J. D. Forbes, head of the almost-bankrupt Four Star Studios in Hollywood contacts band leader Kay Kyser, who puts on a radio and-live theatre program called "The Kollege of Musical Knowledge," to appear in films. When manager Chuck Deems gets the studio offer, he and band members Ginny Simms, Sully Mason, Ish Kabiddle, Harry Babbitt and the others are all fired up at the prospect of going to Hollywood and working in the movies, but band-leader Kay is all against it and says his old grandmother has told him to stay in his own back yard, but he relents. Once there, Stacey Delmore, a Four Star associate producer left in charge of the studio while Forbes is out of town, discovers that the screenplay writers have prepared a script that has Kay Kyser playing a glamorous lover in an exotic European setting.
11-24-1939
1h 34m
THIS
HELLA
Doesn't have an image right now... sorry!has no image... sorry!
Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
David Butler
Production:
RKO Radio Pictures
Key Crew
Screenplay:
William M. Conselman
Screenplay:
James V. Kern
Producer:
David Butler
Director of Photography:
Russell Metty
Story:
David Butler
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Kay Kyser
Bandleader and radio personality memorable for his "Kollege of Musical Knowledge". Often sporting his trademark mortarboard and gown, he appeared with his band in a few World War II-era movies.
Date of Birth 18 June 1905, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, USA
Date of Death 23 July 1985, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA (heart attack)
Adolphe Jean Menjou (February 18, 1890 – October 29, 1963) was an American actor. His career spanned both silent films and talkies. He appeared in such films as Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris, where he played the lead role; Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory with Kirk Douglas; Ernst Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle; The Sheik with Rudolph Valentino; Morocco with Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper; and A Star Is Born with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, and was nominated for an Academy Award for The Front Page in 1931.
[biography (excerpted) from Wikipedia]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
May Robson (19 April 1858 - 20 October 1942) was an actress and playwright. A major stage actress of the late 19th and early 20th century, Robson is best known today for the dozens of 1930s motion pictures she appeared in when she was well into her seventies, usually playing cross old ladies with hearts of gold.
Lucille Désirée Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy. One of the most popular and influential stars in America during her lifetime, with one of Hollywood's longest careers, especially on television, Ball began acting in the 1930s, becoming both a radio actress and B-movie star in the 1940s, and then a television star during the 1950s. She was still making films in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ball received thirteen Emmy Award nominations and four wins. In 1977 Ball was among the first recipients of the Women in Film Crystal Award. She was the recipient of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1979, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center Honors in 1986 and the Governors Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in 1989.
In 1929, Ball landed work as a model and later began her performing career on Broadway using the stage name Dianne Belmont. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures. Ball was labeled as the "Queen of the Bs" (referring to her many roles in B-films). In 1951, Ball was pivotal in the creation of the television series I Love Lucy. The show co-starred her then husband, Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo and Vivian Vance and William Frawley as Ethel and Fred Mertz, the Ricardos' landlords and friends. The show ended in 1957 after 180 episodes. They then changed the format a little - lengthening the time of the show from 30 minutes to 60 minutes (the first one went 75 mins), adding some characters, altering the storyline somewhat, and renaming the show from "I Love Lucy" to "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour", which ran for three seasons (1957–1960) and 13 episodes. Ball went on to star in two more successful television series: The Lucy Show, which ran on CBS from 1962 to 1968 (156 Episodes), and Here's Lucy from 1968 to 1974 (144 episodes). Her last attempt at a television series was a 1986 show called Life with Lucy - which failed miserably after 8 episodes aired although 13 were produced.
Ball met and eloped with Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940. On July 17, 1951, almost 40 years old, Ball gave birth to their first child, Lucie Désirée Arnaz. A year and a half later, Ball gave birth to their second child, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV, known as Desi Arnaz, Jr. Ball and Arnaz divorced on May 4, 1960.
On April 26, 1989, Ball died of a dissecting aortic aneurysm at age 77. At the time of her death she had been married to her second husband, standup comedian and business partner Gary Morton, for twenty-eight years.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Lucille Ball, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
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.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Roscoe Karns (September 7, 1891 – February 6, 1970) was an American actor who appeared in nearly 150 films between 1915 and 1964. He specialized in cynical, wise-cracking (and often tipsy) characters, and his rapid-fire delivery enlivened many comedies and crime thrillers in the 1930s and 1940s. Though he appeared in numerous silent films, such as Wings and Beggars of Life, his career didn't really take off until sound arrived. Arguably his best-known film role was the annoying bus passenger Oscar Shapeley, who tries to pick up Claudette Colbert in the Oscar-winning comedy It Happened One Night (1934), quickly followed by one of his best performances as the boozy press agent Owen O'Malley in Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century. (Six years later, he co-starred as one of the reporters in another Hawks classic, His Girl Friday.) In 1937, Paramount teamed him with Lynne Overman as a pair of laconic private eyes in two B comedy-mysteries, Murder Goes to College and Partners in Crime. From 1950 to 1954, Karns played the title role in the popular DuMont Television Network series Rocky King, Inside Detective. His son, character actor Todd Karns, also appeared in that series.
