Mystery writer Marian Carstairs is hard at work trying to finish her latest novel. Her three children meanwhile are entertaining themselves by trying to solve a murder in their own neighborhood. In between gathering clues, the kids play matchmaker by trying to fix up their widowed mom with the handsome detective investigating the case.
10-02-1946
1h 30m
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Randolph Scott (January 23, 1898 – March 2, 1987) was an American film actor whose career spanned from 1928 to 1962.
As a leading man for all but the first three years of his cinematic career, Scott appeared in a variety of genres, including social dramas, crime dramas, comedies, musicals (albeit in non-singing and non-dancing roles), adventure tales, war films, and even a few horror and fantasy films. However, his most enduring image is that of the tall-in-the-saddle Western hero. Out of his more than 100 film appearances more than 60 were in Westerns; thus, "of all the major stars whose name was associated with the Western, Scott most closely identified with it."
Scott's more than thirty years as a motion picture actor resulted in his working with many acclaimed screen directors, including Henry King, Rouben Mamoulian, Michael Curtiz, John Cromwell, King Vidor, Alan Dwan, Fritz Lang, and Sam Peckinpah. He also worked on multiple occasions with some noted directors: Henry Hathaway (8 times), Ray Enright (7), Edwin R. Marin (7), Andre DeToth (6), and most notably, his seven film collaborations with Budd Boetticher.
Scott also worked with a diverse array of cinematic leading ladies, from Shirley Temple and Irene Dunne to Mae West and Marlene Dietrich. He also appeared with Gene Tierney, Ann Sheridan, Maureen O'Hara, Nancy Carroll, Donna Reed, Gail Russell, Margaret Sullavan, Virginia Mayo, Bebe Daniels, Carole Lombard, and Joan Bennett.
Tall (6 ft. 2 in.; 188 cm), lanky, and handsome, Scott displayed an easygoing charm and courtly Southern drawl in his early films that helped offset his limitations as an actor, where he was frequently found to be stiff or "lumbering". As he matured, however, Scott's acting improved while his features became burnished and leathery, turning him into the ideal "strong, silent" type of stoic hero. The BFI Companion to the Western noted: "In his earlier Westerns...the Scott persona is debonair, easy-going, graceful, though with the necessary hint of steel. As he matures into his fifties his roles change. Increasingly Scott becomes the man who has seen it all, who has suffered pain, loss, and hardship, and who has now achieved (but at what cost?) a stoic calm proof against vicissitude."
During the early 1950s, Scott was a consistent box-office draw. In the annual Motion Picture Herald Top Ten Polls, he ranked tenth in 1950, eighth in 1951, and again tenth in 1952. Scott also appeared in the Quigley’s Top Ten Money Makers Poll from 1950 to 1953.
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Lynn Bari (born Margaret Schuyler Fisher, December 18, 1913 – November 20, 1989) was a film actress who specialized in playing sultry, statuesque man-killers in roughly 150 20th Century Fox films from the early 1930s through the 1940s.
Bari was one of 14 young women "launched on the trail of film stardom" August 6, 1935, when they each received a six-month contract with 20th Century Fox after spending 18 months in the company's training school. The contracts included a studio option for renewal for as long as seven years.
In most of her early films, Bari had uncredited parts usually playing receptionists or chorus girls. She struggled to find starring roles in films, but accepted any work she could get. Rare leading roles included China Girl (1942), Hello, Frisco, Hello (1943), and The Spiritualist (1948). In B movies, Lynn was usually cast as a villainess, notably Shock and Nocturne (both 1946). An exception was The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944). During WWII, according to a survey taken of GIs, Bari was the second-most popular pinup girl after the much better-known Betty Grable.
Bari's film career fizzled out in the early 1950s as she was approaching her 40th birthday, although she continued to work at a more limited pace over the next two decades, now playing matronly characters rather than temptresses. She portrayed the mother of a suicidal teenager in a 1951 drama, On the Loose, plus a number of supporting parts.
Bari's last film appearance was as the mother of rebellious teenager Patty McCormack in The Young Runaways (1968) and her final TV appearances were in episodes of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. and The FBI.
