87% (2) The Breaking Point 97 min, Not Rated, [Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller] [Michael Curtiz] [06 Oct 1950]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 75%, Rotten Tomatoes: 100%, External Reviews
Actors: John Garfield, Juano Hernandez, Patricia Neal, Phyllis Thaxter
Writer: Ranald MacDougall (screen play by), Ernest Hemingway (based on the story by)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Website Language: English, Spanish Country: USA
Plot: Fishing boat captain Harry Morgan charters his boat. Due to strained finances, he is none too careful as to whom he does business with. Real trouble erupts when Harry hires out his boat to transport four men who turn out to be criminals on the lam from a racetrack heist.
Rotten Tomatoes: In this taut adaptation of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not a financially struggling charter-boat captain finds himself in deep and turbulent water when he is forced to get involved with smugglers after a dishonest millionaire cheats him out of pay during a fishing excursion to Mexico; the louse also leaves his seductive girl friend, a hooker, stranded on the boat. The desperate captain agrees to illegally smuggle Chinese refugees into the US, but during the voyage, he is again double-crossed and must force his hapless passengers to jump ship when the Coast Guard suddenly appears. They take his boat away from him. Deeply depressed, he has sex with the abandoned woman and then goes home. Meanwhile, the crooked lawyer who talked him into smuggling the refugees, gets the captain's boat back and then blackmails him into taking a gang of crooks to Catalina Island. During the 26-mile voyage things come to a head when one of the crooks kills the skipper's first mate. Suddenly the captain snaps and he finally gets his revenge.
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75% (1) No Man of Her Own 98 min, Approved, [Drama, Film-Noir] [Mitchell Leisen] [05 Jun 1950]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 75%, External Reviews
Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Cowl, John Lund, Phyllis Thaxter
Writer: Sally Benson (screenplay), Catherine Turney (screenplay), Cornell Woolrich (novel)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: In a mansion in Caulfield, Illinois, Patrice Harkness and Bill Harkness are waiting for the police. Meanwhile, she recalls her life in San Francisco. The eight-month pregnant Helen Ferguson is dumped by her boyfriend, the crook Stephen 'Steve' Morley, who gives a train ticket to her to New York to stay with his new girlfriend. In the train, Helen befriends the also pregnant Patrice Harkness and her husband Hugh Harkness that are returning from Europe. When they go to the toilet, Patrice asks Helen to hold her wedding ring to avoid losing it, but there is an accident and only Helen survives. She is mistaken by the Hatkness family as being Patrice and welcomed by Mrs. Harkness, Mr. Harkness and Bill at home. Helen decides to pose of Patrice thinking in the future of her baby Hugh and the family treats her like a daughter. Out of the blue, Steve meets Helen in a club and blackmails her, promising to destroy the lives to Mr. and Mrs. Harkness. Now Helen realizes that she must kill Steve to protect her son and the old couple. What will she do?
Rotten Tomatoes: In this romantic melodrama, Barbara Stanwyck plays a pregnant young woman who is abandoned by her callous lover. With only a train ticket, the despondent woman heads for home. While aboard the train she meets a wealthy young couple heading home to happily announce their new baby. The wife is particularly excited for she has yet to meet her in-laws. Stanwyck admires the young woman's beautiful wedding ring and the latter generously allows her to try it on. With no warning the train derails and both the young groom and his bride are killed. Stanwyck survives but is rushed to the hospital where she gives birth. Because the ring is still upon her finger, she is mistaken for the dead girl and taken into the bereaved family's posh home. Fortunately, the accident gives the opportunistic young woman the opportunity to conveniently feign amnesia when they ask her too many personal questions. Still the family accepts her as one of their own and she lives happily until her rat of an ex-boyfriend shows up and threatens to blackmail her. Fortunately, by this time, her "brother-in-law" has fallen in love with her and intervenes.
