87% (2) Red Dust 83 min, PASSED, [Drama, Romance] [Victor Fleming] [22 Oct 1932]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 74%, Rotten Tomatoes: 100%, External Reviews
Awards: 1 win.
Actors: Clark Gable, Gene Raymond, Jean Harlow, Mary Astor
Writer: John Lee Mahin (screen play), Wilson Collison (from the play by)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Conditions are spartan on Dennis Carson's Indochina rubber plantation during a dusty dry monsoon. The latest boat upriver brings Carson an unwelcome guest: Vantine, a floozy from Saigon, hoping to evade the police by a stay upcountry. But Carson, initially uninterested, soon succumbs to Vantine's ostentatious charms...until the arrival of surveyor Gary Willis, ill with malaria, and his refined but sensuous wife Barbara. Now the rains begin, and passion flows like water...
Rotten Tomatoes: In this film, Clark Gable plays the overseer of a rubber plantation, whiling away the hot, lonely nights. Donald Crisp arrives by boat with stranded prostitute Jean Harlow in tow. Gable wants no part of Harlow at first, but Gable and Harlow are made for each other.
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83% (2) Flying Down to Rio 89 min, Passed, [Comedy, Musical, Romance] [Thornton Freeland] [29 Dec 1933]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 67%, Rotten Tomatoes: 100%, External Reviews
Awards: Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 1 nomination.
Actors: Dolores del Rio, Gene Raymond, Ginger Rogers, Raul Roulien
Writer: Cyril Hume (screen play), H.W. Hanemann (screen play), Erwin S. Gelsey (screen play), Anne Caldwell (from a play by), Lou Brock (based on an original story by)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English, Portuguese Country: USA
Plot: Aviator and band leader Roger Bond is forever getting his group fired for flirting with the lady guests. When he falls for Brazilian beauty Belinha de Rezende it appears to be for real, even though she is already engaged. His Yankee Clippers band is hired to open the new Hotel Atlântico in Rio and Roger offers to fly Belinha part way home. After a mechanical breakdown and forced landing, Roger is confident and makes his move, but Belinha plays hard to get. She can't seem to decide between Roger and her fiance Júlio. When performing the airborne production number to mark the Hotel's opening, Júlio gets some intriguing ideas...
Rotten Tomatoes: The top-billed stars in the extravagant RKO musical Flying Down to Rio are Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond. Forget all that: this is the movie that first teamed Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. We're supposed to care about the romantic triangle between aviator/bandleader Raymond, Brazilian heiress Del Rio and her wealthy fiance Raul Roulien, but the moment Fred and Ginger dance to a minute's worth of "The Carioca", the film is theirs forever. Other musical highlights include Rogers' opening piece "Music Makes Me" and tenor Roulien's lush rendition of "Orchids in the Moonlight". Then there's the title number. The plot has it that Del Rio' uncle has been prohibited from having a floor show at his lavish hotel because of a Rio city ordinance. Astaire and Raymond save the day by staging the climactic "Flying Down to Rio" number thousands of feet in the air, with hundreds of chorus girls shimmying and swaying while strapped to the wings of a fleet of airplanes. It is one of the most outrageously brilliant numbers in movie musical history, and one that never fails to incite a big round of applause from the audience--even audiences of the 1990s. Together with King Kong, Flying Down to Rio saved the fledgling RKO Radio studios from bankruptcy in 1933. The film was a smash everywhere it played, encouraging the studio to concoct future teamings of those two stalwart supporting players Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
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66% (2) Mr. & Mrs. Smith 95 min, Approved, [Comedy, Romance] [Alfred Hitchcock] [31 Jan 1941]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 65%, Rotten Tomatoes: 67%, External Reviews
Actors: Carole Lombard, Gene Raymond, Jack Carson, Robert Montgomery
Writer: Norman Krasna (story and screenplay)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: New York sophisticates David Smith and Ann Smith née Krausheimer have been lovingly and passionately married for three years, or so they believed. They are told individually that due to a technicality - an unresolved municipal and state jurisdictional issue at the time of their supposed marriage - their wedding was not legal, and as such they are not really married. Despite David saying earlier in the day that if he had to do his life all over again that he would not have married her (even though he loves her), it is Ann that decides not to marry David this second time around due to an action, or in reality inaction, by David in reaction to the news of their marriage being invalid. While Ann goes about her life as a supposedly single woman (which includes calling herself Ann Krausheimer), David does whatever he can to win Ann back. But winning Ann's hand may be difficult as part of Ann's new life is dating other men. One of those other men and the most serious is David's best friend and business partner, Jefferson Custer. Ann and Jeff's relationship quickly gets to the point where Jeff introduces her to his visiting parents, with whom Ann and Jeff are going on a skiing vacation to Lake Placid. David hopes to exploit that vacation in order to win Ann back.
