A Los Angeles fire captain (Roy Roberts) sends an arson-squad rookie (George Cooper) undercover.
In the Canadian mountains, a trapper goes on the run accused of a crime and is pursued by a rugged and determined lawman of the Royal North-West Mounted Police.
A renegade police captain sets out to catch a sadistic mob boss. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
The lives of a young man and woman, an infamous gangster and a group of street kids converge one day in a volatile New York City slum.
Communists blackmail a shipping executive into spying for them.
When he finds out that his wife is having an affair, a criminologist commits the perfect murder--and pins the crime on his wife's boyfriend so well that the man is convicted of the murder.
An ex-con uses his street smarts to become a successful photojournalist.
World War I veteran Tom Holmes is marked by the unbearable suffering caused by his battle wounds. Over the years, he comes to experience both the pain of misfortune and a love for other human beings.
Members of a teenage gang are sent to the State Reformatory, presided over by the callous Thompson. Soon Patsy Gargan, a former gangster appointed Deputy Commissioner, arrives and takes over the administration to run the place on radical principles. Thompson needs a quick way to discredit him.
A hustling public relations man promotes a series of fads.
Ethnic comedy of a nightclub entertainer trying to train a boxer.
Slip and Sach take the rap for a robbery they did not commit in order to uncover the real robbers, whom they suspect are led by a convict who gives orders to his gang outside via a short-wave radio stashed somewhere in the prison.
Showgirls Kay and June are stranded on Palm Beach when they become involved in the case of a fellow chorine who has gone missing on her wedding night.
After the success of "Little Caesar," "Public Enemy" and "Scarface," here is the inevitable parody, in which Liddle Sizzer engages in a vicious Chicago gang war. He's aided by his innocent twin brother, Julius, a greenhorn from the Old Country. Both are played by Benny Rubin.
A naïve farmer writing songs tries his chances in New York. Unlucky, he is helped by a crooner who lusts after one of his songs. Ignoring the real value of his composition, he sold it for the money he owed to his friends: $200.
A young couple marries in secret. Judy's afraid her parents won't approve of Dick and she'll lose her generous allowance. Her parents bring her home from the city where she's been studying art and encourage the attentions of Tom, a persistent suitor. Judy and her jealous husband have an argument that leads her back to the city, a drunken, amorous Tom and a tragedy.
A diplomat is blackmailed by crooked vice cops into helping them frame prostitutes.
A spoiled young rich girl is sent to prison for accidentally running down a pedestrian. There she learns about a life and people she had never even imagined existed before.
Theater usherette Bunny O'Day (Clara Bow) inadvertently becomes hostess of a private gambling den, and gets involved in a romance with a ne'er-do-well gambler.
As the demand for raw silk goes sky high, crooked businessman Wallace Myton corners the market with plans to drive up the price. Determined to fulfill his contracts, manufacturer Donald Kilgore imports $3 million worth of silk to Seattle and accompanies it by special train to New York. But when his secretary is found murdered, Kilgore soon discovers Myton has planted three killers on board with orders to stop the express and its passengers dead in their tracks.
When his ward seeks protection with rival cattleman John Stewart, embittered, jealous rancher Wick Campbell hires ten outlaws to help him seize power in the territory.
A gambler faces deportation when he gets mixed up with murder.
Former bootlegger Dutch Barnes pressures neighborhood druggist Jimmy Morrell into making cut-rate knockoff toiletry, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical products.
A gang hold a family hostage in their own home. The leader of the escaped cons is bothered by a recurring dream that the doctor of the house may be able to analyze.
Alcoholic newspaperman Steve Bramley boards the San Capador for a restful cruise, hoping to quit drinking and begin writing a book. Also on board are Steve's friend Schulte, a private detective hoping to nab criminal Danny Checkett with a fortune in stolen bonds. Steve begins drinking, all the while observing the various stories of other passengers on board, several of whom turn out not to be who they seem to be.
Thanks to a series of comic mishaps, a timid, small-town office clerk finds himself wanted by the police and labeled by the media as "Public Enemy No. 2."
Eight fighter pilots hold off constant Japanese attacks during the construction of an airstrip in New Guinea.
A stranger in a Western cattle-town behaves with remarkable self-assurance, establishing himself as a man to be reckoned with. The reason appears with his stock: a herd of sheep, which he intends to graze on the range. The horrified inhabitants decide to run him out at all costs.
A gambler hires a detective to investigate when a murder is committed in his casino.
World War I drama about a soldier and the wild horse he befriends.
A newspaper man uses a mobster's tips to get the scoop on gangster activities.
Trucker tries to put a railroad man out of business.
Well respected local good guy, "Feet" Samuels finds himself heavily in debt due to an uncharacteristic gambling binge. Feet decides the only way to settle the bill is by selling his body to an ambitious doctor who agrees to allow him one last month to live life to the fullest, then kill himself.
