Archie Mayo

Directing

Archie Mayo

Born — Died

1891-01-29 — 1968-12-04

Place of birth

New York City, New York, USA

Known for

Directing

Credits

40 titles

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   Archie Mayo (29 January 1891, New York City – 4 December 1968, Guadalajara, Mexico) was a movie director and stage actor who moved to Hollywood in 1915 and began working as a director in 1917. His films include Is Everybody Happy? (1929) with Ted Lewis, Night After Night (1932) with Mae West, The Doorway to Hell (1930) with James Cagney and Lew Ayres, Convention City (1933) with Joan Blondell, The Mayor of Hell (1933) with James Cagney, The Petrified Forest (1936) with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, and The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938) with Gary Cooper. Mayo retired in 1946, shortly after completing A Night in Casablanca with the Marx Brothers…

Known for

Moontide poster
6.4

After a drunken night out, a longshoreman thinks he may have killed a man.

Moontide

1942

The Adventures of Marco Polo poster
6.2

The Venetian traveler Marco Polo meets Kublai Khan and foils a plotter with fireworks in medieval China.

The Adventures of Marco Polo

1938

The Petrified Forest poster
7.1

Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.

The Petrified Forest

1936

Crash Dive poster
6.4

A US Navy submarine, the USS Corsair, is operating in the North Atlantic, hunting German merchant raiders that are preying on Allied shipping. Its new executive officer, Lt. Ward Stewart, has been transferred back into submarines after commanding his own PT boat. At the submarine base in New London, Connecticut, he asks his new captain, Lt. Cmdr. Dewey Connors, for a weekend leave to settle his affairs before taking up his new assignment. On a train bound for Washington D.C., Stewart accidentally encounters New London school teacher Jean Hewlett and her students. Despite her initial resistance to his efforts, he charms her and they fall in love.

Crash Dive

1943

Black Legion poster
6.6

When a hard-working machinist loses a promotion to a Polish-born worker, he is seduced into joining the secretive Black Legion, which intimidates foreigners through violence.

Black Legion

1937

The Mayor of Hell poster
7.1

Members of a teenage gang are sent to the State Reformatory, presided over by the callous Thompson. Soon Patsy Gargan, a former gangster appointed Deputy Commissioner, arrives and takes over the administration to run the place on radical principles. Thompson needs a quick way to discredit him.

The Mayor of Hell

1933

Behind the camera

Moontide poster
6.4

After a drunken night out, a longshoreman thinks he may have killed a man.

Moontide

1942

The Adventures of Marco Polo poster
6.2

The Venetian traveler Marco Polo meets Kublai Khan and foils a plotter with fireworks in medieval China.

The Adventures of Marco Polo

1938

The Petrified Forest poster
7.1

Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.

The Petrified Forest

1936

Crash Dive poster
6.4

A US Navy submarine, the USS Corsair, is operating in the North Atlantic, hunting German merchant raiders that are preying on Allied shipping. Its new executive officer, Lt. Ward Stewart, has been transferred back into submarines after commanding his own PT boat. At the submarine base in New London, Connecticut, he asks his new captain, Lt. Cmdr. Dewey Connors, for a weekend leave to settle his affairs before taking up his new assignment. On a train bound for Washington D.C., Stewart accidentally encounters New London school teacher Jean Hewlett and her students. Despite her initial resistance to his efforts, he charms her and they fall in love.

Crash Dive

1943

Black Legion poster
6.6

When a hard-working machinist loses a promotion to a Polish-born worker, he is seduced into joining the secretive Black Legion, which intimidates foreigners through violence.

Black Legion

1937

The Mayor of Hell poster
7.1

Members of a teenage gang are sent to the State Reformatory, presided over by the callous Thompson. Soon Patsy Gargan, a former gangster appointed Deputy Commissioner, arrives and takes over the administration to run the place on radical principles. Thompson needs a quick way to discredit him.

The Mayor of Hell

1933

Angel on My Shoulder poster
6.5

The Devil arranges for a deceased gangster to return to Earth as a well-respected judge to make up for his previous life.

Angel on My Shoulder

1946

A Night in Casablanca poster
6.8

The Marx Brothers are employed at a hotel in postwar Casablanca, where a ring of Nazis is trying to recover a cache of stolen treasure.

