Directing
John Rawlins
Born — Died
1902-06-09 — 1997-05-20
Place of birth
Long Beach, California, USA
Known for
Directing
Credits
42 titles
Director John Rawlins started in films in 1918 as an actor, stunt man, gag writer and assistant director. For a while he sidelined as a comedy writer, then became an editor and later directed second features for First National in Britain from the early 1930s. Returning to the US, he joined Universal (1938-46), where he turned out "B" pictures and serials, including installments of the "Dick Tracy" and "Sherlock Holmes" series. He had similar assignments at RKO (1947-48) and United Artists (1951-53), before branching out into television dramas.
Known for
5.6Dick Tracy investigates the theft of a fortune of fur coats, a possible insurance swindle and several murders, all linked to a huge thug who wears a hook in place of his right hand.
Dick Tracy's Dilemma
1947
6.5England, at the start of World War Two. Mysterious wireless broadcasts, apparently from Nazi Germany are heard over the BBC. They warn of acts of terror in England, just before they take place. Baffled, the Defense Committee call in Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
1942
6.0Two half brothers battle each other for the power of the throne and the love of sensual, gorgeous dancing girl Scheherazade.
Arabian Nights
1942
6.8Second serial featuring The Green Hornet and Kato.
The Green Hornet Strikes Again!
1940
5.5A 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.
Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome
1947
6.5A journalist finds out, that a plantation owner he meets is a gangster the police is looking for, who has changed his face with plastic surgery.
Mississippi Gambler
1942
Film credits
1940s · 2 titles
4.3Hoppy is leading a scientific expedition and the Chinese who have a hidden settlement nearby are trying to stop them. Saulters and his outlaw gang are also in the area looking for a gold mine. When Saulters men attack, the gold mine is found. Hoppy agrees to file for the Chinese and heads after Saulters in the chase to the land office.
Secret of the Wastelands
1941
8.0An all-girl band flees to Argentina to avoid their creditors. Comedy with songs.
Argentine Nights
1940
Behind the camera
5.6Dick Tracy investigates the theft of a fortune of fur coats, a possible insurance swindle and several murders, all linked to a huge thug who wears a hook in place of his right hand.
Dick Tracy's Dilemma
1947
6.5England, at the start of World War Two. Mysterious wireless broadcasts, apparently from Nazi Germany are heard over the BBC. They warn of acts of terror in England, just before they take place. Baffled, the Defense Committee call in Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
1942
6.0Two half brothers battle each other for the power of the throne and the love of sensual, gorgeous dancing girl Scheherazade.
Arabian Nights
1942
6.8Second serial featuring The Green Hornet and Kato.
The Green Hornet Strikes Again!
1940
5.5A 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.
Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome
1947
6.5A journalist finds out, that a plantation owner he meets is a gangster the police is looking for, who has changed his face with plastic surgery.
Mississippi Gambler
1942
6.4An Englishman kills a German look-alike and poses as a Nazi spy in London.
The Great Impersonation
1942
5.3Loretta Young stars in this drama about female pilots during WWII.
Ladies Courageous
1944
6.4It's just after the Civil War and Ben Shelby arrives looking for Johnny Tallon whom he plans to kill. Shelby was the only survivor of a battle due to the cowardice of Tallon. Thinking Tallon dead, another man who lost a brother at the same battle arrives to kill Tallon's blind brother. Tallon arrives to find Shelby and his brother fleeing. Then they are attacked by Indians and Shelby and Tallon must now fight together postponing the inevitable showdown.
Fort Defiance
1951
6.6Two Cavalry Officers clash over the Colonel's Daughter at a remote outpost with Indian troubles.
Massacre River
1949
5.8The brash, opinionated owner of a nightclub manages to drive everybody crazy on a boat trip to Havana.
