Joseph Santley

Broadway producer Earl Carroll was a Ziegfeld-like entrepreneur who staged lavish revues featuring attractive young ladies. Carroll's annual "Vanities" provided story material for three Hollywood films: Murder at the Vanities (34), A Night at Earl Carroll's (40) and Earl Carroll Vanities (45). This last film was produced by Republic Pictures, a bread-and-butter studio specializing in Westerns and serials; Republic had made musicals before, but few of them were expensive enough to allow for lavish production numbers. Earl Carroll Vanities is likewise rather threadbare, though some of the individual musical highlights aren't bad. The plot, such as it is, concerns financially strapped nightclub owner Eve Arden, who finagles Earl Carroll into staging one of his revues at her club.

Open details →

Brazil is perhaps the best of the handful of US films made by singing sensation Tito Guizar. In typical screwball-comedy fashion, the plot is set in motion by authoress Nicky Henderson, who has hit the best-seller charts with her latest tome, Why Marry a Latin? While researching her next book in Rio De Janeiro, she finds out "why" when she meets handsome songwriter Miguel Soares. Upon learning about Nicky's book, Miguel decides to teach her a few lessons in the affairs of the heart. Edward Everett Horton is also on hand, twittering his way through the role of a well-meaning buttinsky. Thanks to the "Good Neighbor" policy of the 1940s, South American musicals were a glut on the market, but Brazil was good enough on its own merits to pay its way at the box office.

Open details →

The three Scott sisters, Susie, Hallie and Lily, live in the small town of Riverdale with their father Tom, a handyman whose laziness is legendary. The high-spirited sisters relieve the tedium by collaborating on Lily's correspondence with Pvt. Robert Mason, who is stationed in Arizona....

Open details →

A journalist attacks the campaign of a mayoral candidate who has gained the endorsement of a rival newspaper.

Open details →

A trio of competing bands vie for a spot on a rural radio program.

Open details →

In this romantic wartime comedy, four female defense plant workers share a house with four male workers. The situation is on the up and up as the men and women work different shifts and they are only making do because there is a housing shortage. Unfortunately, they soon begin to fight about who gets the house during certain hours. Romance ensues.

Open details →

This musical comedy stars radio star Al Pearce has a double role playing himself and Elmer Blurt, the leader of a small-town band that struggles toward stardom in the big city. Their journey begins when Elmer decides to eject their female singer because she isn't really right. Unfortunately, her angry father is their sponsor and when he finds out, he withdraws all support.

Open details →

Young radio personality Judy Joyner becomes mayor of the moribund town, Sleepy Lagoon, after running on an all women ticket and promptly sets out to turn the town around.

Open details →

In this wartime musical, a feisty singer working in a London dive swears that she will become a star. She gets a job in an airplane plant when she learns that her fiance, a producer, and his partner are looking for new talent at the war factories. While working there, the woman meets a handsome RAF officer and falls in love. This causes some trouble.

Open details →

While shooting a western on location, a Hollywood "cowboy" star--whose offscreen image is exactly the opposite of his onscreen one--is saved from disaster by a gregarious local girl. She winds up becoming not only his leading lady in the movie but, because of a set of nutty offscreen circumstances, his fiancé in real life.

Open details →

Liz lives with her mother and stepfather in a boarding house on the "wrong side of the tracks"

Open details →

A radio saleswoman helps a singing cattleman trap a shady meat buyer with a bogus broadcast.

Open details →

An uninhibited Arkansas farmgirl discovers a group of Nazis operating in the United States. Director Joseph Santley's broad WWII comedy stars Judy Canova, Joe E. Brown, Eddie Foy Jr., Anne Jeffreys and Jerome Cowan.

Open details →

A film company hires a gangster to mock himself holding up a bank, but he succeeds too well and makes off with the money. But all ends well.

Open details →

The host of a whodunit radio show finds himself involved in his own mystery when he awakens to find a woman with a knife in her back in his bedroom.

Open details →

A man tries to redeem himself after ducking out on his comrades before the fatal attack.

Open details →

Like 1940's Melody Ranch, the 1941 Gene Autry vehicle Down Mexico Way was designed as a "special", to be promoted separately from Autry's regular B-western series as an A-picture attraction. The story gets under way when a pair of con artists, Gibson (Sidney Blackmer) and Allen (Joe Sawyer), breeze into the town of Sage City claiming to be movie producers. The two scoundrels promise to film a movie in the little burg on the condition that the townsfolk pony up the necessary production fees.

