver seems to have been born to play the classics of American and British literature. Some of her most memorable film roles were in adaptations of works of Charles Dickens. Although some have described her as plain or "horse faced", Edna May Oliver's comedic talents lent a beautiful droll warmth to her characters. She was usually called upon to play less glamorous roles such as a spinsters, but she played them with such soul, wit, and depth that to this day she remains one of the best loved of Hollywood's character actresses. A fine example of her comedic talent can be found in Laugh and Get Rich (1931). Here we find her playing a role almost autobiographical in nature, that of a proud woman with Boston roots who has married "down". As the plot unwinds, she is invited to a society gala despite her modest circumstances. At the gala she becomes tipsy. With a frolicsome air Edna May seems to use the role to gently mock her real self. Her slightly drunk character seizes upon a bit of flattery, and alluding to her old New England family, proudly proclaims to each who will listen, "I am a Cranston. That explains everything!". In real life, Edna May Oliver was a Nutter, and perhaps that explains everything.
Edna May Oliver married stock broker David Pratt in 1928, but the marriage ended in divorce five years later. In 1939 she received an Oscar nomination for her supporting role as Widow McKlennar in the picture Drums Along the Mohawk (1939). That was to be one of her last films. Miss Oliver was struck ill in August of 1942. Although she seemed to recover briefly, she was re-admitted to Los Angeles's Cedars of Lebanon hospital in October Her dear friend actress Virginia Hammond flew out from New York to stay by her bedside. Edna May Oliver died on her 59th birthday, 9th November 1942. Virginia Hammond was with her and said, "She died without ever being aware of the gravity of her condition. She just went peacefully asleep."
Maureen Paula O'Sullivan was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, on May 17, 1911. The future mother of Mia Farrow was a schooldays classmate of Vivien Leigh at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton in London. Even as a schoolgirl, Maureen desired an acting career; she studied hard and read widely. When the opportunity to be an actress came along, it almost dropped in her lap. The director Frank Borzage was in Dublin filming “Song o’ My Heart” (1930) when Maureen, then 18, met him. Borzage suggested a screen test, which she took. The results were more than favorable, as she won the part of Eileen O’Brien. The part was a substantial one, so much so that Maureen went on to Hollywood to complete the filming. Once in sunny California, Maureen wasted no time landing roles in other films such as “Just Imagine” (1930), “Princess and the Plumber” (1930), and “So This Is London” (1930). Maureen was on a roll that her contemporaries could only have wished for when they were coming up through the ranks. In 1932, Maureen was teamed up with Olympic medal winner Johnny Weissmuller for the first time in “Tarzan the Ape Man” (1932). Five other Tarzan films followed, the last being “Tarzan’s New York Adventure” (1942). The Tarzan epics rank as one of the most memorable series ever made. Most people agree that those movies would not have been successful had it not been for the fine acting talents, not to mention beauty, of Maureen O’Sullivan. But she was more than Jane Parker in the Tarzan films; she had great roles and played beautifully in films such as “The Flame Within” (1935), “David Copperfield” (1935), and “Anna Karenina” (1935). She turned in yet another fine performance in “Pride and Prejudice” (1940). After the 1940s, Maureen made far fewer films, not because she lost popularity but by choice. It isn’t always easy to walk away from a lucrative career, but she did because she wanted to devote more time to her husband, John Farrow, an Australian writer, and their seven children. The couple were married from 1936 until his death in 1963. She did not, however, retire completely; Maureen still found time to make an occasional appearance in films or TV or on the stage. Later movie-goers remember her as Elizabeth Alvorg in the hit film “Peggy Sue Got Married” (1986). Her final silver screen appearance was in “The River Pirates” (1988). Some TV movies followed, but only until 1996. She maintained homes in New Hampshire and Arizona, and it was in Scottsdale that Maureen died on June 23, 1998, of a heart attack. She was 87 years old.
