Fred Santley

Proud father Stanley Banks remembers the day his daughter, Kay, got married. Starting when she announces her engagement through to the wedding itself, we learn of all the surprises and disasters along the way.

Comprised of eight unrelated episodes of inconsistent quality, this anthology piece of American propaganda features some of MGM Studios' best directors, screenwriters and actors; it is narrated by Louis Calhern. Stories are framed by the lecture of a university professor. In one tale a Boston resident becomes angry when the census forgets to record her presence. Another sketch chronicles the achievements of African Americans while still another pays tongue-in-cheek tribute to Texas.

A prison convict escapes through the Louisiana swamps.

When a young woman's skeletal remains turn up on a Massachusetts beach, Barnstable cop Peter Moralas teams with Boston police and uses forensics, with the help of a Harvard professor, to determine the woman's identity, how she died, and who killed her.

A Texas carnival showmen team is mistaken for a cattle baron and his sister.

Discovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautiful women find out when they join the spectacle on Broadway: Susan, the singer who must leave behind her ageing vaudevillian father; vulnerable Sheila, the working girl pursued both by a millionaire and by her loyal boyfriend from Flatbush; and the mysterious European beauty Sandra, whose concert violinist husband cannot endure the thought of their escaping from poverty by promenading her glamor in skimpy costumes.

A former prisoner of war, Frank Enley is hailed as a hero in his California town. However, Frank has a shameful secret that comes back to haunt him when fellow survivor Joe Parkson emerges, intent on making Frank pay for his past deeds.

Private eye Phillip Marlowe wants to get out of the detective racket and into crime writing. But when he's called to the office of editor Adrienne Fromsett, it's not to talk about his story ideas — she wants him to locate the missing wife of her boss, Mr. Kingsby. The assignment quickly becomes complicated when bodies start turning up.

"Wicked" Lily Bishop joins a wagon train to California, led by Michael Fabian and Johnny Trumbo, but news of the Gold Rush scatters the train. When Johnny and Michael finally arrive, Lily is rich from her saloon and storekeeper (former slaver) Pharaoh Coffin is bleeding the miners dry. But worse troubles are ahead: California is inching toward statehood, and certain people want to make it their private empire.

Raised by Natalie Brennan, a flamboyant and irresponsible mother, Ziggy Brennan gets involved in hustling men at a young age. She hangs around with a wild crowd and learns gets her "street smarts" first from her mother, who wants everyone to think they are sisters, and then from Denny Reagan, an older man. He starts teaching her his tricks of the trade and she falls right in line with his crooked ways. Then one night she meets Martin J. 'Mart' Neilson, a tall, handsome, honest farmer boy who's a sailor and they fall in love. While he's away fighting the war, she discovers she's pregnant.

A psychiatrist's patient, a nutty heiress, travels west to find gold in her grandfather's abandoned mine. The psychiatrist, unable to talk her out of it, decides to follow her out there.

Shy sailor Casey Kirby suddenly becomes known as a sea wolf when his picture is taken with a famous actress. Things get complicated when bets are placed on his prowess with the ladies.

Ogden Spencer Trulow III is a wealthy kleptomaniac who turned to stealing when he was spurned by a girl. His psychoanalyst advises him to find another girl for a cure. He fastens his interest upon Sally Martin, who happens to be engaged in helping some crooks steal a valuable necklace.

George Sanders stars in this engrossing melodrama about a very domineering sister who holds a tight grip on her brother -- especially when he shows signs of falling in love.

A writer for a radio program needs some fresh ideas to juice up his show. For inspiration, he rents a room with a typical American family and begins to secretly write about their true life antics. The show becomes a big hit, but he begins to feel guilty about his charade when he falls in love with the family's pretty older daughter.

A radio saleswoman helps a singing cattleman trap a shady meat buyer with a bogus broadcast.

A California railroad agent hunts two brothers for murder and robbing a payroll express.

Jimmy Kildare's impending nuptials are jeopardized by a diagnosis of possible epilepsy in his fiancee's brother.

Circumstances force naive Rita Adams into serving an unjust prison term, but she emerges from it a cynical criminal who rises to power in the local crime organization.

