RKO tried something different with stars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with Carefree, the team’s penultimate movie for the studio. Here, Fred plays Tony, a psychiatrist induced by friend Stephen (Ralph Bellamy) to try to convince Stephen’s fiancĂ©e, Amanda (Ginger Rogers) to go through with their planned wedding. She has already called it off more …
Cancel My Reservation (WB, 1972)
Bob Hope’s final starring feature film is a comedy thriller very loosely based on Louis L’Amour’s contemporary western crime novel, The Broken Gun. Scarcely anything remains of the original story, however, save for aspects of the setting; the differences are so great that one wonders why Hope licensed the novel at all. Hope has a …
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The Nitwits (RKO, 1935)
A young Betty Grable replaces Dorothy Lee as the love interest for Bert in this 1935 Wheeler-Woolsey mystery-comedy. In this one, the boys get mixed up in the murder of a music executive who was trying to put the moves on his secretary (Grable). There are plenty of other suspects, of course, and mutual misunderstandings …
She’s Got Everything (RKO, 1937)
When heiress Carol Rogers (Ann Sothern) learns upon her father’s demise that she has inherited nothing but debts, she resolves to get a job to pay them off. Through the machinations of “horse broker” Waldo Eddington (Victor Moore), acting on behalf of the creditors, she ends up secretary for coffee magnate — and eligible bachelor …
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The Thin Man Goes Home (MGM, 1945)
For the first time since their marriage, Nick and Nora Charles head to Nick’s hometown to visit with his parents for a birthday vacation. Nick still chafes at his father’s disapproval of his decision to forgo medicine as a career, and Nora believes that a crime right there in Sycamore Springs will give Nick a …
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