90% (3) Gone with the Wind 238 min, Passed, [Drama, History, Romance, War] [Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood] [17 Jan 1940]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 82%, Rotten Tomatoes: 92%, Metacritic: 97%, External Reviews
Awards: Won 8 Oscars. Another 10 wins & 9 nominations.
Actors: Barbara O'Neil, Clark Gable, Evelyn Keyes, Thomas Mitchell, Vivien Leigh
Writer: Margaret Mitchell (story of the old south "Gone with the Wind"), Sidney Howard (screenplay)
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Website Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Scarlett is a woman who can deal with a nation at war, Atlanta burning, the Union Army carrying off everything from her beloved Tara, the carpetbaggers who arrive after the war. Scarlett is beautiful. She has vitality. But Ashley, the man she has wanted for so long, is going to marry his placid cousin, Melanie. Mammy warns Scarlett to behave herself at the party at Twelve Oaks. There is a new man there that day, the day the Civil War begins. Rhett Butler. Scarlett does not know he is in the room when she pleads with Ashley to choose her instead of Melanie.
Rotten Tomatoes: Gone With the Wind boils down to a story about a spoiled Southern girl's hopeless love for a married man. Producer David O. Selznick managed to expand this concept, and Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel, into nearly four hours' worth of screen time, on a then-astronomical 3.7-million-dollar budget, creating what would become one of the most beloved movies of all time. Gone With the Wind opens in April of 1861, at the palatial Southern estate of Tara, where Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) hears that her casual beau Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) plans to marry "mealy mouthed" Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). Despite warnings from her father (Thomas Mitchell) and her faithful servant Mammy (Hattie McDaniel), Scarlett intends to throw herself at Ashley at an upcoming barbecue at Twelve Oaks. Alone with Ashley, she goes into a fit of histrionics, all of which is witnessed by roguish Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), the black sheep of a wealthy Charleston family, who is instantly fascinated by the feisty, thoroughly self-centered Scarlett: "We're bad lots, both of us." The movie's famous action continues from the burning of Atlanta (actually the destruction of a huge wall left over from King Kong) through the now-classic closing line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Holding its own against stiff competition (many consider 1939 to be the greatest year of the classical Hollywood studios), Gone With the Wind won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), and Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to win an Oscar). The film grossed nearly 192 million dollars, assuring that, just as he predicted, Selznick's epitaph would be "The Man Who Made Gone With the Wind." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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80% (2) Stella Dallas 106 min, Approved, [Drama, Romance] [King Vidor] [06 Aug 1937]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 75%, Rotten Tomatoes: 86%, External Reviews
Actors: Anne Shirley, Barbara O'Neil, Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles
Writer: Sarah Y. Mason (screenplay), Victor Heerman (screenplay), Olive Higgins Prouty (novel), Harry Wagstaff Gribble (dramatization), Gertrude Purcell (dramatization)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Working-class Stella Martin marries high-end Stephen Dallas and soon they have a daughter named Laurel. But Stephen's incessant demands of Stella to become what she isn't leads to their eventual separation. Stephen later marries Helen Morrison (his prior fiancée), and Laurel becomes the focus of Stella's life and love. Nothing is too good for Laurel as far as Stella is concerned. Determined to give her all the advantages, she takes Laurel on a trip to an expensive resort where Laurel makes friends with rich kids. After an embarrassing incident, Stella realizes that her daughter would go farther in life without Stella as her mother. Her subsequent sacrifice is shattering.
Rotten Tomatoes: Produced by Sam Goldwyn, this second film version of Olive Higgins Prouty's Stella Dallas is by far the best. The combined talents of Goldwyn, director King Vidor and star Barbara Stanwyck lift this property far above the level of mere soap opera. Stanwyck is perfectly cast as Stella Martin, the loud, vulgar factory-town girl who snares wealthy husband Stephen Dallas (John Boles). When Stephen is offered a job in New York, Stella stays behind, knowing that she'll never be part of her husband's social circle. She pals around platonically with her old beau, the cheap and tasteless Ed Munn (Alan Hale), a fact that drives yet another wedge between Stella and her husband. The final straw is daughter Laurel's (Anne Shirley) birthday party, which is boycotted by the local bluenoses. Though she would like to remain part of her daughter's life, Stella knows that she and she alone is the reason that Laurel is shunned by the rest of the community. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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79% (2) All This, and Heaven Too 141 min, Approved, [Drama, Romance] [Anatole Litvak] [13 Jul 1940]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 76%, Rotten Tomatoes: 83%, External Reviews
Actors: Barbara O'Neil, Bette Davis, Charles Boyer, Jeffrey Lynn
Writer: Rachel Field (by), Casey Robinson (screen play)
External Links: Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English, French Country: USA
Plot: When lovely and virtuous governess Henriette Deluzy comes to educate the children of the debonair Duc de Praslin, a royal subject to King Louis-Philippe and the husband of the volatile and obsessive Duchesse de Praslin, she instantly incurs the wrath of her mistress, who is insanely jealous of anyone who comes near her estranged husband. Though she saves the duchess's little son from a near-death illness and warms herself to all the children, she is nevertheless dismissed by the vengeful duchess. Meanwhile, the attraction between the duke and Henriette continues to grow, eventually leading to tragedy.
