Mantan Moreland
Date of Birth: 03 Sep 1902
Country: USA
Biography: Although his brand of humor has been reviled for decades, black character actor Mantan Moreland parlayed his cocky but jittery character into a recognizable presence in the late 1930s and early 1940s, appearing in a long string of comedy thrillers . . . and was considered quite funny at the time! Mantan began running away from home at age 12 to join circuses and medicine shows, only to be brought back time and again. During these times he sharpened his comic skills and developed routines and ac
Total Credits at Criticker: 83 (Actor)
Biography last updated by Dunstan-xxx, and picture by Gauntlet
Find more information about Mantan Moreland at The Internet Movie Database
Titles you haven't rated - Actor (83)
An extremely bigotted white man find out the hard (and somewhat humorous) way what it's like being a black man, firsthand! (imdb)
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During World War 2, a small plane off the south coast of America is low on fuel and blown off course by a storm. Guided by a faint radio signal, they crashland on an island. The passenger, his manservant and the pilot take refuge in a mansion owned by a doctor... (imdb)
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Charlie Chan investigates the theft of government radar papers (the laboratory is located in the same building as a radio station!) with the help of Number Three Son Tommy and comic sidekick Birmingham Brown. (imdb)
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In a dilapidated rural mansion, the last generation of the degenerate, inbred Merrye family lives with the inherited curse of a disease that causes them to mentally regress from the age of 10 or so on as they physically develop. The family chauffeur looks out for them and covers up their indiscretions. Trouble comes when greedy distant relatives and their lawyer arrive to dispossess the family of its home. (imdb)
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Charlie Chan is an agent of the U.S. government assigned to investigate the mysterious death of an inventor. (imdb)
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Charlie Chan investigates the locked-room murder of a chess expert. (imdb)
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Charlie searches for a murderer amidst numerous ghosts conjured up by a strange variety of spiritualists and occultists. (imdb)
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Charlie Chan looks into the apparent murder of a scientist in a spooky mansion. (imdb)
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Someone is attempting to steal radium stored in a bank. Cobra bites lead to a number of murders. Charlie investigates. (imdb)
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Three men are convicted of bank robbery, the main evidence against them being that their fingerprints were found at the scene. However, Charlie Chan believes them to be innocent, and his investigation reveals that they are indeed innocent and that their fingerprints were forged and planted in the prison files to frame them. Charlie sets out to uncover the real bank robbers. (imdb)
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Charlie investigates murders connected with insurance fraud. This one is set in San Francisco's Chinatown. (imdb)
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Two members of a show troupe are murdered, and Charlie Chan is called in to solve the case. (imdb)
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Two down-on-their luck friends suddenly hit the "jackpot" when they win the clothes, car and chauffeur of a rich man in a game of dice. They wind up in a sanitarium that's being used as an exclusive, though illegal, gambling club and get mixed up with beautiful women, jealous gangsters and ghosts. (imdb)
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Well-known philanthropist and deaf-mute John G. Harrison is identified leaving the scene of several murders but evades successful prosecution as there are hundreds of witnesses who have also seen him emceeing benefits at the exact same time as the murders. (imdb)
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Princess Mei Ling pays a visit to the Chan residence, where upon being admitted by man-of-all-work Birmingham Brown she refuses to give her name, but hands Birmingham her ring to show to Charlie. While Chan is being summoned, a mysterious figure shoots a dart at the beautiful Princess who manages, before she dies of poison, to scrawl the name "Captain K" on a handy piece of paper... (imdb)
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Charlie attempts to solve a triple murder in which a dead man's finger prints show up at all three murder sites. (imdb)
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A gold mine in Arizona, that was formerly losing a lot of money, suddenly turns into a veritable money-making machine. However, the owner, instead of being happy about his now profitable business, insists to Charlie that something is fishy and that someone is out to murder him. Charlie and his "crew" travel to the mine, pretending to be tourists staying at a nearby dude ranch so as not to arouse suspicion, and discover that the owner may well be right... (imdb)