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70% (1) Come Fill the Cup 113 min, [Drama] [Gordon Douglas] [24 Oct 1951]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 70%, External Reviews
Actors: James Cagney, James Gleason, Phyllis Thaxter, Raymond Massey
Writer: Ivan Goff (screen play), Ben Roberts (screen play), Harlan Ware (from a novel by)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Alcoholic newspaperman Lew Marsh hits bottom, loses his job and is rehabilitated by Charley Dolan. After six years on the wagon he gets his job back and devotes himself to other recovering alcoholics. His boss enlists his help to sober up his nephew, Boyd Copeland, who has married Lew's old sweetheart. Boyd, who is involved with a cabaret singer and the mob, presents quite a challenge.
Rotten Tomatoes: James Cagney plays a once great newspaper reporter ruined by liquor. Thanks to the help of reformed alcoholic James Gleason, Cagney pulls himself out of the gutter and restores his journalistic reputation. Because of his own redemption, Cagney is asked by his editor to straighten out the editor's nephew (Gig Young), a drunken wastrel. The task is made dicey by the fact that the nephew's wife (Phyllis Thaxter) is Cagney's former girlfriend. The nephew's involvement in gangsters results in the death of Cagney's old friend Gleason, but Cagney swallows his rage, vanquishes the crooks, and puts the nephew on the right track. Come Fill the Cup was a little too melodramatic to succeed as an anti-alcohol tract, but it was well acted throughout, especially by Gig Young, who received an Oscar nomination for his efforts.
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69% (1) Jim Thorpe -- All-American 107 min, APPROVED, [Biography, Drama, Sport] [Michael Curtiz] [24 Aug 1951]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 69%, External Reviews
Actors: Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford, Phyllis Thaxter, Steve Cochran
Writer: Douglas Morrow (screenplay), Everett Freeman (screenplay), Frank Davis (additional dialogue), Douglas Morrow (story), Vincent X. Flaherty (story), Russell Birdwell (biography), Jim Thorpe (biography)
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: True story of Native American Jim Thorpe, who rose from an Oklahoma reservation to become a collegiate, Olympic, and professional star. After his medals are stripped on a technicality and his dream of coaching is shattered, Thorpe's life begins to unravel. His marriage to his college sweetheart ends, and he is a forgotten figure, except by Glenn 'Pop' Warner, his coach at Carlisle College.
Rotten Tomatoes: Burt Lancaster stars as Jim Thorpe, the Native American sports whiz whom many consider the greatest athlete of the 20th century. We first see Thorpe as a child on the reservation, highly resistant to the notion of going to school. He proves to be an excellent student, eventually attending the all-Indian college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Still, Thorpe doesn't feel like mixing much with the other students until coach Charles Bickford encourages the lad to go out for the track team. Thorpe finds that he can be more "articulate" as an athlete than as a scholar, and soon excels at all school sports. He also marries his college sweetheart, non-Indian Phyllis Thaxter. After graduation, Thorpe tries to get a coaching job, but is frozen out by the white establishment. Determined to make a name for himself, he enters the 1912 Olympics at Stockholm, where he earns more gold medals than anyone else and is praised as the world's greatest athlete by the King of Sweden. Unfortunately, the fact that Thorpe briefly played semi-professional baseball while attending Carlisle costs him his amateur status--and every one of his medals. Things go from bad to worse for Thorpe after this; his son dies, his marriage disintegrates, and he crawls into a bottle. Thorpe has hit rock bottom when he is reunited with his old coach Bickford, who offers Jim a ticket to the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. It is the first small step on the road to regeneration for Jim Thorpe (alas, real life was not so kind; Thorpe died in near-poverty, and it was not until years after his death that his Olympic medals were restored). Jim Thorpe, All American was directed by Michael Curtiz, who previously had secured small acting roles for the real Thorpe in such films as Knute Rockne: All American (1940).
