Storyline
In 1854, the patriarch Patrick O’Leary of the O’Leary family dies in an accident nearby Chicago while traveling amid-western prairie. His wife Molly O’Leary raises her three sons alone working as laundress. Her son Jack becomes an idealistic lawyer; Dion is a gambler; and Bob helps his mother in the laundry business and marries local Gretchen (June Storey) in the old area known as The Patch. Dion meets the singer Belle Fawcett in the cabaret owned by Gil Warren and they fall in love with each other and become lovers. They also open a business of their own to compete with Gil that becomes their enemy. However Gil invites Dion to join the politics with him but Dion plots a scheme with tragic consequences.

In.Old.Chicago.Roadshow.1937.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 50mn
Size:	3.02 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	704x470 ~> 704x528
Aspect ratio:	4:3
Frame rate:	23.976 fps
Bit rate:	3 623 kb/s
Audio
English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/135A0836BC10062/In.Old.Chicago.Roadshow.1937.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:Spanish

The post Henry King – In Old Chicago (1937) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Half-Indian girl brought up in a wealthy household is loved by the son of the house against his family’s wishes and loves another Indian employed by the household.

Ramona.avi

General
Container:  	AVI
Runtime: 	1h 24mn
Size: 	1.06 GiB
Video
Codec: 	XviD
Resolution: 	624x464 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 601 Kbps
BPP: 	0.231
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch MP3 @ 192 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/056C866C9BB5EEE/Ramona.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Henry King – Ramona (1936) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Plot:Jane Budden, a country girl goes to the big city, determined to find and marry a wealthy man. Instead, she meets and marries Herman Maxim, a struggling inventor. After their marriage, his inventions become successful. Their happiness is complete when they have two children, and Maxim’s portrait is given a place in the National Hall of Science. Written by Les Adams

1.21GB | 1h 27m | 640×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/D22E28E1D73723D/So_Goes_My_Love_(1946)_DVDRip_BBM.avi
or
https://nitro.download/view/5B0822AD8FB7B3A/So_Goes_My_Love_(1946)_DVDRip_BBM.part1.rar
https://nitro.download/view/3A191A887E0BA74/So_Goes_My_Love_(1946)_DVDRip_BBM.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Frank Ryan – So Goes My Love (1946) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Frank S. Nugent wrote:
‘Midnight,’ With Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert, Strikes a Seasonal High in Comedy at the Paramount

The ice went out of the river at the Paramount yesterday, and Spring came laughing in with “Midnight,” one of the liveliest, gayest, wittiest and naughtiest comedies of a long hard season. Its direction, by Mitchell Leisen, is strikingly reminiscent of that of the old Lubitsch. Its cast, led by Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore and Francis Lederer, is in the best of spirits. Its script, by too many authors to mention, is a model of deft phrasing and glib narrative joinery; and its production, while handsome, never has been permitted to bulk larger than its players. The call is for three cheers and a tiger: the Paramount is back on Broadway again.

The “Midnight” of the title is the fatal hour that strikes for every Cinderella, the moment when the coach will change back into a pumpkin, the ballroom dress will fall into rags and the prince charming discover the smudge of soot, or fried egg, on the changeling’s cheek. But the clock doesn’t strike when the film’s midnight comes; out, instead, pops a cuckoo with a clarion call to humor. Things go hilariously to smash, but not Cinderella. Even the fairy godmother—in this case, John Barrymore—blinks amazedly at his protégé’s carryings-on. When Miss Colbert plays Cinderella she doesn’t depend on a magic wand; a slapstick and a bludgeon are handier, and funnier.

It begins with the arrival in Paris on a rainy night of a young woman with one evening gown to her back, and not too much of it to it. In a matter of moments she has met a cab-driver named Czerny, crashed a society musicale and has been “set up”—to use the Park Avenue phrase—in the Ritz by a prankish, yet practical, millionaire with instructions to break up, by intervention, the affair between his wife and an irrepressibly romantic man about town. Miss Colbert’s “Baroness Czerny”—a title by courtesy of the cabby—is beautiful bait, and everything goes smoothly until midnight and even more smoothly, in a comic sense, thereafter.

Usually these things fall apart of their own complications; this one has the marvelous air of being bolstered by them. There is the business of the cab-drivers’ posse; there is the business of Cinderella being baffled by the godmother’s magic wand; there is the business of Cabby Czerny’s heroic attempts to expose the fraud and being considered a lunatic; there is the bit in which Mr. Barrymore impersonates a 3-year-old; there is the complication attending the discovery that the non-wed Czernys will have to be divorced.