Six Lessons From Madame La Zonga
1941
9.0Happy-go-lucky aspiring sportswriter Lon Decker from Indiana who has aspirations of becoming a sportswriter meets the shrewd and larcenous old man, "Mac" Dougal during his wandering. Mac likes to ensure his bets on Quarter-Horse races by doping a horse or two here and there. When Lon finds out Mac intends to fleece wealthy rancher Zelda Bagley he sets out to stop him.
The Boy From Indiana
1950
7.0The story of Ownie Rodgers, the nephew of crooked Oregon police chief Joe Dandridge. A $70,000 windfall, bequeathed to Dandridge by a man he'd once framed on a bank robbery charge, unleashes innumerable family skeletons. Ownie is obliged to solve the long-ago bank job himself, and in so doing he discovers that his "faithful" girl friend Judy was in on the scheme.
Rogue River
1951
6.2Saddled with a loveless marriage and three ungrateful children, Charlie Walker (Jeffrey Lynn) dreams of escape. When he falls overboard on a boating trip and is presumed dead, his fantasy comes true. He washes up on a Caribbean island and meets a lovely local (Leila Barry). He gets a fresh start at life, opening a resort on his island home. But guilt and a few insurance agents may cut Charlie's dream short.
Lost Lagoon
1957
6.2Saddled with a loveless marriage and three ungrateful children, Charlie Walker (Jeffrey Lynn) dreams of escape. When he falls overboard on a boating trip and is presumed dead, his fantasy comes true. He washes up on a Caribbean island and meets a lovely local (Leila Barry). He gets a fresh start at life, opening a resort on his island home. But guilt and a few insurance agents may cut Charlie's dream short.
Lost Lagoon
1957
8.0A ball player takes his girlfriend to a carnival, only to discover a ring of saboteurs.
Mr. Dynamite
1941
7.5Newspaper man "Scoop" Hanlon is looking for a way out of his assigned women's interest column. The one chance he has is to spend the night in the "blue room" of a haunted mansion where a number of people are gathered for a party. When one of the guests disappears from his room, "Scoop" decides to get to the bottom of things.
The Missing Guest
1938
6.5A bunch of waterfront youths pursue the Sea Raiders, a gang of saboteurs.
Sea Raiders
1941
6.6A desert pickpocket, his sidekick, and an escaped slave help an incognito queen in danger.
Sudan
1945
6.5Young Brad Craig enters the military school with a chip on his shoulder which upperclassmen quickly knock off. Once adjusted, Craig falls in love with a professor's beautiful daughter, only to find she is in love with his roommate.
We've Never Been Licked
1943
8.0The state police try to break up racketeering in a coal mining town.
State Police
1938
7.5A pair head to the frozen wastes with an expedition in search of radium deposits. Certain members of the group succumb to greed, plotting to bump off the others and claim the radium for themselves.
Mutiny in the Arctic
1941
6.5A gang of urban street kids and a club of suburban would-be federal agents, at first rivals, join forces to rescue the father of one of the kids, the inventor of a super-explosive and its remote detonator, from the clutches of a band of foreign subversives call the "Flaming Torch Gang". A 12-episode movie serial with the chapters: •1. Enemies Within •2. The Blast of Doom •3. Human Dynamite •4. Blazing Danger •5. Trapped By Traitors •6. Traitors' Treachery •7. Flaming Death •8. Hurled Through Space •9. The Plunge of Peril •10.The Toll of Treason •11.Descending Doom •12.The Power of Patriotism
Junior G-Men
1940
3.7A young man befriends the last surviving Civil War veteran, intending to rob him of $50,000.
Young Fugitives
1938
6.7A disgraced veteran wanders the West alone until he decides to help a battered woman.
The Arizona Ranger
1948
8.0A young crippled girl and her love for a teenage newsboy despite her over-protective and alcoholic mother's objections.
Michael O'Halloran
1948
6.0A murder occurs on a train bound for Shanghai during World War II.
