Preston Foster

Explore the unlikely partnership and enduring legacy of one of the most prolific power couples in entertainment history. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz risked everything to be together.

Born Ruby Stevens, she was orphaned when she was four. A chance audition led to a chorus job. By 17 she was a Ziegfeld Girl. At 20 she earned excellent reviews for a bit part in a Broadway play — and she had a new name: Barbara Stanwyck.

Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.

As punishment for their incompetence in battle, disgraced Union soldier Capt. Jared Heath and his apathetic commanding officer, Col. Claude Brackenbury, are reassigned away from the front lines. The hapless Heath and Brackenbury must now lead a ragtag group on a classified mission to protect a transport for the U.S. Treasury. Complicating matters is Martha Lou Williams, a Confederate agent posing as a lady of the evening.

Research scientists experimenting with time warps are accidentally propelled forward into an unbearable future.

Circuit-riding Texas lawyer Timothy Higgins defends a former girlfriend against a murder charge stemming from an extortionist's threat to reveal her shady past. Through adroit courtroom work, Higgins is able to acquit her and reveal who actually shot the fatal bullet.

A wild beach boy takes a job on a tuna fishing boat.

An ex-convict sets out to uncover who framed him for an armored car robbery.

Wild West lawman Frame Johnson arrests a notorious outlaw, but, after the locals threaten to break into the prison and hang the crook without a trial, Johnson gets fed up with injustice. He decides to put his days of gunslinging behind him in favor of a simple domestic life with his lover, Jeannie. The couple move to the supposedly idyllic Cottonwood — only to find that their new home has been overrun by a rogue rancher who has unfinished business with Frame.

After his best friend and war buddy is mysteriously gunned down, Mike Hammer will stop at nothing to settle the score for the man who sacrificed a limb to save his own life during combat. Along the way, Hammer rides a fine line between gumshoe and a one-man jury, staying two-steps ahead of the law—and trying not to get bumped off in the process.

In 1866, a new gold discovery and an inconclusive conference force the U.S. Army to build a road and fort in territory ceded by previous treaty to the Sioux...to the disgust of frontier scout Jim Bridger, whose Cheyenne wife led him to see the conflict from both sides. The powder-keg situation needs only a spark to bring war, and violent bigots like Lieut. Rob Dancy are all too likely to provide this. Meanwhile, Bridger's chance of preventing catastrophe is dimmed by equally wrenching personal conflicts. Unusually accurate historically.

Mary Rafferty comes from a poor family of steel mill workers in 19th Century Pittsburgh. Her family objects when she goes to work as a maid for the wealthy Scott family which controls the mill. Mary catches the attention of handsome scion Paul Scott, but their romance is complicated by Paul's engagement to someone else and a bitter strike among the mill workers.

When two bumbling barbers act as agents for a talented but unknown singer, they stage a phony murder in order to get him a plum role.

Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers ("Isn't that a contradiction in terms?", another character asks him) travels to Canada in the 1880s in search of Jacques Corbeau, who is wanted for murder. He wanders into the midst of the Riel Rebellion, in which Métis (people of French and Native heritage) and Natives want a separate nation. Dusty falls for nurse April Logan, who is also loved by Mountie Jim Brett. April's brother is involved with Courbeau's daughter Louvette, which leads to trouble during the battles between the rebels and the Mounties. Through it all Dusty is determined to bring Corbeau back to Texas (and April, too, if he can manage it.)

Ken McLaughlin is a precocious 10-year-old who lives with his family on a remote Wyoming ranch. When Ken returns home from school with failing grades, his father, Rob, blames the boy's lack of personal responsibility. At the suggestion of his wife, Nell, Rob allows Ken to choose a single colt from the herd to raise as his own. Much to his father's dismay, Ken chooses a fiery mustang filly -- but the two soon become fast friends.

Bob Ford murders his best friend Jesse James in order to obtain a pardon that will free him to marry his girlfriend Cynthy. The guilt-stricken Ford soon finds himself greeted with derision and open mockery throughout town. He travels to Colorado to try his hand at prospecting in hopes that marriage with Cynthy is still in the cards.

Concentrating on the personal lives of those involved, a war correspondent takes us through the preparations, landing and initial campaign on Guadalcanal during WWII.

On a train trip out west to become a mail-order bride, Susan Bradley meets a cheery crew of young women traveling out to open a "Harvey House" restaurant at a remote whistle-stop.

A pair of married ex-convicts trying to go straight get jobs at a department store. A gangster who knows about their past threatens to expose it unless they agree to help him rob the department store.

World War II espionage drama, starring Preston Foster and Lynn Bari.

