Comedy

<p>In his second "talkie" the immortal Buster Keaton displays his comic genius in full regalia. The addition of his deep, rich voice only serves to make his numerous pratfalls and outrageous mishaps all the funnier. World War I is underway and young men are...

<p>Esther Williams dazzles the eye and Red Skelton tickles the funny bone in Texas Carnival, a rootin' tootin' musical "done in such a grand, breezy manner that even Texans are apt to give it a hearty backslap of approval" (Los Angeles Examiner). The two...

<p>With boundless enthusiasm and enough jive to meld '20s flapper giddiness with '40s swing, 1947's Good News -- the feature directing debut of Charles Walters (Easter Parade, The Unsinkable Molly Brown) and screenwriting debut of Betty Comden and Adolph Green (Singin' in the Rain,...

<p>All I Do Is Dream of You. Not a bad preoccupation for singing lovebirds Dobie and Pansy. But they may want to add more to their cranial cogitations. Like dour Prof. Pomfritt’s English class. And chemistry of the test tube and bunsen-burner kind. Dobie...

<p>"Your hair is like a field of silver daisies," a rhapsodic suitor tells Tinseltown megastar Lola Burns. "I'd like to run barefoot through your hair." In her signature comedy, Jean Harlow shimmers and smolders as Lola, whose life is a dizzy whirlpool of studio...

<p>Produced and directed by comedy veteran Bud Yorkin, Start the Revolution Without Me broke ground for a comedy revolution. It takes the tumultuous "let them eat cake" days of the French Revolution and gives everyone a figurative pie in the face. Two sets of...

<p>The screen's great Schnarzan (Jimmy Durante) wants to wow the visiting Baron Munchausen (Jack Pearl, reprising his familiar vaudeville and radio character) by throwing him a big, bustling Tinseltown bash. Hollywood Party -- 8 directors and 8 writers (2 credited) strong -- is the...

<p>Just point her in the direction of New York's millionaires! Fresh from Missouri, plucky and ambitious Eadie Chapman (Jean Harlow) intends to bag a rich hubby without abandoning her virtue. Just act like a lady, she tells gal pal and fellow huntress Kitty (Patsy...

<p>When a temperamental star walks out of a big Broadway show, it's time to Give a Girl a Break. But which of the hopefuls will land the lead? Suzy (Debbie Reynolds) brings pizzazz. Joanna (Helen Wood) offers swellegant sophistication. And lovely Madelyn (Marge Champion)...

<p>The richest woman in the world (Ruth Chatterton) has everything money can buy. But with her heart torn between her faithless husband and an ardent writer (George Brent), she can't have the one thing every woman wants: happiness. Herbert Hoover was still President and...

<p>Life is a Sunday in the park for Aurelia (Katharine Hepburn), a dotty Parisian countess who looks as if she stepped out of a Georges Seurat painting. But sooner or later, Aurelia had to find out about the so-called sane world and its student...

<p>"Clowning, kissing, kidding, cavorting" -- words not normally used to advertise the celluloid pairings of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, but clearly studio publicity was giddy at the thought of good girl Greer stepping out of her comfort zone and onto the naughty side...

<p>David Maldon (Van Johnson) nearly drowned during World War 2 -- in a flood of brandy! Developing a condition known as "Liquor Recoil ," David must avoid alcohol at all costs; the merest whiff makes him wobbly, and a quaff makes him crazy. Fortunately...

<p>What was in fashion in 1934? Comedy, con men, Orry-Kelly gowns, Busby Berkeley production numbers and in their only screen pairing, two of cinema's greatest stars: William Powell and Bette Davis. The story whisks audiences off to Paris with a fashion sharpie (Powell) and...

<p>"They're killing him bit by bit!" Flamboyant, flame-haired 70-plus Augusta Bertram has opened a package containing a finger that recently belonged to her years-ago lover. The victim's kidnappers continue mailing expendable body parts, and Augusta enlists the aid of her stuffy nephew in a...

<p>Take a bow-wow, Wildfire. You're the canine star of It's a Dog's Life and winner of a Patsy Award (Picture Animal Top Star of the Year). Wildfire, a white bull terrier, is also the narrator (voice by uncredited Vic Morrow) of this tale of...

