Grand Hotel is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay by William A. Drake is based on the 1930 play by Drake, who had adapted it from the 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum. To date, it is the only film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture without being nominated in any other category.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a 1931 American pre-Code horror film, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Fredric March, who plays a possessed doctor who tests his new formula that can unleash people's inner demons. The film is an adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson tale of a man who takes a potion which turns him from a mild-mannered man of science into a homicidal maniac. The film was a critical and commercial success upon its release. Nominated for three Academy Awards, March won the award for Best Actor, sharing the award with Wallace Beery for The Champ.
Gordon Onslow Ford was one of the last surviving members of the 1930s Paris surrealist group surrounding André Breton.
42nd Street is a 1933 American pre-Code musical film directed by Lloyd Bacon, with songs by Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (lyrics). The film's numbers were staged and choreographed by Busby Berkeley. It stars an ensemble cast of Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, George Brent, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers.
Juarez is a 1939 American historical drama film directed by William Dieterle. The screenplay by Aeneas MacKenzie, John Huston, and Wolfgang Reinhardt is based on the 1934 biography The Phantom Crown by Bertita Harding and the 1925 play Juarez and Maximilian by Franz Werfel.
William Dieterle was a German-born actor and film director who emigrated to the United States in 1930 to leave a worsening political situation. He worked in Hollywood primarily as a director for much of his career, becoming a United States citizen in 1937. He moved back to Germany in the late 1950s.
Dorothy Leib Harrison Wood Eustis was an American dog breeder and philanthropist, who founded The Seeing Eye, the first dog guide school for the blind in the United States. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2011.
Jacqueline Cecilia Sturm was a New Zealand poet, short story writer and librarian. She was one of the first Māori women to complete an undergraduate university degree, at Victoria University College, followed by a Masters of Arts degree in philosophy. She was also the first Māori writer to have her work published in an English anthology. Her short stories were published in several collections and student magazines in the 1950s and early 1960s, and in 1983 a women's publishing collective printed a collection of her short stories as The House of the Talking Cat. She continued to write short stories and poetry well into the early 2000s, and is regarded today as a pioneer of New Zealand literature.
Rio Rita is a 1929 American pre-Code RKO musical comedy starring Bebe Daniels and John Boles along with the comedy team of Wheeler & Woolsey. The film is based on the 1927 stage musical produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, which originally united Wheeler and Woolsey as a team and made them famous. The film was the biggest and most expensive RKO production of 1929 as well as the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933). Its finale was photographed in two-color Technicolor. Rio Rita was chosen as one of the 10 best films of 1929 by Film Daily.
John Boles was an American singer and actor best known for playing Victor Moritz in the 1931 film Frankenstein.
Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet is a 1940 American biographical film starring Edward G. Robinson and directed by William Dieterle, based on the true story of the German doctor and scientist Dr. Paul Ehrlich. The film was released by Warner Bros., with some controversy over raising the subject of syphilis in a major studio release. It was nominated for an Oscar for its original screenplay, but lost to The Great McGinty.
The Last Flight is a 1931 American pre-Code ensemble cast film, starring Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, John Mack Brown and Helen Chandler. It was directed by German filmmaker William Dieterle in his debut as an English-language film director.
Noah's Ark is a 1928 American part-talkie epic disaster film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Dolores Costello and George O'Brien. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score and sound effects along with English intertitles. The soundtrack was recorded using the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system. The story is by Darryl F. Zanuck. The film was released by the Warner Bros. studio. Most scenes are silent with a synchronized music score and sound effects, in particular the biblical ones, while some scenes have dialogue.
Sons and Lovers is a 1960 British period drama film directed by Jack Cardiff and adapted by Gavin Lambert and T. E. B. Clarke from the semi-autobiographical 1913 novel of the same name by D. H. Lawrence. It stars Trevor Howard, Dean Stockwell, Wendy Hiller, Mary Ure, and Heather Sears.
20,000 Years in Sing Sing is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film set in Sing Sing Penitentiary, the maximum security prison in Ossining, New York, starring Spencer Tracy as an inmate and Bette Davis as his girlfriend. It was directed by Michael Curtiz and based on the nonfiction book Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing written by Lewis E. Lawes, the warden of Sing Sing from 1920 to 1941.
The Cabin in the Cotton is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Michael Curtiz. The screenplay by Paul Green is based on the novel of the same title by Harry Harrison Kroll.
Fog Over Frisco is a 1934 American Pre-Code drama film directed by William Dieterle. The screenplay by Robert N. Lee and Eugene Solow was based on the 1932 mystery novel The Five Fragments by George Dyer.
Emmanuel Gould was an American animated cartoonist from the 1920s to the 1970s, best known for his contributions as a director, writer and animator for Screen Gems, and solely an animator for Warner Bros. Cartoons and DePatie–Freleng Enterprises.
The Road to Glory is a 1936 American war drama film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Fredric March, Warner Baxter, Lionel Barrymore and June Lang, and produced by 20th Century Fox. It is a depiction of World War I trench warfare in France. It is vaguely inspired by Roland Dorgelès’ 1919 novel and Raymond Bernard’s 1932 film Les Croix de Bois, though the film credits do not mention them.
I Loved You Wednesday is a 1933 American pre-Code comedy drama film directed by Henry King and William Cameron Menzies and written by Philip Klein and Horace Jackson, adapted from the 1932 play of the same title by Molly Ricardel and William DuBois. The film stars Warner Baxter, Elissa Landi, Victor Jory, Miriam Jordan, Laura Hope Crews, and June Lang. The film was released on June 16, 1933, by Fox Film Corporation.