Walter Davis Pidgeon (September 23, 1897 – September 25, 1984) was a Canadian actor who lived most of his adult life in the United States. He starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs. Miniver, The Bad and the Beautiful, Forbidden Planet, Advise and Consent and Funny Girl.
Rita Ann Johnson (August 13, 1913 – October 31, 1965) was an American actress.
Early in her career, Johnson was busy in radio.
Johnson began acting on Broadway in 1935 and started her film career two years later. She played a murderer in Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and a doomed wife in the RKO film noir They Won't Believe Me (1947).
In an incident that was never fully explained, Johnson suffered a head trauma on September 6, 1948 that required brain surgery. Unsubstantiated rumors promulgated by gossip columnists such as Walter Winchell suggested she might have been abused by a boyfriend, but the only explanation she offered was that a large, industrial-grade hair dryer at her apartment had fallen on her. She was in a coma for two weeks and it was reported it took her a year to recover. Her left side was paralyzed temporarily and for a while she couldn't walk. The injury put a virtual halt to her film career. Her screen time in movies after that was limited due to her reduced mobility and powers of concentration. Johnson suffered from alcoholism from the time of her injuries until her death of a brain hemorrhage at age 52.
From Wikipedia.
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Paul Harvey (September 10, 1882 – December 15, 1955) was an American actor who appeared in at least 177 films. He is not to be confused with Paul Harvey the broadcaster.
Primarily a character actor, Harvey began his career on stage and in silent films. He appeared in the Broadway and original film versions of The Awful Truth, then had supporting roles in many Hollywood films, often portraying dignified executives or authority figures.
He was a vacationing businessman whose car is commandeered by fugitive killer Humphrey Bogart in the 1935 crime drama The Petrified Forest and the minister who marries Spencer Tracy's daughter Elizabeth Taylor in the 1950 comedy Father of the Bride and its sequel. In the thriller Side Street, Harvey played a married man forced to pay $30,000 in blackmail money after having an affair.
Besides his numerous films, Harvey appeared in 1950s television series such as I Love Lucy, December Bride, My Little Margie, Father Knows Best and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show before his death from a coronary thrombosis in 1955.
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Walter Kingsford (born Walter Pearce, 20 September 1882 – 7 February 1958) was a British stage, film and television actor. Kingsford began his acting career on the London stage. He also had a long Broadway career, appearing in plays from the 1912 original American production of George Bernard Shaw's Fanny's First Play to 1944's Song of Norway.
In the early 1920s, Kingford was active with the Henry Jewett Players.
Kingsford moved to Hollywood, California, for a prolific film career in supporting parts. On screen, he specialised in portraying authority figures such as noblemen, heads of state, doctors, police inspectors and lawyers. He is best known for his recurring role as the snobbish hospital head Dr. P. Walter Carew in the popular Dr. Kildare (and Dr. Gillespie) film series.
Kingsford had numerous television appearances in the 1950s. They included TV Reader's Digest, Command Performance and Science Fiction Theatre.
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Guinn Terrell Williams Jr. (April 26, 1899 – June 6, 1962) was an American actor who appeared in memorable westerns such as Dodge City (1939), Santa Fe Trail (1940), and The Comancheros (1961). He was nicknamed "Big Boy" as he was 6' 2" and had a muscular build from years of working on ranches and playing semi-pro and professional baseball.
Williams made his screen debut in the 1919 comedy, Almost A Husband, with Will Rogers and Cullen Landis, and was featured in a large supporting role ten years later in Frank Borzage's Lucky Star with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. Throughout the 1920s Williams would have a string of successful films, mostly westerns.
He then appeared in The Great Meadow alongside Johnny Mack Brown, which was Brown's breakout film. Throughout the 1930s, Williams acted in supporting roles, mostly in westerns, sports, or outdoor dramas. Although not the lead actor in any of them, he was always employed, and was successful as a supporting actor. He often played alongside Hoot Gibson and Harry Carey during that period. In 1941, he became one of many actors cast by Universal Pictures in their large film series, Riders of Death Valley. From the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, Williams appeared in supporting roles in a number of A-pictures, sometimes with high billing, such as You Only Live Once, and in Columbia's first Technicolour film The Desperadoes (1943).