From 1959 to 1962, Karns was cast as Admiral Walter Shafer in seventy-three of the ninety-five episodes of the CBS military sitcom/drama series, Hennesey, starring Jackie Cooper in the title role of a United States Navy physician, and Abby Dalton as nurse Martha Hale.
His final film was another Hawks comedy, Man's Favorite Sport?, in 1964.
Karns was born in San Bernardino, California, and died in Los Angeles. Description above from the Wikipedia article Roscoe Karns, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Moroni Olsen (June 27, 1889 – November 22, 1954) was an American actor.
Olsen was born in Ogden, Utah, to Mormon parents Edward Arenholt Olsen and Martha Hoverholst, who named him after the Moroni found in the Book of Mormon. Some sources have claimed that Olsen's birth name was John Willard Clawson, but there appears to be no support for this claim.
Olsen studied at Weber Stake Academy, the predecessor of Weber State University. He then went to study at the University of Utah, where one of his teachers was Maud May Babcock. During World War I, he sold war bonds for the United States Navy. He also studied and performed in the Eastern United States around this time.
In 1923, Olsen organized the "Moroni Olsen Players" out of Ogden. They performed at both Ogden's Orpheum Theatre and at various other locations spread from Salt Lake City to Seattle.
After having worked on Broadway, he made his film debut in a 1935 adaptation of The Three Musketeers. He later played a different role in a 1939 comedy version of the story, starring Don Ameche as D'Artagnan and the Ritz Brothers as three dimwitted lackeys who are forced to substitute for the musketeers, who have drunk themselves into a stupor.
His most famous role was the voice of the Slave in The Magic Mirror in Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Olsen also provided the voice of the senior angel in It's a Wonderful Life.
Olsen was an active member of the LDS Church, being a teacher of youth in the Hoolwood Ward. He also was director of the Pilgramage Play of Hollywood for several years.
Virginia Ellen Simms (May 25, 1913 – April 4, 1994) was an American popular singer and film actress. Simms sang with big bands and labeled with Dinah Shore, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Jo Stafford, and others. She also worked as an MGM and Universal film actress and appeared in 11 movies from 1939 to 1951, when she retired.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edward Everett Horton Jr. (March 18, 1886 – September 29, 1970) was an American character actor. He had a long career in film, theater, radio, television, and voice work for animated cartoons. Horton began his stage career in 1906, singing and dancing and playing small parts in vaudeville and in Broadway productions. In 1919, he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he began acting in Hollywood films. His first starring role was in the comedy Too Much Business (1922), but he portrayed the lead role of an idealistic young classical composer in the drama Beggar on Horseback (1925). In the late 1920s, he starred in two-reel silent comedies for Educational Pictures, and made the transition to talking pictures with Educational in 1929. As a stage-trained performer, he found more film work easily, and appeared in some of Warner Bros.' early talkies, including The Terror (1928) and Sonny Boy (1929).
Horton initially used his given name, Edward Horton, professionally. His father persuaded him to adopt his full name professionally, reasoning that other actors might be named Edward Horton, but only one named Edward Everett Horton. Horton soon cultivated his own special variation of the time-honored double take (an actor's reaction to something, followed by a delayed, more extreme reaction). In Horton's version, he would smile ingratiatingly and nod in agreement with what just happened; then, when realization set in, his facial features collapsed entirely into a sober, troubled mask.
Horton starred in many comedy features in the 1930s, usually playing a mousy fellow who put up with domestic or professional problems to a certain point, and then finally asserted himself for a happy ending. He is best known, however, for his work as a character actor in supporting roles. These include The Front Page (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932), Alice in Wonderland (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934, the first of several Astaire/Rogers films in which Horton appeared), Top Hat (1935), Danger - Love at Work (1937), Lost Horizon (1937), Holiday (1938), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Pocketful of Miracles (1961), It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and Sex and the Single Girl (1964). His last role was in the comedy film Cold Turkey (1971), in which his character communicated only through facial expressions.
