A press agent for a Broadway actress whose career is going downhill attempts to get her some publicity by having her adopt two orphans, without her knowledge.
01-14-1938
1h 13m
THIS
HELLA
Doesn't have an image right now... sorry!has no image... sorry!
Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Richard Thorpe
Production:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Key Crew
Screenplay:
William R. Lipman
Screenplay:
Harry Ruskin
Story:
Herbert Kline
Recording Supervision:
Douglas Shearer
Costume Design:
Adrian
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Gladys George
Gladys George was an American actress.
George went on the stage at the age of 3 and toured the United States, appearing with her parents. She starred on stage in the 1920s, although she had made several films in the early part of that decade. She starred in Personal Appearance, a comedy by Lawrence Riley. This role was reprised by Mae West in the classic film, Go West, Young Man, which West adapted from the play. In 1936 George was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for Valiant Is the Word for Carrie.
George's Broadway credits include The Distant City, Lady in Waiting, and The Betrothal.
Her only other first billed roles were in Madame X (1937) and Love is a Headache.[6] She also appeared in The Roaring Twenties (1939), The Way of All Flesh (1940), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and He Ran All the Way (1951). She played the widow of Miles Archer (Iva Archer) in The Maltese Falcon and Mme. Du Barry in Marie Antoinette.
Her last successful roles were as Lute Mae Sanders in Flamingo Road, her brief appearance as the corrupt nurse Miss Hatch in Detective Story, and Lullaby of Broadway as the alcoholic mother of Doris Day's wholesome character.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Gladys George, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Franchot Tone (February 27, 1905 – September 18, 1968) was an American stage, film, and television actor, star of Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and many other films through the 1960s. In the early 1960s Tone appeared in character roles on TV dramas like Bonanza, Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Franchot Tone, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Ted Healy (born Charles Ernest Lee Nash; October 1, 1896 – December 21, 1937) was an American vaudeville performer, comedian, and actor. Though he is chiefly remembered as the creator of The Three Stooges and the style of slapstick comedy that they later made famous, he had a successful stage and film career of his own and was cited as a formative influence by several later comedy stars.
The circumstances surrounding his death remain a matter of controversy.
From Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule Jr.; September 23, 1920 – April 6, 2014) was an American actor, vaudevillian, comedian, producer, and radio personality. In a career spanning nine decades and continuing until shortly before his death, he appeared in more than 300 films and was among the last surviving stars of the silent film era.
At the height of a career that was marked by declines and comebacks, Rooney performed the role of Andy Hardy in a series of 16 films in the 1930s and 1940s that epitomized American family values. A versatile performer, he became a celebrated character actor later in his career. Laurence Olivier once said he considered Rooney "the best there has ever been". Clarence Brown, who directed him in two of his earliest dramatic roles, National Velvet and The Human Comedy, said he was "the closest thing to a genius I ever worked with".
Rooney first performed in vaudeville as a child and made his film debut at the age of six. At 14, he played Puck in the play and later the 1935 film adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Critic David Thomson hailed his performance as "one of the cinema's most arresting pieces of magic". In 1938, he co-starred in Boys Town. At 19, he was the first teenager to be nominated for an Oscar for his leading role in Babes in Arms, and he was awarded a special Academy Juvenile Award in 1939. At the peak of his career between the ages of 15 and 25, he made 43 films, which made him one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's most consistently successful actors and a favorite of MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer.
Rooney was the top box-office attraction from 1939 to 1941 and one of the best-paid actors of that era, but his career would never again rise to such heights. Drafted into the Army during World War II, he served nearly two years entertaining over two million troops on stage and radio and was awarded a Bronze Star for performing in combat zones. Returning from the war in 1945, he was too old for juvenile roles but too short to be an adult movie star, and was unable to get as many starring roles. Nevertheless, Rooney's popularity was renewed with well-received supporting roles in films such as Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and The Black Stallion (1979). In the early 1980s, he returned to Broadway in Sugar Babies and again became a celebrated star. Rooney made hundreds of appearances on TV, including dramas, variety programs, and talk shows, and won an Emmy in 1982 plus a Golden Globe for his role in Bill (1981).
Ralph Morgan (July 6, 1883 – June 11, 1956) was a Hollywood film, stage and character actor, and the older brother of Frank Morgan (who played the title role in The Wizard of Oz, 1939).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ralph Morgan, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Within the British colony of expatriate actors in Hollywood during the 1930's, Barnett Parker, born 11 September 1886, in Batley, Yorkshire, England, was among the most stereotypical. Harrowgate College-educated, straight-backed, balding and well-intoned, Parker caricatured a multitude of unctuous, stiff-upper-lip butlers, man-servants or waiters, though his performances could, at times, verge on the brink of being camp. When driven to frustration his characters commonly resorted to incoherent twitter or wild gesticulation.