Williams was frequently teamed with Alan Hale, Sr. as sidekicks to Errol Flynn in several of his pictures. In 1960, he was cast in the epic film The Alamo and in Home from the Hill with Robert Mitchum. His last role was opposite his close friend John Wayne and Stuart Whitman in The Comancheros.
Leonid Kinskey (April 18, 1903 – September 8, 1998) was a Russian-born movie and television actor who enjoyed a long career. Kinskey is best known for his role as Sascha in the film Casablanca (1942).
Kinskey was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He fled the Russian Revolution and acted on stage in Europe and South America before arriving in New York City in 1921. He joined the road production of Al Jolson's musical Wonder Bar, before making his first film appearance, in the 1932 Trouble in Paradise. His looks and accent helped him land supporting roles in numerous movies, including Duck Soup and Nothing Sacred, and on television, well into the 1960s. It is said that he got perhaps his best-known role, Sascha in Casablanca, because he was a drinking buddy of star Humphrey Bogart. Kinskey was in the pilot episode for Hogan's Heroes, but turned down a regular role in the series because he thought the subject matter was being taken too lightly.
Kinskey was married three times. His second wife was actress Iphigenie Castiglioni, to whom he remained married until her death in 1963. He was married to Tina York from 1983 to his death. He died of complications of a stroke in Fountain Hills, Arizona, at the age of 95.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Leonid Kinskey, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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John Farrell MacDonald (June 6, 1875 – August 2, 1952) was an American character actor and director. He played supporting roles and occasional leads. He appeared in over 325 films over a 41-year career from 1911 to 1951, and directed forty-four silent films from 1912 to 1917.
MacDonald was the principal director of L. Frank Baum's Oz Film Manufacturing Company, and he can frequently be seen in the films of Frank Capra, Preston Sturges and, especially, John Ford.
Early in his career, MacDonald was a singer in minstrel shows, and he toured the United States extensively for two years with stage productions. He made his first silent film in 1911, a dramatic short entitled The Scarlett Letter made by Carl Laemmle's Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP), the forerunner of Universal Pictures,. He continued to act in numerous films each year from that time on, and by 1912 he was directing them as well. The first film he directed was The Worth of a Man, another dramatic short, again for IMP, and he was to direct 43 more films until his last in 1917, Over the Fence, which he co-directed with Harold Lloyd. MacDonald had crossed paths with Lloyd several years earlier, when Lloyd was an extra and MacDonald had given him much-needed work – and he did the same with Hal Roach, both of whom appearing in small roles in The Patchwork Girl of Oz, which MacDonald directed in 1914. When Roach set up his own studio, with Lloyd as his principal attraction, he hired MacDonald to direct.
By 1918, MacDonald, who was to become one of the most beloved character men in Hollywood, had given up directing and was acting full-time, predominantly in Westerns and Irish comedies. He first worked under director John Ford in 1919's A Fight for Love. In all, Ford would use MacDonald on twenty-five films between 1919 and 1950.
With a voice that matched his personality, MacDonald made the transition to sound films easily, with no noticeable drop in his acting output – if anything, it went up. In 1931, for instance, MacDonald appeared in 14 films – among them the first version of The Maltese Falcon, in which he played "Detective Tom Polhaus" – and in 22 of them in 1932. Although he played laborers, policemen, military men and priests, among many other characters, his roles were usually a cut above a "bit part". His characters usually had names, and he was most often credited for his performances. A highlight of this period was his performance as the hobo "Mr. Tramp" in Our Little Girl with Shirley Temple (1935).
