A maker of illusions for magicians protects an ingenue likely to be murdered.
08-10-1939
1h 11m
THIS
HELLA
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Tod Browning
Production:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Key Crew
Screenplay:
James Edward Grant
Screenplay:
Harry Ruskin
Unit Manager:
Jerry Bresler
Sound Recordist:
Douglas Shearer
Producer:
J.J. Cohn
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Robert Young
Robert George Young (February 22, 1907 – July 21, 1998) was an American television, film, and radio actor, best known for his leading roles as Jim Anderson, the father of Father Knows Best (NBC and then CBS) and as physician Marcus Welby in Marcus Welby, M.D. (ABC).
Young appeared in over 100 films between 1931 and 1952. After appearing on stage, Young was signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and, in spite of having a "tier B" status, he co-starred with some of the studio's most illustrious actresses, such as Katharine Hepburn, Margaret Sullavan, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Helen Hayes, Luise Rainer, Hedy Lamarr, and Helen Twelvetrees. Yet, most of his assignments consisted of B movies, also known as "programmers," which required two to three weeks of shooting (considered very brief shooting periods at the time). Actors who were relegated to such a hectic schedule appeared, as Young did, in some six to eight movies per year.
As an MGM contract player, Young was resigned to the fate of most of his colleagues—to accept any film assigned to him or risk being placed on suspension—and many actors on suspension were prohibited from earning a salary from any endeavor at all (even those unrelated to the film industry). In 1936, MGM summarily loaned Young to Gaumont British for two films; the first was directed by Alfred Hitchcock with the other co-starring Jessie Matthews. While there he surmised that his employers intended to terminate his contract, but he was mistaken.
He unexpectedly received one of his most rewarding roles late in his MGM career, in H.M. Pulham, Esq., featuring one of Hedy Lamarr's most effective performances. He once remarked that he was assigned only those roles which Robert Montgomery and other A-list actors had rejected.
After his contract ended at MGM, Young starred in light comedies as well as in trenchant dramas for studios such as 20th Century Fox, United Artists, and RKO Radio Pictures. From 1943, Young assayed more challenging roles in films like Claudia, The Enchanted Cottage, They Won't Believe Me, The Second Woman, and Crossfire. His portrayal of unsympathetic characters in several of these later films—which was seldom the case in his MGM pictures—was applauded by numerous reviewers.
Young's career began an incremental and imperceptible decline, despite a propitious beginning as a freelance actor without the nurturing of a major studio. He continued starring as a leading man in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but only in mediocre films, then he subsequently disappeared from the silver screen - only to reappear several years later on a much smaller one.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Young (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Florence Rice (February 14, 1907 – February 23, 1974) was an American film actress.
Florence Davenport Rice was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Grantland Rice and Katherine Hollis, who became an actress during the early 1930s and after several Broadway roles, eventually made her way to Hollywood. Blonde, pretty, and wholesome, Rice was cast as the reliable girlfriend in several MGM films, and during the 1930s, MGM gradually provided her with more substantial roles, occasionally in prestige productions.
Rice never became a major figure in films, but achieved popularity in a number of screen pairings with Robert Young. Her most widely seen performances were in Double Wedding (1937), in which she was billed third in the cast credits behind William Powell and Myrna Loy, Sweethearts (1938) with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, and The Marx Brothers film At The Circus (1939).
During the 1940s the quality of her roles steadily decreased and in 1947 she retired.
She married three times, with her third marriage lasting until her death in Honolulu, Hawaii from lung cancer.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Florence Rice, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Lee Bowman (December 28, 1914 – December 25, 1979) was an American film and television actor. According to one obituary, "his roles ranged from romantic lead to worldly, wisecracking lout in his most famous years".
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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.
Frederick Worlock was a British-American actor. He is known for his work in various films during the 1940s and 1950s, and as the voice of Horace in One Hundred and One Dalmatians. On stage, he made his début in 1906 in Henry V in Bristol and acted in four productions in London before moving to the United States in the 1920s, where he appeared in Broadway productions between 1923 and 1954. From 1938 to 1966, Worlock appeared as a supporting actor in films including Man Hunt, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, How Green Was My Valley, The Imperfect Lady, Singapore, The Lone Wolf in London, Love from a Stranger, Ruthless, Joan of Arc, Spartacus, One Hundred and One Dalmatians (voice-over), and Spinout. He appeared in a number of the Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone in the 1940s. The diginfied-looking British actor often portrayed "professorial roles, some benign, some villainous". Worlock died from cerebral ischemia in 1973, at the age of 86.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Carl William Demarest (February 27, 1892 – December 27, 1983) was an American character actor, known for playing Uncle Charley in My Three Sons. A veteran of World War I, Demarest became a prolific film and television actor, appearing in over 140 films, beginning in 1926 and ending in the 1970s. He frequently played crusty but good-hearted roles. Demarest started in show business working in vaudeville, appearing with his wife Estelle Collette (real name Esther Zychlin) as "Demarest and Colette", then moved on to Broadway. Demarest worked regularly with director Preston Sturges, becoming part of a "stock" troupe of actors that Sturges repeatedly cast in his films. He appeared in ten films written by Sturges, eight of which were under his direction, including The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Demarest was such a familiar figure at the Paramount studio that just his name was used in the movie Sunset Boulevard as a potential star for William Holden's unsold baseball screenplay.
