A southern town is rocked by scandal when teenager Mary Clay is murdered on Confederate Decoration Day. Andrew Griffin, a small-time lawyer with political ambitions, sees the crime as his ticket to the Senate if he can find the right victim to finger for the crime. He sets out to convict Robert Hale, a transplanted northerner who was Mary’s teacher at the business school where she was killed. Despite the fact that all the evidence against Hale is circumstantial, Griffin works with a ruthless reporter to create a media frenzy of prejudice and hate against the teacher.
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Tag Archives: 1930s
Bank Holiday (1938) Carol Reed, John Lodge, Margaret Lockwood, Hugh Williams, Drama
A 1930s British summer Bank Holiday starts at midday on Saturday with a rush for the trains to the sea-side. Doreen Richards under the name Miss Fulham is off with friend Milly to a beauty contest. Geoffrey and nurse Catherine Lawrence have decided to spend an illicit week-end in the Grand Hotel, although Catherine’s mind keeps turning back to the hospital case she was working on. Arthur, May and the children are set on a more straight-forward excursion of sea, sand, and pub. Meanwhile, the manager and performers of the “Follies” on the pier pray for rain.
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Black Moon (1934) Roy William Neill, Jack Holt, Fay Wray, Dorothy Burgess, Horror
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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The Story of Temple Drake (1933) Stephen Roberts, Miriam Hopkins, William Gargan, Jack La Rue, Drama
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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Goin’ to Town (1935) Alexander Hall, Mae West, Paul Cavanagh, Gilbert Emery, Comedy, Musical
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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The Gay Deception (1935) William Wyler, Francis Lederer, Frances Dee, Benita Hume, Comedy
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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In campagna è caduta una stella / In the Country Fell a Star (1939) Eduardo De Filippo, Rosina Lawrence, Peppino De Filippo, Comedy
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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Boy Meets Girl (1938) Lloyd Bacon, James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Marie Wilson, Comedy
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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Tsirk / Circus (1936) Grigori Aleksandrov, Isidor Simkov, Lyubov Orlova, Evgeniya Melnikova, Vladimir Volodin, Comedy, Musical
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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History Is Made at Night (1937) Frank Borzage, Charles Boyer, Jean Arthur, Leo Carrillo, Drama, Romance
The obsessive and jealous shipowner Bruce Vail does not accept the divorce his wife Irene Vail achieved in London, and he hires his driver Michael Browsky to forge adultery with Irene in Paris to make the decree null. However, she is rescued by the headwaiter Paul Dumond, who punches Michael and locks Bruce and his private eyes in a locker, and they spend a wonderful night together in the restaurant Chateau Bleu, where Paul and his best friend Chef Cesare work, and they fall in love for each other. Meanwhile, Bruce kills Michael and blackmails Irene, blaming Paul and forcing her to return with him to New York. But Paul does not give up on Irene, and moves to New York with Cesare trying to find her love.
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