A Night in Casablanca

1946

The Sacred Flame poster
3.3

Colonel Maurice Taylor of the Royal Flying Corps is hopelessly injured in an airplane crash immediately following his marriage to Stella. Maurice is non-functional in most of the physical areas of marriage that count, but Stella attends to his other needs faithfully for three years. Then his brother, Colin, shows up from South America, and he and Stella fall passionately in love and are making plans to run away together. Mother Taylor is aware of the romance, as is Nurse Weyland, who is secretly in love with Maurice, and now hates Stella for her careless attitude toward Maurice's patiently-borne sufferings. Maurice is also aware of the affair. He has a talk with his wife and brother. Complications arise.

The Sacred Flame

1929

The Case of the Lucky Legs poster
6.0

A con man who stages phony "lucky legs" beauty contests and leaves town with the money is found with a surgical knife in his heart by Mason.

The Case of the Lucky Legs

1935

It's Love I'm After poster
7.1

An infatuated debutante renews a Shakespearean actor's running feud with his leading lady.

It's Love I'm After

1937

Ever in My Heart poster
5.6

World War I brings tribulations to an American woman married to a German.

Ever in My Heart

1933

Give Me Your Heart poster
5.9

An American lawyer's wife is reunited with her child and his father, an English nobleman.

Give Me Your Heart

1936

The House Across the Bay poster
5.6

Nightclub owner Steve Larwitt sees his empire of investments collapse as he faces tax evasion charges and attacks by rivals. Believing Steve will be safer in prison for one year, his wife, Brenda, testifies against him on advice from his lawyer, Slant Kolma, who is in love with her. After Steve receives 10 years in Alcatraz, Brenda moves to be near him and avoids advances of airplane builder Tim Nolan, who knows nothing about her past.

The House Across the Bay

1940

Call It a Day poster
7.0

The various members of the middle-class Hilton family have a series of romantic misadventures during one eventful spring day.

Call It a Day

1937

The Expert poster
7.2

An elderly gentleman arrives for an extended stay with his grown son in Chicago.

The Expert

1932

The Doorway to Hell poster
6.5

A vicious crime lord decides that he has had enough and much to the shock of his colleagues decides to give the business to his second in command and retire to Florida after marrying his moll. Unfortunately, he has no idea that she and the man are lovers.

The Doorway to Hell

1930

Bordertown poster
5.9

An ambitious Mexican-American gets mixed up with the neurotic wife of his casino boss.

Bordertown

1935

Desirable poster
7.2

A man meets the daughter of his lover and they begin to fall in love.

Desirable

1934

Convention City poster
4.2

Extra-marital fun and games at a convention of the Honeywell Rubber Company in Atlantic City. President J.B. Honeywell is to choose a new company sales manager. T.R. Kent and George Ellerbe are two salesmen who both want the job. However, they both get into trouble: T.R. is discredited when jealous saleswoman, Arlene Dale, interferes with his attempted seduction of Honeywell's daughter, Claire, and George attempts to seduce Nancy Lorraine. The position of sales manager is bestowed upon a drunken employee as a bribe after he catches J.B. about to visit "Daisy La Rue, Exterminator." Considered a lost film.

Convention City

1933

Orchestra Wives poster
6.5

Connie Ward is in seventh heaven when Gene Morrison's band rolls into town. She is swept off her feet by trumpeter Bill Abbot. After marrying him, she joins the band's tour and learns about life as an orchestra wife, weathering the catty attacks of the other band wives.

Orchestra Wives

1942

I Married a Doctor poster
5.2

City girl marries country doctor, meets prejudice and exclusion when she tries to befriend the townspeople.

I Married a Doctor

1936

Beware of Married Men poster
3.7

A press sheet printed in Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World in 1928 put forth the suggestion that “people in the need of a good hearty laugh should take this opportunity of getting it” by seeing a newly released comedy by Warner Bros., suggestively entitled Beware of Married Men. Since director Archie Mayo (The Petrified Forest) helmed this feature during the dying days of the silent era, the studio sought to enhance its commercial viability by embellishing the shot-silent picture with a synchronized music and effects soundtrack using the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system. Ultimately, these efforts went for naught, as the picture failed at the box office and quickly disappeared from theaters.

Beware of Married Men

1928

They Shall Have Music poster
6.5

The future is bleak for a troubled boy from a broken home in the slums. He runs away when his step father breaks his violin, ending up sleeping in the basement of a music school for poor children.

They Shall Have Music

1939

Confirm or Deny poster
4.8

Newsman Mitch and teletype operator Jennifer, whose job is to see he doesn't send inappropriate stuff out of the country, dodge bombs during the blitz of London while falling in love.