Rotten Tomatoes: They're married for bitter or worse - until a technicality renders the union void. But now Mr. misses Mrs. and he's desperate to win her back. A rare and delightful foray into screwball comedy from suspense master Hitchcock.
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73% (1) The House on 56th Street 68 min, TV-G, [Drama, History] [Robert Florey] [23 Dec 1933]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 73%, External Reviews
Actors: Gene Raymond, John Halliday, Kay Francis, Ricardo Cortez
Writer: Austin Parker (screen play), Sheridan Gibney (screen play), Joseph Santley (from the story by)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: This movie opens in 1905, when showgirl and daughter of a deceased gambler Peggy Martin falls in love with Monte Van Tyle and breaks the news to lover Fiske that she is leaving him. She and Monte marry and move into the title house, where Peggy says she "wants to live forever." They live an idyllic life for several years, have baby Eleanor, and life is beautiful. Then Fiske comes back and tells Peggy he is dying and wants her to be with him. She refuses, he gets desperate and tries to shoot himself, they struggle and he is shot dead. Peggy is convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years. She tells the faithful Monte to someday tell Eleanor she died in jail. Time passes, Monte dies in WWI, Peggy is finally released. Her mother-in-law left her $5,000 in her will, so Peggy gets a makeover and goes on a cruise, where she meets Bill Blaine, a crooked gambler. They team up and make scads of money all over the world cheating suckers. They end up in New York and take jobs at a recently-opened gambling house on 56th Street - Peggy's old home. Bill is in charge of the gaming and Peggy deals black jack. Who should show up but Peggy's daughter Eleanor, who gambles herself into a $15,000 debt she can't pay. Bill threatens to call her society-type husband and tell him about Eleanor, but Eleanor shoots him just as Peggy walks in.
Rotten Tomatoes: This melodrama chronicles three decades in the life of the New York located title house beginning at the turn of the century when a chorine falls in love with a wealthy young man. He loves her too and this inspires the lass to leave her sugar daddy, marry and move into the beautiful home that is located very close to Park Avenue. The pair are deliciously happy and even more so when a daughter is born. Unfortunately, unhappiness comes in the form of the jilted lover who returns and threatens to kill himself unless the former dancer comes back to him. Concerned, she visits his apartment to dissuade him from suicide. A struggle ensues with his gun and he dies leaving her to spend twenty years in jail for the alleged crime. Fortunately, her husband's belief in her innocence and his devotion never wavers. Unfortunately, he ends up killed on the front lines during WW I. It is 1925 when the hapless heroine is finally released from prison. She finds herself confused by the many dramatic changes that have turned refined New York into the wild Big Apple of the 1920s. She is also upset that her late husband's family refuses to let her see her grown daughter. They pay her a large sum to stay a stranger. On a subsequent ocean cruise she joins forces with a card sharp and becomes a wealthy con artist. They decide to work in a speakeasy on 56th Street. Surprise, it turns out to be her old home and in it is still the beautiful Florentine medallion that once symbolized the undying love between the woman and her husband. Still she opens the house for its disreputable business. One night her daughter, a compulsive gambler, who of course, doesn't recognize her own mother, shows up and loses a lot of money. She and the card sharp get in a terrible row and the young girl shoots him. Her mother then tries to take the rap but the speakeasy owner doesn't buy it and tells her he'll cover for her on the provision that she remain in the house forever. She accepts the dubious proposition and the story ends. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
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72% (1) The Locket 85 min, [Drama, Film-Noir] [John Brahm] [20 Dec 1946]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 72%, External Reviews
Actors: Brian Aherne, Gene Raymond, Laraine Day, Robert Mitchum
Writer: Sheridan Gibney
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Lovely Nancy seems like the ideal bride to fiancée John Willis... until, just before the ceremony, Willis is approached by Harry Blair, claiming to be Nancy's former husband. The tale Blair unfolds (in a flashback within a flashback within a flashback!) paints Nancy as a kleptomaniac, habitual liar, and perhaps worse. But is Blair telling the truth? And does fate have another surprise in store?
