Bert Roach

Film clips highlight the funniest scenes and brightest comic stars in MGM's history.

A dashing Mississippi river gambler wins the affections of the daughter of the owner of the Show Boat.

A detective tries to prevent the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln during a train ride headed for Washington in 1861.

Beautiful half-breed Pearl Chavez becomes the ward of her dead father's first love and finds herself torn between her sons, one good and the other bad.

Three childhood friends, Martha, Walter and Sam, share a terrible secret. Over time, the ambitious Martha and the pusillanimous Walter have married. She is a cold businesswoman; he is the district attorney: a perfect combination to dominate the corrupt city of Iverstown at will. But the unexpected return of Sam, after years of absence, deeply disturbs the life of the odd couple.

Conniving Broadway starlet Mida King has plenty of enemies, so when she's found murdered at Grand Central Station, Inspector Gunther calls together a slew of suspects for questioning. Mida's shady ex-flame, Turk, seems the most likely culprit, but when smart-mouthed private eye Rocky Custer -- also a suspect himself -- begins to piece together the crime, a few clues that Gunther has overlooked come to light.

A gang of criminals, which includes a piano player and an imposing former convict known as 'Gruesome', has found out about a scientist's secret formula for a gas that temporarily paralyzes anyone who breathes it. When Gruesome accidentally inhales some of the gas and passes out, the police think he is dead and take him to the morgue, where he later revives and escapes. This puzzling incident attracts the interest of Dick Tracy, and when the criminals later use the gas to rob a bank, Tracy realizes that he must devote his entire attention to stopping them.

Lou Costello plays a country bumpkin vacuum-cleaner salesman, working for the company run by the crooked Bud Abbott. To try to keep him under his thumb, Abbott convinces Costello that he's a crackerjack salesman. This comedy is somewhat like "The Time of Their Lives," in that Abbott and Costello don't have much screen time together and there are very few vaudeville bits woven into the plot.

Circumstance, an old flame and a mother-in-law drive a happily married couple to the verge of divorce and insanity.

In Chicago, an unemployed actor aims to solve the mystery concerning a string of ax murders, apparently committed by a lunatic.

The Roth family leads a quiet life in a small village in the German Alps during the early 1930s. After the Nazis come to power, the family is divided and Martin Breitner, a family friend, is caught up in the turmoil.

Olsen and Johnson, a pair of stage comedians, try to turn their play into a movie and bring together a young couple in love, while breaking the fourth wall every step of the way.

Biographical movie about the early 20th century broadway stars Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth.

A radio correspondent tries to rescue a burlesque queen from her marriage to a Nazi official.

The Army takes a bandleader (Kay Kyser) away from his bride (Ellen Drew) and sends him on a spy mission with a woman (Jane Wyman).

A doctor looks at his scrapbook and reflects on college days: how success at football took him from his studies, his flirtation with a widow and his true love. How his roommate helped him put things right.

A fatally shot female gangleader recounts her sordid life of crime to a police officer just before she dies.

While watching from her train window, Nikki Collins witnesses a murder in a nearby building. When she alerts the police, they think she has read one too many mystery novels. She then enlists a popular mystery writer to help her solve the crime on her own, but her sleuthing attracts the attentions of suitors and killers.

As dancer Ginny Walker performs on stage, a veiled woman in the audience stands up, accuses Ginny of stealing her husband and then fires a gun at her. After Ginny collapses and is taken to her dressing room, the woman, Julia Westcolt, a friend of Ginny's, dashes backstage, discards her veil, and then congratulates her friend on their successful publicity stunt. When Ginny's press agents, Gus Crane and his son Junior, visit their client backstage, she brags about her feat and chides them for not being more creative in promoting her. Horrified at Ginny's brashness, Junior, a conservative Harvard graduate, chastises her and leaves the room.

Faith and Hope Banner, sisters, are "convention hostesses" in a hotel. A body is discovered next door as the magician's convention is leaving and the mortician's convention is arriving, and the sisters, with help from manager Wilburforce Puddle, try to hide it. Complicating matters, Hope's boyfriend, Tommy, is a newspaper reporter in the hotel covering some labor negotiations.

