The Snows of Kilimanjaro is about a writer and adventurer waiting to die from a thorn scratch as he reminisces about his life and it’s trials including lost loves and time spent in the Spanish Revolution. It stars Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner as his first erratic love. It was adapted from Ernest Hemingway short story with the same name.

Peter Lorre is two characters. He’s Moto and undercover as antiques shop keeper Kuroki. As Moto he tries to keep tabs on a band of international saboteurs who intend to blow up the French fleet as it enters the Suez Canal. You get to see Peter Lorre do some jiu jitsu in this film and he seems a little tougher than usual.

Chuck Connors as plays an over-the-top, slightly psychotic big-game hunter. He’s out for revenge on an army officer who he thinks got his brother killed.

Penny Serenade (1941) is a film melodrama starring Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Beulah Bondi, and Edgar Buchanan. It was directed by George Stevens and written by Martha Cheavens and Morrie Ryskind. It depicts the story of a loving couple who must overcome a series of adversity to keep their marriage and have a child raised. For his performance in the film, Cary Grant was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

The 1950 film was produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Michael Gordon. José Ferrer received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his starring performance as Cyrano de Bergerac. Mala Powers played Roxane, and William Prince portrayed Christian de Neuvillette.

Davey Fenwick leave for college on a scholarship. He hopes to return on day to help the coal miners with their unsafe working conditions. He falls in love with Jenny and marries her but realizes to late that she still loves her old boyfriend. This is a great movie.

This movie stars Dennis O’Keefe and Gail Russell. It’s the true story about Dan Patch, who held the record for being the fastest harness horse in the world from 1909 to 1938.

Dan Patch was a sports superstar with extensive endorsements (including washing machines and cigars). Much of his career was spent barnstorming and he retired undefeated in 1909 as the holder of nine world records. Dan Patch Avenue at the Minnesota State Fair grounds is named for him. He was also the subject of the 1949 motion picture, The Great Dan Patch starring Dennis O’Keefe and Gail Russell. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

New police officers find challenges as rookies on the force. This movie is also known as I take this oath.

A piano player, Al (Neal), sets off hitchhiking his way to California to be with his girl. Along the way, a stranger in a convertible gives him a ride. While driving, Al stops to put the top up during a rainstorm. He discovers that the owner of the car has died in his sleep. Al panics and dumps the body in a gully and drives off in his car. Later, he picks up another hitchhiker. Vera, (Savage) a femme fatale, threatens to turn him in for the supposed murder unless he assumes the identity of the dead man to collect an inheritance.

Charles Laughton plays Edward C. Wilson Esq, who despite his title, is the town character. His drunken debauchery puts him at odds with Mr. Gray, the resident in charge of the welcome islands. It also puts him at odds with the other Europeans, especially Martha Jordan, the local missionary. Martha and “Mr. Ted” become an unlikely pair as they face a typhoid epidemic that has taken over the islands.

This movie finds Charles Laughton in a quite different role than his most famous Captain Kidd.

Edward G. Robinson pursues a nazi war criminal named Franz Kindler. He thinks it’s the kindly college professor played by Orson Welles. Only a dead man can link him to the crimes… or is it his own obsessions that will finally be his undoing. If you haven’t caught this film, this is a keeper in the realm of public domain films.

This is Anna May Wong playing Lotus Flower who falls in love with an American. It’s silent. It’s the first movie printed to be used in a regular film projector and the 8th color movie ever made.

This made Anna May Wong the first Asian leading lady in a motion picture. She later become the first Asian lady to have a TV show. This role is much different that the anti-Japanese films she did in the 40′s. She was looked on as Chinese, but was born and grew up in California.

She had a hard time finding work as a leading lady because a Chinese woman kissing a white man was just not done in 1922. She did quite a few films in Europe and vaudeville, which didn’t work out really well. Still, she usually found herself singled out for acclaim with everything she did.

