Star Spangled Rhythm is a patriotic WWII musical comedy featuring all the biggest Paramount Studio stars of the era. Musical mayhem ensues when an attendant at Paramount (Victor Moore) tries to impress his navy son (Eddie Bracken) … by claiming that he is a studio mogul!
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In The Forest Rangers, Fred MacMurray fights arson, forest fires, and a romantic triangle with Paulette Goddard and Susan Hayward!
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The Ghost Breakers is a very funny comedy with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. Mary Carter (Paulette Goddard, The Great Dictator) inherits her family’s ancestral home, located on a small island off Cuba. And, despite warnings and death threats, decides to take possession of the ‘haunted’ castle. Radio broadcaster Larry Lawrence (Bob Hope) joins her. He’s fleeing New York with his butler, Alex (Willie Best). Once on the island the threesome enter the eerie castle …
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Thrown out of the Riviera, a family of grifters meets a lonely, vulnerable rich old woman and insinuate themselves into her life while they sponge off her.
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The classic “old dark house” motif is given sterling treatment in The Cat and the Canary. Bob Hope’s status as a star was assured with his role as Wallie Campbell. He becomes the cowardly protector of Joyce Norman (Paulette Goddard). She, in turn, who must spend one night in the eerie mansion of her late, eccentric, millionaire uncle. If she can make it through the night without losing her mind, Joyce stands to inherit her uncle’s entire fortune. Of course, all the other potential heirs now have a motive to drive her insane.
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Modern Times begins with Charlie Chaplin as Charlie the Little Tramp gainfully employed at a factory. However, the strict regimentation is driving him to the brink … Then over the brink, when the factory owner has him as the “guinea pig” for a “time-saving” feeding machine. This leads to Charlie spending time in a mental hospital. Cured after his breakdown. But then he is arrested and jailed when …. He innocently picks up a red flag that has fallen off the back of a truck and runs down the street to return it …. Just when a communist demonstration comes around the corner. He meets Paulette Goddard as ‘The Gamin’ (a street urchin) in the back of the police van. She is arrested for stealing bread. From then on the theme is about the two trying to get along in … modern times
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The Great Dictator, possibly the most well-known of Charlie Chaplin’s films, was a timely satire on Nazisim and fascism in general, and Adolph Hitler in particular. In it, Charlie Chaplin plays a double role — Adenoid Hynkel, autocratic dictator of Tomania who blames the Jewish people for all of society’s ills, and a Jewish Barber who happens to be the spitting image of Hynkel. Contrary to what some people believe, the Jewish Barber was not Chaplin’s world-famous tramp character, although they clearly share some of the same traits. The film is a true classic, with the famous “dance with the globe” where Hynkel dances with an oversized inflated image of the globe, fantasizing about his eventual conquests. The film ends with the famous “Look Up, Hannah” speech which is, perhaps, both verbose and even hokey, but it fits properly and plays well.
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