Half Way to Shanghai
1942
8.0A shifty boxing promoter places an amateur in fixed fights, then hands his contract over to an suspicious female investigative reporter as a raffle prize. He later regrets his actions, however, when the boxer becomes an honest champion.
The Leather Pushers
1940
8.0Tim MacGregor, unscrupulous lumber operator, obtains by bribery a contract to cut a vast quantity of timber from land owned by Kay Handley, rich débutante. When Dick O'Hara, forestry inspector, demands a postponement, MacGrgeor refuses and sends his henchman, Jean Collet, to obtain the services of the famous "bull-of-the-woods" Andy Jensen and his partner "Lucky." Kay arrives and gives her permission to cut the timber, defying Dick. Dick, with his two assistants, Withers and "Tex," begins a survey of the timber stand. When Dick and Tex finally reveal MacGrgeor as a crook, Collet is sent to kill "Tex" and obtain the reports. A fight ensues and "Lucky" is killed by one of Collet's flying knives. Kay then admits that Dick is right and helps him trap Collet. Dick and Andy force a confession from Collet and MacGregor is exposed.
Men of the Timberland
1941
10.0Two investigators for a stagecoach company are assigned to find out why the company's stages keep being ambushed. They discover that the culprits are white men disguised as Indians, and they set out to discover who is behind the plot.
Overland Mail
1942
8.0Two American leave a ship where they had stowed away, in a Middle Eastern port and wind up in the fighting in a brutal civil war
Raiders of the Desert
1941
A British comedy film directed by John Rawlins
High Society
1932
7.5Richard Arlen and Phil Terry star as Skimmer and Tommy, two lifelong buddies who've invented a lightweight, high-speed torpedo boat (hence the title). Their copacetic business relationship is strained when nightclub singer Grace Holman (Jean Parker), having been jilted by Skimmer, marries Tommy on the rebound.
Torpedo Boat
1942
6.0The Unseen Enemy in this wartime meller is Nick (Leo Carrillo), the outwardly effusive manager of a San Francisco waterfront café. To make enough money to ensure his daughter Gen's (Irene Hervey) entree into society, Nick sells his services to a gang of foreign spies, who then use Nick's establishment as a rendezvous point. The plan is to covertly send out a Japanese vessel for the purpose of raiding and destroying American merchant ships. The spies' secret code is hidden in the lyrics of a song called "Lydia", which the unwitting Gen performs on request day after day.
Unseen Enemy
1942
4.2Two daredevil pilots go after the same girl.
Air Devils
1938
NRThe Dead End Kids smash a spy ring in this feature-length version of the Universal serial Junior G-Men. Billy, the leader of the Dead End Kids, learns that his scientist father has been captured by the "Order of the Flaming Torch." This group of fifth columnists plans to use America's biggest brains to destroy the country from within. When the saboteurs outwit the gang's street smarts, the kids have no choice but to ask the FBI for help. The feds send in their own teenage contingent -- The Junior G-Men! Now the two groups must form an uneasy alliance, before the Order of the Flaming Torch can turn the U.S.A. into Amerika, the Evil Empire!
Dead End Kids vs. Spies, Inc.
1940
6.0Someone has absconded with $4,000,000 worth of diamonds, and that someone may very well be a passenger on the Bombay Clipper.
Bombay Clipper
1942
7.0Detectives Dick Williams and Andy McAllister find themselves trying to solve several crimes at an isolated mentally-ill hospital, where the patients range from slightly daffy to criminally insane, and they don't know which is which. A gang is out to steal a fortune inherited by one of the patients and, before Dick and Andy solve the case, several patients are transferred to the cemetery. And 'tiddlie-winks" are indeed involved.
A Dangerous Game
1941
8.0Two doctors try to find the cure for a fatal disease, while battling each other for the affection of a beautiful woman doctor.
Strange Conquest
1946
6.7A boy's tall tale about a gun puts his parents and school principal in jail.
Her Adventurous Night
1946
