From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== The novel is set in a dystopian version of 1988, following a Second Civil War which led to the collapse of the United States' democratic institutions. The National Guard ("nats") and US police force ("pols") reestablished social order through instituting a dictatorship, with a "Director" at the apex, and police marshals and generals as operational commanders in the field. Resistance to the regime is largely confined to university campuses, where radicalized former university students eke out a desperate existence in subterranean kibbutzim. Recreational drug use is widespread, and the age of consent has been lowered to twelve. The black population has almost been rendered extinct. Most commuting is undertaken by personal aircraft, allowing great distances to be covered in little time. The novel begins with the protagonist, Jason Taverner, a singer, hosting his weekly TV show which has an audience of 30 million viewers. His special guest is his girlfriend Heather Hart, also a singer. Both Hart and Taverner are "Sixes", members of an elite class of genetically engineered humans. While leaving the studio, Taverner is telephoned by a former lover, who asks him to pay her a visit. When Taverner arrives at her apartment, the former lover attacks him by throwing a parasitic life-form at him. Although he manages to remove most of the life-form, parts of it are left inside him. After being rescued by Hart, he is taken to a medical facility. Waking up the following day in a seedy hotel with no identification, Taverner becomes worried, as failure to produce identification at one of the numerous police checkpoints would lead to imprisonment in a forced labor camp. Through a succession of phone calls made from the hotel to colleagues and friends who now claim not to know him, Taverner establishes that he is no longer recognized by the outside world. He soon manages to bribe the hotel's clerk into taking him to Kathy Nelson, a forger of government documents. However, Kathy reveals that both she and the clerk are police informants, and that the lobby clerk has placed a microscopic tracking device on him. She promises not to turn Taverner over to the police on the condition that he spend the night with her. Although he attempts to escape, Kathy confronts him again after he has successfully passed a police checkpoint using the forged identity cards. Feeling in her debt, he accompanies Kathy to her apartment block, where Inspector McNulty, Kathy's police handler, is waiting. McNulty has located Taverner via the tracking device the hotel lobby clerk placed on him, and instructs Taverner to come with him to the 469th Precinct police station so that further biometric identity checks can be performed. At the station, McNulty erroneously reports the man's name as Jason Tavern, revealing the identity of a Wyoming diesel engine mechanic. During questioning, Taverner goes along with McNulty's mistake, explaining that he no longer resembles Tavern due to extensive plastic surgery. McNulty accepts this explanation and decides to release Taverner while lab checks are run on the rest of the documents. He issues Taverner a seven-day police pass to ensure he can pass police checkpoints in the interim period. Deciding to lie low, Taverner heads to a Las Vegas bar in the hopes of meeting a woman with whom he can stay. Instead, he encounters a former lover, Ruth Gomen; although she no longer recognizes him, he succeeds in his bid to seduce her and is taken back to her apartment. On the orders of Police General Felix Buckman, Gomen's apartment is raided and Taverner is taken into custody, being transported immediately to the Police Academy in Los Angeles. Buckman personally interrogates Taverner, soon reaching the conclusion that Taverner genuinely does not know why he no longer appears to exist. However, he suspects that Taverner may be part of a larger plot involving the Sixes. He orders Taverner released, although ensuring that tracking devices are again placed on him. Outside the police academy, Taverner is approached by Alys Buckman, Felix's hypersexual sister and lover. Alys removes the tracking devices from Taverner and invites him to the home she shares with her brother. On the way there, she tells Taverner that she knows he is a TV star and reveals copies of his records. At the Buckmans' home, Taverner takes Alys up on an offer of mescaline. When he has a bad reaction to the drug, Alys goes to find him a medicine to counteract it. When she does not return, Taverner goes to search for her, only to find her skeletal remains on the bathroom floor. Frightened and confused, he flees, unsuccessfully pursued by a private security guard. To aid in his escape, he asks for the help of Mary Anne Dominic, a potter. Heading to a cafe with her, they find that one of his records is on the jukebox. When his song plays, people begin to recognize him as a celebrity. After parting with Dominic, Taverner goes to the apartment of his celebrity girlfriend Heather Hart. She returns home, horrified, and shows Taverner a newspaper mentioning that he is wanted in connection with Alys Buckman's death, the motive believed to have been his jealousy over Alys' purported relationship with Hart. An autopsy reveals that Alys' death was caused by an experimental reality-warping drug called KR-3. The coroner explains to Felix that, as Alys was a fan of Taverner, her use of the drug caused Taverner to be transported to a parallel universe where he no longer existed. Her death then caused his return to his own universe. The Police General decides to implicate Taverner in Alys' death to distract attention from his incest. The press are informed that Taverner is a suspect in the case and, wishing to clear his name, Taverner surrenders himself to the police. Heartbroken over the death of his sister, Felix returns home, suffering a nervous breakdown on the way. In an epilogue, the final fates of the main characters are disclosed. Buckman retires to Borneo where he is assassinated soon after writing an exposé of the global police apparatus. Taverner is cleared of all charges and dies of old age, while Heather Hart abandons her celebrity career and becomes a recluse. Dominic's pottery wins an international award and her works become of great value while she lives into her eighties. KR-3 test trials are deemed too destructive and the project is abandoned. Ultimately, the revolutionary students give up and voluntarily enter forced-labor camps. The detention camps later dwindle away and close down, the government no longer posing a threat. Though it is seemingly incidental, the epilogue ends with the word "loved", suddenly and cathartically closing all of the novel's thematic threads. ===== The story is set in a future, overcrowded Earth, where food is carefully rationed. Teenager William (Bill) Lermer lives with his widower father, George. George decides to emigrate to the farming colony on Ganymede, one of Jupiter's moons. After marrying Molly Kenyon, George embarks with Bill and Molly's daughter Peggy on the 'torchship' Mayflower. On the journey, Bill saves his bunkmates from asphyxiation by improvising a patch when a meteor punctures their compartment. During the trip all the children attend class; also, to combat the boredom of the long trip, the Boy Scouts among the passengers form troops. When they arrive on Ganymede, an unpleasant surprise awaits the newcomers. The group is much larger than the colony can easily absorb and the farms they were promised do not yet exist. In fact, the soil has to be created from scratch by pulverizing boulders and lava flows, and seeding the resulting dust with carefully formulated organic material. While some whine about the injustice of it all, Bill accepts an invitation to live with a prosperous farmer and his family to learn what he needs to know, while his father signs on as an engineer in town. Peggy is unable to adjust to the low pressure atmosphere and has to stay in a bubble in the hospital. When the Lermers are finally reunited on their own homestead, they build their house with a pressurized room for Peggy. One day, a rare alignment of all of Jupiter's major moons causes a devastating moon quake which damages most of the buildings. Peggy is seriously injured when her room suffers an explosive decompression. Even worse, the machinery that maintains Ganymede's "heat trap" is knocked out and the temperature starts dropping rapidly. George quickly realizes what has happened and gets his family to the safety of the town. Others do not grasp their peril soon enough and either stay in their homes or start for town too late; two-thirds of the colonists perish, either from the quake or by freezing. The Lermers consider returning to Earth, but after Peggy dies and in true pioneer spirit, they decide to stay and rebuild. The colony gradually recovers and an expedition is organized to survey more of Ganymede. Bill