We could mention other zany bits, but it wouldn’t help. It is really too daffy to be synopsized. You’ll have to take our word for it that it’s fun. Most of the credit, of course, belongs to Miss Colbert. She has superb command of the comic style, can turn a line or toss a vase with equal precision. Mr. Barrymore, the Gehrig of eye-brow batting, rolls his phrases with his usual richly humorous effect, and Mr. Ameche and Mr. Lederer were quite as helpful. All of them have made it a happy occasion. Pictures like “Midnight” should strike more often.

MIDNIGHT, screen play by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, from a story by Edwin Justus Mayer and Franz Schulz; directed by Mitchell Leisen; produced for Paramount by Arthur Hornblow Jr. At the Paramount.

Eve Peabody . . . . . Claudette Colbert
Tibor Czerny . . . . . Don Ameche
Georges Flammarion . . . . . John Barrymore
Jacques Picot . . . . . Francis Lederer
Helene Flammarion . . . . . Mary Astor
Simone . . . . . Elaine Barrie
Stephanie . . . . . Hedda Hopper
Marcel . . . . . Rex O’Malley
Judge . . . . . Monty Woolley
Lebon . . . . . Armand Kaliz
Edouart . . . . . Lionel Pape
Major Domos . . . . . Ferdinand Munier, Gennaro Curci

Midnight.1939.576p.BluRay.AAC1.0.x264-Slope.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 34 min
Size: 	3.12 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	776x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	4 567 kb/s
BPP: 	0.426
Audio
#1:  	English 1.0ch AAC LC @ 92.3 kb/s
#2:  	English 1.0ch AAC LC @ 66.2 kb/s (Commentary by film writer and author Michael Koresky (2025))

https://nitro.download/view/08307100396E5A2/Midnight.1939.576p.BluRay.AAC1.0.x264-Slope.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, English [SDH], French

The post Mitchell Leisen – Midnight (1939) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Disgusted by having to pass “pinhead” football heroes in order for his college to soar to football victory, Professor John Hathaway (Don Ameche) takes his leave of Digby College. With his wife Julie (Rosalind Russell) in tow, Hathaway sets out to conquer Manhattan’s literary circles, his scholarly manuscript on the subject of “jealousy” tucked under his arm in the romantic comedy The Feminine Touch (1941).

If Hathaway had his hands full with dimwitted football players at Digby, he is even more flummoxed by the oddballs, neurotics and sexual predators of the literary world. Nevertheless, the beautiful executive Nellie Woods (Kay Francis) takes a shine to Hathaway and wants to publish his book while publisher Elliott Morgan (Van Heflin) tries to make time with Julie.

The crux of this romantic comedy is Julie’s efforts to force her scholarly and aloof husband to show even a trace of jealousy at her pursuit by a love-drunk Morgan. Especially amusing is a surreal Salvador Dali-style dream sequence in which Julie imagines her otherwise disinterested husband punching out his romantic rivals including Morgan in a jealous rage.

Van Heflin came to M-G-M after impressing executives with his stage performance alongside Katharine Hepburn in Philip Barry’s 1939 play The Philadelphia Story in a role Barry reputedly wrote for Heflin. After a year at the Yale School of Drama, Heflin would go on to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar the same year of The Feminine Touch’s release, playing an alcoholic intellectual in Johnny Eager (1942). Van Heflin was pragmatic about his abilities as a Hollywood leading man during his MGM run from 1941-1949. “I just don’t have the looks and if I don’t do a good acting job I look terrible,” he is quoted as saying in The MGM Stock Company: The Golden Era by James Robert Parish and Ronald L. Bowers. Always drawn back to the stage, Heflin appeared in Arthur Miller’s controversial A View from the Bridge, a role which required him to kiss another man on the lips.

Rounding out the well-selected The Feminine Touch cast was Don Ameche, a solid 20th-Century-Fox player who never achieved real movie stardom though he experienced a surprising career rejuvenation in the 1985 Ron Howard extraterrestrial fantasy Cocoon which highlighted a sexual charisma absent from the actor’s earlier roles.

An elegant beauty, Rosalind Russell was the real star of The Feminine Touch displaying her uncanny knack for physical comedy. “Rosalind Russell makes it,” The New York Times opined of Russell in what MGM advertised as its “Ticklish!” comedy.