Falsely convicted of murder, young Robert Draper escapes custody during a practice blackout drill. Under cover of darkness, Draper hopes to find the real killer, who turns out to be a member of a Nazi sabotage ring. Completed shortly before America entered WW2.

Harry Langdon and Charley Rogers star in this 1941 Monogram comedy, about two bumbling brothers who take jobs at a New York food cannery and accidentally lose a valuable diamond inside a can of pork-and-beans.

During a test, a race car using an experimental oil fueled engine blows up, killing the driver. Lucky Taylor, a stunt driver, is initially blamed for the accident, but is later cleared. He thinks the engine design has a real chance to win races, but the racing association has banned it since the accident. He devises a scheme to have a car equipped with the engine entered into a race, without race officials-- or the engine designer's sassy daughter -- finding out about it.

Bob Clemens is a cameraman for newsreels. Assigned to shoot the Swiss ice skater Karen Vadja, he arrives too late, so decides to film a woman skating on a different New York rink and pass her off as Karen. The scheme backfires when promoter Larry Herman takes a look at Bob's film and decides to make the skater a star. Unfortunately, it's actually amateur (and illegal immigrant) Marie Bergin in the newsreel footage, not the great figure skater from Switzerland. Chaos ensues as Bob tries to straighten everybody out.

As suggested by its title, Behind the News was a "stop the presses!" yarn set in a big-city newsroom. Lloyd Nolan is top-billed as a cynical reporter with a penchant for sticking his neck out too far. Frank Albertson costars as a cub reporter fresh out of journalism school, whose presence is resented by Nolan and his fellow workers. But it is Albertson who, after running afoul of the law, is instrumental in breaking up a ring of racketeers. Behind the News was remade by Republic as Headline Hunters (55).

A girl decides to consult her natural father, whom she's never seen, for advice on her mixed-up love life.

After returning to San Francisco, Nick and Nora Charles are drawn into the disappearance of Nora’s cousin’s husband. When he is found murdered, suspicion falls on the troubled family, and Nick reluctantly resumes his detective work. With Nora eagerly at his side, the pair follows a trail of jealousy, blackmail, secret relationships, and long-buried family scandals.

Wildly optimistic chatterbox Eva Lovelace is a would-be actress trying to crash the New York stage. She attracts the interest of a paternal actor, a philandering producer, and an earnest playwright. Is she destined for stardom, or will she fade like a morning glory after its brief blooming?

A spirited heiress wishing to break into theatre on her own merit arrives at a boardinghouse where aspiring young actresses and showgirls are brought together through their cynicism and disappointments.

The Daring Young Man is hotshot-reporter Don McLane, played by James Dunn. Always on the prowl for a good story, McLane is persistently outscooped by his rival, sob sister Martha Allen (Mae Clarke). After several reels of double-crossing one another, hero and heroine give in to the inevitable and fall in love. But as Martha waits at the altar in her wedding gown, McLane is off on another crusade, this time getting himself arrested to expose corruption within the prison system.

The day after Carol returns from a European trip, she wakes up to find her dead father's creditors hauling everything away. Her aunt wants her to marry a millionaire, but Carol insists on getting a job.

An Italian immigrant singer, Nino, hoping to succeed in Hollywood, falls in with a gang of crooks who use his talent to distract everyone at a party while they steal the jewels.

A rich and famous singer disguises himself as a waiter in order to be near the woman he loves, a European princess.

A girl in search of a rich husband mistakes a millionaire for a male model.

New York singer and nightclub owner Lady Lou has more male friends than can be imagined. One is a vicious escaped criminal on the way to see 'his' girl, unaware she hasn't exactly been faithful in his absence. Help is at hand in the form of young Captain Cummings, a local temperance league leader.

Baseball star Elmer Kane leaves the little town of Gentryville, Indiana, to join the Chicago Cubs, where his naivete and arrogance soon put his relationship and career into jeopardy.

A hustling public relations man promotes a series of fads.

An elderly business tycoon, believed to be dying, decides to give a million dollars each to eight strangers chosen at random from the phone directory.

In this musical, a songwriter goes to court to claim the rights to his song that was stolen by an unscrupulous music publisher. He brings his girlfriend with him. Also going to court are the Jubilee singers, hillbillies, and some cowboys and Indians who demonstrate that the composer wrote his song by rearranging four folk tunes. He wins his song back and $50,000 in damages. Songs include: "Heading Home," "Roll Along Prairie Moon," "Tender Is the Night," "You're My Thrill," "I'm Bound for Heaven," and "The Army Band."

