C. Aubrey Smith

Looks at the stereotype-breaking films of the period from 1929, when movies entered the sound era, until 1934 when the Hays Code virtually neutered film content. No longer portrayed as virgins or vamps, the liberated female of the pre-code films had dimensions. Good girls had lovers and babies and held down jobs, while the bad girls were cast in a sympathetic light. And they did it all without apology.

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Four sisters come of age in America in the aftermath of the Civil War.

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Capt. Jeremy Bradford has a particularly exciting luxury liner cruise in store when he's charged with transporting a troupe of opera singers to Rio de Janeiro. Anxious to become a singer herself, Bradford's young daughter, Polly, decides to skip out on school and sneak onto the ship before it departs. Angry that his daughter disobeyed him, Bradford puts her to work on the ship for punishment, but Polly has her own ideas about how to spend the trip.

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A prominent politician is preparing to expose a financial scandal. But then a woman who has invested heavily in the shady venture threatens to uncover a damaging secret in the politician's past if he exposes the speculation as a fraud. His problem is compounded by his wife's intolerance of the slightest character flaws.

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England, 1763. After being convicted of a crime, the young and beautiful Abigail Hale agrees, to escape the gallows, to serve fourteen years as a slave in the colony of Virginia, whose inhabitants begin to hear and fear the sinister song of the threatening drums of war that resound in the wild Ohio valley.

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Love and adventure on the Matterhorn mountain.

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A homesick American soldier stationed in England during World War II makes an unauthorized trip to see his wife and returns to England with only two people knowing he was home for a few hours. When she learns that she is pregnant, she does not disclose that her husband had paid her a visit as to not get him into trouble. The townspeople are unanimous in their condemnation of her. But, after his discharge, he enlists the aid of a nightclub singer, the only other person who knew he came home.

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Amateur plumber Cluny Brown gets sent off by her uncle to work as a servant at an English country estate.

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Holmes and Watson board a passenger train bound from London to Edinburgh, to guard the Star of Rhodesia, an enormous diamond worth a fortune belonging to an elderly woman of wealth; but within the first hour of the trip, the woman's son is murdered and the diamond stolen and any of the passengers in their car could be the killer thief.

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Ten strangers are summoned to a remote island and while they are waiting for the mysterious host to appear, a recording levels serious accusations at each of the guests. Soon they start being murdered, one by one. As the survivors try to keep their wits, they reach a disturbing conclusion: one of them must be the killer.

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A London curator loses the Mona Lisa to a collector, who discovers it's a fake.

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A young woman who has been stricken with infantile paralysis gives up hope and is trying to "will herself" to die. A doctor who has been conducting experiments with patients with paralyzed nerves is convinced he can cure her.

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Secrets of Scotland Yard is Republic's spin on a plotline first elucidated in the old E. Phillips Oppenheim novel The Great Impersonation. After losing WW I, the German high command, with remarkable foresight, prepares for the next war by planting a spy in the British Admiralty. Edgar Barrier plays the dual role of the German spy and his British twin brother. When one twin is killed, the other assumes his identity. The question: is the surviving brother the "good" one or the bad? It is up to C. Aubrey Smith, cast as Scotland Yard inspector Sir Christopher Belt, to sort out the mystery. Though it owes a great deal to the aforementioned Oppenheim yarn, Secrets of Scotland Yard is actually based on a novel by Denison Clift, who also wrote the screenplay.

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A dramatised life of Samuel Langhorn Clemens, or Mark Twain.

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As dancer Ginny Walker performs on stage, a veiled woman in the audience stands up, accuses Ginny of stealing her husband and then fires a gun at her. After Ginny collapses and is taken to her dressing room, the woman, Julia Westcolt, a friend of Ginny's, dashes backstage, discards her veil, and then congratulates her friend on their successful publicity stunt. When Ginny's press agents, Gus Crane and his son Junior, visit their client backstage, she brags about her feat and chides them for not being more creative in promoting her. Horrified at Ginny's brashness, Junior, a conservative Harvard graduate, chastises her and leaves the room.