In the 1940s, MacDonald was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors, appearing in seven films written and directed by Sturges. MacDonald appeared in Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, The Great Moment, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, Unfaithfully Yours and The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend, Sturges' last American film. Earlier, MacDonald had also appeared in The Power and the Glory, which Sturges wrote. His work on Sturges' films was generally uncredited. He was notable in 1946 in John Ford's My Darling Clementine in which he played "Mac," the bartender in the town saloon. MacDonald also had uncredited roles in It's a Wonderful Life and Here Comes The Groom.
Don Barclay (born Donn Van Tassel Barclay, December 26, 1892 – October 16, 1975) was an American actor, artist and caricaturist whose many roles stretched the period from the Keystone Cops in 1915 to Mary Poppins in 1964 and whose many paintings and caricatures of celebrities filled establishments worldwide and are archived in the Library of Congress.
Jack Baxley was born on 4 July 1884 in Dallas, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for The Kid from Gower Gulch (1950), Song of the Sierras (1946) and Gallant Lady (1942). He was previously married to Kay Deslys. He died on 10 December 1950 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Moyer MacClaren Bupp (January 10, 1928 – November 1, 2007) professionally known as Sonny Bupp, was an American child film actor and businessman. His most notable film was Citizen Kane (1941), in which he appears as Junior, Charles Foster Kane III, the eight-year-old son of Charles Foster Kane and his first wife, Emily. Bupp was the last surviving credited member of the Citizen Kane cast at his death.
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Ralph Everly Bushman (May 1, 1903 – April 16, 1978), was an American actor. He appeared in fifty-five films between 1920 and 1943. In his early film career, he was often credited as Francis X. Bushman Jr.
The son of notable silent film star Francis X. Bushman and Josephine Fladung Duval, he was born in Baltimore, Maryland and died in Los Angeles, California at age 74.
He was a maternal uncle of Pat Conway (1931–1981), star of the ABC western television series Tombstone Territory (1957–1960). He and his wife Beatrice were married for 54 years at the time of his death.
Leonard Carey (25 February 1887 – 11 September 1977) was an English character actor who very often played butlers in Hollywood films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. He was also active in television during the 1950s. He is perhaps best known for his role as the beach hermit, Ben, in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940).
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George Davis (7 November 1889 – 19 April 1965) was a Dutch-born American actor. He appeared in more than 260 films between 1916 and 1963. He was born in Amsterdam and died in Los Angeles, California.
American character actor whose career lasted nearly half a century. James Wilson Flavin Jr. was the son of a hotel waiter of Canadian-English extraction and a mother, Katherine, whose father was an Irish immigrant. (Thus Flavin, well-known in Hollywood as an "Irish" type, was only one-quarter Irish.) Flavin was born and raised in Portland, Maine (a fact that may have enrichened his later working relationship with director John Ford, also a Portland native). He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, but (contrary to some sources) did not graduate. Instead he dropped out and returned to Portland where he drove a taxi. Then as now, summer stock companies flocked to Maine each year, and in 1929 he was asked to fill in for an actor. He did well with the part and the company manager offered him $150 per week to go with the troupe back to New York. Flavin accepted and by the spring of 1930 was living in a rooming house at 108 W. 87th Street in Manhattan. Flavin didn't manage to crack Broadway at this time (his Broadway debut would not occur for another thirty-nine years, in the 1971 revival of "The Front Page," in which Flavin played Murphy and briefly took over the lead role of Walter Burns from star Robert Ryan). He worked his way across the country in stock productions and tours, arriving in Los Angeles around 1932. He quickly made the transition to movies, landing the lead in his very first film, a Universal serial, The Airmail Mystery (1932). He also landed his leading lady, marrying the serial's female star Lucile Browne that same year. However, the serial marked virtually the last time that Flavin would play the lead in a film. Thereafter, he was restricted almost exclusively to supporting characters, many of them without so much as a name. He specialized in uniformed cops and hard-bitten detectives, but played chauffeurs, cabbies, and even a 16th-century palace guard with aplomb. Flavin appeared in nearly four hundred films between 1932 and 1971, and in almost a hundred television episodes before his final appearance, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U-2 Spy Incident (1976). Flavin died of a heart ailment at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on April 23, 1976. His widow Lucile died seventeen days later. They were survived by their son, William James Flavin, subsequently a professor at the United States Army War College. James and Lucile Brown Flavin were buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
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Jack Norton (September 2, 1882 – October 15, 1958) was an American stage and film character actor who appeared in 184 films between 1934 and 1948, often playing drunks, although in real life he was a teetotaler.