As Jeanine Basinger noted in A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960 of Russell’s unique comic abilities, “Once she begins to move…something happens. A slightly storkish quality emerges. She’s a big, loosey-goosey kind of woman, exaggerated and inherently comic…She can be both elegant and ridiculous, holding the two qualities together in a single performance.”

In anticipation of contemporary chick flicks, Russell was known for often playing bossy, snappish career women who find their true life’s mission in the film’s final reel. “What I really wanted was to become a dear little housewife,” joked Russell, well aware of the politics of her typecasting as an independent woman operating in a male world, most archetypally as a newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball classic His Girl Friday (1940). It was during that production that her co-star Cary Grant introduced Russell to her future husband, Frederick Brisson. An actress who extended her career into her forties, Russell may be most remembered for her humorous turn first in the Broadway production and later the 1958 screen version of Auntie Mame which garnered Russell her fourth Oscar® nomination.

Russell was a second-tier star groomed by Irving Thalberg in the Myrna Loy mold to keep that first-tier star in check with a possible replacement waiting in the wings. But Russell created a comic persona all her own and managed to branch out with loanouts to studios besides M-G-M. The middle of seven children, Russell attended the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York which eventually led to a profitable contract with M-G-M which offered her more money than the $400-a-week contract first offered by Universal. Her big break arrived in the George Cukor ensemble piece The Women (1939) which had a memorable comic role for Russell as the flamboyant chatterbox Sylvia Fowler, a part she wanted so desperately she made five screen tests to get it.

Writing about The Feminine Touch, The New York Times praised Russell “as flip and adept a comedienne as is currently reading lines in Hollywood…and Miss Russell knows how to deliver them mischievously.” Variety was equally filled with praise for Russell, “she handles the sophisticated material equally as well as the frequent excursions into slapstick.” The trade paper applauded the entire production as “another comedy winner. It’s a major laughgetter, at times smart and at times screwball, and box office from the initial marquee draught to the screen fadeout.”

Russell turned out to be well matched to her onscreen rival, Kay Francis, an actress also known for her ability to dish out attitude and bon mots with the best of them. In 1933, notes Basinger, Francis was making $4,000 a week and starred in five movies. Despite a slight lisp that often had her pronouncing “R”s as “W”s, Francis was considered a consummately elegant and stylish film actress who often appeared on many “Best Dressed” lists. She is perhaps best known as the victim of jewel thieves in the effervescent Ernst Lubitsch film Trouble in Paradise (1932).

W.S. Van Dyke, the director of The Feminine Touch, hailed from a distinguished American family. His actress mother, however, was forced to return to the stage after the premature death of her husband and the young Van Dyke often joined his mother as a child actor on the stage. After stints as a grocery store clerk, waiter, gold prospector, electrician and sailor, among many professions, Van Dyke apprenticed under D.W. Griffith of whom he said “I’m still trying to do the things I learned from him,” before beginning a prolific career as a screenwriter and director of films in a variety of genres.

Known for shooting with economy and speed he became known by the nickname “One-Take Woody.” Van Dyke was also known for salvaging the Robert Flaherty film White Shadows in the South Seas (1928) after the director suffered a creative block. Ultimately Van Dyke turned in a highly praised first sound film for M-G-M praised by directors from Luis Bunuel to D.W. Griffith. Often drawn to adventure plots set in authentic locations, Van Dyke later made the highly successful Johnny Weissmuller/Maureen O’Sullivan jungle adventure Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) but demonstrated his flexibility by also helming a sparkling and sophisticated screen adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel The Thin Man (1934). Reputedly, Van Dyke, a former Marine Corps. Reserve Major, was the inspiration for King Kong’s (1933) adventurous director Carl Denham.

Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Producer: Joseph L. Mankiewiez
Screenplay: George Oppenheimer, Edmund L. Hartmann, Ogden Nash
Cinematography: Ray June
Production Design: Cedric Gibbons
Music: Franz Waxman
Cast: Rosalind Russell (Julie Hathaway), Don Ameche (John Hathaway), Kay Francis (Nellie Woods), Van Heflin (Elliott Morgan), Donald Meek (Capt. Makepeace Liveright), Gordon Jones (Rubber-Legs Ryan).
BW-98m. Closed captioning.

by Felicia Feaster, TCM

http://nitroflare.com/view/FCB7A8B37693725/The.Feminine.Touch.1941.W.S.Van.Dyke.avi

Language:English

The post W.S. Van Dyke – The Feminine Touch (1941) first appeared on Cinema of the World.