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In order to learn the location of a fabled Aztec treasure, a professor kidnaps his colleague, the only man able to read the ancient Aztec script that is supposed to reveal the location of the treasure. Charlie Chan and his #1 and #2 sons journey to the jungles of Mexico to find the victim and bring the kidnapper and his gang to justice. (imdb)
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All the passengers on an airplane headed for San Francisco are drugged, and when they wake up, it is discovered that a quarter-million dollars is missing. Charlie Chan--and, of course, his #1 son--must discover the identity of the person who doped the passengers and stole the money. (imdb)
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Chan attempts to solve a case involving a stolen shipment of chemicals. When murder enters the picture, the most likely suspect is a chap who claims that the victim had stolen his secret chemical formulas. Naturally, this fellow can't be guilty, which Chan proves in due time. Offering their usual ham-handed assistance are Charlie's son Tommy (Victor Sen Yung) and chauffeur Birmingham Brown (Mantan Moreland). (imdb)
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An amateur detective and a janitor try to find a kidnapped heiress. (imdb)
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After five men previously acquitted of various criminal charges are murdered by a mysterious avenger known as Dr. Rx, police ask private investigator Jerry Church to help them on the case. (TCM.com)
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When Dr. Von Altermann's wife Lila dies mysteriously at his spooky mansion, her friends and relations suspect murder. They little suspect he's turning her into a zombie, to join the army of living dead he hopes to devote to the Nazi cause. All that stands in his way: Lila, though dead, has developed a will of her own. Meanwhile, Lila's brother Scott and his friends are increasingly alarmed by the eerie events. (imdb)
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Mike Shayne tries to distinguish criminals from red herrings as he escorts a surprise witness via rail to a high profile trial in San Francisco. (imdb)
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The story of the rise of boxer Joe Thomas, which paralleled the life of Joe Louis. (imdb)
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Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost looks more like a Columbia two-reel comedy than an RKO feature film. Star Lupe Velez, her conservative ad-man husband (Charles "Buddy" Rogers) and good old Uncle Matt (Leon Errol) find themselves in a supposedly haunted house. Actually the "ghosts" are enemy spies, who try to scare off the visitors so they can develop their nitroglycerin bombs in peace. (allmovie.com)
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When the studios reject her because she''s too young, a young actress sets out to build a career on her own. (tcm.com)
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A woman tormented by the hunting death of her husband forbids her son to have anything to do with horses. But when he falls for the daughter of his father's trainer, he defies his mother by entering the Maryland Hunt. (imdb)
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Heiress Nancy Crocker Fleming will only receive her inheritance if she marries a "plain American." Her late father was afraid a foreign gigolo would steal her heart and money. So Nancy pays Tony Anthony, working on a WPA road project, to marry, then divorce her. (imdb)
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The son of a strict Navy officer falls for the daughter of a musical-comedy star. (imdb)
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A cowboy is wrongfully accused of murder. He winds up in Harlem, where he assumes the identity of a preacher-turned-gangster who looks like him. He infiltrates the gang to catch the men who framed him.
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Dandridge plays a young heiress pursued by two young men, both of whom want to marry her. In addition to this love triangle and Haitian zombies, is the mystery of four deaths which Mantan Moreland, as a detective, tries to solve.
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Tall, Tan, and Terrific (1946) - Short Film
Professional gambler The Duke (Dots Johnson) attempts to cheat Handsome Harry Hansom (Monte Hawley), who owns a successful Harlem nightclub, out of his club and his contract with his lead singer and girlfriend Tall, Tan, and Terrific (Francine Everett). This leads to a murder that is solved by club comic Mantan Moreland and club photographer Butterbeans (Barbara Bradford). But the plot takes little screen time, most of which is devoted to stage acts at the nightclub.
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An undercover police woman poses as a nighclub entertainer to catch the main man behind the racketeers going on around Harlem. Meanwhile two men are falling for her.
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Story of a young football player pursued by fix-minded racketeers, but he and his college pals thwart their plans with some quick thinking.
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Two friends take jobs as truck drivers, unaware that the trucking company is being targeted by a gang of saboteurs who will stop at nothing, including murder, to stop them.
