Nora Cecil

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

A 17th-century witch returns to wreak havoc in the life of a descendant of the Puritan witch hunter who burned her, but runs afoul of her father when she discovers that her mischief might have found her true love.

Egbert Sousé becomes an unexpected hero when a bank robber falls over a bench he's occupying. Now considered brave, Egbert is given a job as a bank guard. Soon, he is approached by charlatan J. Frothingham Waterbury about buying shares in a mining company. Egbert persuades teller Og Oggilby to lend him bank money, to be returned when the scheme pays off. Unfortunately, bank inspector Snoopington then makes a surprise appearance.

Hoping for a peaceful visit with his parents in the small town of Sycamore Springs, Nick Charles and his wife Nora soon find themselves surrounded by old rivalries, family tensions, and a mysterious murder. Nick’s father, a respected retired doctor, would much rather see his son give up detective work, but a suspicious shooting quickly draws Nick back into action. As Nick and Nora investigate, they uncover jealousy, deception, hidden motives, and a dangerous secret involving the town’s prominent citizens.

Near the end of the Civil War, the proud residents of Mannon Manor await the return of shipping tycoon Ezra Mannon and son Orin. Meanwhile Ezra’s conniving wife Christine and daughter Lavinia vie for the love of a handsome captain with a dark secret while well-meaning neighbor Peter sets his sights on Lavinia.

Having been discharged from the Marines for a hayfever condition before ever seeing action, Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith delays the return to his hometown, feeling that he is a failure. While in a moment of melancholy, he meets up with a group of Marines who befriend him and encourage him to return home to his mother by fabricating a story that he was wounded in battle with honorable discharge.

The brother of a notorious outlaw is put in a charge of a stagecoach line way station in dangerous Apache territory. A stagecoach arrives at the station with a valuable box of cargo, and the outlaw brother soon shows up, though denying that he's planning to take the cargo box. Soon, however, rampaging Apaches attack the station, and the station manager, his brother and a disparate group of passengers and employees must fight them off.

A small-town girl with a soft spot for American soldiers wakes up the morning after a wild farewell party for the troops to find that she married someone she can't remember.

On America's frontier, a St. Louis woman marries a New Mexico cattleman who is seen as a tyrant by the locals.

Abigail Chandler has written her stuffy Boston relatives that she's a successful opera singer in New York. In reality, she works at a burlesque house and is billed as High-C Susie. When her sister Martha comes for a visit, Abigail tries to hide the truth from her.

A woman attempts to shelter a young girl from the publicity surrounding her socialite parents' divorce.

A newspaper editor goes on an anti-crime crusade, but gets carried away.

Two strangers split a sweepstake prize to go on a fake honeymoon with predictable results.

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.

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.

Residents get suspicious when a shady character takes over the local hunting lodge right after the two old-timers who own it disappear.

Jo March and her husband Professor Bhaer operate the Plumfield School for poor boys. When Dan, a tough street kid, comes to the school, he wins Jo's heart despite his hard edge, and she defends him when he is falsely accused. Dan's foster father, Major Burdle, is a swindler in cahoots with another crook called Willie the Fox. When the Plumfield School becomes in danger of foreclosure, the two con men cook up a scheme to save the home.

Steve is a shy quiet man who is an executive for a shipping firm. He meets Dot at the Opera where she had his seats and the next day she shows up as his temporary secretary. Then Coffee Cup comes to town to see Dot, his gal. When Steven is with Cecilia, everything is boring. When he is with Dot and Coffee Cup, everything is exciting and he falls for Dot. But Coffee is getting out of the Navy in a few days and he plans to marry Dot.

Wendy Ballantine's parents decide to retire from show biz so she can have a normal life. They are unwelcome in the small town until a storm lets the family show their stuff.

At a family gathering, an elderly man reflects on the follies of his youth during his freshman year at college.

A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo, and learn something about each other in the process.

One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows' agent, gambler Sid Campeau; Campeau's partner Dick Allen is Jeff's war buddy and rival suitor for engineer's daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?