Funloving Pearl White, working in a garment sweatshop, gets her big chance when she "opens" for a delayed Shakespeare play...with a comic vaudeville performance. Her brief stage career leads her into those "horrible" moving pictures, where she comes to love the chaotic world of silent movies, becoming queen of the serials. But the consequences of movie stardom may be more than her leading man can take

Former detective Nick Charles has retired from police work, preferring a life of cocktails, parties, and relaxation with his wealthy wife, Nora. Their holiday is interrupted when the daughter of Nick’s former client asks for help finding her missing father, eccentric inventor Clyde Wynant. When Wynant’s body is discovered, Nick is drawn back into the investigation, with Nora eagerly joining him. As the couple questions Wynant’s family, friends, and business associates, a tangled web of greed, deception, and murder begins to unravel.

A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.

A horse breeder's granddaughter falls in love with a scheming bookie in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

A Parisian tailor goes to a château to collect a bill, only to fall for an aloof young princess living there.

A Japanese man claiming to be Mr. Moto, of the International Police, is abducted and murdered soon after disembarking from a ship at Port Said in Egypt. The real Mr. Moto is already in Port Said, investigating a conspiracy against the British and French governments.

Nick and Nora Charles are back - and this time, they have a baby, a wealthy new client, and another murder to solve! Retired detective Nick is enjoying family life with Nora and their young son, Nick Jr., when eccentric industrialist Colonel MacFay asks for protection after receiving threatening messages. When MacFay is found dead at his isolated estate, Nick and Nora spring into action, questioning a houseful of suspicious guests and uncovering greed, blackmail, family secrets, and a dangerous inheritance plot. With their trademark wit and sophistication, the glamorous couple balances parenthood, parties, and peril as they race to expose the killer.

Joe, who owns a gas station along with his brothers and is about to marry Katherine, travels to the small town where she lives to visit her, but is wrongly mistaken for a wanted kidnapper and arrested.

Falling in love with the voice of Broadway chanteuse Margaret Garret, cocksure young tycoon Daniel Brewster decides to rescue the star from her hectic lifestyle of frenzied fans and mooching relatives. When Margaret has her ardent suitor arrested, the judge appoints her as Daniel's probation officer, forcing the duo to spend time together. As Daniel teaches Margaret to let her hair down and enjoy life, she begins to fall for her fun-loving admirer.

A bohemian free spirit helps meek Waldo win back his fiancée and falls in love with her over-controlling sister in the process.

Scott is a very rich businessman who hangs out with a snooty, silly Countess, but has the hots for Kay who is already engaged to Bill. Scott pursues Kay like crazy, going so far as to buy Bill's oil company so that he can banish him to Japan, leaving Kay unmoored.

Years have passed since the Three Musketeers, Aramis, Athos and Porthos, have fought together with their friend, D'Artagnan. But with the tyrannical King Louis using his power to wreak havoc in the kingdom while his twin brother, Philippe, remains imprisoned, the Musketeers reunite to abduct Louis and replace him with Philippe.

Marianne falls in love with con man Valentine who uses their relation to get her father's endorsement on a money-raising scheme. He runs off with the money and Marianne, later dumping her. Her sister Laura loves Dr. Lindley although she knows he loves Marianne. Marianne returns and marries a wealthy young man, and Lindley turns his love toward Laura.

In 19th century Paris, a maniac abducts young women and injects them with ape blood in an attempt to prove ape-human kinship but constantly meets failure as the abducted women die.

A medical researcher is sent to a plague outbreak, where he has to decide priorities for the use of a vaccine.

A boxer flees, believing he has committed a murder while he was drunk.

A con man poses as a hillbilly preacher.

"Happy" MacDonald and his unfaithful wife own a Prohibition era night club. On this eventful night, he is threatened by bootleggers, and the club's star dancer falls in love with a young socialite who drinks to forget a personal tragedy, among other incidents.

A small-town druggist is henpecked by his social-climbing wife to sell his pharmacy to a national chain. In addition, she tries to set up her pretty young daughter with the nitwit son of the chain's owner, even though the girl is in love with the handsome son of the town doctor. Finally the druggist decides he's had enough and takes matters into his own hands.