Parker was trained under Marie Tempest and George Alexander in England. He first acted on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre as Wilfred Tavish in Arthur Wing Pinero's "The "Mind the Paint" Girl" in 1912. He was well served with further roles in hit plays like "Hobson's Choice" (1915), "Artists and Models" (1924) and "The Red Robe" (1928). He was at first prone to reject film offers, professing to favor acting on stage. Nonetheless, the celluloid medium eventually beckoned, enticing him to sign with the East Coast-based studio Thanhouser in 1915. He worked in films during the daytime (while treading the boards at night) and quickly landed a plum role as a weak socialite, rescuing Gladys Hulette in Prudence, the Pirate (1916). He was seldom thereafter afforded the opportunity for heroic acts. During the 1930's, he was primarily in demand for small roles as dandified or 'silly ass' Britishers, giving value for money in films like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Personal Property (1937), Live, Love and Learn (1937) and Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937). Looking rather older than his years, Barnett Parker died at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles after multiple heart attacks on August 5, 1941.
Julius Tannen was one of the first vaudeville stand-up comedians. He never used props, sets, costumes or stooges. He just put on his hat, walked on stage, took it off, and did his monologue, then put his hat on again and walked off. This was rather revolutionary in his day and Tannen paved the way for many stand-ups to come, such as Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Frank Faye and Jack Benny. Julius Tannen later had a long career as a character actor in Hollywood, and became an invaluable member of the Preston Sturges stock company, giving memorable performances in such Sturges classics as "Christmas in July," "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," and "Unfaithfully Yours."
Date of Birth 16 May 1880, New York City, New York
Date of Death 3 January 1965 , Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California (stroke)
Sam Ash was born on August 28, 1884 in Campbell County,Kentucky, USA. He was an actor, known for Unmasked (1929), Kiss and Make-Up (1934) and The Heat's On (1943). He died on October 20, 1951 in Hollywood, California, USA.
Marie Blake (born Edith Marie Blossom MacDonald) was an American stage, film and television actress. Her younger sister was singing screen star Jeanette MacDonald.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sidney Bracey (18 December 1877 – 5 August 1942) was an Australian-born American actor. After a stage career in Australia, on Broadway and in Britain, he appeared in 321 films between 1909 and 1942.
Bracey was born in Melbourne, Victoria, with the name Sidney Bracy, later changing the spelling of his last name. He was the son of Welsh tenor Henry Bracy and English actress Clara T. Bracy. His aunt was actress and dancer Lydia Thompson.
He began his stage career in Australia in the 1890s, with J. C. Williamson's comic opera companies. On Broadway, in 1900, he appeared as the tenor lead, Yussuf, in the first American production of The Rose of Persia at Daly's Theatre in New York. He then moved to England, appearing as Moreno in the Edwardian musical comedy hit The Toreador at the Gaiety Theatre, London in June 1901. He next joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company on tour in Britain, playing Terence O'Brian in The Emerald Isle from September 1901 to May 1902. He then left the D'Oyly Carte, continuing his stage career in Britain. He appeared in Amorelle at London's Comedy Theatre in 1904, The Winter's Tale in 1904–05, and A Persian Princess at Queen's Theatre in 1909.
Back on Broadway, in 1912, he played as Sir Guy of Gisborne in a revival of Reginald de Koven's Robin Hood at the New Amsterdam Theatre, followed by Rob Roy at the Liberty Theatre in 1913. He then moved into film acting, making first silent films and then "talkies", until his death in 1942. Early in his film career, he wrote and directed a silent movie called Sid Nee's Finish, (Thanhouser Company (1914), in which he played the title character. In 1916, he changed the spelling of his last name to "Bracey". Silent film authority Diane MacIntyre gave this description of him: "Bracey, a stately looking character man, was in big demand for authority like roles; such as movie directors, bosses and, most of the time, the most respectable and poised butler in all of Hollywood. He was thin, dark haired and had an earnest, yet sober, face that could break into a look of wide-eyed exasperation."
Bracy died in Hollywood, California on 5 August 1942, aged 64.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chester Clute (February 18, 1891 – April 2, 1956) was an American actor familiar in scores of Hollywood films from his debut in 1930. Diminutive, bald-pated with a bristling moustache, he appeared in mostly unbilled roles, consisting usually of one or two lines, in nearly 250 films.
He died of a heart attack aged 65. Born Chester Lamont Clute in Orange, New Jersey. He died in Woodland Hills, California and is buried at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edgar Dearing (May 4, 1893 – August 17, 1974) was an American actor who became heavily type cast as a motorcycle cop in Hollywood films. Born in 1893, Dearing started in silent comedy shorts for Hal Roach, including several with Laurel and Hardy, notably in their classic Two Tars, probably his best ever screen role. He later had supporting roles in several of their features for 20th Century Fox in the 1940s.
Dearing continued in his familiar persona until the early 1950s, when he appeared in many film and television westerns, usually as a sheriff. One of his guest roles was on the syndicated television series, The Range Rider, starring Jock Mahoney and Dick Jones.