Demarest appeared with veteran western film star Roscoe Ates in the 1958 episode "And the Desert Shall Blossom" of CBS's Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In the story line, Ates and Demarest appear as old timers living in the Nevada desert. The local sheriff, played by Ben Johnson, appears with an eviction notice, but he agrees to let the pair stay on their property if they can make a dead rosebush bloom within the next month.
In 1959 Demarest was named the lead actor of the 18-week sitcom Love and Marriage on NBC in the 1959–1960 season. Demarest played William Harris, the owner of a failing music company who refuses to handle popular rock and roll music, which presumably might save the firm from bankruptcy. Joining Demarest on the series were Jeanne Bal, Murray Hamilton and Stubby Kaye.
Demarest appeared as Police Chief Aloysius of the Santa Rosita Police Department in the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), as well as on a memorable episode ("What's in the Box") of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone as a hen-pecked husband driven to the murder of his wife.
His most famous television role was in the ABC and then CBS sitcom My Three Sons from 1965 to 1972, playing Uncle Charley O'Casey. He replaced William Frawley, whose failing health had made procuring insurance impossible. Demarest had worked with Fred MacMurray previously in the films Hands Across the Table (1935), Pardon My Past (1945), On Our Merry Way (1948), and The Far Horizons (1955) and was a personal friend of MacMurray. Also, he worked with Irene Dunne in Never a Dull Moment (1950).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eddie Acuff (June 3, 1908 – December 17, 1956) was an American actor. His best-known recurring role is that of Mr. Beasley, the postman, in the Blondie movie series that starred Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake.
Acuff was born Edward DeKalb Acuff in Caruthersville, Missouri. His maternal uncle was a performer on 19th century showboats along the Mississippi River.
Before beginning his Hollywood film career in 1934, Acuff performed in Broadway theatre in the early-1930s. His Broadway credits include Jayhawker (1934), Yellow Jack (1934), John Brown (1934), Growing Pains (1933), Heat Lightning (1933), and The Dark Hours (1932).
He was seen in three film serials — as Curly in Jungle Girl, as Red Kelly, in Daredevils of the West, and as Spud Warner in Chick Carter Detective.
On December 17, 1956, Acuff died of a heart attack in Hollywood, California. He is buried in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.
William Bailey was born on September 26, 1886 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA as Gordon Reineck. He was an actor and director, known for On Dangerous Ground (1917), The Penitent (1912) and Hilda Wakes (1913). He was married to Alethia Hamilton Fadden, Mary Florence Cannon and Polly Vann. He died on November 8, 1962 in Hollywood, California, USA.
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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
Edward Earle (16 July 1882 – 15 December 1972) was a Canadian-American stage, film and television actor. In a career which lasted from the early 1900s to 1966, he appeared in almost 400 films between 1914 and 1956. He was born in Toronto and died in Los Angeles, aged 90.
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Armand Kali(s)z (October 23, 1882 or 1883 - February 1, 1941) was a French born American film actor of the silent film and early sound period of the 1930s. Born in Paris, or in Warsaw, Poland Kaliz was a headliner in vaudeville.
He arrived in the USA in 1907. His Broadway debut came in The Hoyden (1907). His other plays on Broadway included The Kiss Burglar (1918) and Spice of 1922 (1922).
He appeared in films such as The Temptress (1926) with actresses such as Greta Garbo, making some 82 film appearances between 1917 and 1941. After 1933, the majority of his small roles in films went uncredited.
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.
Richard Loo (October 1, 1903 – November 20, 1983) was an American film actor who was one of the most familiar Asian character actors in American films of the 1930s and 1940s. He appeared in more than 120 films between 1931 and 1982.
Chinese by ancestry and Hawaiian by birth, Loo spent his youth in Hawaii, then moved to California as a teenager. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and began a career in business.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent economic depression forced Loo to start over. He became involved with amateur, then professional, theater companies and in 1931 made his first film. Like most Asian actors in non-Asian countries, he played primarily small, stereotypical roles, though he rose quickly to familiarity, if not fame, in a number of films.
His stern features led him to be a favorite movie villain, and the outbreak of World War II gave him greater prominence in roles as vicious Japanese soldiers in such successful pictures as The Purple Heart (1944) and God Is My Co-Pilot (1945). Loo was most often typecast as the Japanese enemy pilot, spy or interrogator during World War II. In the film The Purple Heart he plays a Japanese Imperial Army general who commits suicide because he cannot break down the American prisoners. According to his daughter, Beverly Jane Loo, he didn't mind being typecast as a villain in these movies as he felt very patriotic about playing those parts.
In 1944 he appeared as a Chinese army lieutenant opposite Gregory Peck in The Keys of the Kingdom. He had a rare heroic role as a war-weary Japanese-American soldier in Samuel Fuller's Korean War classic The Steel Helmet (1951), but he spent much of the latter part of his career performing stock roles in films and minor television roles.
