Saturday, April 11 - The Great Mr. Nobody

The Great Mr. Nobody (1941)

Perpetual-optimist "Dreamy" Smith aspires to quit his job as newspaper publicity drudge and sail the world. But life--and his editor--conspires against him. Not only does the car he intends using as the boat's downpayment roll into the bay, but his boss starts to claim "Dreamy's" better publicity ideas as his own.

As a low-level classified ad salesman, Eddie Albert dreams of sailing the high seas in search of adventure with his friend or landlord or relative (not quite sure what he is,) the Skipper played by Alan Hale. He's in love with Joan Leslie as Mary, a wide-eyed, too-good-to-be-true coworker but she'll have to wait til he gets the travel bug out of his system. Meanwhile, Mary is ticked off that his brilliant promotional ideas to perk up the paper's circulation are being swiped by his alcoholic boss. Oh, there's also Dickie Moore as a crippled newsboy...

Friday, April 10 - Women Are Like That

Women Are Like That (1938)

Kay Francis plays Claire, who on her wedding day to Martin (Forbes) runs off instead with Bill Landin (O'Brien). They start off well enough, but then Claire's dad (Hall) runs off, cleaning out the bank account of his advertising agency, where Bill and Martin work. Bill gives the other officers his stock in exchange for Claire not finding out about her dad and continues to work for the company. Unfortunately, now he's in the hands of the penny-pinching Martin, and they slowly start to lose clients. Bill has one more chance, Bel-Ami Cosmetics, but after drawing up the proposals, he trashes them since he knows Martin won't pay for a splashy presentation. Claire resurrects the drawings and sells the campaign to Bon Ami. Her husband promptly dumps her.

Claire carries on with the firm...

Bill travels the world drinking recklessly...

Bill gets into his own advertising firm, taking all of Claire’s and Martin’s best clients...

Thursday, April 9 - Million Dollar Baby

Million Dollar Baby (1941)

When wealthy American expatriate Cornelia Wheelwright (Robson) is informed by her longtime lawyers that her late father swindled his partner, Fortune McCallister, out of $700,000, she acts decisively. First, because James Amory is the only lawyer in the firm to be outraged by the injustice, she hires him and fires the rest of the firm. His first task is to locate all of McCallister's heirs. It turns out there is only one: granddaughter Pam McCallister (Lane).

Pam works in Lacey's Department Store and lives in a boardinghouse in New York City. To find out what kind of person she is, Cornelia becomes a fellow tenant. Cornelia also meets Pam's boyfriend, composer and piano player Pete Rowan (Reagan).

Cornelia then has Jim give Pam a million dollars. Pam is excited at first, buying gifts for her boardinghouse friends, and her boyfriend, who lives across the hall from her. Much to her surprise, her friends and boyfriend seem to change overnight. They are not as overjoyed at her good fortune as she imagines they would be, and rather resent her. As the last straw, her boyfriend tells her she's an Elsie Dinsmore and breaks it off with her. Pam finally decides on a course of action that makes her happy, as well as those around her.

Wednesday, April 8 - The Lady Pays Off

The Lady Pays Off (1951)

Evelyn Walsh Warren is named Teacher of the Year and her photo is on the cover of Time magazine, but she is dissatisfied with her uneventful life. That changes when she goes to Reno and inadvertently loses $7000 at the roulette table, mistaking $100 chips for $1 ones. Casino owner Matt Braddock offers her a deal: He will tear up her IOU if she finds out what is wrong with his nine-year-old daughter Diane, who is moping around, not eating and having nightmares. When Evelyn refuses, he suggests they cut cards for the debt. She gets a king, but he tops her with an ace (by cheating). Defeated, she accompanies him to his home in Carmel, California.

Frustrated at her predicament, Evelyn is initially cold to Diane, but after overhearing the child's telephone conversation with her father, Evelyn becomes ashamed of herself and quickly becomes fast friends with her young charge. Soon, Diane is happy, much to Matt's delight. In fact, she is so taken with her new private teacher that she begins maneuvering to set Evelyn up with her father.

Diane becomes frustrated when Kay Stoddard, Matt's old flame, shows up. Undaunted, the young girl manages to steer Kay into some poison oak to get her out of the way. Evelyn is hostile to Matt at first, but gradually warms to him. When they go out fishing on a boat, she secretly disables the motor to spend more time with him. Matt, however, flags down a commercial fishing boat owned by Manuel to take them aboard. Evelyn gets drunk on a seasickness remedy and admits to Matt that she has fallen for him; they become engaged.

Matt sells his casino so his future wife will not be ashamed of him, but he gets a shock when Evelyn tells him that it was all an act. She goes home.

There, she receives a telephone call from Marie, Matt's housekeeper. Diane has run away. Frantic, Evelyn flies to Carmel, where she and Matt blame each other. However, it turns out that Diane (with Marie's encouragement) was just hiding. The little girl gets the two to realize they really do love each other.

Tuesday, April 7 - Guest in the House

Guest in the House (1944)

A young manipulative woman moves in with her fiancé's family and turns a happy household against itself.

Monday, April 6 - Gold Diggers of 1937

Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936)

Meek, aging, hypochondriac stage producer J.J. Hobart (Victor Moore), who always thinks he is about to die, is going to mount a new show, but his partners Morty Wethered (Osgood Perkins) and Tom Hugo (Charles D. Brown) lost the money for the show in the stock market. On the advice of chorus girl Genevieve Larkin (Glenda Farrell), they insure J.J. for a million dollars, so that when he dies, they will have the money they need to produce the show. Genevieve's friend, ex-chorus girl Norma Perry (Joan Blondell) is sweet on insurance salesman Rosmer "Rossi" Peek (Dick Powell), and he writes the policy.

