A biography of Darryl F. Zanuck, mogul and the power behind 20th Century Fox throughout the Golden Age.
In turn-of-the-century San Francisco, an ambitious vaudevillian takes his quartet from a honky tonk to the big time, while spurning the love of his troupe's star singer for a selfish heiress.
An unemployed drifter, Eric Stanton wanders into a small California town and begins hanging around the local diner. While Eric falls for the lovely waitress Stella, he also begins romancing a quiet and well-to-do woman named June Mills. Since Stella isn't interested in Eric unless he has money, the lovelorn guy comes up with a scheme to win her over, and it involves June. Before long, murder works its way into this passionate love triangle.
Chin-Ching gets lost in Shanghai and is befriended by American playboy Tommy Randall. She falls asleep in his car which winds up on a ship headed for America. Susan Parker, also on the ship, marries Randall to give Chin-Ching a family.
Texan farmers the Frake family head for the Texas State Fair in Dallas. The parents are focused on winning the competitions for livestock and cooking. However, their restless daughter Margy and her brother Wayne meet attractive new love interests.
A would-be filmmaker and actress shake up the industry with a trick dog who gets discovered by a studio bus driver in the 1920s.
Rose Sargent, a Roaring '20s singer, becomes a Ziegfeld Follies star as her criminal husband gets deeper in trouble.
Classical violinist Roger Grant disappoints his family and teacher when he organizes a jazz band, but he and the band become successful. Roger falls in love with the band's singer, Stella, but his reluctance to lose her leads him to thwart her efforts to become a solo star. When the World War separates them in 1917, Stella marries Roger's best friend and, when Roger returns home after the war, an important concert at Carnegie Hall brings the corners of the romantic triangle together.
An entertainer in Rio impersonates a wealthy aristocrat. When the aristocrat's wife asks him to carry the impersonation further, complications ensue.
Trixie is a female pilot looking to win a big race to advance her career. During one race, however, her plane becomes damaged, and she needs help to repair it. She meets a Navy pilot named "Tex" Price and tries to gain his aid. Tex soon meets another pilot, Gerry, a novice who seeks to win an important upcoming race. Tex, concerned for Gerry's safety, tries to convince her not to race. But Gerry, now a rival of Trixie's, is determined to fly.
A soldier falls for a chorus girl and then experiences trouble when he is posted to the Pacific.
A ship company employee, Jay Williams, is sent to Florida where one of the company cruise ships is stuck on a reef off of the coast. He obtains waivers from all of the passengers with the exception of Nan Spencer, a department store salesgirl who wants her vacation now, not later. Jay is instructed to take Nan to Havana, set her up in the best hotel, and keep her entertained. She visits a nightclub where the star attraction is Rosita Rivas and meets Rosita's worthless manager, Monte Blanca, who makes a play for her. Trouble also comes in the form of Jay's fiancée, Terry McCracken, when a romance develops between Nan and Jay.
Starting in 1913 movie director Connors discovers singer Molly Adair. As she becomes a star she marries an actor, so Connors fires them. She asks for him as director of her next film. Many silent stars shown making the transition to sound.
An aging star finally recognizes the truth when she is replaced in her new movie by a girl from the chorus.
The O'Leary brothers -- honest Jack and roguish Dion -- become powerful figures, and eventually rivals, in Chicago on the eve of its Great Fire.
A new Broadway show starring Gary Blake shamelessly lampoons the rich Carraway family. To get her own back, daughter Mimi sets out to ensnare Blake, but the courtship is soon for real, to the annoyance of his co-star, hoofing chanteuese Mona Merrick.
Actor Lee Tracy presides as ringmaster over a show that combines the best elements of cinema with the circus, what he calls a Cinema Circus. Tracy introduces a number of professional circus acts, plus a cavalcade of movie stars who have side shows under the open air big tent. There is as much action in the audience as Tracy identifies a number of movie stars watching the proceedings incognito, having their own fun in the stands, and sometimes interacting with the circus acts.
A two-bit gambler somehow claws his way to the top. His love for riches is only matched by his love for his wife, but he is sometimes confused by which he loves most.
Reporter Miss Lee is looking for a story and approaches George White as he's assembling the latest edition of his famous revue. As it turns out, she has lots of backstage gossip to choose from
Alice Faye plays the title role in this 1940 film biography of the early-20th-century stage star.
A Broadway producer discovers new talent in a small Georgia town and brings them to New York for his new show.
The "Caliban-Ariel" romance of fiftysomething John Barrymore and teenager Elaine Barrie is spoofed in this delightful 20th Century Fox musical. Adolphe Menjou plays the Barrymore counterpart, a loose-living movie star with a penchant for wine, women, and more wine. Alice Faye plays a nightclub singer hungry for publicity. Her agent (Gregory Ratoff) arranges a "romance" between Faye and Menjou. Eventually Faye winds up with Michael Whalen, allowing Menjou to continue his blissful, bibulous bachelorhood. Sing, Baby, Sing represented the feature-film debut of the Ritz Brothers, who are in top form in their specialty numbers--and who are awarded a final curtain call after the "The End" title, just so the audience won't forget them (The same device was used to introduce British actor George Sanders in Fox's Lancer Spy [37]).
Warner Baxter plays the ambitious producer of a burlesque show who rises to the big time on Broadway. Alice Faye is the loyal burleycue singer who helps make Baxter a success. His head turned by sudden fame, Baxter falls under the spell of a society woman (Mona Barrie) who has theatrical aspirations of her own. She marries Baxter, then convinces him to produce a string of "artistic" plays rather than his extravagant musical revues. The plays are flops, and the woman haughtily divorces Baxter. Faithful Alice Faye, who'd gone to London when her ex-beau was married, returns to the penniless Baxter. She and her burlesque buddies team up to pull Baxter out of his rut and put him on top again.
