Fields plays "Larsen E. Whipsnade", the owner of a shady carnival that is constantly on the run from the law. Whipsnade is struggling to keep a step ahead of foreclosure, and clearly not paying his performers, including Bergen and McCarthy, who try to coax money out of him, or in McCarthy's case, steal some outright.
A fugitive receives help from a victim's sister as he tries to clear his name of robbery and murder charges.
Stan and Ollie get involved with con men, crooks, a genial magician, and two interchangeable coffins with disastrous but funny results.
Steve Wayne, a daring young ambulance driver for a large hospital in Los Angeles, is a rival with his friend, Doctor Bill Barie (the house surgeon in the Emergency Ward), for the attentions of nurse Martha Gray. Despite their rivalry, Steve still endeavors to free his friend from the grip of a merciless racketeer and a gambling gang. But Steve fails in his efforts and then sets out to avenge his friend and smash-up the gang.
Americans are preoccupied with the news, but need an escape from many of the events reported in the news. These escapes in the past have included dime store novels. The most accessible of these escapes is what are known as the funny papers, the set of serialized comic strips that are included within many newspapers. They appeal to all socio-economic classes, and all ages. Some of the earliest known from the late 19th century include the Yellow Kid, Little Nemo, Happy Hooligan, the Katzenjammer Kids, Mutt & Jeff, and Bringing Up Father. Many cartoonists are seen in action. Some originated their characters, while others have taken over following the passing of the originator. The joy of many comic strips are the absurd and the fantastical, which are limited only by the imagination of the cartoonist. Others are grounded in reality, which add to their poignancy within the public mindset.
During World War II Stan and Ollie find themselves as improbable bodyguards to an eccentric inventor and his strategically important new bomb.
On the day of his wedding, Sir John Carteret's fiancée, Moonyeen, is killed by a jealous rival named Jeremy, leaving him emotionally devastated. Carteret spends three decades in seclusion, mostly communing with the spirit of Moonyeen, until he learns that her niece, Kathleen, has become an orphan. He adopts and raises the child as his own but is alarmed when, as a young woman, she falls in love with the son of Moonyeen's murderer.
Tom Turner, a naturalist, comes to the "Topa Topa" district (named for the mountain), and falls in love with widow Margaret Weston...
Roy Rogers, Smiley Burnette and the Sons of the Pioneers go undercover to help Texas Governor Russell Hicks stop World War II Axis sympathizers from blowing up U.S. warehouses.
An elderly business tycoon, believed to be dying, decides to give a million dollars each to eight strangers chosen at random from the phone directory.
John Dawson loses control of his factory when he is crippled in an accident caused by a rival. Destitute, he travels the country organizing the homeless to help him regain control of his steel mill.
Domestic drama about an elderly woman and her four squabbling adult children.
To protect a young woman's life, a man pretends to be her injured friend so he can investigate a murder and capture the killers.
Bob Adams, ace newsreel cameraman, is told by his boss, "Get the picture---we can't screen alibis." He heads for Samari, a desert hot-bed of tribal unrest in Africa, to do just that, which includes getting footage of El Kadar, bandit and rebel leader. He gets his pictures but only after a romance with the Colonel's daughter Pamela, saving his wimpy, hacked-off brother Don from being a dupe of the gun-runners, and run-ins with spies and throat-cutting tribesman. For a finale, he saves the British Army.
Philo Vance investigates a series of murders among members of the wealthy Greene family.
When silver is found in Virginia City, Lawyer John Storm leads a group from Indiana west. He soon has to defend them all in court against a company that is after their claims. Fighting a crooked Judge, he gets a mis-trial by telling how much each of the jurors was bribed. Then he gets the Governor to appoint a new Judge. But just as the retrial opens, the Judge learns his daughter has been kidnaped.
After Fred von Bergen, a German immigrant in America, is forced from his job by anti-German hysteria before the first world war, he and his friend Bob Wilson leave America and join the German air force. There, both men fall in love with ambulance driver Alida Hoffman. When America enters the war, Bob is caught between loyalty to his home country and the threat of execution for desertion and treason to Germany. It remains for his friend Fred to extricate him from the dilemma - but at what cost?