When Rosmer's boss, Andy Callahan (William B. Davidson) finds out how old J.J. is, he is afraid he wil not pass the physical, but when Hobart does, Rosmer decides he has to keep J.J. alive as long as possible, to reap the rewards of his sale. On the other hand, Morty and Hugo have everything to gain if J.J. dies, and they try to help things along. When that fails, they talk Genevieve into seducing J.J., but she ends up falling in love with him instead. Rosmer finds out the reason for the insurance policy, and talks his boss, Callahan, into investing in J.J.'s show, to save the company the money it would have to pay if J.J. dropped dead after learning he was broke and could not put on the show. When the show is a success Genevieve and J.J. get married, and so do Norma and Rosmer.

Sunday, April 5 - The Mating of Millie

The Mating of Millie (1948)

No-nonsense businesswoman Millie McGonigle desperately wants to adopt her orphaned neighbor Tommy. When the question of a husband comes up, Millie invents a fiancé who is working in Alaska. Ralph Galloway, who runs the foundling home, gives her 60 days to present her fiancé for his adoption interview. Millie sets her eyes on Doug Andrews, but he quickly informs her he is a confirmed bachelor. However, Doug is willing to help Millie find a husband. Doug's lessons in the art of allurement soon catch the eye of playboy neighbor Phil Gowan.

Saturday, April 4 - Professional Sweetheart

Professional Sweetheart (1933)

Ginger Rogers plays Glory Eden, radio's Purity Girl, representing Ippsie Wipsie Washcloths. As the Purity Girl, Glory can't be anything but pure. Glory finds this annoying. All she's interested in is drinking, smoking, going to Harlem, wearing sexy clothes, and, if one reads between the lines, losing her virginity.

Her handlers decide to fix her up with a pure Anglo-Saxon, found in the Kentucky Mountains. They choose a nice-looking fan (Norman Foster) and set the two up, even having a wedding on the air. Knowing of her discontent, Kelsey Dish Rags is after her, too, and know she hasn't re-signed with Ippsie yet. The two engage in battle, and find there's a third party involved - Glory's new hubby, who takes Glory at her word about wanting to live in a Kentucky cabin and have a cow.

Friday, April 3 - The Runaround

The Runaround (1946)

Maverick private eyes Kildane and Quayle leave a large agency to work on their own. Their first assignment (pirated from the old firm): retrieve eloping heiress Penelope Hampton...in competition with their former boss Prentiss. Kildane finds Penelope with surprising ease and keeps her one jump ahead of Prentiss with assorted difficulties, but can he avoid a romantic complication with his lovely charge?

The Continental Detective Agency’s star investigator, Eddie Kildane (Rod Cameron), has had enough of his dictatorial chief, Prentiss (Broderick Crawford), so he and partner, Wally Quayle (Frank McHugh) quit (Wally was fired) and establish their own business. Clients are hard to come by when you’re starting out, though, so they steal one from their old boss. The assignment: find and return, unmarried, the client’s run-away daughter.

Crawford is constantly on Cameron’s trail, one step behind here, one step ahead there. This is while Cameron has his hands full with Raines’s attempts to elude him.

Thursday, April 2 - Remains to Be Seen

Remains to Be Seen (1953)

A singer and her apartment manager get mixed up in a creepy Park Avenue murder and find themselves facing danger at every turn.

Wednesday, April 1 - Shadow on the Wall

Shadow on the Wall (1950)

Child Susan Starrling (Gigi Perreau) is the sole witness to a killing, but the shock causes her to suffer amnesia about the event. Her father David (Zachary Scott) is convicted of first degree murder of his wife. However, psychiatrist Caroline Canford (Nancy Davis) is convinced she can cure the young girl and begins to suspect that another person is guilty.

That person is Dell Faring (Ann Sothern), who became incensed after brother-in-law David discovered that while he was away on a business trip, wife Celia (Kristine Miller) was having an affair with Dell's fiance, Crane Weymouth. A resentment already existed between the sisters because Dell felt this was not the first time Celia had selfishly taken something from her. Celia knocked David unconscious during a quarrel over her infidelity. Dell then arrived, picked up a gun David brought home from his trip and killed her sister with it. With no memory of what happened, David can only assume he was the one who shot Celia, so he accepts the jury's verdict and the judge's sentence that he be put to death.

Susan, who saw the murder from the door but repressed the memory, is haunted by the image of a shadow on the wall. A distraught Dell, realizing that Dr. Canford is trying to restore the girl's memory, attempts to murder the child. When she fails, she adopts Susan instead. Dell casts a shadow on the wall that triggers Susan's memory.

Tuesday, March 31 - Jive Junction

Jive Junction (1943)

A young, classical-trained musician, Peter Crane, transfers from the Conservatory to Clinton High School, where he finds his music in conflict to that of the high school's world of jive and Hep Cats. Claire falls for Peter, who is warned to stay away from her by Grant Saunders. Later, for fear of hurting his hands, Peter backs down from a fight with Saunders and is deemed a coward by Claire and his classmates. He also goes home that day to find that his father has been killed in action overseas. He turns to jive and is soon leading the school band, which is entered in a national contest. On the night of the finals competition, the band, through an accident, find they have no instruments. Peter rushes to his old professor at the Conservatory, who lends him the instruments from a Symphony Orchestra he conducts.