Gus Glassmire was born on 29 August 1879 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Living Ghost (1942), The Secret Code (1942) and I Give My Love (1934). He died on 23 July 1946 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Sheilah Graham - Television Commentator (uncredited)
Vinton Hayworth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Vinton Hayworth (June 4, 1906 – May 21, 1970) was an Americanactor who began in weaselly and milquetoast roles and aged into dignified character parts.
Career
Born in Washington, D.C., he began acting in his late teens. He was a pioneering radio announcer in the early 1920s, first in Washington, later in New York City, and then in Chicago.
Subsequently, he appeared on numerous radio programs in various roles. He entered movies in 1933, under the stage name Jack Arnold and made appearances in small roles, usually played comically good-natured, sneaky characters. His appearances as Jack Arnold ended in the early 1940s and he did a two year stint on Broadway from 1942-44 before returning to California. He made appearances in film from the late 1950s onward.
Hayworth was also one of the founders of AFRA (later AFTRA), the union representing radio and television artists, of which he was also the president from 1951-54.
Hayworth began appearing on television in the 1950s. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, Dennis the Menace, Petticoat Junction, Hazel, The Munsters, Green Acres (1965) and Dick Tracy (1967). He played Carlos Galindo on Disney's Zorro (1957-1959). His final role was as General Winfield Schaeffer on I Dream of Jeannie between 1969 and 1970. Hayworth replaced Barton MacLane, who had played General Peterson until his death in 1969. Both Hayworth and MacLane died before the final episodes that they appeared in were aired.
Death
Shortly after completing his recurring role of General Schaeffer in I Dream of Jeannie, Hayworth died of a heart attack on May 21, 1970. He died five days before I Dream of Jeannie aired its last first-run episode (May 26, 1970). His remains were cremated.
Personal
Hayworth was married to actress Jean Owens. Hayworth's elder sister was Volga Hayworth, mother of screen star Rita Hayworth.
Hedda Hopper (May 2, 1885 – February 1, 1966) was an American actress and gossip columnist, notorious for feuding with her arch-rival Louella Parsons. She had been a moderately successful actress of stage and screen for years before being offered the chance to write the column Hedda Hopper's Hollywood for the Los Angeles Times in 1938. At the height of her power in the 1940s she commanded a 35 million strong readership. She was well known for her political conservatism, and during the McCarthy era she named suspected communists. Hopper continued to write gossip until the end, her work appearing in many magazines and later on radio.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles Judels was born in Amsterdam on 17 August 1882. He starred on vaudeville in the early 1900s. His Broadway stage debut was in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1912. Judels appeared in more than 130 American comedy and drama movies and was an expert with dialects. That talent served him well throughout his career. His first film was a comedy, Old Dutch, in 1915.
Judels is perhaps best remembered as the cheese store proprietor in Laurel & Hardy's 1938 film Swiss Miss. He also did extensive work as a voice actor in animated films, most notably as the voice of "Stromboli" in Disney's Pinocchio (1940). His final appearance on screen was as a Danite merchant in Samson and Delilah in 1949.
Judels died in San Francisco, California on 14 February 1969.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Horace McMahon (May 17, 1906 – August 17, 1971) was an American actor.
McMahon was born in South Norwalk, Connecticut. He became interested in acting when he was a student at Fordham University School of Law.
In his early career he mostly played thugs or jailbirds, but in 1949 he starred in his most acclaimed role, as Lieutenant Monaghan in the drama play Detective Story and in 1951 he reprised his character in Paramount Pictures' film version Detective Story, alongside Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker.
McMahon also starred on television, in the ABC police series Naked City as Lt. Mike Parker, a gruff, no-nonsense, but warmhearted cop's cop, interested only in justice and doing the job according to the proper rules of the game. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for this role.
In 1964, McMahon played Hank McClure, a police contact in the 13-week CBS drama series, Mr. Broadway, with Craig Stevens.
He also did voice-overs for commercials, including those for Close-Up toothpaste and Armstrong tires.
In 1972, a 375-seat theater named in honor of McMahon was created in the McCrory Building on Washington Street in South Norwalk, Connecticut.
McMahon was married to actress Louise Campbell from 1938 until his death in 1971, when he died from a heart ailment. Their daughter, Martha McMahon, also became an actress.
Forbes Murray was born on November 4, 1884 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada as Murray Forbes Barnard. He was an actor, known for A Chump at Oxford (1940), Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride (1940) and The Spider's Web (1938). He died on November 18, 1982 in Douglas County, Oregon, USA.
Australian born William H. O'Brien began his screen acting career in Australia in 1918, then resumed in Hollywood in 1921. He continued acting in films and television series to 1971.