In the 1840's Mexico has ceded California to the United States, making life nearly impossible for the Mexican population due to the influx of land and gold-crazy Americans. Farmer Joaquin Murrieta revenges the death of his wife against the four Americans who killed her and is branded an outlaw. The reward for his capture is increased as he subsequently kills the men who brutally murder his brother. Joining with bandit Three Fingered Jack, Murrieta raises an army of disaffected Mexicans and goes on a rampage against the Americans, finally forcing his erstwhile friend, Bill Warren, to lead a posse against him.
An arrogant boxer (Pat O'Brien) discovers his wife (Glenda Farrell) had a hand in his success.
After a former model is drowned in her bathtub, Detective James Halloran and Lieutenant Dan Muldoon attempt to piece together her murder.
Outdoor drama about a newly-hired lumberjack discovering that his former girlfriend is now his new boss's wife.
An army sergeant inspires his son to become an ace flyer.
Light-hearted, old-style romance about a farm-hand who arranges to buy a pair of mules from his employer. No one is able to handle the mules and he must train them. Adding to his dilemma, he pursues his boss's daughter who gets her kicks out of keeping him guessing about her true feelings. Of course, at the end he tames both the mules and the girl.
A big-city cop is reassigned to the country after his superiors find him too angry to be an effective policeman. While on his temporary assignment he assists in a manhunt of a suspected murderer.
Asaph (Charles Ruggles) is a meek, mild-mannered homebody who occasionally shows some backbone to his prudish, overbearing boss, only to be beaten down again. With the encouragement of his secretary Beulah (Ann Dvorak), his old college team-mate Wynn (Eugene Pallette) and some liquor, Asaph regains some of his wild-man soul. Watch out world!
Scotty Hamilton is a reporter who works for a crooked editor. Bill Banning is another reporter who is about to expose the editor's ties to the mob. When the editor is killed, both reporter Banning and mobster Tony Garcia are suspected.
Inventor Robert Fulton receives support from a tavern owner and a shipyard worker to help realize his dream of a high-powered steamboat.
In this western, a Mexican bandit and an angry rancher team up and take on a crooked saloon keeper.
A psychopathic criminal with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and then leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist. After the heist, events take a crazy turn.
Brash hoodlum Tom Connors enters Sing Sing cocksure of himself and disrespectful toward authority, but his tough but compassionate warden changes him.
An Air Force washout and his buddy room with a pretty young lady. Desperate for jobs during the Depression, they finally land employment with the mob.
'Natural' Davis (William Powell) is a respected gambler who follows a ruthless code of honor with those who cheat against him. His wife, Alma (Kay Francis), wants to divorce him because of his addiction and lifestyle, but they agree on a reconciliation and second honeymoon together and 'Natural' promises to give up gambling. However, his plans change when his brother, 'Babe' (Regis Toomey), arrives in town looking to score big, and 'Natural' has to devise a plan quickly to put him off gambling forever.
Two yokels are framed and sent to prison, but wind up playing football on the warden's championship team.
A high-spirited and short-tempered Texan woman storms her way through life until her luck runs out, forcing her to learn the error of her ways.
When retired racket boss John Sarto tries to reclaim his place and former friends try to kill him, he finds solace in a monastery and reinvents himself as a pious monk.
A young woman not only inherits her late father's estate, she also gets control of a carnival on the edge of bankruptcy in this comedy. Intrigued by carnival life, the woman disguises herself and joins up. She hopes to see how she might save it. She has many adventures and even becomes a magician's assistant.
A World War I veteran’s dreams of becoming a master architect evaporate in the cold light of economic realities. Things get even worse when he’s falsely convicted of a crime and sent to work on a chain gang.
Whenever it becomes known how good he is with guns, ex-gunman George and his wife Dora have to flee the town, in fear of all the gunmen who might want to challenge him. Unfortunately he again spills his secret when he's drunk. All citizens swear to keep his secret and support him to give up his guns forever -- but a boy tells the story to a gang of wanted criminals. Their leader threatens to burn down the whole town, if he doesn't duel him.
Ambrose C. Park, left on a park bench as an infant with an impulsive need to find his parents, is an assistant to a diamond cutter. Shyster lawyer Remlick, in a strategy to get a fabulous uncut diamond through Ambrose, arranges for Emily Drummon, Duke Fargoh and Maggie Drummon to pose as Ambrose's long-lost parents and sister. The diamond, through many comic situations, is acquired and the gang is going to have Ambrose cut the diamond, and relieve him of the two stones and his parental illusions at the same time. But Maggie, who has no taste for the deception, tips Ambrose off and a wild chase ensues. At the end, Ambrose is very happy as he can now marry his "sister."
