Police sergeants Johnson and McManus take on Los Angeles confidence tricksters. Con man Tony Wells, lining up rich widow Jessica Royce as his latest mark, sets up a false paranormal society with other charlatans to convince the credulous Jessica that her late son is speaking to her through their sham seances. When the plan leads to murder, Johnson and McManus must bring the group down before they kill again.
09-01-1950
1h 7m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Herbert I. Leeds
Production:
RKO Radio Pictures
Key Crew
Screenplay:
George Callahan
Producer:
Lewis J. Rachmil
Production Manager:
Walter Daniels
Music Director:
C. Bakaleinikoff
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Robert Sterling
Robert Sterling, born William Sterling Hart (November 13, 1917 – May 30, 2006) was an American film and television actor.
The son of baseball player and umpire Bill Hart, he was born in New Castle, Pennsylvania. He attended the University of Pittsburgh and worked as a clothing salesman before pursuing an acting career.
After signing with Columbia Pictures in 1939, he changed his name to Robert Sterling to avoid confusion with silent western star William S. Hart. In 1941, Sterling went to MGM. He worked steadily as a supporting player for several years. After serving in World War II as an Army Air Force flight instructor, he returned to Hollywood, but by the end of the decade, his film career had faltered. He did, however, play the non-singing role of Steve Baker, opposite Ava Gardner as Julie, in the hit MGM 1951 film version of Show Boat.
Sterling later revived his acting career on the small screen with numerous appearances on Television.
Ricardo Cortez (September 19, 1900 – April 28, 1977) was an American film actor who began his career during the silent film era.
Born Jacob Krantz in New York City into a Jewish family, he worked on Wall Street in a broker's office and as a boxer before his looks got him into the film business. Hollywood executives changed his name to Cortez to appeal to film-goers as a "Latin lover" to compete with such highly popular actors of the era as Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro and Antonio Moreno. When rumour began to circulate that Cortez was not actually Spanish, the studios tried to pass him off as a different type of Latin, French, before they finally admitted his (supposedly) Viennese origin.
Cortez appeared in over 100 films. He played opposite Joan Crawford in Montana Moon in 1930, played Sam Spade in the original The Maltese Falcon in 1931, co-starred with Charles Farrell and Bette Davis in The Big Shakedown and Wonder Bar (with Al Jolson and Dolores del Río) in 1934. He also played Perry Mason in the 1936 film The Case of the Black Cat. Although he began his career playing romantic leads with actresses like Greta Garbo, when sound cinema arrived, his powerful delivery and New York accent made him an ideal villain and conman, and he switched from sex symbol to character actor.
Cortez was married to silent film actress Alma Rubens until her death of pneumonia in 1931.
When he retired from the film business, Cortez went to work as a stockbroker for Solomon Brothers on New York's Wall Street. He died in New York City in 1977 and was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.
He was the older brother of noted cinematographer Stanley Cortez (born Stanislaus Krantz).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Douglas Fowley (born Daniel Vincent Fowley; May 30, 1911 – May 21, 1998) was an American movie and television actor in more than 240 films and dozens of television programs. Fowley is probably best remembered for his role as the frustrated movie director Roscoe Dexter in Singin' in the Rain (1952), and for his regular supporting role as Doc Holliday in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elisabeth Risdon (born Daisy Cartwright Risdon; 26 April 1887 – 20 December 1958) was an English film actress. She appeared in over 140 films between 1913 and 1952. A beauty in her youth, she usually played in society parts. In later years in films she switched to playing character parts.
Born in London, England, Risdon graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts in 1918 with high honours. She attracted the attention of George Bernard Shaw and was cast as the lead in his biggest plays. Besides her performances for Shaw, she was leading lady for actors including George Arliss, Otis Skinner, and William Faversham. She was also under contract to the Theatre Guild for many years.
In later years, she taught drama to patients at a veterans administration hospital near her Brentwood home. She was married to the prolific silent film director George Loane Tucker who left her a widow in 1921. She later married actor Brandon Evans, who died in April 1958. She was the great-aunt of actress Wendy Barrie-Wilson.
Risdon died in December 1958 in St Johns Hospital in Santa Monica, California from a cerebral haemorrhage. Her body was donated to medical science.
