Swing Your Lady | |
---|---|
Directed by | Ray Enright |
Screenplay by | Joseph Schrank Maurice Leo |
Based on | Swing Your Lady 1936 play by Kenyon Nicholson Charles Robinson |
Produced by | Samuel Bischoff |
Starring | Humphrey Bogart Frank McHugh Louise Fazenda Nat Pendleton Penny Singleton Allen Jenkins Ronald Reagan |
Cinematography | Arthur Edeson |
Edited by | Jack Killifer |
Music by | Adolph Deutsch |
Production company | |
Release date |
|
Running time | 77 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Swing Your Lady is a 1938 American country musical comedy film directed by Ray Enright, starring Humphrey Bogart, Frank McHugh, and Louise Fazenda. Ronald Reagan is also in the cast in one of his early roles. Brunette singer Penny Singleton who was also cast was about to turn blonde and embark on a long, hugely successful career playing the iconic comic strip character Blondie in a series of 28 films and a popular radio show.
Swing Your Lady features the first film performance by the Weaver Brothers and Elviry, a comedy troupe better known as The Arkansas Travelers [1] during their many years in vaudeville and on the Grand Ole Opry radio show. [2] Following this performance, the trio was picked up by Republic Pictures for Down in Arkansas, the first in what was to be a series of 11 comedy films for the studio. [3] [2]
Promoter Ed Hatch comes to the Ozarks with his slow-witted wrestler Joe Skopapoulos whom he pits against a hillbilly Amazon blacksmith, Sadie Horn. Joe falls in love with her and won't fight, at least not until Sadie's beau, Noah, shows up. Love triumphs, despite Ed's machinations, and after defeating Noah, Joe passes on a bout at Madison Square Garden to marry Sadie and take over the blacksmith's shop, while Noah rides away with Ed and his crew.
Actor/Actress | Role |
---|---|
Humphrey Bogart | Ed Hatch |
Frank McHugh | Popeye Bronson |
Louise Fazenda | Sadie Horn |
Nat Pendleton | Joe Skopapolous |
Penny Singleton | Cookie Shannon |
Allen Jenkins | Shiner Ward |
Leon Weaver | Waldo Davis |
Frank Weaver | Ollie Davis |
June Weaver | Mrs. Davis (as Elviry Weaver) |
Ronald Reagan | Jack Miller |
Daniel Boone Savage | Noah Webster |
Hugh O'Connell | Smith |
Tommy Bupp | Rufe Horn |
Sonny Bupp | Len Horn (as Sunny Bupp) |
Joan Howard | Mattie Horn |
Sue Moore | Mabel |
Olin Howland | Hotel Proprietor |
Sammy White | Specialty Dancer |
The film featured Daniel Boone Savage, a professional wrestler, making his film debut and Nat Pendleton, a former Olympic and professional wrestler. [4]
Bogart was apparently becoming very disenchanted with the film roles that Warner Bros. was offering him at this stage of his career; the following year he appeared in his only horror/sci-fi film, The Return of Doctor X , and these were two roles he never liked talking about when he became a major film star several years later; he considered his performance in Swing Your Lady the worst of his career. [5] [6]
Swing Your Lady is listed in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time .
Humphrey DeForest Bogart, colloquially nicknamed Bogie, was an American actor. His performances in classic Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute selected Bogart as the greatest male star of classic American cinema.
Sydney Hughes Greenstreet was a British and American actor. While he did not begin his career in films until the age of 61, he had a run of significant motion pictures in a Hollywood career lasting through the 1940s. He is best remembered for the three Warner Bros. films - The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), and Passage to Marseille (1944) - with both Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre. He portrayed Nero Wolfe on radio during 1950 and 1951. He became an American citizen in 1925.
Betty Joan Perske, professionally known as Lauren Bacall, was an American actress. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute and received an Academy Honorary Award in 2009 in recognition of her contribution to the Golden Age of motion pictures. She was known for her alluring, sultry presence and her distinctive, husky voice. Bacall was one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Arthur Veary Treacher was an English film and stage actor active from the 1920s to the 1960s, and known for playing English types, especially butler and manservant roles, such as the P.G. Wodehouse valet character Jeeves and the kind butlers opposite Shirley Temple in Curly Top (1935) and Heidi (1937). In the 1960s, he became well known on American television as an announcer/sidekick to talk show host Merv Griffin, and as the support character Constable Jones in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964). He lent his name to the Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips chain of restaurants.
Raymond Thomas Bailey was an American actor on the Broadway stage, films, and television. He is best known for his role as greedy banker Milburn Drysdale in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies.
Allen Curtis Jenkins was an American character actor, voice actor and singer who worked on stage, film, and television. He may be best known to baby-boomer audiences as the voice of Officer Charlie Dibble in the Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon series Top Cat (1961–62).