goes along as the cook. While exploring, he and a friend discover artifacts of an alien civilization, including a working land vehicle that has legs, like a large metal centipede. This proves fortuitous when Bill's appendix bursts and they miss the rendezvous. The shuttle picks up the rest of the group and leaves without the pair. They travel cross country to reach the next landing site. Bill is then taken to the hospital for a life- saving operation. ===== The book's narrator is Friday Jones (often going under cover name Marjorie Baldwin and using both surnames somewhat interchangeably). Friday is a genetically engineered human (known as an Artificial Person or AP) in many ways mentally and physically superior to ordinary humans. There is great prejudice against APs so Friday conceals her status. Employed as a highly self-sufficient “combat courier in a quasi-military organization”, traveling across the globe and to some of the near-Earth space colonies. Friday is returning from her latest mission when she is captured, tortured, raped and interrogated by an enemy group. She is rescued by her own people, who tell her that her highly critical mission was successful as her captors failed to find the data she was carrying in her body. After recovering from the ordeal, Friday takes a vacation to New Zealand to visit her group family, composed of several husbands and wives and many children. In an argument over racism, Friday reveals to her family that she is an AP, and they promptly divorce her. On the way back to her company's headquarters, she meets and befriends a married couple, the Tormeys, and their extra-legal co-husband, Georges. Friday is their house-guest in British Canada (a country in the Balkanized North America) when a worldwide emergency known as Red Thursday occurs. Various groups claim credit for the assassinations and sabotage, but Friday later learns that it is the result of a struggle between rival factions within the ultra-powerful Shipstone corporation. With British Canada under martial law, Friday kills a policeman who tries to arrest her and Georges as non-citizens to be interned. The two become fugitives, and Friday travels through the California Confederacy, the Lone Star Republic (where she parts from Georges), and the Chicago Imperium as she attempts to reach her headquarters. After several adventures, she abandons her attempt to make contact with her employer and then finds that the Tormeys are not at their home. An agent of her employer finally tracks her down. However, Friday's boss soon dies and the organization disbands, rendering her temporarily homeless and unemployed. Her boss has left her money in trust to be used only for the purpose of relocating to an off-Earth colony of her choosing. Living in Las Vegas Free State, Friday is eventually recruited for a courier job which will incidentally allow her to visit and evaluate several of the colonies she is considering as future homes. However, on an interplanetary cruise ship for her mission, she learns that agents of her new employers are watching her, and that she is a virtual prisoner on the ship. Realizing that her mission is top secret and her employers misled her about it, she fears that they will kill her when it is over. While the ship is in orbit at a rustic colony world, she escapes with the Tormeys, who have been on the run since the policeman's death and happened to be fleeing Earth on the same ship. She is helped and joined in her escape by two of the agents watching her, one of whom was among her torturers at the beginning of the story but is now repentant. After evading the ship's crew and the remaining agents, Friday and her friends settle in the colony to lead a quiet life as a group family. ===== —All You Zombies— chronicles a young man (later revealed to be intersex) taken back in time and tricked into impregnating his younger, female self (before he underwent sexual reassignment surgery); he thus turns out to be the offspring of that union, with the paradoxical result that he is his own mother and father. As the story unfolds, all the major characters are revealed to be the same person, at different stages of her/his life. ===== The story describes the tensions among the staff of a nuclear reactor. Heinlein's concept of a nuclear reactor was one of a barely contained explosion, not the steady-state thermal plants developed later. As a consequence the work is dangerous, and the slightest mistake could be catastrophic. All the technical staff are monitored by psychologists who have the authority to remove them from the work at any time lest they crack under the pressure and precipitate a disaster. Needless to say, the monitoring itself is part of the problem. The supervisor calls up Dr. Lentz, a fictional student of Alfred Korzybski, to analyze the situation. It turns out that the calculations on the stability of the reactor have greatly underestimated the scale of the reaction should the reactor go out of control. The situation seems hopeless, as the energy produced by the reactor is sorely needed on Earth, oil having been monopolized by the military. Using a method called "calculus of statement," Lentz helps the team to mitigate the pressure harming the plant operators. Lentz's solution takes into account the social, psychological, physical, and economic variables. One of the by-products of the reactor is a more stable nuclear fuel which can also be used as the basis for a rocket engine. Armed with their theories and the new fuel, the protagonists undertake a campaign to have the reactor shut down, moved into space, and used as a source for the fuel, which will supply the needs of Earth and take humanity into space. Their final card is a shame campaign which will subject the trustees of the reactor to public vilification. The next story sequentially is "The Man Who Sold the Moon". In that we find that the reactor exploded in space. The actual cause was the detonation of the service rocket's fuel, caused by the effects of cosmic radiation on the supposedly stable nuclear material. ===== The story is set in the future on Earth in which a utopian government has the ability to psychologically "cure" criminals of violent personality traits. The protagonist, David MacKinnon, is a romantic idealist on trial for assault. Since the court determines he is a substantial risk to cause violence in the future, he is given a choice: either allow trained psychologists to fix him, or be exiled to a confinement area for other unregenerate people known as Coventry. MacKinnon chooses to emigrate to escape what he sees as the boredom of a too-civilized society. He is sent to the rugged outland beyond the Barrier that separates Coventry from the rest of the world, where people who refuse to abide by social norms and refuse psychotherapy are exiled. MacKinnon discovers that the peaceful anarchy he envisioned is in reality a bleak dystopia split into three separate "countries:" * New America, a corrupt democracy with a dysfunctional judicial system, that lies closest to Coventry's entry point and is the most populous of the three nations; * the ironically named Free State, an absolute dictatorship ruled by the "Liberator" with an even harsher penal system, a nation frequently at war with New America though not at the time of the story; and * The Angels, remnants of the theocracy from "If This Goes On—", in the hills north of New America, living under a new "Prophet Incarnate" — it is implied they are the least populous of the three. He is jailed on arrival in New America, losing everything he had brought through the Barrier with him. Befriended by a man David knows only as "Fader" Magee, he breaks out of jail. He learns that New America and the Free State are combining forces to attack the outside civilization. He and Fader break out of Coventry separately to warn the country from which he had emigrated of the imminent attack. Back in the world he had left, MacKinnon learns that Fader is actually an agent of the United States Army, and that by risking his life to warn the rest of the country, he has redeemed himself and no longer needs therapy. ===== Brooks McNye, a communications engineer, wangles a job as a radio technician (concealing her first name, Gloria) and joins the all-male crew of construction workers building a space station. On arrival, she is immediately confronted by "Tiny" Larsen, the hard-boiled construction superintendent, who had not realized she was female. He does not want women "sniffing around my boys" and orders her returned on the next shuttle, only to be forced by circumstances to keep her. Larsen is constantly putting his foot in his mouth with remarks like, "Mind what [Hammond] tells you. He's a good man," only to hear a brisk, "I know, I trained him." In the end, he is forced to admit that having a woman on the team has improved morale and efficiency, and he decides to stop discriminating on the basis of sex. He also asks