Dr. Eli Watt, a widower, comes to a small town, considering himself a failure in his attempt to have a meaningful career in New York. He raises his son Jimmy as well as Letty, a baby whose mother has died in childbirth and whose father blames Watt and abandons the child. Watt dreams of returning to do research studies, but always something gets in the way: an epidemic, his children's needs, or the needs of his generally ungrateful patients. Only with the passing years does he come to find that his future isn't over and his past isn't quite the failure he believed.
Three electrical linemen work through the hazardous conditions of the Depression Era. Sparks fly, and things become truly dangerous, when Ann comes between this band of brothers. Things get worse, after they move in together, following the death of her father, their supervisor, "Pop" Foster, from an industrial accident.
An amateur sleuth solves three murders at his son's New England college.
When a wealthy art dealer is murdered, the private investigator hired for the case discovers a web of blackmail, corruption and stolen bonds.
Johnny Eaton, trouble-shooter for an American oil company drilling in China, leaves his bride-to-be to head for the Orient and straighten out problems at the inland-concession site his company controls.
The ghost of a recently deceased family patriarch tries to help his surviving relatives, in part by preventing a marriage that he knows will go wrong.
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.
Generational saga about a failed streetcar conductor, who finds success as an Atlantic City fortune teller, and his son.
There are plenty of suspects when an unscrupulous, blackmailing businessman turns up dead, especially the Police Commissioner's current paramour, who actually confessed to the killing before it was committed.
An heiress abandons an out-of-work husband, two sons and a lovesick daughter.
A Mild Teenager gets a job as a timber guard.
The third film version of the Bret Harte tale, starring Anne Shirley as a miner's daughter in a small town who falls for a handsome young schoolteacher.
The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
The Mesquiteers return to Texas after the Civil War to find Army carpetbaggers fighting the local bushwackers. They quickly learn that Capt. Hawks and his men are the culprits and join up with Morgan and his men.
A newspaper editor takes on the cause of oppressed migrant Mexican fruit pickers.
A mad scientist named Dr. Satan plots to steal key pieces of technology to enable him to build an army of robots based on his prototype to conquer America. The only one standing in his way is Bob Wayne, who fights Satan as the enigmatic Copperhead. Mysterious Doctor Satan is a 1940 film serial named after its chief villain. Doctor Satan's main opponent is the masked mystery man, "The Copperhead", whose secret identity is Bob Wayne, a man searching for justice and revenge on Satan for the death of his step-father. The serial charts the conflict between the two as Bob Wayne pursues Doctor Satan, while the latter completes his plans for world domination.
A night club owner takes on the crooks who killed his best friend.
The crew of an Air Force bomber arrives in Pearl Harbor in the aftermath of the Japanese attack and is sent on to Manila to help with the defense of the Philippines.
The life and loves of composer Stephen Foster, from his early success through his decline, degradation, and death from alcoholism.
The peaceful life of a gas station owner is disrupted when a man from his past arrives in town and forces him to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.
In this crime drama, the owner and chief editor of a newspaper gets together with two college pals and begins looking into the strange death of an old hermit who lived on the fringe of town.
A beautiful white girl resident of Ta'Pu, Tana, is determined to clear Harley, who is suspected of stealing sacred jewels.
A shy bookkeeper accidentally discovers that the company where he works is targeted in a series of late-night robberies.
A cattle inspector runs a rustling ring on the side.
Dr. Kildare treats and falls for impoverished ex-con Janet Haley, widow of a bank robber, who can't find her baby. Later she helps Kildare sew up gangster Hanlon in a tavern back room. Kildare pursues Janet and enlists Hanlon to help her; the gangster's solution, not surprisingly, is violent.
Two Cavalry Officers clash over the Colonel's Daughter at a remote outpost with Indian troubles.
Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.
Tony, the son of Italian immigrants, works in a smoky steel mill in Gary, Indiana. He wins a company scholarship which will enable him to attend Yale college. Over the four years of his college career he learns about football, love, and class prejudice.
Clay Tallant comes to Silver City, Arizona in the 1880s and encounters wide-spread lawlessness and disorder, unscrupulous politicians, outlaws galore and brow-beaten citizens. He accepts the position of town marshal and, with his brother and a reformed outlaw , Tex Randolph, who comes over to his side, sets out to bring law-and-order where none exists. He also wins the hand of the singer appearing at the Opera House.