The Beverly Hillbillies is a 1993 American comedy film directed by Penelope Spheeris, written by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, and starring Jim Varney, Diedrich Bader, Dabney Coleman, Erika Eleniak, Cloris Leachman, Rob Schneider, Lea Thompson and Lily Tomlin.
Mike Mazurki was a Ukrainian-American actor and professional wrestler who appeared in more than 142 films. Although educated as an attorney, his hulking 6 ft 5 in (196 cm) presence, craggy face, and croaking voice had him often typecast as brainless athletes, tough guys, thugs, and gangsters. Memorable roles included Moose Malloy in Murder, My Sweet (1944), Splitface in Dick Tracy (1945), Yusuf in Sinbad the Sailor (1947), and "The Strangler" in Night and the City (1950). He was the founder and first president of the Cauliflower Alley Club.
John Cromwell was an American film and stage director and actor. His films spanned the early days of sound to film noir in the early 1950s, by which time his directing career was almost terminated by the Hollywood blacklist.
Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) was an American actor and producer whose 36-year career began with live stage productions in New York in 1920. He had been born into an affluent family in New York's Upper West Side, the first-born child and only son of illustrator Maud Humphrey and physician Belmont DeForest Bogart. The family eventually came to include his sisters Patricia and Catherine. His parents believed he would excel academically, possibly matriculate at Yale University and become a surgeon. They enrolled him in the private schools of Delancey, Trinity, and Phillips Academy, but Bogart was not inclined as a scholar and never completed his studies at Phillips, joining the United States Navy in 1918.
Big Business is a 1988 American comedy film starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, each playing two roles, as sets of identical twins mismatched at birth. The nature versus nurture farce adapts The Comedy of Errors, but with female siblings in contemporary society: one of each twin being reared in a wealthy urban setting, while the others grew up in a poor rural environment.
Robin "Bob" Burns was an American musical comedian, who appeared on radio and in movies from 1930 to 1947.
Lyle Florenz Talbot was an American stage, screen and television actor. His career in films spanned three decades, from 1931 to 1960, and he performed on a wide variety of television series from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. Among his notable roles on television was his portrayal of Ozzie Nelson's friend and neighbor Joe Randolph, a character he played for ten years on the ABC sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse is a 1938 American crime film directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Edward G. Robinson, Claire Trevor and Humphrey Bogart. It was distributed by Warner Bros. and written by John Wexley and John Huston, based on the 1936 play The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, the first play written by short-story writer Barré Lyndon, which ran for three months on Broadway with Cedric Hardwicke after playing in London.
Robert Strauss was an American actor. He became most familiar in Hollywood films of the 1950s such as Stalag 17 (1953), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Supporting Actor.
Invisible Stripes is a 1939 Warner Bros. crime film starring George Raft as a gangster unable to go straight after returning home from prison. The movie was directed by Lloyd Bacon and also features William Holden, Jane Bryan and Humphrey Bogart. The screenplay by Warren Duff was based on the novel of the same title by Warden Lewis E. Lawes, a fervent crusader for prison reform, as adapted by Jonathan Finn.
Up the River is a 1930 American pre-Code comedy film directed by John Ford, and starring Claire Luce, Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart. The plot concerns escaped convicts, as well as a female convict. It was the feature film debut role of both Tracy and Bogart. Despite Bogart being billed fourth, Tracy's and Bogart's roles were almost equally large, and this is the only film in which they appeared together. Up the River is also Bogart's only film directed by John Ford. Bogart's image is featured with Luce on some of the film's posters rather than Tracy's since Bogart was the romantic lead with Luce. Fox remade the film in 1938 starring Preston Foster and Tony Martin playing their roles.
Brother Orchid is a 1940 American crime/comedy film directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Edward G. Robinson, Ann Sothern and Humphrey Bogart, with featured performances by Donald Crisp, Ralph Bellamy and Allen Jenkins. The screenplay was written by Earl Baldwin, with uncredited contributions from Jerry Wald and Richard Macauley, based on a story by Richard Connell originally published in Collier's Magazine on May 21, 1938. Prior to the creation of the movie version of Connell's story, a stage adaptation was written by playwright/novelist Leo Brady. The script was originally produced at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C..
The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County is a 1970 American comedy Western film by Universal Studios, directed by Anton Leader and Ranald MacDougall, and starring Dan Blocker and Nanette Fabray, with a supporting cast featuring Jim Backus, Mickey Rooney, Wally Cox, Jack Elam, Noah Beery, Jr. and Don "Red" Barry. MacDougal wrote the screenplay. It was originally made as a television film but the decision was made to release it to movie theaters.
The Weaver Brothers and Elviry were musical comedy vaudeville and film performers, in the "hillbilly" style. The group consisted of brothers Leon "Abner" Weaver and Frank "Cicero" Weaver, with June "Elviry" Weaver. The group headlined a traveling vaudeville show with Abner as the master of ceremonies, presenting songs, comedy, dancing, acrobatic acts and barnyard imitations.