He was still active in films and television until he retired in the early 1960s; he died from lung cancer.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sarah Edwards (October 11, 1881 – January 7, 1965) was a Welsh-born American film and stage actress. She often played dowagers or spinsters in numerous Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s, mostly in minor roles. Edwards started her acting career as a stage actress, she was described in 1916 by a newspaper article as a leading actress "very popular with West End theatre-goers".[1] She eventually settled in the United States and appeared in six Broadway plays between 1919 and 1931, primarily in comedies like The Merry Malones by George M. Cohan. Among her first movies was the New York-filmed 1929 musical Glorifying the American Girl (1929), where she portrayed the mercenary mother of leading actress Mary Eaton. She came to Hollywood in the mid-1930s where she appeared in about 190 films until her retirement 1951, mostly in uncredited, small character roles. Sarah Edwards died in Hollywood in 1965, aged 83.
Edwards seemed older than she was and often portrayed a "kindly grandmother, imperious dowager, hardy pioneer wife, ill-tempered teacher and strict governess". She remains perhaps best-known to modern audiences as the imperious mother of Mary Hatch (Donna Reed) in Frank Capra's film classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946) who tries to keep her daughter away from George Bailey. Edwards also played a customer in Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner (1940) with James Stewart. She also appeared in another Christmas classic, The Bishop's Wife (1947) with Cary Grant, and as the wife of a doctor on the train in Hitchcock's thriller Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Edwards sometimes also portrayed more substantial roles, for instance in the Charlie Chan movie Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Howard Charles Hickman (February 9, 1880 – December 31, 1949) was an American actor, director and writer. He was an accomplished stage leading man, who entered films through the auspices of producer Thomas H. Ince. Hickman directed 19 films and co-starred with his wife, actress Bessie Barriscale, in several productions before returning to the theatre.
With the rise of the sound film, Hickman returned to the film business but received mostly small roles, often as an authoritarian figure. Hickman made a brief appearance as plantation owner John Wilkes, father of Ashley Wilkes, in Gone with the Wind (1939). He ended his film career in 1944, after more than 270 films.
Hickman died of myocardial infarction in San Anselmo, California, and is buried at the Mount Tamalpais Cemetery, San Rafael, California.
Leyland Hodgson (5 October 1892 – 16 March 1949), also known as Leland Hodgson, was an English-born American character actor of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in London on 5 October 1892, Hodgson entered the theatre in 1898. In his early 20s Hodgson was part of a touring theatre company, spending his time in the British areas of the Far East, before entering the stage in Australia. In 1930 moved to the United States, where he made his film debut in the Oscar-nominated film, The Case of Sergeant Grischa in 1930.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joseph Henry Kolker (November 13, 1874) [some sources 1870] Berlin, Prussia, Germany – July 15, 1947, Los Angeles, California) was an American stage and film actor and director.
Kolker came to America at the age of five and his family settled in Quincy, Illinois. Kolker, like fellow actors Richard Bennett and Robert Warwick, had a substantial stage career behind him before entering silent films.
On stage he appeared opposite such leading ladies as Edith Wynne Matthison, Bertha Kalich and Ruth Chatterton. Kolker is best remembered for his motion picture appearances and for appearing with Barbara Stanwyck in the ground-breaking Pre-Code film Baby Face (1933) as the elderly CEO of the company whom Stanwyck's character seduces. Another well remembered part is as Mr. Seton, father of Katharine Hepburn and Lew Ayres in the 1938 film Holiday directed by George Cukor.
Kolker entered films as an actor in 1915 and eventually ended up trying his hand at directing. Kolker's best known directorial effort is Disraeli (1921), starring George Arliss which is now a lost film with only one reel remaining. Prints however exist in Europe and Russia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Middlemass (3 September 1883, New Britain, Connecticut – 10 September 1949, Los Angeles, California) was an American playwright and stage actor, and later character actor with over 100 film appearances. usually playing detectives or policemen.
Middlemass graduated from Harvard University in 1909 and initially went into the insurance business, but soon went on the stage, joining the Castle Square Theatre stock company in Boston. He debuted on Broadway in September 1914 in The Bludgeon at the Maxine Elliott Theatre.
His best known play was a one-act melodrama written with Holworthy Hall (real name H. E. Porter, a college roommate) titled The Valiant, which was also made into a film of the same name in 1929, and as The Man Who Wouldn't Talk in 1940. The play became a favorite for amateur and local theater groups, and is still performed today.
Middlemass moved to Los Angeles around 1935, and began appearing in films. He died there in 1949.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cyril Ring (December 5, 1892 – July 17, 1967) was an American film actor. He began his career in silent films in 1921. By the time of his final performance in 1951, he had appeared in over 350 films, almost all in small and/or uncredited parts.
He is probably best remembered today for his role as Harvey Yates, a con artist captured and hand-cuffed to fellow con artist Penelope, played by Kay Francis at the very end of the Marx Brothers first film The Cocoanuts (1929).