Comedy

<p>"I don't know what the younger generation is coming to." Like so many parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas want what's best for their children. Like so many children, twentyish Ralph (Robert Young) and Phyllis (Margaret Perry) insist on finding out what's best for themselves....

<p>Don Ameche, renowned for his portrayal of the telephone's inventor in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, here plays another prolific inventor: Hiram Stevens Maxim, whose many creations include a machine gun, a mousetrap, the curling iron and various manufacturing mechanisms. The film is...

<p>The career of the British Invasion pop group Herman's Hermits was in full, fan-shrieking, disc-selling orbit when their first top-billed movie came to theaters, so maybe it's only natural to think NASA would want to name a rocket after them. Well, at least that's...

<p>Mrs. Brown has a long snout, skinny legs and an owner! That's right, Mrs. Brown is a dog, a greyhound to be precise, and Herman (Peter Noone) and the other Manchester boys are eager to make money racing her. But first there's a matter...

<p>The prizefighter is the real deal -- real-life World Heavyweight Champion Max Baer in an acclaimed performance. The lady -- she's the real deal, too: Myrna Loy, just before she shot to renown in The Thin Man. The movie is a two-fisted bruiser of...

<p>Third finger, left hand. That's where unmarried fashion-magazine editor Margot Sherwood Merrick (Myrna Loy) parks a wedding ring, hoping to deter male colleagues who have more than business on their minds. Then a smitten artist (Melvyn Douglas) learns Margot's secret and begins a charade...

<p>The star has injured an ankle, but the show -- and inexperienced stage assistant Polly Browne -- must go on. Break a leg, kid. And don't let the presence of Hollywood director and talent scout Mr. De Thrill add any pressure. And so begins...

<p>Musical fans, we're calling you, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo! Howard Keel and Ann Blyth (who would later team for Kismet) play stalwart Mountie and backwoods hellion in this grand color and CinemaScope version of the beloved operetta. Filmed largely on location in the Canadian Rockies, Rose...

<p>Archaeologist Andrew Larabee tunnels below an English meadow, seeking a rare historical relic. His shoveling takes him back to the surface and into the lions' cage during a circus act. Just like that, a star -- or at least a Joey -- is born....

<p>Psychiatrist Jonathan Kingsley is an expert on the problems of the adolescent -- unless that adolescent is his own daughter. In his best I-only-think-I'm-in-control fashion, David Niven plays the exasperated doc and Cristina Ferrare is his rebellious offspring in this '60s generation-gap comedy --...

<p>"It's entertainment that fills up the screen like she fills out a bikini," the trailer for Don't Make Waves proclaimed. She is Sharon Tate, portraying a beach-loving, sky-diving beauty named Malibu. The entertainment filling up the screen is a gleeful sand-and-surf-and-sex satire based on...

It's fiesta time in Vista Del Rio, and that means much musical celebration. It's also a time of global war. So, in the updated plot of this exuberant World War II-era remake of the 1929 Wheeler and Woolsey romp, that means little Vista Del...

<p>Rocky and Puddin' Head are waiting tables at an inn on Tortuga when a letter given them by Lady Jane for delivery to Martingale gets switched with a treasure map. Kidd and Bonney kidnap them to Skull Island to find said treasure.</p>

<p>Scotland Yard's Jim Naboth (Stacy Keach) battled the bottle instead of London's seedy underworld and lost. But he finds one chance to get out of life's gutter when the mob kidnaps his ex-wife in a ruthless $1-million ransom scheme. Director Michael Apted tightens The...

<p>The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer is comedy and comedy, a quirky skewering of sex, the advertsing business, media, politics, the clergy, ale and you name it and featuring a motley array of talents -- we'll name them: Bedazzled and Beyond the Fringe's...

<p>Fred Astaire gracing an imaginative, surreal 16-minute ballet with his wit and unerring dance mastery; a jazzy, glorious-in-Technicolor street carnival pulsing with movement and music; director Vincente Minnelli's lush, savvy sophistication evident in every scene -- these elements highlight Yolanda and the Thief, a...

<p>Academy Award winner* Gene Kelly brings his remarkable talents as star, director and choreographer to this glittering gala of music, dance and pantomime -- and the result is a lush, one-of-a-kind musical flight of fancy. The film has three episodes, each with its own...