Quicksand stars Mickey Rooney and Jeanie Cagney. Jeanie is a bad, bad girl that gets poor Jim in trouble with increasing regularity.

Entering the movie business in 1926, Mickey Rooney made his name as the title character in the Mickey McGuire shorts. These were a series of more than 40 silent, two-reel comedies adapted from the Toonerville Trolley comic strip, in which he starred through 1936. For a time he billed himself as Mickey McGuire, but legally changed his name to Mickey Rooney in 1932. Also during this period he met Walt Disney and later he would claim Disney had named Mickey Mouse after him. It is difficult to verify, and others have made similar claims, but Rooney takes credit for giving rising starlet Norma Jean Baker the stage name Marilyn Monroe (his co-star in the 1950 film The Fireball).

The Society of the Black Dragons sends Bela Lugosi (Dr. Melcher) to transform 6 japanese into indentical likenesses of American industrialists forming a 5th column. This is at the behest of the Nazis. This film isn’t as good as British Intelligence (1940), but is sort of along the same lines as WWII was just about started to get rolling.

Here’s a 1946 black and white movie starring George Raft and Ava Gardner shot in and in the film noir style, but without really being a film noir. At least I don’t think so. You could argue with me.

Welcome to the smokey back rooms for San Francisco’s Haite/Ashbury district in the 1940′s

Sponsored by Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Studio One was seen on CBS , from 1948 through 1958, under several variant titles: Studio One Summer Theatre, Studio One in Hollywood, Summer Theatre, Westinghouse Studio One and Westinghouse Summer Theatre. It was telecast in black-and-white only.

Lady Behave is a light hearted romantic comedy. Millionaire Neil Hamilton gets drunk at a stylish party and wakes up married! He bolts off to his lawyer to have the marriage annulled, but finds out his new bride is already married. Hamilton fears a bigamy charge and for damage to his reputation so he lives with Sally Eilers, his new brides sister. This is when Lady Behave! starts to get interesting. Sally gets miserable juggling her sister, her pretend husband, her brother in law, and her pretend step children.

The Golden Eye is a 1948 American film directed by William Beaudine and starring Roland Winters in his fourth appearance as Charlie Chan. The film is also known as Charlie Chan in Texas (Belgian English title) and Charlie Chan in the Golden Eye (American poster title).

Passengers in a bus crash relive the experience through flash backs.

Hard bitten San Francisco industrialist Walter Williams’s two-timing wife and her lover plot to do her husband in, but instead the boyfriend gets killed and mistaken for . Half-dazed, Williams stumbles into a moving van that takes him to Mayberry RFD, where newspaper stories of his “death” jog his memory. While recuperating and plotting his eventual return and revenge, Williams falls in love with Marsha (Helen Walker) , an auto mechanic. And when Williams finally gets back to San Francisco, he’s tried for the lover’s murder

Jigsaw is a 1949 film noir made by Tower Pictures and distributed by United Artists. It was directed by Fletcher Markle and produced by Edward J. Danziger and Harry Lee Danziger from a screenplay by Vincent McConnor and Fletcher Markle from a story by John Roeburt.

The film stars Franchot Tone, Jean Wallace and Marc Lawrence and has cameo appearances by Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, John Garfield, Burgess Meredith and Everett Sloane.

Charles Bronson plays Joe Martin. Joe has a jaded past, but has settled down and become a fisherman married to Liv Ullman. Some of his old army buddies look him up and want him to smuggle heroin in his fishing boat. Joe isn’t too happy about this. This is a suspense film and has a lot of good car chase scenes.

Martin Sheen plays a priest who must enforce the church doctrine that the Mass should be said in native languages. The monks of a remote monastery disagree and think that the Mass should remain prayed in Latin.

Martha Ivers tried to get away from her aunt. She and her friend Sam were caught by the police and returns. When Mrs. Ivers attacks Martha’s pet cat with her cane; Martha intervenes and accidentally kills her aunt. After this, the movie is a great film noir full of blackmail and intrigue. Stars Barbara Stanwyck, Lizbeth Scott and Van Heflin.