The story begins in 1917 with Stan and Ollie being drafted into the U.S. Army to fight in World War I. While in the Army, the pair befriend a man named Eddie Smith, who is killed by the enemy during a battle. After the war is over, Stan and Ollie venture to New York City, where they begin a quest to reunite Eddie's little daughter with her rightful family. The task proves both monumental and problematic as the boys discover just how many people in New York have the last name Smith.

As the Great War breaks out in Europe, English brothers Roy and Monte enlist in the Royal Flying Corps to fight for king and country, while their Oxford College friend Karl is ordered back to Germany. As a love triangle develops involving Monte, Roy, and Roy's girlfriend, Helen, the brothers' disparate personalities, and Monte's cowardice in the face of war soon threaten to compromise a top-secret bombing mission over German territory.

A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country.

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.

Huckleberry Finn, a rambunctious boy adventurer chafing under the bonds of civilization, escapes his humdrum world and his selfish, plotting father by sailing a raft down the Mississippi River.

J.B. Ball, a rich financier, gets fed up with his free-spending family. He takes his wife's just-bought (very expensive) sable coat and throws it out the window, it lands on poor hard-working girl Mary Smith. But it isn't so easy to just give away something so valuable, as he soon learns.

When a small-town girl is incorrectly diagnosed with a rare, deadly disease, an unknowing newspaper columnist turns her into a national heroine.

Ruby falls in love with small-time con man Eddie. During a botched blackmail scheme, Eddie accidentally kills the man they were setting up. Eddie takes off and Ruby is sent to a reformatory for two years.

Alexander Graham Bell falls in love with deaf girl Mabel Hubbard while teaching the deaf and trying to invent means for telegraphing the human voice. She urges him to put off thoughts of marriage until his experiments are complete. He invents the telephone, marries and becomes rich and famous, though his happiness is threatened when a rival company sets out to ruin him.

Independent Gilda is resigned fo a life of married tedium when Tom and George, having gotten past their jealousy, come to America and whisk Gilda away to live an exciting polyamorous life in Paris.

Nicky Nelson is a fast-talking sideshow barker with a wax-and-alive concession on Atlantic City's boardwalk. Even with the band of his friend, struggling musician Gene Krupa, playing on the sidewalk to attract the customers, "The Living Corpse" and other low-rent acts aren't enough to lure the seen-it-all boardwalk strollers, and the landlord closes the show in lieu of never-paid rent. Nicky, always promoting, goes to Stephen Hanratty, head of the pier's Dance Pavilion, to plug Krupa's band as an attraction, but Hanratty won't even listen to them. But, while there, he meets singer Lily Racquel, who knows he is a phoney but might have the ability to to talk a radio-station manager into giving her an audition. She gives him a ring to help finance the project; he promptly loses it in a crap-game.

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

When Mr. X wakes up in the city park with amnesia, bloody and apparently connected to a murder of a well-known producer, fast talking Marie Smith takes pity on him. They solve the case and discover his identity.

Romance strikes when a vacationing millionairess and her daughter and son spend their vacation at a posh New England resort.

Richard, a millionaire in love with his secretary, Diane, is dispirited when his wife refuses to divorce him. Concerned that Diane will now lose interest, Richard offers her an all-expense-paid cruise to Argentina so that she can think it over. While traveling, however, Diane falls in love with fellow traveler Mike. She resolves to come clean to Richard, but upon return she becomes conflicted when she finds out he was able to get divorced after all.

A Broadway playboy inherits an almost bankrupt girls' school and tries to save it by a big show.

Sylvia is a French teacher at an all-girls school who wants to find love. When she hears Bill Williams on the radio, she decides to go visit and thank him. However, difficult problems lie ahead when Lili gets in the way.

Dwight Stanford and his wife, Penny, are a pair of spendthrifts who can't hold on to money, dependent for support on Dwight's rich uncle, who sends them a monthly allowance. Conrad Norris, Dwight's cousin, disapproves of Dwight and Penny, and resents his uncle's generosity. The uncle is the victim of a hit-and-run accident and, there being no will, Conrad, as next of kin, inherits. Switch, the uncle's lawyer, tells Dwight he is shutout with no hope of appeal. Dwight starts writing mystery novels about a fictional detective named Steven Knight, which become instant hits and the money pours in.