<p>Expect things to be different at the Penrose dinner table. Ma insists everyone perform yogic deep breathing. Mr. Puddy, a boarder, has news of an edible beer bottle he's inventing. And little Lewie Penrose? He's been communicating with horses. "Butch" Jenkins, whose brief career...

<p>Who knows the secret of Mrs. Frankweiler's mixed-up art files? The Hideaways, that's who! Three-time Academy Award winner* Ingrid Bergman joins Richard Mulligan, Madeline Kahn and newcomers Sally Prager and Johnny Doran in a charmer based on the beloved book From the Mixed-Up Files...

<p>Alex is the hottest commodity in Hollywood, a first-time director who's completed an unreleased but buzzed-about movie. Opportunity doesn't knock, it hammers. Alex and his wife can buy a big home (which one?). He can lunch with a big producer (the producer pitches him)....

<p>One of Hanna-Barbera's most beloved characters stands up for law and order in this fast, funny and furryous feature-length animated adventure. It may be the height of the gold rush but all Huckleberry Hound plans to do is settle down at a quaint country...

<p>Dingus Magee wants to flag a ride. "Hold up!" he yells to a rolling stagecoach. "It's a holdup!" shouts the coach driver's panicked sidekick, who tosses a jewel-packed strongbox over the side. Magee, who began his criminal escapades with a $10 price on his...

<p>Despite father George's disapproval, Judy Jetson is totally into Sky Rocker, the biggest intergalactic rock star around. When the teen icon announces a surprise concert, Judy writes a super awesome song and sends it to him. And -- oops -- the song is accidentally...

<p>Busby Berkeley, the musical staging genius behind 42nd Street and the Gold Diggers series, bid farewell to his original Warner Bros. contract in swingin' style with tunes by Harry Warren, Al Dubin and Johnny Mercer. Now that's Golden Age name-dropping. The story is a...

<p>Four coeds from snowbound Penmore U. know that the only place to be during Spring Break is Where the Boys Are. The rites (and wrongs) of the spring migration of thousands of college students to sunny Fort Lauderdale are celebrated in an era-defining film...

<p>Follow the fun, follow the fleet, Follow the Boys with four seagulls -- Navy wives and sweethearts who careen around the French and Italian Riviera in a beat-up jalopy, trying to keep up with their seagoing menfolk. After America's teens made Where the Boys...

<p>Two tickets to Broadway will take you to TV! One of the first films centered on the new medium is also a spirited throwback to '30s musicals all about a determined young miss (in this case, Janet Leigh) with stars in her eyes and...

<p>Wyoming Steve Gibson has wavy hair, a pleasant tenor and a really neat cowboy outfit. He's sure to hit it big as Hollywood's next Singing Cowboy, as long as nobody figures out Wyoming Steve is really an East Coast city slicker who's scared silly...

<p>In 1960, a bright young cast made college musicals hip again with the surf-sand-and-sexcapade Where the Boys Are. Two graduates of that smash hit -- Connie Francis and Jim Hutton -- reunite for this kooky comedy about a girl who can't decide if she...

<p>No sex, please -- we're on our honeymoon! After a showgirl (Debbie Reynolds) and an Air Force sergeant (Glenn Ford) head to the altar on the basis of one torrid smooch, the bride begins having second thoughts. After all, marriage can't be based on...

<p>Aggie Hurley (Bette Davis) is making up for a lifetime of making do. Her daughter Jane (Debbie Reynolds) is going to have a lavish wedding -- even if Jane wants a simple ceremony. And even if Aggie's husband Tom (Ernest Borgnine) must give up...

<p>What would you do if a blackmailer showed up peddling nudie pictures of your sweet wife? Why, plug the scoundrel and bury him under the backyard gazebo, of course! Delightful screen farceurs Glenn Ford and Debbie Reynolds are up to their corpus delicti in...

<p>Love blooms for a New York reporter (Van Heflin) during a small-town tulip festival when the youngest of the seven Van Maaster daughters (Kathryn Grayson) captures his heart. But Papa Van Maaster (S.Z. Sakall) insists his girls get married chronologically. And since the snooty...

<p>Fred Astaire sails across the pond to meet damsel in distress Joan Fontaine and delightful (if unlikely) dance partners George Burns and Gracie Allen in a musical co-scripted by master wit P.G. Wodehouse and directed by George Stevens (Swing Time). The helium-light story concerns...