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Nona Brooks, former member of a stranded theatrical troupe, earns a temporary living singing in a café in Duakwa, British Rhodesia, Africa. The café owner is secretly in league with two foreign agents with a goal of making the natives restless. American explorer Larry Mason leaves for the jungle with his servant, Jeff and a safari. Nona escapes the café into the jungle but is followed by the agents as, unknowing to her, she is carrying a report of the agent's activities.
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Jim Smiley has a frog that can jump further than anyone else's frog, and Jim becomes obsessed with entering the frog in all of the local jumping-frog contests, not realizing that his obsession is about to cost him his marriage. (imdb)
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Two Bowery vaudevillians compete to be the first to produce shows on Broadway. They might be friends were they not so convinced that each has stolen ideas from the others. This bouncy musical chronicles their rivalry and the success they find after they finally team up. Unfortunately the success is short-lived when one of them suddenly departs to work for a beautiful woman. This time the feud erupts with a vengeance. Fortunately, their paths again cross and a happy ending follows. (allmovie.com)
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This tale of two tugboats focuses upon the rivalries between two operators competing to win a major shipping contract. Meanwhile a tugboat office secretary and an ex-con who wants to go straight, fall in love. Tugboat Annie is put in charge of a child violinist. When a waterfront fire breaks out, the two warring captains join forces to put it out. (allmovie.com)
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A delivery boy for a flower shop, who thinks of himself as an amateur detective, finds out that his boss is mixed up with a foreign espionage ring. (imdb)
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A young man in a small town wins $5000 in a radio contest. He goes to New York City to propose to his girlfriend, but gets mixed up with a crooked attorney and two con men who are trying to sell a fake "robot." (imdb)
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On his way to a post as special adviser of the new parachute troops of the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, Paul Dumont meets the beautiful Helene on the ship. A romance ensues, but the two decide to part when Paul learns that Helene is the fiancée of his best friend and fellow officer Raoul. Raoul is wounded during an Arab attack and the wedding is postponed, and Helene and Paul are thrown together and find it impossible to hide their feelings. (imdb)
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Like the first entry in Columbia's "Ellery Queen" series, Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery depicts its amateur-criminologist hero as an oafish ignoramus. This time around, Chinese ventriloquist Gordon Cobb (Noel Madison), is murdered by a gang of jewel thieves. Baffled by the contradictory clues, Inspector Queen (Charles Grapewin) asks his son Ellery (Ralph Bellamy) to help out. (allmovie.com)
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Four struggling musicians lose their vocalist at the insistence of her gangster boyfriend. They find a replacement in an innocent young woman being courted by a cabbie pretending to be a king. (imdb)
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Freckles (Johnny Downs) comes home from college...and the sheriff accuses him of murder, gangsters put him on the spot, and his girl friend, Jane (Gale Storm), falls in love with a confidence man. (imdb)
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A South American in New York rents the apartment of a socialite who pretends to be his maid. (imdb)
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Hubert Wilkins, a bookkeeper for Mr. Bates by day and an air raid warden by night, patrols the district where his boss' warehouse is located, and finds two employees removing raw silk stocks. They say they are working under Bates' orders and brush him off. Hubert wants to marry Emily Conway, company secretary, but can't see how he can afford it since he has loaned a salesman, Fuller, $400 with deeds to four lots as security. (imdb)
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Buzzy O'Brien is a bellhop in a hotel where a guest is murdered. The police blame Kitty Monahan and Buzzy succeeds in helping her escape and hides her at his home with his mother. Buzzy and his pal Jefferson manage to fumble their way to finding the real killer who was after the stolen bonds carried by the victim. Based on Charles Molyneaux Brown's story "Death Hops the Bells." (imdb)
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It Comes Up Love was typical of teenaged songstress Gloria Jean's Universal vehicles: good songs and a strong cast squandered on a low-budget B effort. Jean and Mary Lou Harrington play Victoria and Constance, the precocious daughters of big-city businessman Tom Peabody (Ian Hunter). Long separated from his girls, who've been raised in the country, the widowed Peabody brings them to live with him in New York. (allmovie.com)
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Rawley University is about to receive a star athlete who could give it the first championship rowing team it's ever had. Unfortunately, he gets drafted into the army before he's able to join the team. Two of the team's members get the bright idea of passing off a burly truck driver as the "athlete". Complications ensue. (imdb)
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A busboy at a nightclub sets out to make sure that the pretty blonde hatcheck girl gets the singing career she's always wanted. (imdb)
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Joe Zany has been bashful around girls since he was a baby, and has violent spells of hiccuping when he is kissed by one. His father, utilities magnate J.B. Zany, calls in the services of escort bureau manager Bob Norman and offers him a fat fee if he can cure Joe. Learning that Joe isn't scared of old ladies, Bob takes him to a lake resort where there are many girls and tells him they are old ladies who have had face lifts. Neither Bob nor Joe know that J.B. (imdb)
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A beautiful woman goes to Las Vegas in a scheme to make her husbnd jealous, but once she gets there she becomes involved with another man. (imdb)
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Two cut-rate private detectives are broke, hungry and down to their last nickel. They decide to hock their banjo in order to get some money for food, and while one partner is negotiating the deal, the other one falls asleep and dreams that a wealthy society matron has hired them to investigate a string of suitors.