During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.
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.
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).
In an exclusive Swiss school for young girls, Christa Storm discovers that she is going to have a baby. She keeps the secret from everyone but her boyfriend, chemistry student David Perrin. Having lived in the private school for most of her life, Christa cannot confide in her distant father - and David cannot get his approval to marry her.
US marshal Sundown Jim Majors main purpose in life is to bring a deadly frontier feud to a peaceful end. This requires him to clean out the local criminal element, which he does with determination.
Chane Weymer, an Arizona rancher, goes after a gang that is trapping wild horses by the use of barbed-wire enclosures.
Young Andy develops a crush on his drama teacher. When his play is chosen as the school's annual production, Andy seizes the opportunity to spend as much time as possible with his pretty teacher. Meanwhile, Judge Hardy has his own problems when he gets conned into forming a phony aluminum corporation.
An anti-Nazi refugee on the run and a young Jewish couple race across Europe trying to escape Hitler's ever powerful influence.
A small town drunk beats a teetotal banker guilty of a shady transaction.
Joe and Ethel Turp are up in arms when their faithful old mailman is fired. Unable to get satisfaction on a municipal level, Joe and Ethel plead their mailman's case to the President himself.
A young woman uses her body and her sexuality to help her climb the social ladder, but soon begins to wonder if her new status will ever bring her happiness.
In New York, Sheila Bennet and her spouse, Matt Krane, are trying to unload a trove of rare jewels they smuggled into America from Cuba, but the police are hot on the couple's trail. Meanwhile, government officials begin a desperate search for an unknown individual who is infecting the city with smallpox.
A successful shoe manufacturer named John Reeves goes on vacation and meets the grown children of his recently deceased and much-respected competitor; they're on the verge of losing the family legacy through their careless behavior. Reeves takes it upon himself to save his rival's company by teaching the heirs a lesson in business.
A prison warden fights to prove one of his inmates was wrongly convicted.
While executing an armored car heist in Los Angeles, icy crook Dave Purvis shoots policeman Lt. Phillips before he and his cronies make off with the loot. Thinking he got away scot-free, Purvis collects his money-crazy mistress, Yvonne, then disposes of his partners and heads out of town. What Purvis doesn't know is that Phillips' partner, tough-as-nails Lt. Cordell, is wise to the criminal's plans and is closing in on his prey.
Two friends return home after their discharge from the army after the Civil War. However, one of them has had deep-rooted psychological damage due to his experiences during the war, and as his behavior becomes more erratic--and violent--his friend desperately tries to find a way to help him.
Charming Andre Cassil woos physician Jane Alexander and the two impulsively get married. The honeymoon ends very quickly when Jane voices her progressive views on marriage which include the two having separate apartments. Andre then tries to make his wife jealous in order to lure her into his bedroom.
Escaped convicts Jack and Judy stumble upon an airstrip on the Western ranch of arrogant business tycoon Gerald Axton. Taking Axton and his secretary hostage, the convicts inadvertently cause the crash-landing of a small plane ferrying Axton's political adversary, Gov. Sam Pruden, and a nosy reporter. As the long night unfolds, each person's rivalries and weaknesses are prodded by the others.
It's just after the Civil War and Captain Morgan and his confederate soldiers are establishing a town on the Bozeman trail. Colonel Strong and his union men are at the nearby fort. Things are peaceful until Riley has the Indians attack a union wagon train and leave a confederate sword at the scene.
O'Malley pretends to be an outlaw in order to join a gang terrorizing towns along the American border.
Jack exchanges his cow for some magic beans. The beans grow overnight into a beanstalk, which Jack climbs, arriving at a castle that is his. Jack sets a deal with the giant in exchange for their fortune.
The father of a star football player at Annapolis wants his son to follow the family pattern and join the Marines.
Life changes in surprising ways when a lazy, unemployed husband and father finds a box containing thousands of dollars in cash.
Biographical movie about the early 20th century broadway stars Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth.
Generational saga tracing the events in the lives of the midwest pioneering Nordholm family, as seen through the eyes of businessman Orin Nordholm Jr., who ages from a youth to an elderly grandfather.