Motion Picture Herald (Mar-Apr 1947)

ADVANCE SYNOPSES and information SUMMER HOLIDAY (MGM) PRODUCER: Arthur Freed. DIRECTOR: Douben Mamoulian. PLAYERS: Mickey Rooney, Gloria DeHaven, Walter Houston, Frank Morgan, Marilyn Maxwell. MUSICAL. Based on the play, "Ah Wilderness," by Eugene O'Neill, this is a story of family life at the turn of the century. It is chiefly concerned with the adventures and first love affair of the adolescent son of the family. THUNDER MOUNTAIN (RKO Radio) PRODUCER: Herman Schlom. DIRECTOR: Lew Landers. PLAYERS: Tim Holt, Richard Martin, Martha Hyer, Robert Clarke, Steve Brodie, Virginia Owen. WESTERN. A young man returns to his Arizona ranch, which some crooks are planning to buy because a dam will be built there. The crooks incite two brothers who have long feuded with the young man's family to kill him, but they are restrained by their sister. The crooks kill one of the brothers, and the young man is charged with the murder, but the real culprits are exposed, and the feud is ended. OREGON TRAIL SCOUTS (Republic) PRODUCER ASSOCIATE: Sidney Picker. DIRECTOR: R. G. Springsteen. PLAYERS: Allan Lane, Bobby Blake, Martha Wentworth, Roy Barcroft, Emmett Lynn, Edmund Cobb. WESTERN. "Red Ryder" battles a bandit for the right to trap fur-bearing animals on land belonging to an Indian chief. The bandit resorts to murder in an attempt to capture "Little Beaver," the chief's grandson. Ryder protects the Indian child, and the latter, in turn, is instrumental in saving Rider from an attack bj the bandit. When peace has been restored, the Indian boy decides to remain with Ryder, rather than return to his people. DESPERATE (RKO Radio) PRODUCER: Michel Kraike. DIRECTOR: Anthony Mann. PLAYERS: Steve Brodie, Audrey Long, Douglas Fowley, Raymond Burr, Freddie Steele, Paul E. Burns. MELODRAMA. A gangster determines to reform, and start life over again out west with his wife and infant son. The mob to which he belonged, however, hold him responsible for the capture of several of their members. They pursue him from state to state and town to town. A detective also trails the fugitive in an attempt to learn the mob's whereabouts. Just as the mob is about to close in on the reformed gangster, the police close in on the mob, and all ends well. WINTER WONDERLAND (Republic Walter Colmes Productions) ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS: Walter Colmes and Henri SokaL DIRECTOR: Bernard Vorhaus. PLAYERS: Lynn Roberts, Charles Drake, Eric Blore, Renee Godfrey. ROMANTIC DRAMA. A skiing instructor, who works at a large resort hotel, falls in love with a young woman, an exhibition skier, who works at a small, struggling hotel nearby. After many complications, the two are married, and the resources of the hotels are combined, thereby saving the backers of the small hotel from bankruptcy. THE BIRDS AND THE BEES (MGM) PRODUCER: Joe Pasternak. DIRECTOR: Fred Wilcox. PLAYERS: Jeannette MacDonald, Jose Iturbi, Jane Powell, Ann Todd, Mary Eleanore Donahue, Harry Davenport. COMEDY WITH MUSIC. Having divorced her first husband, a war correspondent, a woman with three children meets and marries a pianist. She hesitates to tell her daugters of her remarriage, since the girls believe that the nature of their father's work was the real reason for the divorce. Thinking that their mother is grieved by their father's absence, the girls plead with his publisher to transfer him home again. The publisher, however, knowing that the father is not the man the girls think he is, persuades them to accept the fact of their mother's remarriage, and her new husband as a second father. THEY WON'T BELIEVE ME (RKO Radio) PRODUCER: Joan Harrison. DIRECTOR: Irving Pichel. PLAYERS: Robert Young, Susan Hayward, Jane Greer, Rita Johnson, Tom Powers. MELODRAMA. A playboy, married to a wealthy woman, becomes infatuated with a newspaperwoman. His wife, in order to break up the affair, takes him to Los Angeles and buys him an interest in a brokerage firm. He becomes infatuated with his secretary, and plans to rob his wife and run away with the secretary. In order to break up this second affair, the wife buys a ranch in the Sierras and takes him there. He leaves her nonetheless, whereupon she drowns herself. The