A cattle-vs.-sheepman feud loses Connie Dickason her fiance, but gains her his ranch, which she determines to run alone in opposition to Frank Ivey, "boss" of the valley, whom her father Ben wanted her to marry. She hires recovering alcoholic Dave Nash as foreman and a crew of Ivey's enemies. Ivey fights back with violence and destruction, but Dave is determined to counter him legally... a feeling not shared by his associates. Connie's boast that, as a woman, she doesn't need guns proves justified, but plenty of gunplay results.

Richard Dix as Dan Taylor and Preston S. Foster as Paxton Bryce are two longtime friends seeking their fortune in Texas after the war. The two men decide, not without problems, to establish a cattle empire. Paxton becoming too ambitious, distances himself from Dan and Abby, Paxton's wife. It will only be after a personal tragedy that he will come back to his senses.

A private eye and a niece investigate when six World War I veterans start dying in the same week.

The deep unbreakable bond between a wild stallion and the boy he rescues is chronicled in this children's adventure.

A policeman's family helps to exonerate him of murder charges in the death of a man he had under interrogation.

Filmed in the months immediately following Pearl Harbor, 20th Century-Fox's Little Tokyo USA is 63 minutes' worth of speculation about prewar Japanese espionage activities. Los Angeles cop Preston Foster suspects that there's dirty work afoot in the city's Japanese community, but no one will believe him except for intrepid girl reporter Brenda Joyce. When the spies frame Foster on a trumped-up murder charge, Joyce does a little detective work herself. The enemy agents are rounded up just before they can do any real damage. Because of its strident insistence that most (if not all) Japanese-American citizens were secretly loyal to the Rising Sun, Little Tokyo USA is seldom seen these days.

On a secluded base in Arizona, veteran World War I pilot Steve Britt trains flyers to fight in World War II. One of his trainees, Englishman Peter Stackhouse, competes with Britt for the affections of Kay Saunders, the daughter of a local rancher. Despite their differences, Britt makes sure Sutton passes his training and becomes a combat pilot -- even though he loses Kay to the young man in the process.

A dancehall girl meets a sailor and they fall in love, but the club’s owner doesn’t want the girl to leave.

A greedy woman betrays her jewel thief husband to the police, for the reward. Her husband's friend, a detective, adopts the couple's child and raises her as his own. Eighteen years later the husband, still in prison, finds out that his ex-wife is now blackmailing their daughter. He vows to break out and put a stop to her once and for all.

Set during Prohibition, the movie centers on Touhy's rise from small time thug to the city's most powerful bootlegger whose empire is rivaled only by that of Al Capone (who is referred to, but never named in the story). It is his rival who frames Touhy for kidnapping and arranges for him to serve a life-long term in Stateville prison. Determined to be free again, the desperate Touhy and his cellmate Basil "the Owl" Banghart, begin plotting a violent break out.

Gypo Nolan is a former Irish Republican Army man who drowns his sorrows in the bottle. He's desperate to escape his bleak Dublin life and start over in America with his girlfriend. So when British authorities advertise a reward for information about his best friend, current IRA member Frankie, Gypo cooperates. Now Gypo can buy two tickets on a boat bound for the States, but can he escape the overwhelming guilt he feels for betraying his buddy?

A World War I veteran’s dreams of becoming a master architect evaporate in the cold light of economic realities. Things get even worse when he’s falsely convicted of a crime and sent to work on a chain gang.

A convicted murderer has been sentenced to death in the electric chair. He decides to spill the name of the man who hired him, but just before he does he's killed by a poison dart. A police detective and a pretty young newspaper reporter team up to find out the identity of the man behind the killings.

In this action-filled spectacle set in ancient Pompeii, a blacksmith becomes a Roman gladiator, though his rise to wealth and power is jeopardized by his son's Christianity and the eruption of Vesuvius.

Awkward Annie loves her sharpshooting rival in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

A wisecracking New York reporter intrudes on a research scientist's quest to unmask The Moon Killer.

A condemned murderer, in the process of being executed, relives the events that led to his being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Told in flashback, we witness a sleazy dancehall girl dupe a high rise riveter into marriage so she can live off of him. But when he loses his job and his marbles, she ends up supporting him with money from her side man--and misses no opportunity to rub it in his face that she's now supporting him in his emasculated state. As the animosity grows and things get more and more unbearable, he is eventually driven to desperate measures.

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.

A politician's wife plots for her husband to become the next U.S. President.

A husband clashes with his wife over his membership to the Irish citizen army during the Easter rebellion.

Tough Caribbean freighter Captain Sam Whelan engages Sally Clark, a tramp masquerading as a missionary's daughter, to care for an abandoned baby on board his ship. En route to New York, ships mate Gatson sexually attacks her. The Captain knocks Gatson overboard in an ensuing scuffle. A romance developing between the Captain and Miss Clark is put to the test in New York after an assault investigation uncovers the girl's questionable past.