If a suitor wants to win the heart of one of the seven Mulvain sisters, he'd better be ready to deadlift 300 lbs. and dine on shredded-parsnip souffle. Combining the then-novel topic of physical fitness with Hollywood song and dance, Athena is an eat-your-veggies...

<p>How did alley cats Top Cat, Choo-Choo, Brain, Fancy-Fancy and Benny the Ball end up in the swanky mansion of Gertrude Vandergelt? What's Benny doing in a dog pound? And why are the conniving butler Snerdly and his mad wolfhound Rasputin out to get...

It's the wackiest animated adventure of all space-time when the world's favorite Modern Stone Age Family comes face to face with the First Family of the Future in a matchup that only Hanna-Barbera Studios can delightfully make possible! Thanks to Elroy's malfunctioning tie machine,...

<p>A story so nice they did it thrice! The Gershwin musical Girl Crazy finds yet another financially strapped out-West ranch in need of youthful showbiz enthusiasm in this star-studded, '60s-tinged movie redo. Connie Francis and Harve Presnell play the young love- and songbirds eager...

<p>Iowa farm boy Lewis Tater has a brainstorm: instead of continuing the correspondence courses that are learnin' him to write cowboy novels, he'll travel to the out-West school itself and soak up the campus atmosphere first hand. He arrives to find the school is...

<p>Pvt. Marion Hargrove -- reporting for comedy duty! Robert Walker found his career breakthrough and wartime audiences found something to laugh at with this Hollywood version of real-life journalist Marion Hargrove's waggish bestseller about his army boot-camp experiences. Helping the film earn its stripes...

<p>Tell us, Max, what are the facts? The Navy's test -- Operation Honeymoon -- of the on-board supercomputer Max and its ability to predict an ICBM's place of impact is a success. But Lt. Fergie Howard (Steve McQueen) wonders if Max can pinpoint something...

<p>Again and again, a Japanese raider strikes on an American-held Pacific island. He steals fruitcake from the military larder. Smoked oysters. Even gelfite fish. This means war! Lt. Merle Wye, who majored in French but was assigned to the intelligence group's Japanese interpretation unit,...

<p>They also serve who only sit and type! Hollywood brought audiences to atten-hut! in the 1950s and '60s with a string of military comedies like Mr. Roberts, Operation Petticoat, Ensign Pulver, No Time for Sergeants and this splash into the typing pool of dry-land...

<p>In the war between the blue and the gray, one soldier is yellow! When a cantankerous Union colonel is labeled a coward after his horse bolts for the rear, the brass puts him in command of a company of the brainless and brawnless and...

<p>With their splendid voices, matinee-idol looks, vivacity (she) and stoutheartedness (he), Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy were America's Singing Sweethearts, "a true team, mixing the chemistry that permits one to accept disguised princesses, dream melodies and beautiful doom" (Ethan Mordden, The Hollywood Musical). Naughty...

<p>Broadway's Gwen Marlowe and Ernest Lane are sweethearts, onstage as stars of Victor Herbert's operetta and offstage as happily marrieds. Then Hollywood beckons, and their fretful stage producer puts the kibosh on any Tinseltown plans by trumping up a romantic triangle that sets the...

<p>Four Daughters. Four Wives. Four Mothers. The popular film series comes to an end with this laughter-touched melodrama that welcomes fans to one last visit with the Lemp family. The four Lemp sisters, played by the Lane sisters (Priscilla, Rosemary and Lola) plus Gale...

<p>In 1938, Four Daughters packed movie palaces, making a star out of John Garfield and winning hearts with its appealing depiction of the Lemps, a family that shares an unshakeable bond between parent and child, sister and sister. In 1939 the Lemps were back...

<p>The stars and director of Four Daughters reunite for another tender Golden Era classic about love, loyalty and the sustaining strength of family. This time, the story revolves around a father who returns 20 years after abandoning his wife and daughters, just in time...

<p>Moxie Slaight is on the air, teaming with his lovely partner to send jokes and tunes into the living rooms of mainstream USA. But America is tuning out. Moxie needs a fresh gag writer to spark his radio show and an opportunistic agent sets...

<p>"Be sure the story is something you cannot resist," Richard Rodgers once advised Meredith Willson. After considering 100 projects for a successor to The Music Man, Willson found one that was irresistible. And unsinkable. Debbie Reynolds plays the title role, inviting all to Belly...