
Take a Chance was based on the hit Broadway musical of the same name, though only one of the original songs, Eadie Was a Lady, has been retained. The thinnish plot involves the misadventures of a pair of pickpockets, played on Broadway by Jack Haley and Sid Silvers and on film by James Dunn and Cliff “Ukelele Ike” Edwards.
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Tag Archives: 1930s
Kept Husbands (1931) Lloyd Bacon, Clara Kimball Young, Joel McCrea, Dorothy Mackaill, Drama, Romance

Blue collar steelworker Richard Brunton (McCrea) saves two of his fellow workers after an accident at a factory. In gratitude, his boss, millionaire Arthur Parker invites Richard for dinner with his family. Arthur’s daughter Dot (Mackaill) is instantly impressed and infatuated with Richard She vows to marry him within a month.
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Juvenile Court (1938) D. Ross Lederman, Paul Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Frankie Darro, Crime, Drama

Public Defender Gary Franklin, frustrated by being unable to save criminal Dutch Adams from a death sentence by blaming the slums environment as the cause of Dutch’s crimes, enlists the aid of Dutch’s sister, Marcia Adams, to get the slum dwellers at appeal for public monies to provide recreational places for the slum kids.
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Secrets of an Actress (1938) William Keighley, Kay Francis, George Brent, Ian Hunter, Drama, Romance

A romantic drama film about a love triangle between a stage actress, her financial backer, and his friend.
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Alibi Ike (1935) Ray Enright, Joe E. Brown, Olivia de Havilland, Ruth Donnelly, Comedy, Romance, Sport

Rookie pitcher Francis “Ike” Farrell comes seemingly out of nowhere to help the Cubs go for the pennant. His idiosyncratic ways, which include excuses and alibis for everything, drive his manager and fiancee crazy in this baseball farce.
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Pennies from Heaven (1936) Norman Z. McLeod, Bing Crosby, Madge Evans, Edith Fellows, Comedy, Drama, Musical

Larry Poole, in prison on a false charge, promise an inmate that when he gets out he will look up and help out a family. The family turns out to be a young girl, Patsy Smith, and her elderly grandfather who need lots of help.
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Let’s Be Famous (1939) Walter Forde, Jimmy O’Dea, Betty Driver, Sonnie Hale, Comedy

An Irishman sets out to become famous as a singer on the radio. Due to a mix up he is instead entered as a contestant on a quiz show. He causes mayhem in the studio and the publicity attracts the attention of an agent who thinks he can help.
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Ich war Jack Mortimer (1935) Carl Froelich, Anton Walbrook, Eugen Klöpfer, Sybille Schmitz, Drama, Thriller

The jealous star conductor Montemayor knows that his beautiful younger wife, Winifred, is cheating on him with an American named Jack Mortimer. After the concert rehearsal, he takes a taxi to the train station, sees Mortimer and shoots him at an intersection from the backseat of his taxi.
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Attorney for the Defense (1932) Irving Cummings, Edmund Lowe, Evelyn Brent, Constance Cummings, Drama

A lawyer is haunted by a previous case in which he manipulated evidence and convicted an innocent man.
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Back Page (1934) Anton Lorenze, Peggy Shannon, Russell Hopton, Claude Gillingwater, Crime, Drama

Peggy Shannon plays a young female reporter who is fired from a big city newspaper, then decides to take over a troubled small town newspaper. She encounters difficulties with small town politics, getting advertisers to help keep the paper afloat, and issues with 1930’s feminism in the resistance she receives from the town’s residents to her attempts to run the newspaper. An insightful story of a woman’s determination to succeed in an era long before the women’s rights movement.
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