She quickly took up the rising medium of television during the '50s, which began when she starred in the live television sitcom Detective's Wife, which ran during the summer of 1950, and in Boss Lady
In 1955, Bari appeared in the episode "The Beautiful Miss X" of Rod Cameron's syndicated crime drama City Detective. In 1960, she played female bandit Belle Starr in the debut episode "Perilous Passage" of the NBC western series Overland Trail starring William Bendix and Doug McClure and with fellow guest star Robert J. Wilke as Cole Younger.
From July–September 1952, Bari starred in her own situation comedy, Boss Lady, a summer replacement for NBC's Fireside Theater. She portrayed Gwen F. Allen, the beautiful top executive of a construction firm. Not the least of her troubles in the role was being able to hire a general manager who did not fall in love with her.
Commenting on her "other woman" roles, Bari once said, "I seem to be a woman always with a gun in her purse. I'm terrified of guns. I go from one set to the other shooting people and stealing husbands!"
Robert Dean Stockwell (March 5, 1936 – November 7, 2021) was an American film, television and stage actor with a career spanning over 70 years. As a child actor under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he first came to the public's attention in films including Anchors Aweigh (1945), The Green Years (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), The Boy with Green Hair (1948), and Kim (1950). As a young adult, he had a lead role in the 1957 Broadway and 1959 screen adaptation of Compulsion; and in 1962 he played Edmund Tyrone in the film version of Long Day's Journey into Night, for which he won two Best Actor Awards at the Cannes Film Festival. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his starring role in the 1960 film version of D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers.
He appeared in supporting roles in such films as Dune (1984), Paris, Texas (1984), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Blue Velvet (1986), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), and Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988). He received further critical acclaim for his performance in Married to the Mob (1988), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He subsequently had roles in The Player (1992), Air Force One (1997), The Rainmaker (1997) and The Manchurian Candidate (2004).
His television roles include Rear Admiral Albert "Al" Calavicci in Quantum Leap (1989–1993), Navy Secretary Edward Sheffield on JAG (2002–2004), and Brother Cavil on Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009). Following his roles on Quantum Leap and Battlestar Galactica, he appeared at numerous science fiction conventions. He retired from acting in 2015 following health issues and focused his later life on sculpture and other visual art.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Dean Stockwell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
A promising blue-to-gray-eyed, blonde-haired child actress of the post-WWII years who had more talent than she was given credit for, little Connie Marshall was born on April 28, 1933 in New York City. Her parents were not of show business stock, her father being a lieutenant with the Allied Military Government in Europe. She was a direct descent of this country's first Chief Justice, John Marshall, and was also a descendant of Geradus Beekamn, who was the first colonial governor of New York.
A strikingly sensitive-looking tyke with sad, beady eyes, she broke into the competitive side of show business quite young (age 5) as a pig-tailed model for commercial newspapers and magazines. Frequently used by New York photographers, artists and caricaturists, she began her acting career a year later quite by happenstance. A failed screen test taken in Hollywood was, by luck, seen by 20th Century-Fox director Lloyd Bacon who just happened to be casting the role of little Mary Osborne in the warm family comedy-drama Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944). The film went on to star the future husband and wife team of Anne Baxter and John Hodiak, who first met and fell in love while shooting this picture. Director Bacon stopped looking when he came across Connie.
Educated at the Gardner School in New York, where she appeared in a few plays, and the Fox Studio School, Connie also studied ballet and ballroom dancing. She made a strong impression in her very first film, with a natural forlorn ease as one of the Osborne children that also included up-and-coming Bobby Driscoll. With Connie's second picture Sentimental Journey (1946), she was handed her best weepy-eyed showcase. Fatally ill actress Maureen O'Hara adopts an orphan girl (Connie) so her Broadway producer husband John Payne will have someone to care for after she passes away. The treacly plot follows the difficult adjustment between the grief-stricken two who are left behind, but eventually guided together by O'Hara's spirit. The pathetic storyline was a bit much but Connie held her own beautifully and received rave reviews.
Connie continued to show precocious promise in the post-war years in both sentimental drama and lightweight comedy with Dragonwyck (1946) as the daughter of Vincent Price; Home, Sweet Homicide (1946) as an amateur young sleuth who tries to solve a neighborhood murder aided by brother and sister Peggy Ann Garner and Dean Stockwell; Mother Wore Tights (1947) as the daughter of song-and-dance team Betty Grable and Dan Dailey; and the noted comedy classic Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) as one of the Blandings offspring of Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. These subsequent film roles, however, didn't match in importance when compared to her first two films.