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While reading the newspaper in his jail cell during his stint as a "guest of the county", Wallingford reads a story that his cellmate, Schenectady, has inherited a hotel from an uncle who has recently died. Upon hearing the news, Schenectady falls asleep and dreams of what kind of life he'll lead now that he owns a hotel. It turns out he has a surprise in store.
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Mantan Moreland and Shelton Brooks play two parolees out looking for a job. they apply and get a job on a wealthy estate as a butler and a maid. Mantel plays a big-chested maid and Shelton the butler. The plot involves a shady swamie trying to steal the lady of her jewelry and succeeding. Enter Mantan and Shelton to trick the swamie into getting the jewelry back and him arrested.
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A young couple buy a bankrupt vaudeville booking agency, and try to make it a success. (imdb)
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A none-too-popular (nor good) radio singer, Rita Wilson is murdered while singing on the air in a radio studio. Radio page boy, Frankie Ryan, and his janitor pal, Jeff, solve the mystery for the none-too-sharp police. (imdb)
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The Rancho Grande, a Texas border ranch, cut off from the law by a gang of outlaws led by ranch foreman Bart Lane, who is holding the elderly owner of the ranch, Sarah Burton, a prisoner. Tex Lowery (Tex Ritter), an undercover Texas Ranger, rescues Martha Williams, a nurse sent for by the ailing Sarah, from a stagecoach holdup by Lane's henchmen. He later convinces Laner that he is a wanted outlaw named Ed Carter, and gains entry to Rancho Grande. But the real Ed Carter shows up. (imdb)
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Mantan takes a job as office boy at a new TV station and gets to watch several pre-recorded musical numbers.
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Frankie Kelly is the soda jerk and embryo scientist in Midvales only drugstore. Two murders and an attempted killing suddenly swing Midvale into national prominence. Frankie and his pal, Jefferson, become involved when a wounded gangster starts to tell them where $300,000 in stolen loot is hidden, but he is murdered before he can give them all of the information. The search is on. (imdb)
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An elevator operator and a janitor team up to solve two murders that may be connected to an illegal gambling operation. (imdb)
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Because of a fight at a dog show between "Smoky" and "Shadow", Alsatian Shepherd dos, owned and trained by Judy Weston, "Smoky" loses first prize. Judy sells "Shadow", but Ben, the trainer, smuggles him into the plane taking them back to Canada. They crash in a snow storm and "Smoky", freed from his crate, escapes. Shadow, with a broken leg, manages to free himself and bring help to Judy and Ben, who are unconscious. Fox-camp owner Rod Freeman and his son Billy rescue them. (imdb)
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WWII morale film for Texas A&M graduates fighting overseas. Young Brad Craig (Langton) enters the military school with a chip on his shoulder which Mitchum and other upperclassmen quickly knock off. Once adjusted, Craig falls in love with a professor's beautiful daughter, only to find she is in love with his roommate, played by Noah Beery. In the meantime, Craig associates with Japanese spies bent on stealing a secret chemical compound being worked on a the University.