<p>"She got picked up at her own husband's funeral!" She is Pearl Berman, a not-so-inconsolable widow whose emotionally barren life and dysfunctional family get a joyous kick in the pants when a handsome Italian confesses that for 23 years he's loved her from afar....

<p>Lana Turner and Fernando Lamas star in this sumptuous Oscar -nominated musical based on the 1905 operetta by Franz Lehar. After the King of Marshovia invites her to visit her late husband's homeland, wealthy American Crystal Radek (Turner) takes off for Paris when she...

<p>Who's that girl waving a semaphore message of "I Love You" to a destroyer as it departs New York for World War I? It's Sally, the Coney Island saltwater-taffy girl. Each of the sailors -- especially pals and romantic rivals Baltimore Clark, Dutch Herman...

<p>Her name is Nora Hunter (Laraine Day), but call her Sylvia. Wartime shipbuilding magnate Nora poses as her secretary Sylvia to ward off newshounds and marriage-minded fortune hunters. Meanwhile, the secretary poses as Nora to attend all ship christenings and public functions. But when...

<p>In its Golden Age, Hollywood boasted many delightful actresses who could play beautiful, smart, funny working girls. But when it came to beautiful, smart, funny career women, Rosalind Russell was the ideal choice. In this polished romantic comedy, she portrays a judge wooed by...

<p>Every princess needs a Prince Charming. But lovely Princess Veronica didn't expect hers to be bellhop Jimmy Dobson. Hedy Lamarr is the princess, Robert Walker is the bellhop and June Allyson is a bedridden former dancer who secretly loves Jimmy in this frothy fairy...

<p>Before she became a great star and a two-time Academy Award winner,* Jane Fonda was a screen ingenue who sent a string of bubbly romantic comedies soaring, including this charmer from the prolific pen of Norman Krasna (Bachelor Mother, The Devil and Miss Jones)....

<p>America was sprawling away from Main Street, transforming into a nation of bedroom communities within easy commute of the office. But what's going on in those bedrooms? Bob Hope intends to find out when he plays a Bachelor in Paradise. Always quick with a...

<p>Welcome home, Tony, Geoffrey and Maria to a home and father you never knew. Ex-playboy Sir Basil Winterton has located the now-grown children he sired out of wedlock by different women and invited them to share the splendor of Rooksfold Manor. Psst! The cranky...

<p>Fresh from Gone with the Wind, Olivia de Havilland was eager to continue in demanding roles. Those roles (and Academy Awards *) would come. But after GWTW's Melanie came a spun-sugar romp starring de Havilland as talented violin-student Amelia. The doting CEO of Monarch...

<p>Critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times made it known moviegoers were in luck with Lucky Partners. Likening the film to fine champagne, he wrote: "It belongs to approximately the same vintage as The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife a comedy that...

<p>1940 marked a high point in Ginger Rogers' career: it was the year of Kitty Foyle, which would earn her a Best Actress Academy Award . Rogers made another exceptional drama that year: this overlooked gem that pushed boundaries with its (for the time)...

<p>It's social season in London, and amid the swirl of coming-out balls the aristocratic Broadbents (real-life marrieds Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall) are intent on giving their American-educated 17-year-old daughter Jane (Sandra Dee) the right entry into society and a proper upper-class beau. One...

<p>Larry Blake (Melvyn Douglas) is growing a bit blase about his outdoorsy bride Karin (Greta Garbo). So Karin masquerades as her temptress twin, suggestively purring "I'm partial to the indoor life" in a bid to pique her husband's romantic attention -- and the sophisticated...

<p>To be or not to be? To act or not to act? The questions are the same to Joe, a struggling (read: jobless) actor whose every sinew and synapse cries out to perform and to soften the blow of not landing a part in...

<p>When Max Herschel (Alan King), the ruthless magnate who has everything, loses his executive mistress Bones Burton (Ali MacGraw) to a young playwright (Peter Weller), he carves out a whole new battlefield in the war between the sexes! Director Sidney Lumet's sophisticated comedy, written...