In 1974 he appeared as the Thai billionaire tycoon Hai Fat in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, opposite Roger Moore and Christopher Lee.
Loo was also a teacher of Shaolin monks in three episodes of the 1972–1975 hit TV series Kung Fu and made a further three appearances as a different character. His last acting appearance was in The Incredible Hulk TV series in 1981, but he continued to act in Toyota commercials into 1982.
Loo died of a cerebral hemorrhage on November 20, 1983, age 80.
[biography (excerpted) from Wikipedia]
Alphonse Martell (born March 27, 1890 in Strasbourg, German Empire, died March 18, 1976 in San Diego, California, United States) was a screen and television actor.
Martell performed many French roles in American cinema and directed a film, Gigolettes of Paris.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Alphonse Martell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Frank McLure was born on July 14, 1893 in Mobile, Alabama. He was an actor, known for Citizen Kane (1941), Notorious (1946) and His Girl Friday (1940). He died on January 23, 1960 in Los Angeles, California.
Claire McDowell (2 November 1877 – 23 October 1966) was an American actress. She appeared in 360 films between 1908 and 1945.
Still somewhat of a youthful beauty when she started in early silent films, McDowell appeared in numerous films, eventually graduating to playing character and mother types. She can be seen to good advantage in Douglas Fairbanks's 1920 The Mark of Zorro. McDowell appeared in two of the biggest films of the silent era, The Big Parade (1925) and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), both in which she played mothers.
She was married to silent screen character actor Charles Hill Mailes from 1906 to his 1937 death. The couple appeared in numerous silent films together, including The Mark of Zorro. They had two sons, Robert Mailes and Eugene Mailes.
Claire McDowell died, aged 88, in Hollywood, California.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Matthew O. McHugh (January 22, 1894 – February 22, 1971) was an American film actor who appeared in more than 200 films between 1931 and 1955, primarily in small cameo parts.
McHugh came from a theatrical family. His parents ran a stock theatre company and, as a young child, he performed on stage. His brother, Frank, who went on to become part of the Warner Bros. stock company in the 1930s and 1940s, and sister Kitty performed an act with him by the time he was fourteen years old, but the family quit the stage around 1930. His brother Ed became an agent in New York.
Matt made his Broadway debut in Elmer Rice's Street Scene in 1929, along with his brother Ed, and also appeared in Swing Your Lady in 1936.
Despite his actual origins, McHugh usually performed his roles with a Brooklyn accent, and was often cast as characters explicitly from Brooklyn. In Star Spangled Rhythm (1941), his one scene is a protracted monologue during the climactic "Old Glory" sequence, in which McHugh plays a character who literally embodies the spirit of Brooklyn.
Harold Miller (born Harold Edwin Kammermeyer) was an American actor, his screen, then eventually also television, career spanning the years 1919-1964. After the 1920s, Miller appeared only in uncredited bit and background parts.
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).
Lawrence Wells Steers (February 14, 1888 – February 15, 1951) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 550 films between 1917 and 1951. He was born in Indiana, and died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Larry Steers, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Bert Stevens (born Malcolm Byron Stevens) was an American screen and television actor. He was the older brother of star actress Barbara Stanwyck whose birth name was Ruby Catherine Stevens.
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William Tannen (November 17, 1911 – December 2, 1976) was an American actor originally from New York City, who was best known for his role of Deputy Hal Norton in fifty-six episodes from 1956 to 1958 of the ABC/Desilu western television series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, with Hugh O'Brian as Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp.
Tannen was also cast as Gyp Clements in the 1955 episode "The Buntline Special" of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. Beginning on September 11, 1956, in the second season of the series, with the setting moved from Wichita to Dodge City, Kansas, Tannen filled the Hal Norton role. His earliest episodes were "Fight or Run", "The Double Life of Dora Hand" and "Clay Allison", the latter two based on historical figures, the saloon singer and actor Dora Hand and the gunfighter Clay Allison. Some of his appearances were uncredited. His last credited role was "Doc Holliday Rewrites History" (May 6, 1958), with Myron Healey as the frontier gunfighter and dentist Doc Holliday. His last uncredited roles aired thereafter in May and June 1958, "Dig a Grave for Ben Thompson", based on the historical figure Ben Thompson played by Denver Pyle, "Frame-up", and "My Husband".
He was cast as Ike Clanton, not on The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, but in the 1964 episode "After the OK Corral" of the syndicated western anthology series, Death Valley Days. Jim Davis portrayed Wyatt Earp in this particular episode. Tannen appeared twice, one role uncredited in Davis' earlier syndicated western series, Stories of the Century, including the role of Dutch Charlie in "Milt Sharp", the story of the stagecoach robber Milt Sharp.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edward Alyn Warren (June 2, 1874 – January 22, 1940) was an American actor. He appeared in 99 films between 1915 and 1940. In some early silent films he was credited as Fred Warren or E. A. Warren. He was born in Richmond, Virginia and died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.