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American Susan travels with her father to England for a vacation. Invited to a society ball, Susan meets Sir John Ashwood and marries him after a whirlwind romance. However, she never quite adjusts to life as a new member of the British gentry. At the outbreak of World War I, John is sent to the trenches and never returns. When her son goes off to fight in World War II, Susan fears the same tragic fate may befall him too.

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Poor physics student Marie is studying at the Sorbonne in 1890s Paris. One of the few women studying in her field, Marie encounters skepticism concerning her abilities, but is eventually offered a research placement in Pierre Curie's lab. The scientists soon fall in love and embark on a shared quest to extract, from a particular type of rock, a new chemical element they have named radium. However, their research puts them on the brink of professional failure.

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Anthology film of three tales of the supernatural. The first story is set at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The second involves a psychic who predicts murder. The third is about a man who literally meets the girl of his dreams.

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Accused of helping an enemy submarine, a man escapes and joins a beautiful girl in trying to find the real traitors.

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In World War II, American Gates Trimble Pomfret is in London during the Blitz to sell the ancestral family house. The current tenant, Leslie Trimble, tries to dissuade him from selling by telling him the 140-year history of the place and the connections between the Trimble and Pomfret families.

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Dr. Jekyll believes good and evil exist in everyone and creates a potion that allows his evil side, Mr. Hyde, to come to the fore. He faces horrible consequences when he lets his dark side run amok.

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This MGM B-picture was adapted from Ivor Novello's play The Truth Game. Max and Florian Clemington pretend to be members of the landed gentry. Max romances the much-older Lady Joan Culver before finding true love in the form of pretty heiress Martha Gray.

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Showgirl Maisie Ravier finds herself once again out of work. She meets a wealthy playboy who hires her to be his family's new maid. Maisie soon finds herself trying to mend the family's many problems.

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A child from the New York tenements sings on a radio quiz show and is eventually hired to a big-bucks contract, which allows her and her family to move into a posh apartment, with all the usual problems that accompany sudden wealth.

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Father's return from the insane asylum spells calamity for the Fairfield family.

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On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left for the front.

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The ghosts of three elderly industrialists killed in an airplane crash return to Earth to help reunite a young couple whom they initially brought together.

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Story of a young woman who marries a fascinating widower only to find out that she must live in the shadow of his former wife, Rebecca, who died mysteriously several years earlier. The young wife must come to grips with the terrible secret of her handsome, cold husband, Max De Winter. She must also deal with the jealous, obsessed Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, who will not accept her as the mistress of the house.

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Texas girl goes to New York, becomes a newspaper reporter, and tries to get her gambler boyfriend to come home.

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A Russian prince disguised as a worker and a cafe singer secretly involved in revolutionary activities fall in love.

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Not even the joys of parenthood can stop married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles from investigating a murder on a Long Island estate.

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Anita, engaged to solid Don Barnes, is swept off her feet by magician Arturo. Before you can say presto, she's his wife and stage assistant on a lengthy world tour. But Anita is annoyed by Arturo's constant flirtations, and his death-defying stunts give her nightmares. And forget her plan to retire to a farmhouse. Eventually, she has had enough and disappears.

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A young city girl from a poor family is invited to spend the summer at a camp for girls from wealthy families. At first made fun of and ridiculed because of her background, she determines to show the snooty rich girls she's just as good as they are.

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Twelve people are aboard Coast Airline's flagship the Silver Queen enroute to South America when the airplane encounters a storm and is blown off course. Crashing into jungles known to be inhabited by head hunters, pilots Bill and Joe race against time to fix the engines and attempt a take off. The situation brings out the best and worst in the stranded dozen as they create a makeshift runway and prepare to escape before the natives attack. But damage to the plane and low fuel reserves means that only 5 people can be carried to safety.

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The Randolph family have a tradition of working in the British colonial service. Clive comes home from a mission in the Gold Coast of Africa accompanied by his wife Helen. He discovers his younger brother John, is not keen on following in his footsteps. John is then persuaded to try colonial service by his grandfather. He is accompanied by Clive who has been sent to investigate the source of a series of radio broadcasts that are sewing unrest throughout the world. These may be linked to Hugo Zurof, a man plotting to rule the world.

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A disgraced officer risks his life to help his childhood friends in battle.

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