<p>You know the voice, the mannerisms, the red necktie. And you know you'll laugh. Rover Dangerfield, written by Rodney Dangerfield and featuring his inimitable voice talents, is a cartoon fan's best friend. The makers of The Brave Little Toaster team with the comedy legend...

<p>In 1998 the world's oil supply is exhausted. The U.S. Treasury is empty and in deep debt to a billionaire businessman (Chief Dan George) who'll foreclose on the nation in 30 days. The solution: a telethon to save Uncle Sam from bankruptcy. And with...

<p>Seven-year-old Phillippa "Flip" Gayley (Patti Brady) wants a family her own. So she plots to get her divorced parents, who love her (and secretly each other), back to the altar. Will she succeed? Well, just take a glance at the title. Errol Flynn (spoofing...

<p>Hear those footsteps in the dark? They signal thrills, laughs and mystery as swashbuckler Errol Flynn steps out of tights and into a dinner jacket for a jolly round of sleuthing. Flynn plays a blueblood who juggles two identities: his public persona as a...

<p>A man is bewitched by the mysterious Madam Satan he meets at a lavish masquerade ball. Does this mean the end of his marriage to the demure spouse he left at home? Not likely, because the temptress is really his wife in disguise! Cecil...

<p>Unemployed Polly Parrish (Ginger Rogers) impulsively picks up a baby left at orphanage doors at Christmas. Everyone assumes the foundling is hers, including Polly's playboy ex-boss (David Niven), who offers her a job if she'll live up to her maternal duties. A paycheck would...

<p>Bowling? Nope. Another round of beers? Yawn. Three married men and their divorced buddy want to try something more intriguing on their boys' night out: a boy's night in with a blonde tootsie in a secret love pad. Unknown to them, the tootsie is...

<p>When Bundle of Joy premiered in 1956, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher were the cutest young marrieds in Hollywood, the obvious choice to headline the musical remake of one of the great comedies of the '30s, Bachelor Mother. As the Prince Charming of the...

<p>Screenwriter Mark Christopher gets a Christmas present that isn't on his Santa list: a 17-year-old delinquent named Susan, deposited in his bachelor pad by a cop pal who doesn't want to see the kid spend Christmas behind bars. Touched by Susan's plight, Mark decides...

<p>Grace Kelly is gloriously, glamorously regal in this retelling of Ferenc Molnar's romantic fable about a shy princess whose head tells her to wed a worldly Crown Prince (Alec Guinness), but whose heart is drawn to a dashing commoner (Louis Jourdan). Garbed in dreamy...

<p>A fairy-tale ball, first kisses, broken hearts, and a beautiful princess wooed by a handsome prince. So much can happen during One Romantic Night! Two great ladies of the screen who could scarcely be more dissimilar -- waiflike, vulnerable Lillian Gish (in her Talkie...

<p>Heroes and villains of DC Comics square off in the two-part, live-action, made-for-TV (with a laugh track!) smackdowns of Legends of the Super Heroes. The Challenge: Batman and Robin (Adam West and Burt Ward of the live-action Batman TV series) lead The Flash, Green...

<p>Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner) is a very nice young man anxious to step out into the "adult world." His plan is to move out of his parents' Long Island house into an eighth-floor Greenwich Village walkup -- and try to convince someone to share...

"I've waited a whole year to grow claws like these. Jungle Red!" One of film's greatest lines belongs to a wronged wife who wins back her man with the aid an aggressive shade of nail polish. First a hit play, then an all-star 1939...

<p>No stones in slingshots. No skirmishes too late in the day. They're rules of war for the youngsters of two neighboring Irish villages. And here's another rule: if you spit-shake on something, you better follow through. Kids will be kids. But sometimes they, in...

<p>Struggling Calvert University needs a new income stream -- fast. So it hires firebrand coach James Gore to build a turnstile-clicking football team. Build it he does by bringing in top players, slipping them stipends, putting them in pea-brained classes, manipulating the media and...

<p>Boston judge Tom Bailey (Alexander Knox) has position, security and a lovely home on Beacon Hill. He also has a disagreeable wife, a selfish daughter and a nagging suspicion that somehow his life has gone terribly wrong. Then one day Bailey falls ill and...