Inventor Robert Fulton receives support from a tavern owner and a shipyard worker to help realize his dream of a high-powered steamboat.
In China, a singer and a journalist meet while traveling on a train attacked by bandits.
Satire on radio, built around the supposed feud between bandleader Ben Bernie and journalist Walter Winchell.
Three young girls working in an agency have build a singing trio. They want to "lease" the Dictaphone of their boss to make a record of their singing, but they are caught and fired. When they are not able to pay their rent any longer, they decide to try it on an amateur contest at a radio station.
Manicurists Sally, Irene and Mary hope to be Broadway entertainers. When Mary inherits an old ferry boat, they turn it into a successful supper club.
Down-on-his-luck film director Jimmie Dale takes a job at a fly-by-night acting school. He is drawn into the plans of the school's owner to bilk a wealthy young man out of the funds he has supplied to shoot a movie starring pretty student Alice Perkins. But Jimmie hopes to bilk the bilkers by actually completing the movie as ostensibly planned.
Starving playwright Judith Wells meets playboy writer of musicals, George Macrae, over a plate of stolen spaghetti. He persuades producer Sam Gordon to buy her ridiculous play "North Winds" just to improve his romantic chances, and even persuades her to sing in the sort of show she pretends to despise. But just when their romance is going well, Gordon's former flame Lulu reveals the ace up her sleeve...
After WWI two men go into radio. Failure leads the wife of one to borrow money from another; she goes on, after separation, to stardom. A coast-to-coast radio program is set up to bring everyone back together.
Cossetted and bored, Barbara Barry is finally sent off to school by her busy if doting widowed soap manufacturer father. When her nurse is injured en route, Barbara finds herself alone in town, ending up as part of radio song-and-dance act Dolan and Dolan sponsored by a rival soap company.
A Broadway producer is in a quandary when he discovers that the opening of his newest big production coincides with that of a major charity event. He despairs that the show will close after opening night until an ingenious writer suggests that he simply give the production snob-appeal by making the tickets nearly impossible to get by fabricating a story that they were all purchased by a flamboyant Texas oil baron who is totally besotted by the show's star.
Shanghai nightclub singer Jean falls in love to a sailor, but after his ship left Shanghai, he is of the opinion that he cannot support her in the States, so he writes her in a letter, that he will not see her again, but two practical jokers intercept it and write another with an opposite content. Jean comes to the states, but her sailor doesn't acknowledge her, but the two don't give up trying to bring Jean and sailor back together.
A biography of the Portuguese-born Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda, whose most distinctive feature was her tutti-frutti hat. From her arrival in the US as the "Brazilian Bombshell" to her Broadway career and Hollywood stardom in the 1940s.
Reenactments of actual USO experiences of its female stars entertaining troops overseas.
Songwriters Calhoun and Harrigan get Katie and Lily Blane to introduce a new one. Lily goes to England, and Katy joins her after the boys give a new song to Nora Bayes. All are reunited when the boys, now in the army, show up in England.
Profile of famed dance director Busby Berkeley's career, in particular "The Gang's All Here"
Lassie is claimed from his family by a "former owner" and then braves a cross country trip to rejoin the ones that love her.
A merry whodunnit diamond caper unfolds after a woman's million dollar necklace is stolen while she is having her portrait done.
Promo film for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, with host Alice Faye. Faye looks back on her career in Hollywood.
Highlights from the great musicals of the 1940s. Stars featured include Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Danny Kaye, Jimmy Durante and Frank Sinatra.
There never was a star quite like her. Adored by adults and children alike, at four she already led at the box office — ahead of Gable and Cooper. Her films saved a movie studio from bankruptcy, and a President credited her with raising the morale of Depression-weary Americans. Her earliest movies gave a foretaste of her talents and soon would become the songs and dances that helped make those movies immortal.
A parade highlights the Screen Actors Guild's Film Stars Frolic, hosted by Walter Winchell as Master of Ceremonies.
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
A young husband becomes a game-show participant in the hopes of winning the cash to pay his pregnant wife's doctor.
An aircraft carrier is sent on a decoy mission around the Pacific, with orders to avoid combat, thus lulling Japanese alertness before the battle of Midway.
A look back at the first 100 years of the movies.
The first half century of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation from its beginnings under Hungarian immigrant William Fox to it emergence as a major studio.
The most glittering, expensive, and exhausting videotaping session in television history took place Friday February 19, 1982 at New York's Radio City Music Hall. The event, for which ticket-buyers paid up to $1,000 a seat (tax-deductible as a contribution to the Actors' Fund) was billed as "The Night of 100 Stars" but, actually, around 230 stars took part. And most of the audience of 5,800 had no idea in advance that they were paying to see a TV taping, complete with long waits for set and costume changes, tape rewinding, and the like. Executive producer Alexander Cohen estimated that the 5,800 Radio City Music Hall seats sold out at prices ranging from $25 to $1,000. The show itself cost about $4 million to produce and was expected to yield around $2 million for the new addition to the Actors Fund retirement home in Englewood, N. J. ABC is reputed to have paid more than $5 million for the television rights.
A two-hour in-depth exploration into the Hollywood musicals of the 1930s.
This is a two-hour in-depth exploration into the Hollywood musicals of the 1940s.
A TV special on the 100th anniversary of the birth of film.
Documentary featuring more than one dozen musical outtakes from classic 20th Century-Fox films.