Writing

Michael L. Simmons

Born — Died

1896-04-05 — 1980-02-01

Place of birth

New York City, New York, USA

Known for

Writing

Credits

24 titles

Known for

Scattergood Meets Broadway poster
7.5

Scattergood finds out that his neighbor, Elly Drew, is going to sell her home to support her son David, an aspiring playwright, who is in New York City trying to get his play produced. Scattergood decides to loan Elly the money but things are not as David has been telling his Mother...

Scattergood Meets Broadway

1941

Eyes of the Underworld poster
5.6

Blackmail and murder in a tale of an auto-theft ring.

Eyes of the Underworld

1942

Romance of the Redwoods poster
7.0

June Martin is a dishwasher in a California logging camp boarding house. Steve Blake fights Jed Malone for her and loses, thus casting suspicion on himself when Malone dies under cloudy circumstances.

Romance of the Redwoods

1939

Cosmo Jones, Crime Smasher poster
4.6

Cosmo Jones, a correspondence-school detective from a small town, comes to the big city to offer his services to the police. He happens by where a gangster is killed by an opposing gang. Socialite Phyllis Blake is running around with gang member Tom and the opposing gang plan on kidnapping her. Cosmo is with Sergeant Flanagan when the attempt is made in front of a night club, where a bystander is seriously wounded in the gun-battle. Police Chief Murphy blames Flanagan for the shooting and demotes him. Cosmo, with the aid of a porter, Eustace and Flanagan's fiancée, Susan, tries to find the killer. Phyllis is finally kidnapped and Cosmo decides the act was committed by one of the two gangs. He has her father place an ad in the newspaper that contact has been made with the kidnappers. Each gang thinks the other is pulling a double cross, and one gang wipes out the other.

Cosmo Jones, Crime Smasher

1943

Scattergood Survives a Murder poster
5.9

Rural sage Scattergood Baines (Guy Kibbee) shows big-city newsman how to solve a mystery.

Scattergood Survives a Murder

1942

Two Weeks to Live poster
4.5

When Abner is mistakenly diagnosed as having only two weeks to live, his partner gets the idea that they can make a ton of money by having Abner perform all kinds of dangerous stunts.

Two Weeks to Live

1943

Behind the camera

Scattergood Meets Broadway poster
7.5

Scattergood finds out that his neighbor, Elly Drew, is going to sell her home to support her son David, an aspiring playwright, who is in New York City trying to get his play produced. Scattergood decides to loan Elly the money but things are not as David has been telling his Mother...

Scattergood Meets Broadway

1941

Eyes of the Underworld poster
5.6

Blackmail and murder in a tale of an auto-theft ring.

Eyes of the Underworld

1942

Romance of the Redwoods poster
7.0

June Martin is a dishwasher in a California logging camp boarding house. Steve Blake fights Jed Malone for her and loses, thus casting suspicion on himself when Malone dies under cloudy circumstances.

Romance of the Redwoods

1939

Cosmo Jones, Crime Smasher poster
4.6

Cosmo Jones, a correspondence-school detective from a small town, comes to the big city to offer his services to the police. He happens by where a gangster is killed by an opposing gang. Socialite Phyllis Blake is running around with gang member Tom and the opposing gang plan on kidnapping her. Cosmo is with Sergeant Flanagan when the attempt is made in front of a night club, where a bystander is seriously wounded in the gun-battle. Police Chief Murphy blames Flanagan for the shooting and demotes him. Cosmo, with the aid of a porter, Eustace and Flanagan's fiancée, Susan, tries to find the killer. Phyllis is finally kidnapped and Cosmo decides the act was committed by one of the two gangs. He has her father place an ad in the newspaper that contact has been made with the kidnappers. Each gang thinks the other is pulling a double cross, and one gang wipes out the other.

Cosmo Jones, Crime Smasher

1943

Scattergood Survives a Murder poster
5.9

Rural sage Scattergood Baines (Guy Kibbee) shows big-city newsman how to solve a mystery.

Scattergood Survives a Murder

1942

Two Weeks to Live poster
4.5

When Abner is mistakenly diagnosed as having only two weeks to live, his partner gets the idea that they can make a ton of money by having Abner perform all kinds of dangerous stunts.

Two Weeks to Live

1943

Missing Daughters poster
4.3

The Missing Daughters of the title are innocent young girls who've been led astray by seedy dance-hall operator Lucky Rogers.

Missing Daughters

1939

Juvenile Court poster
6.0

Public Defender Gary Franklin, frustrated by being unable to save criminal Dutch Adams from a death sentence by blaming the slums environment as the cause of Dutch's crimes, enlists the aid of Dutch's sister, Marcia Adams, to get the slum dwellers at appeal for public monies to provide recreational places for the slum kids.

Juvenile Court

1938

Flight to Fame poster
7.5

An evil villain steals a newly invented death ray.

Flight to Fame

1938

Scattergood Rides High poster
10.0

When Martin Knox, a friend of Scattergood's who owns a horse-breeding farm, is killed in a harness race Scattergood tells Martin's son Dan that he will send him to college if he forgets about taking over his father's business, which was heavily mortgaged and has been put up for auction after Knox's death. The boy reluctantly agrees, but when he discovers that his favorite horse Starlight is sick, he decides to bring the animal back to health and then enter him in the Governor's Race, whose $5000 prize would enable Dan to pay off his father's mortgage and keep the business in the family.