Career
Jack Norton was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 2, 1882.
In his early career he had a vaudeville comedy act with his wife Lillian Healy. Norton made his Broadway debut in 1925 in that year's edition of Earl Carroll's Vanities, and also appeared in Florida Girl, which was produced and staged by Carroll.
Norton's first film work was for a musical short, School for Romance, in 1934, in which a young Betty Grable appeared, but his scenes were deleted. His work survived to reach the screen in his next assignment, The Super Snooper, a comedy short, and in his third film, his first full-length movie, Finishing School, which featured Frances Dee, Billie Burke, Ginger Rogers and Bruce Cabot, Norton played a drunk, setting the pattern for many of his future performances. Although he also played stone sober characters as well, he was best known for his inebriated characterizations, and he improved his work by following genuine drunks around, picking up behavioral tips.
Norton worked continuously and consistently, sometimes appearing in as many as 20 films in one year, although many of his performances went uncredited. One of the few times he was credited as part of the main cast was in 1945 for the film A Guy, a Gal and a Pal In the 1940s, Norton was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors, appearing in five films written and directed by Sturges. He is perhaps best known to modern audiences as A. Pismo Clam, the drunken film director whom W.C. Fields is hired to replace in The Bank Dick (1940).
In 1947, Norton retired from films due to illness, his last appearance being in Alias a Gentlemen, which was released in 1948, although he did make some live television appearances in the early 1950s.
Jack Norton's final appearance would have been in the 1956 episode of The Honeymooners entitled "Unconventional Behavior", but age and infirmity had so overwhelmed him that he was literally written out of the show as it was being filmed, though Jackie Gleason saw to it that Norton was paid fully for the performance he was ready, willing, but unable to give.
Norton died on October 15, 1958 in Saranac Lake, New York at the age of 76. He is buried in Sacred Hearts Cemetery in Southampton, New York on Long Island.
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Renie Riano (August 7, 1899 – July 3, 1971) was an English-born American actress who, with the exception of the Jiggs and Maggie comedies, had minor roles in 1940s-1950s films.
She was the daughter of Irene Riano (1871–1940), the daughter of Joseph Rice, a Philadelphia theatre owner, who, in the early 1890s, married vaudeville acrobat Robert Riano (b. 1867, Yonkers, New York – 1909, New York City). Irene Riano was a stage actress, the sole female member of vaudeville's popular Four Rianos acrobatic act, eccentric acrobat act which toured the world in vaudeville, variety and music halls, and the mother of actress Renie Riano. Irene was the daughter of Joseph Rice, a Philadelphia theatre owner. In the early 1890s, she married vaudeville acrobat Robert Riano (b. 1867, Yonkers, New York – 1909, New York City) who organised the famous "Four Rianos" eccentric acrobat act which toured the world in vaudeville, variety and music halls.
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Harry Semels (November 20, 1887 – March 2, 1946) was an American film actor. He appeared in over 315 film between 1917 and 1946. Semels appeared in his first film in 1917. He began to achieve fame after arriving at Columbia Pictures, appearing in several Three Stooges shorts including Disorder in the Court, Wee Wee Monsieur and Three Little Sew and Sews. He also appeared in feature films like Road to Morocco, The Princess and the Pirate and The Kid from Brooklyn. A versatile character actor, Semels often appeared as villains, waiters, soldiers, lawyers, et al.