that a chaplain be assigned to the station, reasoning, "under the new policy we may need one anytime." Category:Short stories by Robert A. Heinlein Category:1949 short stories ===== A physical chemist and his wife (the MacRaes), who have been in residence in Luna City on the Moon for some time, spend much of their time volubly regretting having ever left Earth. When this attitude results in social conflict with "Loonies" who love their home, the pair feel isolated, misunderstood, and put-upon. They decide to return "dirt-side", only to discover that the Earth of their imaginations bears only the faintest of resemblances to the actuality, which includes things unheard of in Luna, like smog, unpleasant weather, the common cold, and repairmen who refuse to make house calls. Ultimately, they discover that all they really want is to go back to Luna City, where they are welcomed with open arms by their peers (now that they have realized that the Moon is "home" after all) and settle down to be happy "Lunatics". ===== Two well-off Earth men are arguing about whether there is slavery on Venus, and one of them gets shanghaied there—or so he believes; they later find out that they've bet one another about the topic, gotten drunk, and signed on. Upon his arrival, he finds his contract sold to a farmer. His discovery that it will take him years to work off his debt is compounded by his realization that he cannot get to sleep at night without rhira, an expensive local narcotic, thus increasing his debt every day. ===== A coming-of-age story that follows Andrew Jackson Libby, a boy from Earth with extraordinary mathematical ability but meager education. Finding few opportunities on Earth, he joins the Cosmic Construction Corps, a future military-led version of the US Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps employing out-of-work youth to colonize the Solar System. With a group of other inexperienced young men he is assigned to a ship traveling to the asteroid belt where their task is to move an asteroid into a more convenient orbit between Earth and Mars. Libby comes to the Captain's attention during the process of blasting holes in the asteroid for rocket engines when Libby realizes that a mistake has been made in calculating the size of the charge, preventing a catastrophic blast. He is assigned to the ship's astrogation computer. During the move to the destination orbit, the computer malfunctions and Libby takes over, performing all the complex calculations in his head. The asteroid is settled successfully into its final orbit. "Slipstick" Libby became one of Heinlein's recurring characters, and would later appear in several works associated with Lazarus Long, among them Methuselah's Children and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. The story includes one of the earliest uses of the term "space marines". ===== A spaceship's crewman is called to repair an antenna while his ship is still under spin. He is unable to hold on, despite supreme effort; he drifts away from the ship and has far too much time to ponder things. When he returns to Earth, he is unable to work as a spaceman and has a fear of heights. After living in fear and sadness for a time, he must face his troubles while rescuing a kitten stuck on the 35th-floor ledge of a building. Heinlein includes a variant verse to the hymn Eternal Father, Strong to Save, dedicated "to those who venture into space," in the story. Originally titled "Broken Wings", the story was rejected by The Saturday Evening Post. A reading of this story was broadcast on BBC Radio 7 on July 14, 2007. ===== The story centers around Delos David Harriman, the lead character of The Man Who Sold the Moon. Harriman, a tycoon and latter-day robber baron, had always dreamed of going to the Moon, and had spent much of his career and resources making space flight a practical commercial enterprise. Unfortunately, his business partners prevented him from taking the early flights because they could not risk the public face of their company. Now an old man, Harriman has still not been to the Moon, a fact that frustrates him, since he lives in a world where space travel is so commonplace that carnivals have their own barnstorming spacecraft. Although no longer bound by his contractual obligations, he is now too old to pass the medical examination needed for space travel. Very wealthy, Harriman bribes two spacemen to help him get to the Moon after encountering them at a funfair in Butler, a small town outside Kansas City, Missouri (and Heinlein's birthplace), where they sell rides on their old, somewhat run-down ship. The three of them fight many obstacles, including Harriman's heirs, who want him declared mentally incompetent or senile before he can spend their inheritance. In the end, Harriman finally makes it to the Moon, only to die on the surface soon after landing, content at finally having reached his goal. His body is left there, with his epitaph scrawled on the tag from an oxygen bottle. It is Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem", which is inscribed on his own headstone in Samoa. ===== It is the story of "Noisy" Rhysling, the blind space-going songwriter whose poetic skills rival Rudyard Kipling's. Heinlein (himself a medically retired U.S. naval officer) spins a yarn about a radiation-blinded, unemployable spaceship engineer crisscrossing the solar system writing and singing songs. The story takes the form of a nonfiction magazine article. The events of the story concern the composition of the titular song. Rhysling realizes that his death of old age is near, and hitchhikes on a spaceship headed to Earth so he can die and be buried where he was born. A malfunction threatens the ship with destruction, and Rhysling enters the irradiated area to perform repairs. While completing the repairs, he knows that he will soon die of radiation poisoning and tells them to record his last song; he dies just moments after singing the final, titular verse. Heinlein credited the title of the song, "The Green Hills of Earth", to the short story "Shambleau" by C. L. Moore (first published in 1933), in which a spacefaring smuggler named Northwest Smith hums the tune. Moore and Henry Kuttner also have Northwest Smith hum the song in their 1937 short story "Quest of the Starstone," which quotes several lines of lyrics. ===== In 1999, Lieutenant John Ezra Dahlquist is a member of the Space Patrol, an international organization with the custody of all Earth's remaining nuclear weapons. A young bomb officer and physicist at the Patrol's lunar base, he is apolitical and is devoted to his wife and young daughter. The base's executive officer Colonel Towers asks to meet with him. Towers and others want to overthrow the Earth government, and plan to use the bombs to destroy "an unimportant town or two" so Earth takes them seriously. Dahlquist leads Towers to believe that he will cooperate, but he does not want his family to live under a dictatorship and plans to stop the coup by preventing the bombs' use. Dahlquist locks himself in the bomb bunker, modifies a bomb to detonate by hand, and threatens to blow up himself and the bombs. He negotiates with Towers, pretending to be still naïve; he hopes to give the government time to stop the coup. Dahlquist is growing tired, however, and if he falls asleep the conspirators may regain control. He decides to disable the bombs beyond the plotters' ability to repair them, despite the danger. The only way to do so is to open them up and break the plutonium core of each bomb. Dahlquist does so, but in the process exposes himself to a fatal dose of radiation. He dies "very happy". The coup collapses and Towers shoots himself. The Patrol recovers Dahlquist's radioactive body and places it in a lead coffin. As Earth mourns the hero, his body is entombed in a marble monument, with an honor guard beyond the limit of safe approach. ===== Delos David "D. D." Harriman, "the last of the Robber Barons", is obsessed with being the first to travel to--and possess--the Moon. He asks his business partner, George Strong, and other tycoons to invest in the venture. Most dismiss Harriman's plans as foolhardy: Nuclear rocket fuel is scarce as the space station that produces it blew up, also destroying the only existing spaceship. The necessary technology for a chemical-fueled rocket stretches the boundaries of current engineering. The endeavor is both incredibly costly and of uncertain profitability. One skeptic offers to sell "all of my interest in the Moon...for fifty cents"; Harriman accepts and tries to buy the other associates' interests as well. Strong and two others agree to back his plans. The technical problems are solvable with money and talent. To solve the tougher financial problems, Harriman exploits commercial and political rivalries. He implies to the Moka-Coka company, for example, that rival soft drink maker 6+ plans to turn the Moon into a massive billboard, using