In the American oilfields, a fugitive from justice's destiny is intertwined with the fortunes and the misfortunes of a small oil company that hires him as a roughneck.
Richard Dix stars as Pecos Smith, a strong, silent Westerner suspected of cattle rustling.
Corrupt politicians resort to murder and blackmail when a young boy accidentally witnesses them taking payoffs.
Columbia's final release for 1950 was the Gene Autry western Indian Territory. Set during the Reconstruction Era, the story finds Autry working as an undercover agent for the U.S. cavalry. His mission: to neutralize a former Austrian army officer named Curt Raidler (Phil Van Zandt), who is leading a group of renegade Indians on a series of destructive raids.
When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.
The story follows General George Armstrong Custer's adventures from his West Point days to his death. He defies orders during the Civil War, trains the 7th Cavalry, appeases Chief Crazy Horse and later engages in bloody battle with the Sioux nation.
The murders are committed in swift succession on board a liner crossing the Atlantic in a dense fog, and many of the passengers come under suspicion before the actual killer is bought to justice with the aid of a very substantial "ghost."
A small-town reporter investigates a mysterious group holed up in a country lodge.
An uncompromising, visionary architect struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards.
Butch Saunders has been transferred to Missing Persons because he was too brutal in other police work...
The friendship between two orphans endures even though they grow up on opposite sides of the law and fall in love with the same woman.
A bohemian free spirit helps meek Waldo win back his fiancée and falls in love with her over-controlling sister in the process.
Two destitute New Yorkers meet cute in Central Park and then separate and independently get tangled up with some gangsters only to be reunited again in the end.
A gangster is unable to go straight after returning home from prison.
Georgia Garrett is sent by jealous wife Elvira Kent on an ocean cruise to masquerade as herself while she secretly stays home to catch her husband cheating. Meanwhile equally suspicious husband Michael Kent has sent a private eye on the same cruise to catch his wife cheating. Love and confusion ensues along with plenty of musical numbers.
A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.
A go-getting bank messenger falls in with unsuccessful gambler.
A Marshal must face unpleasant facts about his past when he attempts to run a criminal gang out of town.
Margot Rande, a basically decent woman, is led down the path to perdition by her bank robber husband.
To make an honest woman of his pregnant sister, Rosalie, callous New York mobster Phil Regal intimidates witnesses and bribes a store clerk to get Rosalie’s condemned boyfriend, Nicky Bradna, out of prison. But Regal’s meddling deeds soon backfire.
A mild mannered sheriff must fight both a hired gun and local anti-Indian bigotry in a small frontier town.
Ruby falls in love with small-time con man Eddie. During a botched blackmail scheme, Eddie accidentally kills the man they were setting up. Eddie takes off and Ruby is sent to a reformatory for two years.
Rubber-legged comedian Leon Errol made his talkie starring bow in Paramount's Only Saps Work. Based on a play by Owen Davis Sr., the film casts Errol as James Wilson, a kleptomaniac who starts with picking pockets and ends up robbing a bank. Wilson's friend Lawrence Payne (Richard Arlen) inadvertently aids our hero during one of his heists, ending up in deep doo-doo with the law. Before Wilson is able to extricate Payne from his dilemma for the sake of heroine Barbara Tanner (Mary Brian), he pauses long enough to pose as a private eye -- and even gives bellboy Oscar (Stu Erwin) tips on how to spot a crook! If only all of Leon Errol's feature films had been as consistently hilarious as Only Saps Work.
A young man falls in love with a beautiful blonde. When he sees her being forced onto a luxury liner, he decides to follow and rescue her. However, he discovers that she is an English heiress who ran away from home and is now being returned to England. He also discovers that his boss is on the ship. To avoid discovery, he disguises himself as the gangster accomplice of a minister, who is actually a gangster on the run from the law.
After giving the District Attorney another stinging defeat, Perry plans to take a vacation in China. That is, he was, until Rhoda, his old flame, meets him at a restaurant. It seems that her husband Moxley, who had been allegedly dead for four years, is alive and demanding money as she has married into wealth. The case escalates when the police find the body of Moxley and charge her with the murder.
Sailor Joe Hart, who is spending his shore leave at a gambling joint, sells his gun to young Laurie Roberts after losing terribly. After Hart again loses his last dime, he leaves the joint and steals a car in order to return to his ship. Later that night, a tough gambler named "The Weasel" convinces Laurie, who also lost badly, that Baldy, the joint's owner, is crooked, and they both return to the joint to break open the safe. During the holdup, The Weasel kills Baldy with Joe's gun and, after being picked up for speeding, Joe is arrested for murder.
When newlyweds visit Las Vegas, the wife's shady past comes to the surface.