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A crusading D.A. orders the police to shut down a South Seas themed girly show and arrest its participants. The lead dancer eludes jail time when her attorney persuades the judge that she has a elderly mother to take care of. The attorney then scours the local senior homes for a suitably sweet maternal type to fit the bill. At the same time, the dancer seeks her revenge by seducing the D.A.'s ambitious but naive son. But her newly acquired mama eventually exerts some influence on the girl.
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Some swampland becomes valuable, and various factions squabble over ownership of it.
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After fighting in the Civil War, Wild Bill Hickok and Whiney head west to investigate missing cattle herds. There they meet their war buddy Norris who is now in the cattle business. When he is unable to explain the missing herds, Bill goes into action. (imdb)
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Matt Lindsay (Leon Errol) is the captain/owner of a showboat that is on the rocks literally and figuratively. His efforts to raise money to save his boat and troupers get him involved with a Kentucky Colonel (not named Sanders), a tough-as-a-boot hotel manager and a feuding family.
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An ex-cop who is now a private detective is hired by a woman to be the go-between in retrieving an important envelope from her partner. The detective has the partner come to his apartment to give him the envelope, but someone sneaks into his apartment and strangles her while the detective is in another room. Fearful that the police will suspect him of the murder, he brings the woman's body back to her own apartment, but the police find out and suspect him of the murder anyway. (imdb)
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Russell plays a psychiatrist who sees no need for a man in her life. Her resolve weakens a bit when she meets Lee Bowman, a dashing combat sketch artist suffering from wartime emotional problems. Bowman falls in love with the shrink and determines to establish a beachhead, while Russell is equally determined to hold her ground. (allmovie.com)
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To save their music publishing firm from bankruptcy, Bll "Brains' Watson creates a colorful life-story about his partner, Danny Lee, representing him as a descendant of Louisiana's famous Josh Lee family and rightful poet laureate if Dixieland. Bill sells the movie rights to Apex Pictures for $100,000, and hires Dixie Hollister, a southern girl who has been singing in a new York nightclub, to help Danny acquire a Southern accent and manners. In New Orleans, Danny receives an honorary music degre
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18-year-old Angela, reared in a New England town by her Aunt Betsy, receives an inheritance which she uses to go to New York, ostensibly for voice training, but she is pursuing Major Hilary Jarret, an Army surgeon with whom she has become infatuated. Her departure depresses her childhood friend Jimmy Plum. Dr. Plum devises an errand on which to send his love-sick son to New York, where Jimmy discovers Angela thinks she is Jarret's fiancée.
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Journalist Marion Hargrove enters the Army intending to supplement his income by writing about his training experiences. He muddles through basic training at Fort Bragg with the self-serving help of a couple of buddies intent on cutting themselves in on that extra income. (imdb)
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A young woman marries a soldier to fulfill the conditions of a will. However, when she gets ready to divorce him, she realizes that she actually loves him, and determines to find a way to stay married to him.
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After collecting his usual meager paycheck, Mantan, a part time janitor at the local courthouse, commiserates with his ne'er-do-well friend Alex, who is similarly poorly paid. Since Mayor Henry Corbit has been arrested for drunken driving and sentenced by the famous "poetical" judge, Alex comes upon the idea of having Mantan run for mayor, with Alex serving as his campaign manager.
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Yippee! Mantan rides again a riot of songs and laughs in this roaring musical western!
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In order to make some cash, buddies Mantan and Alex found the "Ghost Association," which will hold mock seances for the local residents. After studying the details of the locals' various deceased relatives, Alex insist that the reluctant Manta, who is afraid of ghost, play "Prince Alabastar Amsterdam" and fool people into thinking that he is in communication with their dead loved ones.
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A blind detective and his seeing-eye dog investigate a murder and discover a Nazi plot. (imdb)
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In this touching adventure, a remake of the popular 1940 film, two Georgia boys ignore their racial differences to team up and befriend a feral bird dog, whom they train to participate in a fence-jumping contest. (imdb)
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