a rocket to scatter black dust on the surface in patterns. To an anti-Communist associate, he suggests that the Russians may print the hammer and sickle across the face of the Moon if they get to it first. To a television network, he offers the Moon as a reliable and uncensorable broadcasting station. Harriman seeks to avoid government ownership of the Moon. As it passes directly overhead only in a narrow band north and south of the equator, he uses a legal principle that states that property rights extend to infinity above a land parcel. On that basis, Mexico, Central and parts of South America, and other countries in those latitudes around the world, have a claim on the Moon. The United States also has a claim due to Florida and Texas. By arranging for many countries to assert their rights Harriman persuades the United Nations to, as a compromise, assign management of the Moon to his company. Money remains the main difficulty. Harriman liquidates his assets, risks bankruptcy, damages his marriage, and raises funds in numerous legitimate and semi-legitimate ways; "I", he says, "would cheat, lie, steal, beg, bribedo anything to accomplish what we have accomplished". Children donate money for a promise of all contributors' names engraved on a plaque left on the Moon. The names, however, will be microscopic in size. Harriman sells land and naming rights to craters, and plans to sell postal covers canceled on the Moon to collectors. He starts rumors that diamonds exist in moondust, intending to secretly place gems in the rocket to convince people that the rumors are true. Harriman will strenuously deny that the diamonds are from the Moon, being merely part of a scientific experiment; he expects people not to believe him, but he will not be guilty of actual fraud. Harriman wants to be on the first flight of the Pioneer but the ship only has room for one pilot, Leslie LeCroix. The multistage rocket launches from Peterson Field, near Colorado Springs, Colorado, lands on the Moon, and returns to Earth. Harriman is the first to open the rocket's hatch; the canceled postal covers were left behind to save weight and he needs to get them aboard surreptitiously. While doing so, he asks LeCroix for the "lunar" diamonds. The pilot complies, then produces real lunar diamonds as well. As Harriman predicted, once the first flight succeeds, many seek to invest in his venture to make more flights using a catapult launcher built on Pikes Peak. The next flight will begin a lunar colony. Harriman intends to be on the ship, but the majority owners of the venture object to his presence on the flight; he is too valuable to the company to risk in space. The rocket leaves without Harriman, who "looks as Moses must have looked, when he gazed out over the promised land." ===== The story is set in the near future, when the Moon is colonized with people living in underground cities. The "menace" of the title is a glamorous woman tourist who visits the Moon colony. She is assigned a young guide named Holly, a 15-year-old girl and aspiring starship designer who is the first-person narrator. Holly's best friend Jeff develops a crush on the "groundhog" visitor, Ariel. As Jeff spends more time with Ariel, Holly becomes jealous and begins to doubt his friendship. Living in an underground city on the Moon, Holly and Jeff's hobby is flying with strap-on wings in a great cavern, made possible because the gravity field is one sixth the strength of Earth's and the air pressure in the cavern is kept high enough. Ariel wants to try flying, and Holly, in order not to appear jealous, offers to teach her. However, during her first flight, Ariel loses control at a great height, falling toward the ground. Holly swoops down and saves her life, breaking both arms in the process as she cushions Ariel's fall. In the hospital afterward, Ariel gently explains some things to Holly. Ariel is twice the age of the teenagers, and could never be interested in Jeff. More to the point, Jeff is not in love with her but with Holly. Ariel tells how in the aftermath of the crash Jeff arrived "like an avenging angel", ignoring Ariel to cradle the unconscious Holly in his arms, sobbing. Following this revelation, Jeff arrives in the hospital room and Ariel tactfully leaves the two alone. After some embarrassed banter, Jeff kisses Holly for the first time. ===== In the first section of the narrative, a stormy meeting takes place at a Sacramento Sector Guild Hall of the technicians working "down inside", among the very noisy great rotors which keep the moving roads going. Speakers voice various grievances and call for immediate strike action. "Shorty" Van Kleeck, the Chief Deputy Engineer of the Sacramento sector, appears and declares his sympathy with the technicians' demands and effectively places himself at their head. As would become clear later, it was Van Kleeck who instigated the technicians' agitation in the first place. The road's workforce is sharply divided into two classes - the technicians, who are unionized civilians, and the engineers, who are organized as Transport Cadets, an elite paramilitary organization formed by the US Military to keep this crucial infrastructure running. The technicians feel some hostility to the "arrogant" engineers. Van Kleeck - himself a senior engineer who had "come up from the ranks" manipulates this hostility, with the intention of catapulting himself into a position of personal power. After this initial scene, the point of view shifts - and remains for the rest of the story - to Van Kleeck's superior Larry Gaines, Chief Engineer of the Diego-Reno Roadtown - at the outset yet unaware of the brewing trouble. He is busy entertaining Mr. Blenkinsop, the Australian Transport Minister, who is looking into Road technology with an eye to introducing it in Australia. Gaines's explanation of the Road machinery to Blenkinsop is a device to bring the reader into the world of the Roads. Larry Gaines is dining with his Australian guest, in a moving restaurant on the road, when one of the moving sidewalk strips unexpectedly stops. This causes a chain reaction of people falling from the stopped strip onto the fast moving strips next to it, and vice versa. The entire length of the Road becomes a scene of carnage. The reader already knows that this was the result of the ruthless action taken by Van Kleeck and his confederates. Gaines quickly concludes that this is no mechanical failure but deliberate sabotage, and that the stoppage was sabotage and that the technicians who maintain the Stockton section of the road are responsible. The rebels have stopped the strip - heedless of the resulting killing and wounding of numerous people traveling the moving road - as a demonstration to encourage their fellow technicians around the country to rebel against the Cadets. Gaines calls the Stockton office and learns that the leader of the rebellion is his own deputy Van Kleeck, who defiantly declares "The Functionalist Revolution". Holding to a radical social theory, Functionalism, the rebel technicians were persuaded that their role in maintaining the nation's transport infrastructure is more important than that of any other workers and that they should therefore be in control. Blenkinsop is left behind at one of Road stations as Gaines takes charge of the advance on the Stockton office. Going into the machinery under the roadway that runs it, Gaines takes command of the response. He doesn't order the Road stopped, since that would leave millions of commuters stranded, but instead has the military evacuate the riders, a time-consuming procedure. In command of a hastily gathered corps of armed cadets, he proceeds up the underground access tunnel toward Stockton, on "tumblebugs," motorized and gyroscopically stabilized unicycles much like the later real-life Segway. As the military advance proceeds, they arrest rebel technicians and cross connect the wiring of the machinery, motor by motor, to take control away from the rebels in the Stockton office. Over the videophone Van Kleeck warns that he has a button rigged to blow up the Road if Gaines doesn't capitulate - which could cause countless deaths, possibly running into millions. Gaines doesn't understand how Van Kleeck has gotten so many technicians to side with him; psychological screening tests are supposed to guarantee that technicians don't have the temperament to revolt. Then Gaines realizes that Deputy Van Kleeck was able to move revolution-prone workers into his sector because, as deputy, Van Kleeck had access to the psychological files on the technicians. Gaines accesses Shorty's psychological profile and studies the neurotic traits that have made him a demagogue. Asking for a parley, Gaines is taken to the Stockton office and faces Shorty. There he uses his knowledge of Shorty's psychology to push him into a nervous breakdown, and overpowers him, gaining control of the 'suicide' button. The Cadets attack the office and the