Scattergood Rides High

1942

Tropic Fury poster
5.5

An investigator checks into the rumors of harsh working conditions on an Amazon rubber plantation.

Tropic Fury

1939

Landrush poster
9.0

The Durango Kid rides again in Columbia's Landrush. As ever, the masked do-gooder, alias Steve Harmon, is played by Charles Starrett. Bringing up the rear in every sense of the word is Harmon's comical sidekick Smiley Burnette. In this outing, Harmon dons his Durango garb to rescue a group of homesteaders from scurrilous villains. Musical relief is provided by Ozie Waters and his Colorado Rangers.

Landrush

1946

The Awakening of Jim Burke poster
9.0

After his divorced wife dies, Jim Burke takes their son who she had been raising and he hasn't seen in many years. Jim Burke is a tough, hard-nosed construction boss on engineering projects, and he is looking forward to molding Little Jim into his own image. Jim Burke is more than a little bit dismayed and a whole lot disgusted when Little Jim arrives and it doesn't take Big Jim long to figure out that Little Jim...ain't nothing but a sissy. Little Jim is fond of practicing on his violin and reading and studying. What's a poor father to do?

The Awakening of Jim Burke

1935

Cinderella Swings It poster
9.0

Scattergood Baines, Coldriver's most popular citizen, neighborly counselor and sly old fox, entices a Broadway producer to Coldriver to see the gay musical extravaganza Baines is staging for the benefit of the U.S.O. He is also promoting the singing career of his latest local protégé, Betty Palmer. There are a few problems but the Sage of Coldriver manages to keep pulling the right strings.

Cinderella Swings It

1943

Murder in Greenwich Village poster
5.8

A society girl is suspected of murdering an artist whose brother is a notorious racketeer. In her pursuit of an alibi, she inadvertently implicates a struggling advertisement photographer. Now they must keep up the appearance of being engaged as a bumbling detective snoops around, and their initial distaste for each other blossoms into romance.

Murder in Greenwich Village

1937

Mutiny on the Blackhawk poster
8.0

Story deals with slave-running between Hawaii and California in 1840, featuring a wild mutiny aboard a slave ship on the high seas, the bartering of natives for slavery in a tropical paradise, and battle scenes between enraged California settlers and the Mexican Army.

Mutiny on the Blackhawk

1939

Heavenly Music poster
6.2

Bandleader/singer/songwriter Ted Barry arrives to heaven. The receptionist tells him that before he can take his place in the Hall of Music, a committee must review his work and decide whether he is worthy of admittance.

Heavenly Music

1943

Girl of the Ozarks poster
6.5

A sweet little country girl has issues with school. Her mother is ill. The school threatens to send her to an orphanage.

Girl of the Ozarks

1936

Scattergood Baines poster
7.0

Young Scattergood Baines arrives in the small New England town of Coldriver. Through some shrewd business maneuvering, he manages to open up a hardware store. Twenty years later he has become a prosperous and respected member of the community, a member of the local school board and the owner of a railroad that transports timber to the local sawmill. Problems begin to arise, however, when a young schoolteacher he has hired turns out to be not quite what he expected, and the mill owners pressure Scattergood to sell them his railroad, with the idea of raising the transportation fees paid to them by the local loggers.

Scattergood Baines

1941

Little Miss Roughneck poster
10.0

Sad-eyed, uniquely talented child actress Edith Fellows was Columbia's "answer" to Shirley Temple, Jane Withers and Deanna Durbin. In Little Miss Roughneck, Fellows is cast as Foxine LaRue, a tomboyish sort who is being prodded into a show-biz career by her stage mother Gert (Margaret Irving). Young Mr. Partridge (Scott Colton) becomes Foxine's agent, principally because he's sweet on the girl's older sister Mary (Jacqueline Wells). Blackballed from Hollywood because of her mother's pushiness, Foxine tries to help out Partridge and her own family by cooking up a bizarre publicity stunt, enlisting the aid of easy-going Mexican "papacita" Pascual (Leo Carrillo).

Little Miss Roughneck

1938

No artwork available
5.0

A fast-talking, street-wise con-man forsakes the tank-towns of Pennsylvania for the greener pastures in Manhattan, and gains fame-and-fortune as New York City's number one merchandise promoter. A model and a society girl provide some complications along the way.

Venus Makes Trouble

1937

They Live in Fear poster
8.0

After witnessing the killing of a professor in concentration camp "Dachau" German student Paul emigrates to the USA. Here an American fellow student endangers Paul's new American existence and his family's which stayed in Germany.

They Live in Fear

1944

All American Sweetheart poster
7.0

Cap Collender (Arthur Loft),a showboat gambling racketeer, ensnares a collegiate rowing team's coxswain, "Squirt" Adams (Jimmy Eagles), into the sports-gambling racket.

All American Sweetheart

1937

Squadron of Honor poster
7.0

Squadron of Honor takes place during an American Legion convention, with newsreel shots of the genuine article interspersed among the reenacted scene. A murder is committed, and young legionnaire Blane (Don Terry) wants to find out who's responsible. The cops are convinced that pacifistic munitions executive Metcalf (Thurston Hall) committed the crime, but in fact Metcalf has been framed by pro-war armaments manufacturer Kimball (Robert Warwick).

Squadron of Honor

1938