Sam Bisbee is an inventor whose works (e.g., a keyhole finder for drunks) have brought him only poverty. His daughter is in love with the son of the town snob. Events conspire to ruin his bullet-proof tire just as success seems near. Another of his inventions prohibits him from committing suicide, so Sam decides to go on living.

An able nurse clashes with a new doctor at her hospital.

A white youth raised in the jungle by animals is captured by a safari and brought back to civilization as an attraction in a circus.

After being fired from his job at the Marriage License Bureau, a clerk turns to matchmaking.

The Great McGonigle and his troupe of third-rate vaudevillians manage to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors and the sheriff.

In Vienna, a new jazz club featuring American trumpeter Buzzy Bellew threatens the existence of its neighbor, the Waltz Palace, run by Franz Strauss and featuring his granddaughter, singer Elsa. Smitten by Elsa, Buzzy hides his identity and association with the club -- whose owner intends to buy out the Palace property. When Elsa accidentally learns who Buzzy really is, it appears he may have to return to America alone.

A dull statistician changes his life after winning a pile of money after successfully determining the number of beans in a barrel. He decides to do something novel with the prize and ends up buying a barrel factory. He encounters trouble when the nearby pickle factory is threatened by a shyster attempting to close it.

A pretty but virtuous small-town bank clerk is the victim of a vicious rumor from an unsuccessful suitor that she spent the night with a notorious womanizer.

A wealthy mama's boy finds himself the victim of con artists involved in an oil stocks racket.

The sinister Dr. Fu Manchu returns to destroy the people he holds responsible for the death of his family.

A family living on a farm in Maine takes in a young woman to stay with them, not knowing that the woman is not quite what she seems and has a secret in her past that she hasn't told them about.

A parable about magic glasses involving on the nature of beauty, truth, good, and evil set in 17th Century Germany with music and Glorious Technicolor.

A man convicted of murder escapes from jail and hides out in the home of a small town newspaper publisher who has befriended him. She knows who the real killer is.

Peg and her father live a simple life in an Irish fishing village. One day Sir Gerald arrives at the village to tell Pat that Peg is heir to estate of her grandfather, who hated Pat. The upshot of the will is that she must go to England for 3 years to learn to be a lady and that Pat can never see her again.

Wealthy widow Mrs. Bramson notices that her maid is distracted, and when she learns the girl's fiancé, Danny, is the reason, she summons him in. Mrs. Bramson's niece Olivia takes a liking to Danny, and comes to believe that he may have been involved in the disappearance of a local woman.

Jim Gladden, a construction site foreman, is partially responsible for the accidental death of one of his workers, Fred Smith, and makes good on Fred's deathbed request to go to Scotch Valley and take care of his surviving wife and children. When Jim arrives in the small town, he is told that there are two Fred Smith families in Scotch Valley, the rich Smiths and the poor Smiths. Jim assumes that the Smiths he is looking for are the poor ones, and is directed to a house where four children live in poverty.

A famous singer, bored with music and fans, goes to live in Mexico. His manager sends a woman to bring him back. They fall in love.

Before a planned African expedition, Jim's fiancée Eve worries her father's guest plans to steal one of her father's rubies. The couple are kidnapped and held prisoner at a mysterious, creepy house, where strange things are afoot.

Gwen's family is rich, but her parents ignore her and most of the servants push her around, so she is lonely and unhappy. Her father is concerned only with making money, and her mother cares only about her social position. But one day a servant's irresponsibility creates a crisis that causes everyone to rethink what is important to them.

When Tourneur adapted the allegorical plays The Blue Bird by Belgian symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck and Prunella by British playwrights Harley Granville Barker and Lawrence Housman in 1918, they had been successfully staged for many years, opening in Moscow and on Broadway and everywhere. Today, the saccharine charm of these anti-modern fairy tales doesn’t work any more. But undistracted by the meaning or action of the film, we can enjoy the surface of Prunella all the better, the dazzling sets and costumes, silhouettes and painted backdrops created by the great art director Ben Carré in a fashionable Art Déco Neo-Rococo style.