rebellion is ended. Later, Gaines ponders the changes that will have to be made to make sure there is never a recurrence of these events: more psychological testing, more careful oversight, and more esprit de corps. He concludes that the price of high tech transportation like the Roadways is eternal vigilance. He then suddenly realizes that he had let the Australian Transport Minister kick his heels in an empty office the whole night, and rushes off to apologize. ===== General Services is a very successful company that provides various personal services such as shopping for you or walking your dogs or supplying a host for a party, but also proudly advertises that no job is too large. One ad campaign idea which the staff discusses is "Want somebody murdered? Then DON'T call General Services. But for anything else, call.... It Pays!". The business model involves knowing to whom to subcontract work. The technology used involves rapid access to client data and the use of personal, portable telephones. The company is asked to do the impossible: enable an interplanetary conference to be held on Earth, whose strong gravity is inhospitable to many of the native races of other planets and moons in the solar system. The solution of holding the conference on Mars or Luna is considered politically unacceptable. In a side plot, the team also have to deal with a rich woman who wants to visit her son recuperating from a skiing injury over a thousand miles away while simultaneously conducting a fashionable party at her home. The solution is to conduct her to her son's side while using 3-D projection to have her appear at the party. They charge a hefty fee for this. The fee is doubled when the woman selfishly tries to insist on hiring one of the team as her personal social secretary. Much of the action of the story is not, as one might expect, about the science or engineering of creating an antigravity device to allow the conference to take place, but about how to persuade the world's leading physicist, a Dr. O'Neill, to undertake the job. O'Neill is too wealthy to be tempted by money, but longs to possess a museum piece, a Chinese porcelain bowl called "The Flower of Forgetfulness". The team have to find a way to get the bowl from its current location in a London museum. This involves the creation of a duplicate and some underhand tactics. When they receive it, they discover that it is indeed one of the most beautiful objects imaginable. The anti-gravity generator is created and O'Neill, who is a recluse, requests payment. The team agree, but with one condition: that they themselves be allowed to view the bowl from time to time. Caught by surprise, he agrees and begins to regard them as potential friends. The company also asserts ownership of the device against the government's attempts to claim it. O'Neill was under salaried contract at the time, with the bowl as a bonus, so under normal law General Services owns all his work. With some legal maneuvering, and allowing the government agent himself to buy stock in a company to hold the patents, they manage to turn an even bigger profit. ===== The novel is set in the future when Mars has been colonized by humans, but is administered by a governor appointed by the Earth government and the colonists have no political power. On Mars, colonial teenagers Jim Marlowe and Frank Sutton travel to the Lowell Academy boarding school for the start of the academic year. Jim takes along his native Martian pet, Willis the Bouncer, a round furry ball the size of a volleyball, who is about as intelligent as a human child and has a photographic memory for sounds, which he can also reproduce perfectly. At a rest stop, Willis wanders off and encounters one of the adult sentient Martians. The three-legged alien takes the two boys and Willis to join a ritual called "growing together" with a group of its fellows. They also share water, making Jim and Frank "water friends" with the Martian, who is named Gekko. At school, Jim gets into trouble with the authoritarian headmaster, Mr. Howe, who confiscates Willis, claiming that it is against the new rules to have pets. When Jim and Frank sneak into Howe's office and rescue Willis, the bouncer repeats two overheard conversations between Howe and Beecher, the unscrupulous colonial administrator of Mars, detailing Beecher's plans for Willis and the colony. When Beecher learns Howe has a bouncer, he is ecstatic, since the London Zoo is willing to pay a hefty price for a specimen. Worse, Beecher is secretly planning to prevent the annual migration of the colonists (to avoid 12 months of severe winter weather) in order to save money. The boys run away from school to warn their parents and the colony. The boys set out to skate the thousands of miles to their homes on the frozen Martian canals. During the trip, Frank gets sick. On the third night, they are forced to take shelter inside a giant Martian cabbage plant (nearly suffocating when it folds up at night). The next day, they meet some native Martians, who accept Jim because of his relationship to Willis and water-friendship with Gekko. The Martians treat Frank's illness and send the two boys home by a swift subway. Once warned, Jim's father quickly organizes the migration, hoping to catch Beecher off guard. The colonists take over the boarding school, and they turn it into a temporary shelter. Howe locks himself in his office, while Beecher sets up automatic, photosensor-controlled weapons outside to stop the malcontents (as he calls them) from leaving. After two colonists are killed trying to surrender, and the power to the building is cut, the colonists decide they have no choice but to fight back. The colonists organize a raiding party, with the boys taking part, capture Beecher's office and proclaim the colony's independence from Earth. Several Martians enter the school area, and one of them shows up in the door leading to Howe's office, hiding him from sight. When the Martian turns away, Howe is nowhere to be found. The Martians then go to Beecher's building, and when they leave, he has also vanished. The Martians had been content to allow humans to share their planet, but Beecher's threat to Willis has made them reconsider. They present the colonists with an ultimatum: leave the planet or else. Dr. MacRae negotiates with the Martians, and is able to persuade them to let the colonists stay, mainly because of Jim's strong friendship with Willis. MacRae theorizes that Martians start life as bouncers, metamorphose into adults, then continue to exist after their deaths as the "old ones." In the end, Jim resigns himself to giving Willis up so he can undergo the transformation to adulthood. As with Podkayne of Mars, there are two versions of the ending. As originally written (and published much later) it is made clear that Willis will not emerge as an adult for forty years. This was edited and changed by Heinlein's publishers, as was a discussion early in the novel in which MacRae expresses strong support for adults and older children being free to carry handguns, and opposition to any government which would restrict that. ===== The book is a series of diary entries primarily by each of the four main characters: Zebadiah "Zeb" John Carter, programmer Dejah Thoris "Deety" Burroughs Carter, her mathematics professor father Jacob Burroughs, and off-campus socialite Hilda Corners. The names "Dejah Thoris," "Burroughs," and "Carter" are overt references to John Carter and Dejah Thoris, the protagonists of the Barsoom novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. In the opening, Deety is dancing with Zeb at a party at Hilda's mansion. Deety is trying to get Zeb to meet her father to discuss what she thinks is an article Zeb wrote about n-dimensional space, even going so far as to offer herself. Zeb figures out and explains to Deety that he is not the one who wrote the article but a relative with a similar name. After dancing a very intimate tango, Zeb jokingly suggests the dance was so strong they should get married, and Deety agrees. Zeb is taken aback but then accepts. As they are leaving, Deety and Zeb rescue Jacob from a heated argument he is having with another faculty member before a fight breaks out. As they are approaching their vehicles, Hilda comes out, deciding to tag along. Zeb, having a premonition, grabs the three of them and ducks behind another vehicle before Jacob and Deety's vehicle explodes. Zeb gets everyone into his modified air car Gay Deceiver and by activating the Deceiver's flying capability, escapes undetected by the authorities or the criminals who put a bomb in the other vehicle. Zeb flies to Elko, Nevada, the state being the only one to allow people to get married 24 hours a day with no waiting period or blood test. The incidents have so traumatized Jacob that he has agreed to marry Hilda and so they have a double ceremony. The couples then go to Jacob's hidden cabin in the woods, where they have