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66% (1) Springfield Rifle 93 min, APPROVED, [War, Western] [André De Toth] [25 Oct 1952]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 66%, External Reviews
Actors: David Brian, Gary Cooper, Paul Kelly, Phyllis Thaxter
Writer: Charles Marquis Warren (screenplay), Frank Davis (screenplay), Sloan Nibley (story)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Major Lex Kearney, dishonorably discharged from the army for cowardice in battle, has actually volunteered to go undercover to try to prevent raids against shipments of horses desperately needed for the Union war effort. Falling in with the gang of jayhawkers and Confederate soldiers who have been conducting the raids, he gradually gains their trust and is put in a position where he can discover who has been giving them secret information revealing the routes of the horse shipments.
Rotten Tomatoes: Springfield Rifle was Gary Cooper's third western in a row, released not long after the classic High Noon. Cooper plays Union army officer Lex Kearney, who undertakes a covert investigation to find out why the North's supply of horses has suddenly diminished. Because of the top-secret nature of his mission, Kearney is forced to distance himself from everyone he knows, including his wife Erin (Phyllis Thaxter) and son Jamie (Michael Chapin). Heading to a remote cavalry post, he discovers that renegade soldiers have been stealing horses and selling them to the South. Someone at the post has been operating as the thieves' "inside man," and Lex, posing as a dishonorably discharged soldier, aims to ferret out the traitor. Had it not followed directly on the heels of the critical and financial success of High Noon, Springfield Rifle might have fared better with audiences and reviewers. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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63% (1) Fort Worth 80 min, APPROVED, [Western] [Edwin L. Marin] [14 Jul 1951]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 63%, External Reviews
Actors: David Brian, Helena Carter, Phyllis Thaxter, Randolph Scott
Writer: John Twist
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Southern veteran Ned Britt returns home to Fort Worth after the Civil War with his mentor, newspaperman Ben Garvin, along with his young apprentice, in hopes of building the town into a modern metropolis. However, the area is terrorized by the ruthless Gabe Clevenger and his gang of hired guns. Britt wonders whose side his old friend Blair Lunsford is on. Lunsford has used the unrest to buy up parcels of land on the cheap and hopes to profit from this speculation after the territory is cleaned up and ultimately become governor. Britt sees through his friend's ambition, and they are alternately allies and antagonists. Britt is also distracted by girl-next-door Flora Talbott and and seductive Amy Brooks.
Rotten Tomatoes: Fort Worth stars Randolph Scott as gunfighter-turned-newspaperman Ned Britt. Setting up shop in the eponymous Texas town, Britt tries to expose the crooked machinations of cattle baron Gabe Clevinger (Ray Teal). This brings him into conflict with his old friend Blair Lunsfold (David Brian), who has cast his lot with Clevinger. Further complicating matters is Lunsford's fiancee Flora Talbot (Phyllis Thaxter), who falls in love with Britt. As tensions threaten to erupt into all-out bloodshed--especially when Clevinger deploys brute force to prevent the arrival of the railroad--Ned Britt is forced to rethink his newfound philosophy that the pen is mightier than the sword.
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63% (1) Living in a Big Way 104 min, APPROVED, [Comedy, Musical] [Gregory La Cava] [08 Sep 1947]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 63%, External Reviews
Actors: Charles Winninger, Gene Kelly, Marie McDonald, Phyllis Thaxter
Writer: Gregory La Cava (screenplay), Gregory La Cava (story), Irving Ravetch
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Leo Gogarty marries Margaud Morgan after a whirlwind romance just before shipping out to war. When he returns he is surprised to discover not only that his bride is not what she led him to believe, but also that she expects a quick divorce. Both Mr. & Mrs Gogarty must find their place with or without each other in a society still adjusting to peace.
Rotten Tomatoes: In this black-and-white tunefest, Gene Kelly stars as an ex-GI who discovers that his wealthy war bride is an insufferable snob. Flying in the face of his in-laws, Kelly insists upon using his wife's money to open a charity home for the families of those soldiers who didn't come back.
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