Pilot disobeys unsafe orders and loses his job. He then starts a flying school which receives a boost when the government launches a program which it hopes will produce 20,000 pilots a year.

Dale Jordan is first accepted by the aristocratic first-cabin passengers on a south-bound Panama-Pacific liner until they discover she is a member of a troupe of cabaret girls led by Trixie Snell en route for the Bull Ring Cabaret in Panama City.

A judge hands four wayward boys to a college football coach who turns them into backfield stars.

“Sparks” Roberts and Captain Cogswell are brothers whose relationship is fractured by a long-standing feud involving rivalries over boats and women. The tension between them reaches a breaking point when a passenger ship they are on unexpectedly encounters a violent typhoon. The life-threatening danger of the storm acts as a catalyst for the brothers, forcing them to reconcile and work together to survive the maritime disaster.

When American newsreel cameraman stationed in Paris is sent to cover an Arab rebellion he finds a financier presumed dead but actually fomenting desert warfare.

Olga runs an isolated gas station and restaurant in the stifling hot American desert with her discontented younger sister Myra. When two escaped criminals stop for a bite to eat, Olga is reminded of the past she left behind.

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.

John Thompson is kidnapped by mobsters after quitting his job. Then he is arrested, tried, and sentenced to death for murders they committed. A suspicious detective thinks he is innocent and works to save his life.

The film begins with a knuckle-head playboy (Preston Foster) working on a road crew dressed in a tux in order to win a bet. Apparently, this guy will take on any bet or act on a whim. This becomes very apparent when he disrupts a food giveaway hosted by the mayor’s daughter and as a result of this, he announces he’s running for mayor–though he seems very much apolitical and has no interest in the job. Later, when he once again meets up with the mayor’s daughter (Joan Fontaine) they supposedly fall in love–although there seemed to be little chemistry between them and it made very little sense for Fontaine to suddenly love a guy she so quickly hated at the beginning of the film. Plus, she really had plenty of reason to dislike the guy.

A young captain hoping to replace the U.S. Army's horses with mechanized vehicles faces court-martial after his commanding officer, who's opposed to modern changes, is killed.

Promotional short produced by General Electric for release through Warner Bros. to advertise GE's home appliances.

The 1937 film version of Bret Harte's story, starring Preston Foster.

A day in the maternity ward from the lens of accepted morals and medical attitudes of 1932. The ward includes women from all walks of life and situations.

Famous private detective Tip O'Neil is summoned by telegram to the estate of old friend Paul Harding, but finds the telegram was sent by Paul's attractive secretary, Amy Hutchins. Paul admits his dog was shot by extortionists to show they mean business, and shows Tip some threatening notes they sent. That night, Paul's ward, Corinne, is kidnapped by two gangsters and her driver is found dead the next morning. The kidnappers contact Tip demanding $200,000, which is delivered according to instructions. Awaiting the return of Corrine, Tip learns her fiancé, Gene Leland, is an ex-convict, and he also investigates why a thug, Maratti, was found prowling around the grounds, and why Paul's brother-in-law, Jim Glenray, was seen leaving the estate late the night before. And when the chauffeur is murdered with Amy's gun as he was about to confess some complicity, Tip has to piece together various clues to pinpoint the culprits.

Money was what gangster Vince M. Falcone wanted most and he did lay hands on millions of dollars by fair means or (mostly) foul. But once he became rich what he craved for was respectability. So why not marry a lovely society lady? And with a young daughter as a bonus Mister Falcone could show off among the creme de la creme. Of course when times got rough he felt free to desert his wife and little girl. Fortunately Taps, a lawyer working for the underworld, will console them both.

A moll, imprisoned after participating in a bank robbery, helps with a breakout plot.

Two men bear the name Joe Holt. One is a shipping clerk, the other a champion Canadian swimmer. When a socialite gets them confused, thinking the clerk is the inventor of an unsinkable swim suit, she enters him in a 20 mile swim race.

No good deed goes unpunished for Lena Karelson (Wynne Gibson), hooker with a heart of gold trying to go straight in the big city. Covering a bachelor party for a friend in need, Lena winds up at a gambling house where she is the sole witness when Mayor Wentworth's drunken lout of a son shoots the owner. Wentworth's political machine wants Lena to falsely incriminate mob boss Callahan to bolster their re-election campaign. Callahan's mouthpiece nabs Lena first, conveying her stealthily by train from Toledo to New York to prevent her from testifying against the big boss. A midnight special smash-up, a tense courtroom finale and true love triumphant round out this typical Fox pre-Code programmer, released just before the Legion of Decency dropped the hammer in 1934.

A railroad detective is having a difficult time stopping or even slowing down a gang that is robbing the merchandise carried on the freight trains, with inside information. However, his son and his son's young friends notice something that helps the railway detective get on the right trail.