Movies from the Past
Ernest Bliss is a rich young man with too little to do. Not realizing the depression he’s in is due to boredom, Ernest consults a doctor. Sir James Aldroyd gives Ernest a prescription that he doesn’t think Ernest can fill: Ernest must earn his own living for one year using none of his current wealth. Ernest bets him 50,000 English pounds that he can. IMDB
When Sheriff Jake sees a man at the safe and then finds the payroll gone, he trails him. Just as he is about to arrest him, the man saves his life. Still suspicious, he joins up with the man and later they learn that Melgrove, the towns leading citizen, is trying to take over the area’s ranches by having his gang stop all incoming supply wagons. With the ranchers about to sell to Melgrove, the two newcomers say they will bring in provisions. IMDB
In the years following the Civil War, the town of Abilene, Kansas is poised on the brink of an explosive confrontation. A line has been drawn down the center of the town where the homesteaders and the cattlemen have come to a very uneasy truce. The delicate peace is inadvertantly shattered when a group of new homesteaders lay down their stakes on the cattlemen’s side of town, upsetting the delicate balance that had existed thus far and sparking an all-out war between the farmers, who want the land tamed and property lines drawn, and the cowboys, who want the prairies to be open for their cattle to roam. IMDB
Hazel Flagg of Warsaw, Vermont receives the news that her terminal case of radium poisoning from a workplace incident was a complete misdiagnosis with mixed emotions. She is happy not to be dying, but she, who has never traveled the world, was going to use the money paid to her by her factory to go to New York in style. She believes her dreams can still be realized when Wally Cook arrives in town. He is a New York reporter with the Morning Star newspaper. He believes that Hazel’s valiant struggle concerning her impending death is just the type of story he needs to resurrect his name within reporting circles after a recent story he wrote led to scandal and a major demotion at the newspaper. He proposes to take Hazel to New York both to report on her story but also to provide her with a grand farewell to life. She accepts. Wally’s story results in Hazel becoming the toast of New York. In spending time together, Wally and Hazel fall in love. Hazel not only has to figure out what to do … IMDB
An actress is murdered by her estranged husband, who is jealous of all of her young boyfriends. The next day, writer Robert Tisdall (who happens to be one such boyfriend) discovers her body on the beach. He runs to call the police, however, two witnesses think that he is the escaping murderer. Robert is arrested, but owing to a mix-up at the courthouse, he escapes and goes on the run with a Police Constable’s daughter Erica, determined to prove his innocence. IMDB
A newly hired police chief vows to clean up a notoriously corrupt police department. When he is murdered, investigators find that there is no shortage of suspects, most of them being fellow cops. IMDB
Jamaica Inn is a 1939 British adventure thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock adapted from Daphne du Maurier’s 1936 novel of the same title, the first of three of du Maurier’s works that Hitchcock adapted (the others were her novel Rebecca and short story “The Birds”). It stars Charles Laughton and features Maureen O’Hara in her first major screen role. It is the last film Hitchcock made in the United Kingdom before he moved to the United States.
The film is a period piece set in Cornwall in 1819, in the real Jamaica Inn (which still exists), as a pub on the edge of Bodmin Moor
The film is set in 1820 (at the start of the reign of King George IV, as mentioned by Pengallan in his first scene).
Over and above its function as a hostelry, Jamaica Inn houses the clandestine rural headquarters of a gang of cutthroats and thieves, led by innkeeper Joss Merlyn (Leslie Banks). They have become wreckers. They are responsible for a series of engineered shipwrecks in which they extinguish coastal warning beacons, causing ships to run aground on the rocky Cornish coast. They then kill the surviving sailors and steal their cargo.
One evening, a young Irish-woman, Mary Yellan (Maureen O’Hara), is dropped off by coach near the inn, at the home of the local squire and justice of the peace, Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Charles Laughton). She requests the loan of a horse so she can ride to Jamaica Inn to re-unite with her Aunt Patience (the wife of Joss Merlyn). Despite Pengallan’s warnings, she intends to live at Jamaica Inn with her late mother’s sister. Shortly afterwards, we learn that Pengallan is the secret criminal mastermind behind the wrecking gang; he learns from his well-to-do friends and acquaintances when well-laden ships are passing near the coast, determines when and where the wrecks are to be caused, and fences the stolen cargo. He uses the lion’s share of the proceeds to support his lavish lifestyle and passes a small fraction of them to Joss and the gang. Read More at Wiki
Set during World War II, journalist Joan Kenwood (Jane Russell), whose Air Corps photographer husband was killed on an air mission, returns to New York City from England. The managing editor of the newspaper for which she worked, Peter Waring (Kent Taylor), offers Joan work, but she despondently rejects it and instead stays with two aunts on their farm in Virginia. Unable to stop thinking about the death, however, she decides to return to New York.
On the train, young bomber pilot Lt. Jim Cameron (Louis Hayward) persistently tries to charm her, but Joan rebuffs him. In New York, both are unable to find vacant hotel rooms, but Joan calls her friend, Peg Martin (Penny Singleton), whose baseball player husband is serving on a submarine, for a place to stay. Peg shares her apartment with Mac (Marie Wilson), a show girl who has just returned from entertaining the troops. A number of military men drop in on the apartment as Joan arrives, all invited by the scatter-brained Mac. Jim learns where Joan is staying, shows up too, and sees opportunity in the situation. Later, everyone goes out to a café. While Jim and Joan are dancing, her husband’s favorite song is played, and a distraught Joan leaves. Jim follows and takes her home. When he bluntly suggests that she get over the man she is in love with, Joan explains that the man is her husband, who was killed over Berlin. Ashamed, Jim returns to his base at Mitchel Field on Long Island, where he is awaiting orders for the Pacific ….Wiki
“Butcher” Benton goes to his death in the state prison, cursing the three men who double-crossed him following an armored-car hold-up; “Squeamy” Ellis, Joe Marcelli and Paul Lowe, his attorney and leader of the gang. He vows to return and kill them and dies without revealing the location of the stolen money. Detective Chasen is determined to keep working on the case until the stolen loot is recovered. Benton’s body is taken to Professor Bradshaw and his assistant for experimentation, and they manage to restore him to life, making him practically indestructible in the process. He takes off after the three men, getting rid of everybody who stands in his way. He is impervious to police bullets. He kills Ellis and Marcelli, while Lowe seeks police protection. Benton takes to the sewers to recover the hidden loot and the police are powerless to stop him. IMDB
Through a series of macabre “coincidences,” the newly-elected director of a cemetery (Richard Boone) begins to believe that he can cause the deaths of living owners of burial plots by merely changing the push-pin color from white (living) to black (dead) on a large wall map of the cemetery that notes those plots. IMDB