After losing their Missouri home during the Great Depression, the Skitch family pulls up stakes and heads west to California to begin life anew. Comedy, released in 1933.

A career woman marries her boyfriend's rich uncle when the boyfriend marries her sister.

After a love affair ending in an abortion, a young prison reformer submerges herself in her work. She then falls for a controversial and married judge and scandal looms again.

Besieged by his adoring female fans, radio celebrity Ned "The Fireside Troubadour" Farrar hides out at the home of his wife Queena's imperious Aunt Min. Pretending to be Aunt Min's handyman, he performs his tasks so well that she refuses to let him leave.

Elizabeth Rimplegar inhabits a household populated by virtual lunatics. Her mother, Nellie, mishandled the family fortune, and, alas, the stock market crash has depleted their worth. Elizabeth's goofy brothers cannot easily adjust to the life of the average worker. Meanwhile, the family doctor has his eye on Elizabeth, but he will have to compete with her suitor, an ill-informed writer.

A strong-willed young woman hires a student to impersonate a boorish French count and brings him home to meet her parents.

President McKinley asks Lt. Richard L. Perry to go underground to identify some obviously very well briefed Mid-Western bank robbers based in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

After tricking him into marriage, a woman tries to win the love of her philandering husband.

Tom Turner, a naturalist, comes to the "Topa Topa" district (named for the mountain), and falls in love with widow Margaret Weston...

Racketeer Frank Rocci is smitten with Joan Whelan, a dancer at Texas Guinan's famous Broadway night spot. He uses his influence to help her get a starring role in the show, hoping that it will also get Joan to fall in love with him. After scoring a hit, Joan accepts Frank's marriage proposal, more out of gratitude than love. The situation gets even stickier when she falls for a handsome band leader during a trip to Florida. Can she tell Frank she's in love with someone else?

A relationship gradually develops between a savvy New York City street girl and a good-hearted cab driver, but other matters keep getting in their way, including financial problems and a murder.

An aspiring young writer becomes infatuated with a successful romance novelist, who realizes his life as a philandering Lothario is suddenly threatened.

When a crime wave hits town, bank robbers find haven in Errol's home.

Tempress Vivian Marsh (Betty Bronseon) lures Tom Evans (Jack Mulhall) away from stenographer Connie Lee (Constance Cummings), the girl he really loves. Connie, on the rebound, has an affair with her married boss Yates (Jameson Thomas). Vivian, not content with her successful conquest of milquetoast Tony, decides to have a romantic liaison with Yates as well. Tony discovers her infidelity, gets a divorce, and returns to Connie, who is a bit less pure than when he abandoned her.

After striking it rich in Alaskan gold, a young man returns to marry his fiancé only to be snubbed. Her sister, however, is worth considering, until he learns about her gold-digging family.

A 15-episode serial involving the land rush, gold mines, stolen maps, etc.

Holt plays police lieutenant McHenry, while Graves is his friendly rival, crime reporter Wally Cook. After the two men verbally duel over a variety of details, they hunker down to business, that of solving the murder of a lawyer who was in the midst of reading a will to a motley collection of heirs.

Rose Pierce is discontent with her life as the wife of a small town plumber and has visions of becoming a wealthy socialite. Consequently, when her smart aleck son Sammy hears that an electric railroad line is to be built through town, she decides that the family can become rich by purchasing the lots along the right of way. Patriarch George Pierce laughs at the idea, but when Rose and Sammy learn that Cora Stewart, the wealthy town widow, has withdrawn her savings from the bank, they jump to the conclusion that she is interested in buying the lots, and mother and son secretly invest the family bank roll in the land.

Chick Evans is a Marine private in Honolulu, Hawaii. He falls for society girl Delphine Witherspoon, and begins to scheme as to how to win her over.

A bank teller's love life falls apart when he's accused of embezzling.

Bobby Martin, a young middleweight champion boxer, is an honest and decent fighter. However, a dishonest but beautiful woman uses every trick to ensnare him.

This deft comedy about a foiled elopement and assumed identity shows the importance of a carefully worked out scenario for narrative flow.