From Wikipedia
Vivien Oakland (born Vivian Anderson, May 20, 1895 – August 1, 1958), was an American actress best known for her work in comedies in Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s, most notably with the Hal Roach Studios. Oakland appeared in 142 films between 1915 and 1951.
She supported Laurel and Hardy on several occasions, and sometimes played the wife of Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol in their series of short films. She played mostly bit roles in feature films in the 1940s before making her last film (an Errol comedy) in 1951.
Gertrude Astor (Born Gertrude Eyster November 9, 1887 – November 9, 1977) was an American motion picture character actress, who began her career playing trombone on a riverboat.
Born in Lakewood, Ohio, Astor at the age of 12 ran off and joined a woman's band as a trombone player and toured the states. In New York she left the band to obtain film work and got a job as an extra before her career took off. Astor was a prolific performer, between 1915 and 1962 she appeared in over 250 movies. Her first known credit is in a Biograph short in 1915. She then became a contract player at Universal. A tall, angular and beautiful woman, Astor frequently towered over the leading men of the era; thus, she was most frequently utilized in comedy roles as aristocrats, golddiggers and "heroine's best pal".
Her best-known silent appearances were as the visiting stage star in Stage Struck (1925) with Gloria Swanson, as the vamp who plants stolen money on Harry Langdon in The Strong Man (1926), and as Laura LaPlante's wisecracking travelling companion in The Cat and the Canary (1927).
Astor worked prolifically at Hal Roach studios with such headliners as Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, and especially Charley Chase. She was also kept busy at Columbia Pictures' short subjects unit.
She continued to play bits in feature films throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. She was briefly glimpsed as the first murder victim in the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Scarlet Claw and was among the ranks of dress extras in 1956's Around the World in Eighty Days. Her last appearance was in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
In her later years, Astor was a welcome guest at several Sons of the Desert gatherings, and became an honorary member of the Way Out West tent.
She died in Woodland Hills, California from a stroke. She is interred in the Abbey of Psalms in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, CA.
Arlington Rand Brooks Jr. (September 21, 1918 – September 1, 2003) was an American film and television actor.
Brooks was born in Wright City, Missouri. He was the son of Arlington Rand Brooks, a farmer. His mother and he moved to Los Angeles when he was four, though he continued to spend summers in Wright City. Brooks continued to make visits to his hometown of Wright City into the 1950s, up to and following the death of his father in 1950. His mother and his grandfather were actors.
After leaving school, Brooks got a screen test at MGM and was given a bit part in Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938). His big fame came with his part as Charles Hamilton in Gone with the Wind (1939), a role which he later admitted he despised; he wanted to play more macho parts. He made $100 per week under contract at MGM, but when he was on loan to Selznick International Pictures for Gone with the Wind, he made $500 per week.
After Gone With the Wind, he had relatively small parts in other movies including Babes in Arms, then a regular role as Lucky in the Hopalong Cassidy series of Westerns in the mid-1940s; Brooks succeeded Russell Hayden in the role. Among the films, which starred William Boyd as Hopalong, were Hoppy's Holiday, The Dead Don't Dream, and Borrowed Trouble. He received positive notice for his work in Fool's Gold, with Variety reporting that he did "an excellent job." In edited, half-hour versions of some of the films, he appeared in 12 of the 52 episodes of the Hopalong Cassidy television series.
In 1948, he co-starred with Adele Jergens and Marilyn Monroe in the low-budget, black-and-white Columbia Pictures film, Ladies of the Chorus. Brooks became the first actor to share an on-screen kiss with Monroe, who in a few years was one of the world's biggest movie stars. Filmed in just 10 days, the film was released soon after its completion. Variety called his performance in the 1952 film The Steel Fist "capable."
Television brought new opportunities, again often in Westerns. He played Cpl. Randy Boone in the 1950s television series, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. Brooks had guest roles in 1950s Western series, including Mackenzie's Raiders, The Lone Ranger, Maverick, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza. He appeared twice on the syndicated adventure series, Rescue 8, as well as on CBS's Perry Mason courtroom drama series.