Rotten Tomatoes: This film recounts the mental disintegration of bride-to-be Laraine Day. As a child, Day was accused of stealing a locket at a fancy party. She has spent her life getting even for this false accusation by becoming a kleptomaniac and ruining the lives of those around her.
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70% (1) Ex-Lady 67 min, Unrated, [Comedy, Drama] [Robert Florey] [15 May 1933]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 70%, External Reviews
Actors: Bette Davis, Frank McHugh, Gene Raymond, Monroe Owsley
Writer: David Boehm (screen play), Edith Fitzgerald (story), Robert Riskin (story)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Commercial artist Helen Bauer believes marriage kills romance. She lives with advertising writer Don Peterson. He convinces her to marry him. He later carries on with client Peggy Smith; Helen takes up with Don's competitor Nick Malvyn. In the end, the couple agree to give marriage another chance.
Rotten Tomatoes: In this romantic sex-comedy from director Robert Florey, Bette Davis stars as Helen Bauer, a free-spirited, self-sufficient feminist who would rather pursue her career as a graphic artist than settle down and marry Don Peterson (Gene Raymond), the advertising writer she loves, out of fear that marriage will destroy the romance. Eventually, Don wears Helen down and the couple marry. But when the flame quickly burns out, Don begins an affair with a female client. Not to be outdone and without missing a beat, Helen takes up with Nick Malvyn (Monroe Owsley), another ad writer, who by no coincidence also happens to be Don's biggest rival. In light of their respective bouts of infidelity, the couple must consider whether or not they want to give the marriage another shot.
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66% (1) Sadie McKee 93 min, APPROVED, [Drama, Romance] [Clarence Brown] [09 May 1934]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 66%, External Reviews
Actors: Edward Arnold, Franchot Tone, Gene Raymond, Joan Crawford
Writer: John Meehan (screen play), Viña Delmar (based on a story by)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: The life of Sadie McKee takes many twists and turns. She starts as the daughter of the cook for the well off Alderson family. Lawyer Michael Alderson likes Sadie but she runs off to New York City with boyfriend Tommy to get married. Before they get married, Tommy takes up with show girl Dolly and deserts her. Sadie stays in New York and becomes involved with Michael's boss, millionaire Brennan. She marries the chronically alcoholic Brennan for his money. Michael views her as a golddigger at first, but then sees her help Brennan beat his alcoholism. Sadie leaves Brennan to try and find Tommy when she hears that her old flame is in trouble. Little does she know just how much trouble.
Rotten Tomatoes: In this '30s Joan Crawford vehicle, Crawford plays the heroine Sadie McKee, who climbs up the lover's ladder from a drifter/loser, to a millionaire lush, to a hard-working successful businessman who falls for her and, as she finally realizes, she for him.
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