playboy elopes with his secretary, and in an automobile accident she is killed and her body burned beyond recognition. He is convicted of the murder of his secretary. DARK PASSAGE (Warners) PRODUCER: Jerry Wald. DIRECTOR: Delmer Daves. PLAYERS: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Agnes Moorehead, Bruce Bennett, Tom d' Andrea. MELODRAMA. An innocent man, convicted of the murder of his wife, escapes from prison, has his face altered by means of plastic surgery, and sets out to find his wife's killer. He is aided and abetted by a girl drawn to him because of the similarity between his conviction and that of her father, also condemned for a crime he did not commit. When the fugitive succeeds in locating the killer, however, the latter commits suicide. His last hope of clearing his name gone, he sets out for Peru, where the girl has promised to meet him. MY WILD IRISH ROSE (Warners) PRODUCER: William Jacobs. DIRECTOR: David Butler. PLAYERS: Dennis Morgan, Andrea King, Arlene Dahl, Alan Hale, George Tobias, George O'Brien, Ben Blue. MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY. This is a fictionalized biography of Chauncey Olcott, the Irish tenor. Unhappy at home, he breaks away to carve out a singing career. He meets Lillian Russell, and becomes her leading man. She plans to marry him, but gives him up when she learns he loves another. He finally marries the girl of his choice, despite her father's objections. DICK TRACY'S DILEMMA (RKO Radio) PRODUCER: Herman Schlom. EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Sid RogelL DIRECTOR: John Rawlins. PLAYERS: Ralph Byrd, Lyle LatelL Jack Lambert, Ian Keith, Tony Barnett, Richard Powers, William Davidson, Al Bridges, Kay Christopher, Charles Marsh, Bernadine Hayes. MELODRAMA. A fur company is robbed and the night watchman killed. Dick Tracy is assigned to the case, and learns that the robbery was engineered by three crooks, led by a man with an artificial hand. After many complications, Tracy rounds up the crooks. The leader of the gang is electrocuted when his steel hand comes in contact with a live trolley wire. ADVENTURES OF DON COYOTE (UA Comet) PRODUCER: Buddy Rogers and Ralp.. Cohn. DIRECTOR: Reginald LeBorg. PLAYERS: Frances Raff erty, Marc Cramer, Val Carlo, Bennie Bartlett, Frank Fenton, Byron Foulger, Edwin Parker, Pierce Lyden, Frank McCarroll. WESTERN. A group of bandits try by every possible means to force a young girl off her ranch, across which the railroad plans to run a spur. Two Mexican cowboys come to her aid, and the villains are impounded in the county jail. WOMAN ON THE BEACH (RKO Radio) PRODUCER: Jack J. Gross. DIRECTOR: Jean Renoir. PLAYERS: Joan Bennett, Robert Ryan, Charles Bickford, Virginia Huston. MELODRAMA. An officer in the Coast Guard falls in love with a woman who is married to a man presumed to be blind. The two plot to get rid of the husband, but the officer comes to his senses before the plan can be put into execution. Discovering that the treacherous wife is not worthy of his love, he turns to another woman. VARIETY GIRL (Paramount) PRODUCER: Daniel Dare. DIRECTOR: George Marshall. PLAYERS: Mary Hatcher, Olga San Juan, De Forest Kelley, Frank Ferguson, Paramount stars. MUSICAL ROMANCE. Suggested by the history of the Variety Clubs of America, Jhis musical relates the adventures of two girls who crash the gates of Paramount Studio. Both land minor screen contracts. I WAKE UP DREAMING (RKO Radio -Goldwyn) PRODUCER: Samuel Kennedy. DIRECTOR: Norman Z. McLeod. PLAYERS: Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Fay Bainter, Boris Karloff, Thurston Hall, Florenca Bates, Ann Rutherford. COMEDY-DRAMA. A clerk in a publish ing house, dominated by his employer at the office, and by his mother at home, compensates for his frustration by continual day-dreaming. He dreams he is a gangster, a pirate, a G-man, etc., and in all his dreams the same girl figures as heroine. When he becomes involved in a real-life murder committed by a gang of jewelthieves, his mother, his employer and his psychiatrist think it is just one more day-dream. After many complications, he proves that he is telling the truth by capturing the killers. MOTION PICTURE HERALD, APRIL 26, 1947 3599