Connie was to work with the silver screen's top movie stars over the years, including Gene Tierney and Joan Crawford, but once she outgrew her precociousness, her career began to fade away. She attempted TV with the short-lived series "Doc Corkle" (1952) and appeared as a feisty teen co-star opposite Gene Autry in his film oater Saginaw Trail (1953), but by 1954, after an un-billed part in Rogue Cop (1954), Connie was literally and figuratively out of the picture.
James Gleason was born in New York City to William Gleason and Mina Crolius, who were both in the theatre. He was married to Lucile Gleason (born Lucile Webster), and had a son, Russell Gleason. As a young man James fought in the Spanish-American War. After the war he joined the stock company at the Liberty Theater in Oakland, California, which his parents were running. James and his wife then moved to Portland, Oregon, where they played in stock at the Baker Theater. For several years afterward they toured in road shows until James enlisted in the army during World War I. When he returned he appeared on the stage in "The Five Million." He then turned to writing, including "Is Zat So", which he produced for the NY stage. He also wrote and acted in "The Fall Guy" and "The Shannons on Broadway." Next he wrote The Broadway Melody (1929) for MGM. He collaborated, in 1930, on The Swellhead (1930), Dumbbells in Ermine (1930), What a Widow! (1930), Rain or Shine (1930) and His First Command (1929). He and his wife were then contracted to Pathe, Lucille to act, and James (or Jimmie as he was known) as a writer. Probably his most famous acting role was as Max Corkle, the manager of Joe Pendleton who was wrongly plucked from this life into the next, in the hit fantasy Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941).
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Marietta Canty (1905-1986) was an African American actress, community activist and recipient of numerous humanist awards.
As an actress, Marietta Canty first appeared on Broadway in 1933. She also appeared in 40 films between 1940 and 1955, mostly in supporting roles and bit parts. Two of her first roles were in the films The Lady is Waiting (1942) and The Spoilers (1942), both with Marlene Dietrich in the leading role. Canty is perhaps best known as Delilah, Spencer Tracy's housemaid, in the comedy Father of the Bride (1950) and in its sequel Father's Little Dividend (1951). Canty retired from film acting in 1955, her last role in Hollywood was Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean, where she had a memorable part as Sal Mineo's family maid.
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Olin Ross Howland (February 10, 1886 – September 20, 1959) was an American film and theatre actor.
Howland was born in Denver, Colorado, to Joby A. Howland, one of the youngest enlisted participants in the Civil War, and Mary C. Bunting. His older sister was the famous stage actress Jobyna Howland.
From 1909 to 1927, Howland appeared on Broadway in musicals, occasionally performing in silent films. The musicals include Leave It to Jane (1917), Two Little Girls in Blue (1921) and Wildflower (1923). He was in the film Janice Meredith (1924) with Marion Davies. With the advent of sound films, his theatre background proved an asset, and he concentrated mostly on films thereafter, appearing in nearly two hundred movies between 1918 and 1958.
Howland often played eccentric and rural roles in Hollywood. His parts were often small and uncredited, and he never got a leading role. He was a personal favorite of David O. Selznick, who cast him in his movies Nothing Sacred (1937) as a strange luggage man, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938, as the teacher Mr. Dobbins) and Gone with the Wind (1939) as a carpetbagger businessman. He also played in numerous westerns from Republic Pictures, including the John Wayne films In Old California (1942) and Angel and the Badman (1947). As a young man, Howland learned to fly at the Wright Flying School and soloed on a Wright Model B. This lent special sentiment in his scenes with James Stewart in the film The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), as Stewart was also a pilot in real life. The Spirit of St. Louis and Them (1954),where he played a drunken old man, and The Blob (1958) were his last films.
He also played in telelevision shows during the 1950s. In 1958 and 1959, he was cast as Charley Perkins in five episodes of ABC's sitcom The Real McCoys, starring Walter Brennan.
Howland never married and had no children. He worked until his death in Hollywood, California, at the age of 73.