Former bootlegger Remy Marco has a slight problem with foreclosing bankers, a prospective son-in-law, and four hard-to-explain corpses.

After the death of her sewing machine tycoon husband, a young woman is cold-shouldered by her grasping in-laws. She heads to New York City and meets a man, falls in love and gets married. Unknown to her, her new husband is after what he thinks to be her fortune, in revenge for the theft of his father's patents that made the sewing machine profits. Discovering that she is in fact penniless, they both reconcile.

When a young South Seas sailor falls overboard, the beautiful daughter of a Polynesian king dives in and saves his life. Thus begins the romance of Johnny and Luana. Though Luana is promised to another man, Johnny whisks her away, and for a brief time the lovers live very happily together. But, when a local volcano threatens their lives, Luana knows that she must sacrifice herself to the volcanic gods in order to save her island.

Rose Sargent, a Roaring '20s singer, becomes a Ziegfeld Follies star as her criminal husband gets deeper in trouble.

On the back of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, a young businessman is about to commit suicide. With a note to his wife scribbled down and a gun in his hand, he notices an envelope addressed to him on his desk. As he begins to read, we're taken back to World War One and his meeting with a young woman named Mary Lane.

It is the fate of a small frontier town, adjoining the no-man's-land where the Russians and Austrians are fighting out one of the final campaigns of World War I, to be occupied one day by the Russians, the next by the Austrians, and the inhabitants soon acquire a complacent view of the changing allegiances. To the town comes Ann Warschaska, intent on avenging the suicide of her sister, who has killed herself after being betrayed by an Austrian officer. She knows no more about his identity than the number of his room at the "Hotel Imperial".

A small town drunk beats a teetotal banker guilty of a shady transaction.

Composer Johann Strauss risks his marriage over his infatuation with a beautiful singer.

A reporter covering a murder trial guesses that the murderer of a ruthless businessman is her ex-fiancé and persuades him to confess and clear the innocent man on trial.

G-Man Jeff Crane poses as a crook to infiltrate the notorious Purple Gang, a band of hoodlums which preys upon other hoodlums. Orchestrating the jailbreak of the gang's leader, Crane joins him in a Dillinger-like flight across the country.

A wife's psychiatrist tells her that she is being dominated by her husband. Her solution is to divorce him.

Expatriates and foreign correspondents mix in a Paris bistro...

We find con-man Ingraham Steward living by his wits by steering wealthy Paris visitors to sellers of fake paintings and other assorted dodges. He and his wife, Agatha, have been separated for 15 years, but he promises to give their daughter, Joyce, a lavish wedding at his "château" in France. The fact that he doesn't have a château in France is just a minor trifle. He induces the caretaker, Bill Cherau, of a large country estate to allow it to be used for the wedding. The wedding party arrives and Bill falls madly in love with Joyce and she with him, but a gal has gotta do what a gal has gotta do, and her intended marriage to stuffed-shirt Horace Miller stays on the books. But Steward has a change of heart and he tells one and all that he and his friends, Von Gersdorff, Lefevre, Iznamof, Clifton Summitt and Sasch, are all frauds and crooks. Horace and his family stalk out, which is just fine with Joyce as her true love, the caretaker, is waiting on the grounds.

Spies on opposite sides fall in love in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Fight manager takes out an insurance policy on his puny pugilist and then proceeds to try to arrange for an accident so that he can collect.

John, an ambitious but undisciplined New York City office worker, meets and marries Mary. They start a family, struggle to cope with marital stress, financial setbacks, and tragedy, all while lost amid the anonymous, pitiless throngs of the big city.

Three United States soldiers are lost in the Rhineland on Armistice Day and accepted as conquering overlords by a village... except for Lady Bountiful.

A German Shepherd Dog and the people he loves are entangled in World War One.

A sailor and his would-be bride search their train for a clergyman to marry them.

Hollywood hopeful Peggy Pepper arrives at a major studio, from Georgia, to become a great dramatic star. Things don't go entirely according to plan.

Ben Turpin's rival marries his college sweetheart played by Phyllis Haver.