Rotten Tomatoes: In this film, Bette Davis is first seen as a French schoolteacher in a 19th-century American seminary. When her supervisor, minister Jeffrey Lynn, has questions to ask about her tainted past, Davis relates her story in flashback.
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77% (1) Shining Victory 80 min, APPROVED, [Drama] [Irving Rapper] [07 Jun 1941]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 77%, External Reviews
Actors: Barbara O'Neil, Donald Crisp, Geraldine Fitzgerald, James Stephenson
Writer: Howard Koch (screenplay), Anne Froelich (screenplay), A.J. Cronin (from a play by)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: In a Scottish sanitarium, a brilliant research psychiatrist works on a treatment for dementia precox. He falls for his altruistic female lab assistant and they begin a passionate tragic relationship.
Rotten Tomatoes: In this melodrama, a loyal research psychologist escapes from Budapest after the nature of his work is discovered. He resettles in Scotland and soon resumes his work. His benefactors provide him a female assistant, and at first the stubborn scientist is not pleased. Eventually the two fall in love. Not long after the research is finished, they marry and for a time the two are happy. But then a terrible fire erupts and the assistant/wife dies trying to protect the researcher's valuable notes. The distraught doctor dedicates the rest of his work to her memory and then heads to China to work as a medical missionary. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
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68% (1) I Am the Law 83 min, APPROVED, [Crime, Drama] [Alexander Hall] [25 Aug 1938]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 68%, External Reviews
Actors: Barbara O'Neil, Edward G. Robinson, John Beal, Wendy Barrie
Writer: Fred Allhoff (story based on Liberty Magazine Serial), Jo Swerling (screenplay)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Law professor John Lindsay (Edward G. Robinson)accepts the job of special prosecutor offered him by civic leader Eugene Ferguson (Otto Kruger) against the wishes of his wife Jerry (Barbara O'Neil). Paul(John Beal, Ferguson's son, aids Lindsay, not knowing his father is boss of the crime syndicate.
Rotten Tomatoes: I Am the Law is arguably the best of the late-1930s films inspired by the racket-busting career of New York district attorney Thomas E. Dewey. Edward G. Robinson switches to the right side of the law as the Dewey counterpart, here named John Lindsay (!) A feisty, no-nonsense law professor, Lindsay is approached by a group of concerned citizens to act as special prosecutor to rid up their (unnamed) state of big-time lawbreakers. He wastes no time taking charge, storming into the prosecutor's office and firing anyone whom he suspects of being "on the take." With the help of his dedicated law students, who work alongside him for free, Lindsay purges the local government of such corrupt influences as Eugene Ferguson (Otto Kruger), the outwardly respectable "brains" behind the rackets. Among the minor pleasures in I Am the Law is watching Robinson dancing the Big Apple with gun moll Wendy Barrie in an early scene, and his firing of suspicious-looking Charles Halton with a brusque "Don't like your face! Never have! You've got shifty eyes and a weak chin!" (which, indeed, were Halton's screen trademarks). Barbara O'Neil, who the following year played Scarlet O'Hara's mother in Gone with the Wind, is quietly effective as Robinson's supportive wife.
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68% (1) Tower of London 92 min, APPROVED, [Drama, History] [Rowland V. Lee] [17 Nov 1939]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 68%, External Reviews
Awards: 1 nomination.
Actors: Barbara O'Neil, Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Ian Hunter
Writer: Robert N. Lee (original screen play)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English, Latin, French Country: USA
Plot: In the 15th century Richard Duke of Gloucester, aided by his club-footed executioner Mord, eliminates those ahead of him in succession to the throne, then occupied by his brother King Edward IV of England. As each murder is accomplished he takes particular delight in removing small figurines, each resembling one of the successors, from a throne-room dollhouse, until he alone remains. After the death of Edward he becomes Richard III, King of England, and need only defeat the exiled Henry Tudor to retain power.
Rotten Tomatoes: Basil Rathbone's real-life son, John Rodion, has his head chopped off early on in this historical melodrama often mistakenly referred to as a horror film. Yes, a second-billed Boris Karloff does stomp about on a club-foot as the Duke of Glouchester's chief executioner, Mord, but Karloff's presence is really more colorful than horrifying. Rathbone is the main villain here, as the Duke of Glouchester, the deformed second brother of Edward IV (Ian Hunter), whose throne he covets. But before he can place himself on that exalted chair, there are quite a few relatives and pretenders to be rid off. The exiled Prince of Wales (G.P. Huntley) is dispatched during a battle, and his father, the feeble-minded Plantagenet King Henry VI (Miles Mander), who steadfastly refuses to gracefully die of old age, is murdered by Mord. Half-brother Clarence (Vincent Price), meanwhile, is drowned very picturesquely in a vat of Malmsey wine and when Edward IV dies of natural causes, only his two young sons remain. To the horror of Queen Elizabeth (Barbara O'Neil), Glouchester is named their protector -- which of course means that Mord the executioner will be working overtime once again. But the evil duke, now Richard III, has not counted on the heroic John Wyatt (John Sutton), who, by looting the treasury, is able to bring back from exile in France yet another pretender, Henry Tudor (Ralph Forbes). The latter's invasion proves victorious at the famous battle of Bosworth Field and the brutal reign of Richard II, and his executioner, comes to an end.
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