their honeymoons. Thus begins the series of adventures that the four embark upon as they travel in the Gay Deceiver, which is equipped with the professor's "continua" device and armed by the Australian Defence Force. The continua device was built by Professor Burroughs while he was formulating his theories on n-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry. The geometry of the novel's universe contains six dimensions; the three spatial dimensions known to the real world, and three time dimensions: t, the real world's temporal dimension, τ (tau), and т (teh). The continua device can travel on all six axes. The continua device allows travel into various fictional universes, such as the Land of Oz, as well as through time. An attempt to visit Barsoom takes them to an apparently-different version of Mars, seemingly under the colonial rule of the British and Russian Empires, but near the end of the novel, Heinlein's recurring character Lazarus Long hints that they had traveled to Barsoom and that its "colonial" status was an illusion imposed on them by the telepathically adept Barsoomians: ===== The plot of the original Escape Velocity involves disputes between the Confederation government and a Rebellion against it. As noted earlier, the player may choose sides (or not) based on who they believe is right, who they believe is stronger, who they believe it is more profitable to support, or any other criteria. The player begins with a shuttlecraft resembling those from Star Trek. ===== Five hundred years after the establishment of the Foundation, the Mayor of Terminus, Harla Branno, is basking in a political glow, her policies having been vindicated by the recent successful resolution of a Seldon Crisis. Golan Trevize, a former officer of the Navy and now a member of Council, believes the Second Foundation, which is almost universally thought to be extinct, still exists and is controlling events. He attempts to question the continued existence of the Seldon Plan during a Council session, but Branno has him arrested on a charge of treason. Branno also believes that the Second Foundation still exists and is in control, but she cannot admit it publicly for political reasons, and treats that as a state secret, hence her alarm and her swift action. So, she orders Trevize to leave Terminus to search for the Second Foundation. As a cover, he is to be accompanied by Janov Pelorat, a professor of Ancient History and mythologist, who is interested in the location of Earth, the fabled original world of the human species. They are provided a highly advanced computer- controlled "gravitic" ship to carry out their mission. Branno also sends out Munn Li Compor in another similar vessel to follow and monitor Trevize. Indeed, the Second Foundation still does exist, but rather than being in complete control, as the First Foundation fears, it has similar worries. On Trantor, home of the Second Foundation, Stor Gendibal, a rising intellect in the Second Foundation hierarchy, reveals to Quindor Shandess, the current First Speaker, his finding that the Seldon Plan, which the Second Foundation diligently protects and furthers along, is being manipulated by some unknown group, probably more powerful than the Second Foundation, with unknown motivations. Shandess dubs this group the "Anti-Mules," as they seem to possess powers similar to the Mule, but to be using them not to destroy the Seldon Plan, as the Mule had tried to do, but rather to preserve it. At first, Gendibal's ideas are very badly received by the other Speakers, with Shandess alone supporting him, and he is threatened with expulsion, but the Speakers' resistance is overcome when Gendibal demonstrates that the brain of Sura Novi, a member of the Hamish, the rude people of farmers who inhabit and cultivate Trantor, shows a subtle change to her mind that would be far beyond the Second Foundation's capabilities to make, and could only have been made by a much more powerful entity, probably the "Anti-Mules." Gendibal and Novi are sent out on a spaceship to track Trevize and determine the goals of the "Anti- Mules." Meanwhile, Trevize and Pelorat engage in the latter's project to locate Earth, but there is no planet with that name in the galactic table of planets, and none with its exact predicted characteristics either. However, Pelorat mentions having heard of a planet called Gaia, whose name he somehow discovered to mean Earth in some ancient language. Its coordinates are unknown, but it is supposed to be somewhere in the Sayshell Sector. Trevize decides that they must go there to follow up on this lead. On the Sayshell main planet, Trevize and Pelorat meet a scholar, Professor Quintesetz, who is able to reluctantly give them the coordinates to Gaia. They travel there and discover that Gaia is a "superorganism," where all things, both living and inanimate, participate in a larger group consciousness, while still retaining any individual awareness they might have. Pelorat slowly falls in love with a Gaian woman named Blissenobiarella, commonly called Bliss. Gendibal finds Trevize's location with information from Compor, who is secretly a Second Foundation agent. On approaching Gaia, Gendibal is met by a First Foundation warship, commanded by Mayor Branno. As Gendibal's mental powers stalemate with Mayor Branno's force shield, Novi reveals herself as an agent of Gaia. She joins the stalemate and the three are locked until Trevize can join them. Bliss explains to Trevize that he had been led to Gaia so that his untouched mind, which has unique, remarkable powers of intuition, can decide the galaxy's fate -- whether it will be ruled by the First Foundation, by the Second Foundation, or by Gaia, which envisions an extension of its group consciousness to the entire galaxy, thus forming the new entity Galaxia. He also learns that the stalemate between the First Foundation (Branno), the Second Foundation (Gendibal), and Gaia (Novi) was intentional, and that through his ship's computer, he can decide who shall ultimately prove victorious. Trevize decides upon Gaia, and through mental adjustments, Gaia makes Branno and Gendibal believe they have won minor victories, and that Gaia does not exist. But Trevize is troubled by one final missing piece of information: in the course of their investigation, Trevize and Pelorat had found out that all references to Earth had been removed from the Galactic Library at Trantor. Trevize wants to know who did this and why, as Gaia denies having done that. He announces his intention to find Earth, since without knowing the answers to those questions, he cannot be certain his choice was the right one. Trevize also explains that he chose Gaia because that was the only choice of the three that was reversible in case his choice should prove to be wrong, due to the large length of time required for the formation of Galaxia. ===== In this novel, Isaac Asimov introduces Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw, later his favorite protagonists. They live roughly three millennia in Earth's future, a time when hyperspace travel has been discovered, and a few worlds relatively close to Earth have been colonized — fifty planets known as the "Spacer worlds". The Spacer worlds are rich, have low population density (average population of one hundred million each), and use robot labor heavily. Meanwhile, Earth is overpopulated (with a total population of eight billion, three times that of Asimov's 1950s) and strict rules against robots have been passed. In The Caves of Steel and its sequels (the first of which is The Naked Sun), Asimov paints a grim situation of an Earth dealing with an extremely large population, and of luxury-seeking Spacers, who limit birth to permit great wealth and privacy. Asimov described himself as a claustrophile: "I wrote a novel in 1953 which pictured a world in which everyone lived in underground cities, comfortably enclosed away from the open air. People would say, 'How could you imagine such a nightmarish situation?' And I would answer in astonishment, 'What nightmarish situation? The "caves of steel" are vast city complexes covered by huge metal domes, capable of supporting tens of millions each: the New York City of that era (wherein much of the story is set) encompasses present-day New York City, as well as large tracts of New Jersey. Asimov imagines the present day's underground transit connected to malls and apartment blocks, until no one ever exits the domes, and most of the population suffer from extreme fear of leaving them. Even though the Robot and Foundation series were not considered part of the same fictional universe until much later, the "caves of steel" resemble the planet Trantor. The book's central crime is a murder, which takes place before the novel opens. (This is an Asimovian trademark, which he attributed to his own squeamishness and John Campbell's advice of beginning as late in the story as possible.) The victim is Roj