Open details →

Bob Clemens is a cameraman for newsreels. Assigned to shoot the Swiss ice skater Karen Vadja, he arrives too late, so decides to film a woman skating on a different New York rink and pass her off as Karen. The scheme backfires when promoter Larry Herman takes a look at Bob's film and decides to make the skater a star. Unfortunately, it's actually amateur (and illegal immigrant) Marie Bergin in the newsreel footage, not the great figure skater from Switzerland. Chaos ensues as Bob tries to straighten everybody out.

Open details →

On the day that United Broadcasting System's new building is dedicated, bumbling vice-president Harold L. Montgomery, Sr. discovers that he gave the wrong survey to the builders...

Open details →

The story details the misadventures of two itinerant songwriters named Duke (Crosby) and Cliff (Foy) as they try to survive Army boot camp. Intending to boost the morale of their fellow draftees, our heroes stage a big musical show, which they eventually hope will graduate to Broadway.

Open details →

An unsophisticated farm girl enrolls in college and stars in the campus musical.

Open details →

As suggested by its title, Behind the News was a "stop the presses!" yarn set in a big-city newsroom. Lloyd Nolan is top-billed as a cynical reporter with a penchant for sticking his neck out too far. Frank Albertson costars as a cub reporter fresh out of journalism school, whose presence is resented by Nolan and his fellow workers. But it is Albertson who, after running afoul of the law, is instrumental in breaking up a ring of racketeers. Behind the News was remade by Republic as Headline Hunters (55).

Open details →

Director Ted Brooks and comedians Jack Norcross, Dandy Joslyn and Phil Miller are part of a troupe of promising young players rehearsing for a WPA show at the Garrick Theater in New York and are stunned when the government withdraws their funding on the day of the show's dress rehearsal. Destitute, the troupe plans to return home when Mac, the stage doorman, offers to allow four of the men, Phil, Dandy, Jack and Ted, to use the theater for a boardinghouse. After accepting Mac's offer, the men improvise bedrooms out of the set pieces and meet amateur actress Lorie Fenton from Cleveland, who is eager to audition for them. When the men learn she recently received a small inheritance, they allow her to audition, hoping she will back the show.

Open details →

Jane Frazee made her starring film debut in the Republic B-plus musical Melody and Moonlight. The plot is motivated by the show-biz aspirations of bellboy Danny O'Brien (Johnny Downs). With the help of a wealthy chiropodist (Jerry Colonna), O'Brien not only gets to star on a big-time radio show, but also sprinkles stardust upon his sweetheart Kay Barnett (Jane Frazee)-who, unbeknownst to everyone but the audience, is the daughter of the show's sponsor.

Open details →

His Arizona hometown of Torpedo invites Gene back to be the honorary sheriff of the Frontier Days Celebration.

Open details →

A young woman engaged to a millionaire falls for the understudy in a Broadway musical.

Open details →

A young man inherits a valuable piece of Texas land that an oil man plots to steal away.

Open details →

Rose Pierce is discontent with her life as the wife of a small town plumber and has visions of becoming a wealthy socialite. Consequently, when her smart aleck son Sammy hears that an electric railroad line is to be built through town, she decides that the family can become rich by purchasing the lots along the right of way. Patriarch George Pierce laughs at the idea, but when Rose and Sammy learn that Cora Stewart, the wealthy town widow, has withdrawn her savings from the bank, they jump to the conclusion that she is interested in buying the lots, and mother and son secretly invest the family bank roll in the land.

Open details →

Tom Allen, an orphan accustomed to waiting in bread lines is awarded a scholarship to the Culver Military Academy. Talked into attending so that he can have free room and board, Allen initially resists the rigid discipline but later softens as he makes friends and sees the value to the hard work and discipline.

Open details →

In this musical comedy, two star-struck small town kids head for the Big Apple and become famous for their jitterbug act. Their fame doesn't last long, but they had fun anyway. Songs include: "Baltimore Bubble," "Gingham Gown," "Just a Bore," "Wasn't It You," "Kaneski Waltz" (Frank Skinner, Charles Henderson).

Open details →

Jane's dad (Tombes) is an oil field worker who comes into a fortune and is then pushed into society by his wife.

Open details →