In 1962, he directed and produced a movie about brave dogs, Bearheart, but the film was entangled in legal troubles due to his business manager's involvement in crimes such as forgery and graft. The film was finally released in 1978, under the title Legend of the Northwest.
After he left show business, Brooks ran a private ambulance company in Glendale, California. He commented that he "died in more pictures than almost anyone" and that though he was never very big in show business, he was willing to return to it. Brooks sold the ambulance company in 1994, and retired to his ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, where he bred champion Andalusian horses. He attended a Gone with the Wind reunion for Clark Gable's birthday, along with Ann Rutherford and Fred Crane, in Cadiz, Ohio, in 1992.
On September 1, 2003, Brooks died in Santa Ynez, California.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard "Dick" Elliott (April 30, 1886 – December 22, 1961) was an American character actor who played in over 240 films from the 1930s until the time of his death.
He was born Richard Damon Elliott in Boston, Massachusetts.
Elliott played many different roles, typically as a somewhat blustery sort, such as a politician. A short, fat man, Elliott played Santa Claus on the Jimmy Durante, Red Skelton, and Jack Benny programs. Elliott had a couple of memorable lines in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), in which he scolded James Stewart, who was trying to say goodnight to Donna Reed, advising him to stop hemming and hawing and "just go ahead and kiss her".
He also had a few memorable appearances in episodes of the Adventures of Superman television series. He appeared three times as Stanley on the CBS sitcom December Bride, as well as on two of ABC/Warner Brothers' western series, Sugarfoot and Maverick. He was cast as the prospector Peter Cooper and then as Sheriff Tiny Morris in two segments of CBS's Tales of the Texas Rangers. He appeared twice as Doc Thornton on ABC's The Real McCoys. Elliott is perhaps best known as Mayberry's Mayor Pike in early episodes of CBS's The Andy Griffith Show, one of his last screen works. In two of the eleven episodes featuring Elliot as mayor, actress Josie Lloyd portrayed his daughter.
On December 22, 1961, Elliott died from heart illness.
John Rummel Hamilton was an American actor, who played in many movies and television programs. He is probably best remembered for his role as the blustery newspaper editor Perry White for the 1950s television program “Adventures of Superman.”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Earle Hodgins (October 6, 1893 – April 14, 1964) was an American actor.
Early in his career, Hodgins was active in stock theater, including working in the Ralph Cloninger troupe of Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Siegel Stock company of Seattle, Washington.
He appeared in over 330 films and television shows between 1932 and 1963. He specialized in playing fast-talking con men—often in westerns, such as The Lone Ranger, Judge Roy Bean, The Cisco Kid, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, Rawhide, Maverick, Lawman, The Rifleman, Cheyenne, Have Gun – Will Travel, Gunsmoke and Hopalong Cassidy. In the 1960-1961 season, he appeared in three episodes of Joanne Dru's ABC sitcom, Guestward, Ho! as the aging ranch wrangler known as "Lonesome." In one of those episodes, "Lonesome's Gal", he was cast opposite ZaSu Pitts. Thereafter, the two died within a year of each other.
Hodgins' other television roles were as carnival barkers, medicine-show salesmen, and the like. He was known for shooing away obstreporous children from his stage, snapping at them, "Get away, son, ya bother me".
Hodgins married Sue Hanley, who was described in a newspaper item as "a Seattle society girl."
American character actor specializing in villainous roles. Born in White Plains, New York to Herman E. and Franceska Lauter, he was raised in Denver, Colorado. Although it has been suggested that he appeared briefly in a couple of films during the Thirties, his real movie career began in 1946. He came to be a familiar presence in low-budget films, serials, and television programs in the 1950s, though he only once really came close to stardom, as one of the leads in the television series "Tales of the Texas Rangers (1955)". Most of his career was spent as a serviceable second lead or heavy, though he continued to play bit parts in larger pictures. The son of an artist, he devoted much of his energy late in life to his own painting and running an art gallery. He died in 1990.
Thomas Martin was born in 1892 in New York, USA. He is an actor, known for North by Northwest (1959), All About Eve (1950) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
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.
Dale Harris Van Sickel (November 29, 1907 – January 25, 1977) was an American college football, basketball and baseball player during the 1920s, who later became a Hollywood motion picture actor and stunt performer for over forty years.
