William Saroyan wrote a 240-page, four-hour script for the 1943 film The Human Comedy, which MGM deemed too long. He refused to compromise and was dumped as director. He turned his script into a bestselling novel and won an Oscar for his story.

Director Clarence Brown’s warm and generous spirited 1943 MGM American black and white comedy-drama film The Human Comedy stars Mickey Rooney, who gives one of his most winning performances as teenager Homer Macauley, a California small-town (the fictional town of Ithaca) telegram delivery boy, whose deliveries bring sadness or hope during World War Two. It also stars Frank Morgan, James Craig, Marsha Hunt, Fay Bainter, Ray Collins, Van Johnson, Donna Reed and Jackie ‘Butch’ Jenkins.

This appealing movie is heavy on the sentiment, but never too s...

Director Rowland V Lee’s attractive 1938 RKO black and white Mother Carey’s Chickens is notable in itself but especially as it stars a wonderful cast – Anne Shirley, Ruby Keeler, Fay Bainter, James Ellison, Walter Brennan, Donnie Dunagan, Frank Albertson, Alma Kruger, Jackie Moran, Virginia Weidler, Margaret Hamilton and Ralph Morgan. Screen-writers S K Lauren and Gertrude Purcell translate Kate Douglas Wiggin’s novel and play to the screen.

Fay Bainter stars as 1890s widow Old Mother Carey, who looks after her brood of kids (two daughters Anne Shirley and Ruby Keeler; two sons Donnie Dunagan and Jackie Moran) in times of trouble in this pleasingly played, small-scale drama, with romantic complications when the daughters fall in love with the same man.

It may seem a little inconseq...

Director Howard W Koch’s 1958 Andy Hardy Comes Home is a rather sad, belated, out-of-time sequel to the Thirties and Forties Andy Hardy series (1937-1946), filmed a decade too late, with a 40-something Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) coming home to Carvel with his wife and children as a successful lawyer and making a land deal.

The 16th and last in the series, this reprise has a well-meaning story and there is a pleasure to be found in seeing most of the series’s regulars (especially Fay Holden as Mrs Hardy, Cecilia Parker as Marian, and Sara Haden as Aunt Milly) still present and correct, though alas there is no Lewis Stone as the judge (the actor died in 1953) and Ann Rutherford decided not to return as Polly Benedict.

Some mild pleasure there may be, but somehow young Andy Hardy should ...

There are bleeding hearts aplenty in director Stephen Roberts’s well-played by extremely trite little 1936 melodrama in which Herbert Marshall plays Doctor Michael J Talbot who divorces his selfless wife Anne Talbot (Ann Harding) for young mistress Gerry Mannerly (Margaret Lindsay), a professional golfer whom he marries only to find out that she is an uncivilised person and that he still loves his ex-wife Anne.

[Spoiler alert] It is the death of Marshall’s father Jim Talbot (Edward Ellis) that provokes a change of heart and direction in the hero.

This stagy, contrived and dated film is short on credibility and originality, with a screenplay by P J Wolfson and Anthony Veiller that is hampered by some particularly stodgy, antique dialogue.

RKO’s cheap-looking production is extremely ba...

John Bentley again plays novelist-sleuth Paul Temple, who this time investigates a series of gruesome murders by a mysterious serial killer known as The Marquis, in the 1952 British thriller film Paul Temple Returns.

John Bentley again plays novelist-sleuth Paul Temple, who this time investigates, along with his sleuth wife Steve (Patricia Dainton), a series of gruesome murders by a mysterious serial killer known as The Marquis. Director Maclean Rogers drums up another pleasingly twisty and well-acted but rickety and cheap-looking black and white British mystery thriller, based on the 1942 BBC radio serial Paul Temple Intervenes by Francis Durbridge.

This 1952 mystery movie, Paul Temple Returns [Bombay Waterfront], proved to be the fourth and final Temple film, following Send for Paul Tem...

‘Behind the lighted tower windows the conflict of love and power is reckless and daring!’ Director Robert Wise’s Oscar-nominated 1954 drama stars Barbara Stanwyck as Julia O Tredway, who oversees the candidates for new board president when her father, Avery Bullard, the President of the huge Tredway Corporation furniture manufacturing business passes on from a sudden stroke.

William Holden also stars as junior executive McDonald ‘Don’ Walling, the sole candidate who is not wheeler-dealing for the job as he is more concerned about his wife Mary (June Allyson) and son Mike (Tim Considine). Fredric March plays calculating skilled businessman Loren Shaw, the most likely successor, but some want to stop him.

The board members have a difficult task in choosing a replacement for Bullard as th...

The 1953 MGM romantic comedy film Dream Wife is notable as the first of three movies that paired Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Grant plays a business tycoon whose gaze falls on the pretty Arabian princess Tarji (Betta St John). 

The 1953 MGM romantic comedy film Dream Wife is notable as the first of three movies that paired Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Co-writer/director Sidney Sheldon’s contrived and artificial comedy Dream Wife stars Grant as business tycoon Clemson Reade, whose gaze falls on the pert, pretty and pleasing Arabian princess Tarji (Betta St John). 

However, the marriage proposal that Clemson makes to Tarji isn’t exactly very diplomatic of him because he is already engaged to smart and capable professional working woman, US diplomat Priscilla ‘Effie’ Effington (Deborah...