Nemmenuh Sarton, a Spacer Ambassador who lives in Spacetown, the Spacer outpost just outside New York City. For some time, he has tried to convince the Earth government to loosen its anti-robot restrictions. One morning, he is discovered outside his home, his chest imploded by an energy blaster. The New York police commissioner charges Elijah with finding the murderer, in cooperation with a highly advanced robot named R. Daneel Olivaw who is visually identical to a human and is equipped with a scanner that is able to detect human emotions through their encephalographic waves. ===== Prelude to Foundation is set in the year 12,020 G.E. (Galactic Era), during the rocky reign of the Emperor Cleon I. It starts with Seldon's presentation of a paper at a mathematics convention detailing how psychohistory might theoretically make it possible to predict the future. The Emperor of the Galactic Empire learns of this and wants to use Seldon for political gain. In a face-to-face interview, Seldon emphasizes that psychohistory is something that he has not even begun developing or even has a clear idea how to do so, but Cleon is not wholly convinced that Hari is of no use to the Empire. Seldon then meets reporter Chetter Hummin, who convinces him that Cleon's first minister, Eto Demerzel, is attempting to capture him, and that it is therefore imperative for Seldon to escape and try to make psychohistory practical. He is taken by Hummin to Streeling University, one of the top ranked of the Empire and introduced to Dors Venabili by Hummin. Seldon theorizes that the first development of psychohistory requires a smaller, yet still significant sample than the entire Empire, possibly just the original world where humans originated...which is now lost, along with much of the older historical records. Hari and Dors narrowly evade capture at Streeling University, and Hummin arranges for them to be sheltered in the reclusive Mycogen sector, which supposedly values its ancient history. Seldon and Venabili are welcomed by Sunmaster Fourteen, the leader of Mycogen. Seldon obtains the Mycogenians' treasured religious/historical book, but finds it disappointing except for the revelation of what the Mycogenians call their home planet, Aurora, and references to "robots" (which do not exist in the Empire). Seldon and Venabili face execution when Seldon insists on entering the Mycogenian "temple", the Sacratorium, in disguise in hopes of interviewing a robot supposedly housed there. They are easily detected, but Hummin arrives in the nick of time to save them. The action then shifts to the Dahl sector, where Seldon and Venabili rent rooms from a middle-class family. While in Dahl, they meet a guttersnipe named Raych, whom Seldon later adopts. Also in Dahl, they are told by an old wise woman that the Aurora of the Mycogenians is not the original world, but actually the "enemy" of the original human planet, called Earth. (This links with the Robot series.) Towards the end of the novel, Seldon, Venabili, and Raych are kidnapped and forcibly taken to see Rashelle, who is the Mayor of Wye, a powerful and vital sector situated at Trantor's south pole. Rashelle and her father have long been plotting to overthrow the Emperor and take his place. Seldon has the revelation that he could try to develop psychohistory using Trantor itself as a test case because of the great cultural diversity of its sectors. Rashelle launches her coup attempt, but it quickly collapses due to Demerzel's skillful subversion of Wye's forces. The finale reveals that "Hummin" is actually Eto Demerzel. Seldon then gets Demerzel to admit he is a robot; Demerzel is in fact R. Daneel Olivaw, who can influence humans mentally. He wants the development of psychohistory to help him better protect humanity, as per "The Zeroth Law Of Robotics". Seldon also suspects Venabili of being a robot, as well. This theme would subsequently be continued in Forward the Foundation. ===== Several centuries after the events of Second Foundation, two citizens of the Foundation search for Earth, the legendary planet where humans are said to have originated. Even less is known about Earth than was the case in Foundation, when scholars still seem to know the location of 'Sol'. The story follows on from Foundation's Edge, but can be read as a complete work in itself. (It does, however, give away most of the mysteries around which Foundation's Edge is built.) ===== The book covers several periods from the life of Lazarus Long (born Woodrow Wilson Smith), an early beneficiary of a breeding experiment designed to increase mankind's natural lifespan, known as the Howard Families, after the program's initiator. The result of more a mutation than the breeding experiment, he is the oldest living human, at more than two thousand years old. The first half of the book takes the form of several novellas connected by Lazarus's retrospective narrative. In the framing story, Lazarus has decided that life is no longer worth living, but, in what is described as a reverse Arabian Nights scenario, agrees not to end his life for as long as his companion, chief executive of the Howard Families and descendant Ira Weatheral, will listen to his stories. ===== The Stones, a family of "Loonies" (residents of the Moon, known as "Luna" in the book, from the Roman goddess), purchase and rebuild a used spaceship and go sightseeing around the Solar System. The twin teenage boys, named Castor and Pollux after the half-brothers of classical legend, buy used bicycles on Luna to sell on Mars, their first stop, where they run afoul of local regulations but are freed by their grandmother Hazel Stone. While on Mars, the twins buy their brother Buster a native Martian creature called a flat cat, which produces a soothing vibration, as a pet. In preparation for the asteroid belt, where the equivalent of a gold rush is in progress prospecting for "core material" and radioactive ores, the twins obtain supplies and luxury goods on Mars to sell at their destination, on the principle that it is shopkeepers, not miners, who get rich during gold rushes. En route, the flat cat and its offspring overpopulate the ship so the family places them in hibernation and later sells them to the miners. The novel ends with the family setting out to see the rings of Saturn. ===== Hugh Farnham, a white middle-aged man, holds a bridge club party for his alcoholic wife Grace, law-graduate son Duke, college-student daughter Karen, and Karen's friend Barbara. During the bridge game, Duke berates Hugh for frightening Grace by preparing for a possible Soviet nuclear attack. When the attack actually occurs the group, along with Joe, the family's African American servant, retreat to the fallout shelter beneath the house. After several distant nuclear explosions rock the shelter, Hugh and Barbara become sexually intimate, after which the largest explosion of all hits the shelter. With only minor injuries, but with their bottled oxygen running low, the group decides to ensure that they will be able to leave the shelter when necessary. After exiting through an emergency tunnel, they find themselves in a completely undamaged, semi-tropical region apparently uninhabited by humans or other sentient creatures. Several of the group speculate that the final explosion somehow forced them into an alternate dimension. The group struggles to stay alive by reverting to the ways of the American pioneers, with Hugh as the leader—despite friction between Hugh and Duke. Karen announces that she is pregnant and had returned home the night of the attack to tell her parents. Barbara also announces that she is pregnant, but without mentioning that her pregnancy resulted from her sexual encounter with Hugh during the attack. Karen eventually dies during her labor, due to complications, along with her infant daughter the next day. Grace, whose sanity has been challenged by all these events, demands that Barbara be forced from the group or she will leave. Duke convinces Hugh that he will go with Grace to ensure her safety, but before they can leave, a large aircraft appears overhead. The group is taken captive by people of African ancestry, but is spared execution when Joe intervenes by conversation with their captives' leader in French. The group finds that it has not been transported to another world, but instead is in the distant future of their own world. A decadent but technologically advanced African culture keeps either uneducated or castrated whites as slaves. Each of the characters adapts to the sudden change in black/white roles in different and sometimes shocking ways. In the end, Hugh and Barbara reject the new era of slavery they find themselves in and attempt to escape, but are captured. Rather than execute them, Ponse, "Lord Protector" of the house to which they have been enslaved, asks them to volunteer for a time-travel experiment that will send them back to their own time. They return just prior to the