Tag Archives: 1930s

A young girl who lives on a tropical island loses her parents to a voodoo sacrifice, but although she manages to escape the island, a curse is put on her. Years later, as an adult, she feels a strong compulsion to return to the island to confront her past. Her husband, her daughter and her nanny go with her, but once back on the island, the woman finds herself elevated by the locals to the stature of a voodoo goddess, and she begins her inevitable descent into madness, with disastrous results for her family.
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Temple Drake is a Southern belle who leads men on with her sexuality but usually leaves them wanting. She’s loved by lawyer Stephen Benbow, whom she likes but doesn’t love. While out carousing with one of her beaux, she finds herself stranded with a gang of bootleggers, one of whom, Trigger, rapes her and makes her his sex slave. When another man is accused of a murder Trigger committed, Stephen defends him and sets out to find Trigger. But he isn’t prepared for whom he finds with Trigger, or what she’s become.
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Richard Field is a successful businessman who has become romantically involved with younger employee Diane Lovering, but he is unable to persuade his grasping wife to grant him a divorce out of his dysfunctional marriage. Diane meets dashing rancher Mike Bradley through his wise-cracking pal Johnnie on a South American ocean voyage, and they begin a shipboard romance that carries over to his Argentinian ranch. Diane decides to return to New York and tell Richard in person that she intends to marry Mike Bradley. When Diane gets there Richard surprises her with a wedding ring and the morning newspaper citing Mrs. Field is in Reno obtaining a divorce. Richard had to agree not only to a large monetary settlement but was forbidden to see his sons. Diane didn’t have the heart to tell Richard about Mike and decides to marry him. Diane writes a “Dear John letter” to Mike explaining a calculated mercenary decision that she prefers the position and financial status that Field’s can offer her …
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When her fiancée Buck Gonzales is killed, dance hall queen Cleo Borden inherits his wealth. Included are oil wells supervised by British engineer Carrington, whom Cleo sets out to win by becoming a “lady.” She races her horse in Buenos Aires, gains social position by loveless marriage to bankrupt Colton, and even sings in an opera. But when she meets Carrington again, he’s become the Earl of Stratton…
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Mirabel wins a $5,000 lottery which will enable her to live like a queen in New York. There she meets Sandro, a bellboy who is really a prince, so she does get to be a queen after all.
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The stenographer Alice Sycamore is in love with her boss Tony Kirby, who is the vice-president of the powerful company owned by his greedy father Anthony P. Kirby. Kirby Sr. is dealing a monopoly in the trade of weapons, and needs to buy one last house in a twelve block area owned by Alice’s grandparent Martin Vanderhof. However, Martin is the patriarch of an anarchic and eccentric family where the members do not care for money but for having fun and making friends. When Tony proposes Alice, she states that it would be mandatory to introduce her simple and lunatic family to the snobbish Kirbys, and Tone decides to visit Alice with his parents one day before the scheduled. There is an inevitable clash of classes and lifestyles, the Kirbys spurn the Sycamores and Alice breaks with Tony, changing the lives of the Kirby family.
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Troubled with union problems in his business and lonely on his birthday because his wife, Martha, is out with a playboy, millionaire Timothy Borden meets unemployed and hungry Mary Grey in a park and convinces her to help him celebrate at a nightclub. Much to his surprise the following morning, Mary has slept in the guest room for the night. Not unmindful that Martha’s interest in Timothy seems renewed, he hires Mary to stay at the house as an employee and they go out on the town virtually every night. Mary meanwhile has a positive effect on other members of the household: daughter Katherine is in love with Michael, the communism-spouting chauffeur, and seeks her advice; and son Tim is forced to take over the neglected business to keep it from running downhill, which Timothy had been trying unsuccessfully to get him to do. Complications arise when Tim falls in love with Mary, but is bothered by the affair he perceives she is having with his father.
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An American starlet inflames two Italian peasants who forget about their respective fiance’s. One of them even thinks of marrying her and begins to plan for the engagement banquet. When the girl decides to live the countryside harmony reigns again.
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Two lazy screenwriters need a story for the studio’s cowboy star. A studio waitress turns out to be pregnant. This gives them the idea for a movie about a cowboy and a baby. The waitress’s baby becomes the star. The cowboy and his agent run off with the waitress and her valuable asset. The writers retaliate by hiring an unemployed extra to impersonate the baby’s father. But the extra already knows the waitress…
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Circus tells the story of an American named Marion who is banished from the US because a black man impregnates her. Marion escapes to Russia to start a new life in the circus and joins up with lustful, anti-Russian ringmaster who happens to be in love with her. The ringmaster knows her secret about the black baby and threatens to reveal it unless she marries him. The problem is that Marion has fallen in love with a Russian acrobat and later out of sheer jealousy, the ringmaster reveals the identity of the woman’s child in front of the circus audience.
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