Confirm or Deny

1941

The Man with Two Faces poster
6.8

Actress Jessica Wells, sister of actor Damon Wells, is on top of her form except when her husband Vance is around. When Vance takes her to the apartment of a theatrical producer she comes home incoherent and Vance is found dead in the vanished producer's hotel suite.

The Man with Two Faces

1934

The Life of Jimmy Dolan poster
6.2

Champion boxer Jimmy Dolan has cultivated a wholesome image for himself, but he's a boozer and womanizer behind the scenes. Intoxicated at a party, he punches a reporter who threatens to expose his hypocrisy, and accidentally kills him. Dolan panics and skips town, winding up on a farm that serves as a home for disabled children run by kindhearted Peggy. As the cynical Dolan falls for Peggy, he begins to change his ways.

The Life of Jimmy Dolan

1933

Svengali poster
6.3

A music maestro uses hypnotism on a young model he meets in Paris to make her both his muse and wife.

Svengali

1931

Go Into Your Dance poster
7.2

An irresponsible Broadway star gets mixed up with gambling and gangsters.

Go Into Your Dance

1935

Gambling Lady poster
6.2

A businesslike syndicate runs all the gambling joints in town; least profitable is honest Mike Lee's. Under pressure to allow cheating, Mike "walks out," leaving tough-minded daughter Lady Lee to earn a living the only way she knows. She soon becomes a success gambling among the rich, but, falling out with the syndicate, she considers the marriage proposal of blueblood Garry Madison. Can such a match work despite snobbery and old associations?

Gambling Lady

1934

The College Widow poster
10.0

Following another instance of the perennial defeat of the Atwater College football team, President Witherspoon is told that unless better athletes can be induced to come to Atwater, he will be asked to resign. Acting upon the suggestion of Professor Jelicoe, Jane, the professor's beautiful daughter, uses her personal charm to draw noted football stars from neighboring schools by a series of ruses at a vacationing spot. Billy Bolton, son of a financial magnate, falls for Jane and to prove himself registers under another name and works his way through school, attaining scholastic and athletic honors. Through the jealousy of another girl, Billy learns of Jane's trickery and persuades the athletes not to play;

The College Widow

1927

Dearie poster
8.0

Finding herself in dire circumstances, the widowed Sylvia Darling determines that her son, Stephen, will complete his college education and develop his supposed literary talents; thus, she accepts a contract as singer in a Broadway nightclub, billed as "Dearie," and becomes an immediate sensation.

Dearie

1927

Slightly Used poster
8.0

Cynthia Martin’s father insists she marry before her two younger sisters Helen and Grace. So, she invents a husband for herself called Major Smith. Trouble begins when the fictitious husband Major John Smith materializes, bringing with him chaos and confusion.

Slightly Used

1927

Johnny Get Your Hair Cut poster
7.0

An orphan is adopted by a kindly old racehorse owner. He decides to pay back his benefactor by training to ride the horse so he can win an important race.

Johnny Get Your Hair Cut

1927

Wide Open poster
5.8

An eccentric, fluttery bachelor is dismayed to discover an undressed woman in his apartment.

Wide Open

1930

Street of Women poster
5.0

An architect has an affair with a woman who inspires him. Her brother is in love with the architect's daughter. The complicated entanglement leads to misunderstanding and dissolution, but ultimately love.

Street of Women

1932

Youth Takes a Fling poster
5.5

McCrea plays Joe Meadows, whose only ambition as a Kansas farm boy was a life at sea. He moves to New York to try to get a job as a sailor, finds it more difficult than he thought, and meets Helen Brown, who falls for him and uses her feminine wiles to try to prevent him leaving.

Youth Takes a Fling

1938

Illicit poster
5.6

Ann, a young woman with outrageously advanced ideas, has been living in sin with Dick, her lover, because of her conviction that marriage would destroy their love; but social pressure ends up paying off, so Ann and Dick get married.

Illicit

1931

The Great American Broadcast poster
6.0

After WWI two men go into radio. Failure leads the wife of one to borrow money from another; she goes on, after separation, to stardom. A coast-to-coast radio program is set up to bring everyone back together.

The Great American Broadcast

1941

Unknown Treasures poster
10.0

A poor man refrains from proposing to the woman he loves until he can secure the fortune left him by his uncle. Believing the treasure awaits in his uncle's abandoned mansion, he begins searching... only to uncover mystery, murder, and a killer ape.

Unknown Treasures

1926