Chester Morris and Thelma Todd star in this 1931 film about a football coach who became a stock broker, but didn’t have the heart for stealing from widows and orphans. To ease his conscience, while still making a ton of money, he becomes a high seas pirate. This movie is loaded with 1931 witty banter. Thelma Todd plays the spoiled Wall Street heiress and siren.

Thelma Todd died in 1935 of carbon monoxide inhalation in her car inside the garage of Jewel Carmen, a former actress and former wife of Todd’s business partner Roland West. Was it suicide? Was it an accident? Was it her ex-husband or gangster Lucky Luciano? No one is sure, but it ended a career of 40 films in the late 20′s and 30′s.

This historical drama recounts the events that led up to the rule of Russia’s 18th-century Catherine the Great. Arriving from Germany as a young woman who is to wed Grand Duke Peter, she soon becomes caught up in the court intrigue and marries the lit-fuse duke. As the Grand Duke’s mother lays dying, she relates her fears about her son’s mental states, leaving Catherine to contend with his irrational and cruel behavior. When he goes too far with his antics, he is overthrown and put to death, though not by her wishes. Soon, however, Catherine is made the new Czaritza and restores order to her country. I can’t really explain why I liked this movie more than I thought I would. Perhaps it’s the performance of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Elisabeth Bergner.

This is a 1972 made for TV movie about a police woman named Christie Yur Under Arrest Sugah Love. This movie is should have Aqua Net and polyester commercials. It was released on ABC in 1972 and spawned a short lived TV series. She’s one bad mama jamma whatever the heck that is. She wasn’t just tough, she was highly flammable. It was 1972. All the polyester and Aqua Net. One spark and a guy would go up like a torch.

This is a pre-code film about some frivolous rich people, a young secretary, and the weird goings on in 1930. It stars Basil Rathbone and Constance Bennet.

A Star Is Born (1937) is a romantic drama film produced by David O. Selznick and directed by William A. Wellman, with a script by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell. It stars Janet Gaynor as an aspiring actress who travels to Hollywood to become a movie star. Other members of the cast include Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine and Lionel Stander.

This is a cute political comedy starring Frank Morgan of Wizard of Oz fame. It was directed by Roy Rowland and produced by Robert Sisk from an original screenplay by Isobel Lennart and William Kozlenko.

Judge Priest depicting life in Kentucky after the Civil War and Reconstruction Period.
It still shows the stereotypes and prejudices which existed at that time in a somewhat humorous manner.

Based on a story by the noted Kentucky humorist, Irvin S. Cobb, it presents life as one would have imagined it at that time period.

The Last Time I Saw Paris is a 1954 romantic drama made by MGM, loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald ‘s short story Babylon Revisited. It was directed by Richard Brooks and produced by Jack Cummings. The screenplay was by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Richard Brooks.

The film starred Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson, with Walter Pidgeon, Donna Reed, Eva Gabor, Kurt Kasznar, George Dolenz and Roger Moore.

Joaquin Shannon confesses to a murder he didn’t commit. He gets a year in prison to start for manslaughter. It gets hard to be on good behavior. I liked this movie. I think I’ll add it to favorites.

Nick Allen comes to the rescue when a gun moll Jo Elliot gets hassled on the street. Spudsy, Red and Jo take it on the lam and Nick ends up going along. They get stranded because of car trouble and end up staying with old, blind Pop Regan. After weeks with Pop Regan, all of them seem to like the rural lifestyle better and start to think about going straight.

Please Murder Me is a 1956 film starring Raymond Burr and Angela Landsbury. It’s a film noir with Burr playing a lawyer. It’s like a character he would reprise a year later as the famous Perry Mason. Looking at this, it must be a reason that he got the role. I can’t say too much about this film because anything I would say from here would be a spoiler. I really enjoyed it. I hope you do too.