original nuclear attack, and flee in Barbara's car. As they drive they realize that while Barbara had driven a car with an automatic transmission, this car—the same car in every other respect—has a manual transmission, and Farnham deduces that the time-travel experiment worked but sent them into an alternate universe. They gather supplies and flee into the hills, surviving the attack, and live out the rest of their lives. ===== The story is set in New York City in the 1890s. A bawdy singer, Lady Lou (Mae West), works in the Bowery barroom saloon of her boss and benefactor, Gus Jordan (Noah Beery), who has given her many diamonds. But Lou is a lady with more men friends than anyone might imagine. What she does not know is that Gus trafficks in prostitution and runs a counterfeiting ring to help finance her expensive diamonds. He also sends young women to San Francisco to be pickpockets. Gus works with two other crooked entertainer- assistants, Russian Rita (Rafaela Ottiano) and Rita's lover, the suave Sergei Stanieff (Gilbert Roland). One of Gus's rivals and former "friend" of Lou's, named Dan Flynn (David Landau), spends most of the movie dropping hints to Lou that Gus is up to no good, promising to look after her once Gus is in jail. Lou leads him on, hinting at times that she will return to him, but eventually he loses patience and implies he'll see her jailed if she doesn't submit to him. A city mission is located next door to the bar. Its young director, Captain Cummings (Cary Grant), is in reality an undercover Federal agent working to infiltrate and expose the illegal activities in the bar. Gus suspects nothing; he worries only that Cummings will reform his bar and scare away his customers. Lou's former boyfriend, Chick Clark (Owen Moore), is a vicious criminal who was convicted of robbery and sent to prison for trying to steal diamonds for her. In his absence, she becomes attracted to the handsome young psalm-singing reformer. Warned that Chick thinks she's betrayed him, she goes to the prison to try to reassure him. All the inmates greet her warmly and familiarly as she walks down the cellblock. Chick becomes angry and threatens to kill her if she double-crosses or two-times him before he gets out. She lies and claims she has been true to him. Gus gives counterfeit money to Rita and Sergei to spend. Chick escapes from jail, and police search for him in the bar. He comes into Lou's room and starts to strangle her, breaking off only because he still loves her and cannot harm her. Lou calms him down by promising that she will go with him when she finishes her next number. After Sergei gives Lou a diamond pin belonging to Rita, Rita starts a fight with Lou, who accidentally stabs her to death. Lou calmly combs the dead woman's long hair to hide the fact Rita is dead while the police search the room for Chick Clark. She has her bodyguard Spider (Dewey Robinson), who "would do anything for you, Lou" dispose of Rita's body. She then tells Spider to bring Chick, who's hiding in an alley, back to her room upstairs. Then, while she sings "Frankie and Johnny", she silently signals to Dan Flynn that he should go to her room to wait for her, even though she knows Chick is in there with a gun. Chick shoots Dan dead and the gunfire draws a police raid. Cummings shows his badge and reveals himself as "The Hawk", a well-known Federal agent, as he arrests Gus and Sergei. Chick, still lurking in Lou's room, is about to kill Lou for double-crossing him, when Cummings also apprehends him. Cummings then takes Lou away in an open horse-drawn carriage instead of the paddywagon into which all the other criminals have been loaded. He tells her she doesn't belong in jail and removes all her other rings and slips a diamond engagement ring onto her left ring finger.Green, Stanley (1999) Hollywood Musicals Year by Year (2nd ed.), pub. Hal Leonard Corporation page 22 ===== In pre-World War I northern China, young farmer Wang Lung (Paul Muni) marries O-Lan (Luise Rainer), a slave at the Great House, the residence of the most powerful family in their village. O-Lan proves to be an excellent wife, hard working and uncomplaining. Wang Lung prospers. He buys more land, and O-Lan gives birth to two sons and a daughter. Meanwhile, the Great House begins to decline. All is well until a drought and the resulting famine drive the family to the brink. O-Lan gives birth to a second daughter but kills her shortly after birth to spare her from starvation. Desperate, Wang Lung considers the advice of his pessimistic, worthless uncle (Walter Connolly) to sell his land for food, but O-Lan opposes it. Instead, they travel south to a city in search of work. The family survives by begging and stealing. When a revolutionary gives a speech to try to drum up support for the army approaching despite rain in the north, Wang Lung and O-Lan realize the drought is over. They long to return to their farm, but they have no money for an ox, seed, and food. The city changes hands, and O-Lan joins a mob looting a mansion. However, she is knocked down and trampled upon. When she comes to, she finds a bag of jewels overlooked in the confusion. This windfall allows the family to go home and prosper once more. O-Lan asks only to keep two pearls for herself. Years pass. Wang Lung's sons grow up into educated young men, and he has grown so wealthy that he purchases the Great House. Then, Wang Lung becomes besotted with Lotus (Tilly Losch), a pretty, young dancer at the local tea house, and makes her his second wife. He begins to find fault with the worn-out O-Lan. Desperate to gain affection from Lotus, he gives O-Lan's pearls to Lotus. When Wang Lung discovers that Lotus has seduced Younger Son (Roland Lui), he orders his son to leave. Then a swarm of locusts threatens the entire village. Using a strategy devised by Elder Son (Keye Luke), everyone unites to try to save the crops. Just when all seems lost, the wind shifts direction, taking the danger away. The near-disaster brings Wang Lung back to his senses. He reconciles with Younger Son. On the latter's wedding day, Wang Lung returns the pearls to O-Lan before she dies, completely exhausted by a hard life. Without disturbing the wedding festivities, Wang Lung quietly exits the house and regards a flowering peach tree planted by O-Lan on their marriage day. Reverently he murmurs, "O-Lan, you are the earth." ===== ‘Sam’ Spade is a private detective in San Francisco, in partnership with Miles Archer. The beautiful "Miss Wonderley" hires them to follow Floyd Thursby, who has run off with her sister. Archer takes the first stint but is found shot dead that night. Thursby is also killed later and Spade is a suspect. The next morning, Spade coolly tells his office secretary, Effie Perine, to have the office door repainted to read simply "Samuel Spade". "Miss Wonderley" is soon revealed to be an acquisitive adventuress named Brigid O'Shaughnessy, who is involved in the search for a black statuette of unknown but substantial value. Others are after this falcon, including Joel Cairo, an effeminate Levantine homosexual, and Casper Gutman, a fat man accompanied by a vicious young gunman, Wilmer Cook. O'Shaughnessy begs for Spade's protection while telling him as little as possible. They meet with Cairo at Spade's apartment, and Spade again presses O'Shaughnessy for details; again she stalls but kisses Spade. The next morning, she is asleep in his bed. Leaving her there, Spade slips out to search her apartment. Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in the 1941 film adaptation Effie believes O'Shaughnessy "is all right" and Spade should help her. Effie agrees to hide her at her own home, but O'Shaughnessy disappears again. When Spade meets Gutman in his hotel room, neither will tell what he knows. Spade implies he is looking out for himself, not O'Shaughnessy. Red herrings abound. The police suspect Spade in the shootings: He was bedding Archer's wife, Iva. The District Attorney ties the shootings to Dixie Monahan, a Chicago gambler who had employed Thursby as a bodyguard in the Far East. At a second meeting, Gutman tells Spade the history of the falcon. It was made of gold and jewels by the 16th-century Knights of Malta as a gift to the King of Spain but was captured by pirates. After passing from owner to owner, at some time it was coated with black enamel to conceal its value. Gutman traced the falcon to General Kemidov, a Russian exile in Constantinople and hired O'Shaughnessy to get it; she brought in Cairo to help. O'Shaughnessy and Thursby fled with the falcon to Hong Kong and from there to San Francisco. During this conversation, Gutman drugs Spade, who passes out on the floor. Spade awakens alone and returns to his office where a wounded ship's captain staggers in with a package containing the falcon and dies. O'Shaughnessy calls the office, begs for Spade's help, but sends him on a wild goose chase. When he returns, O'Shaughnessy is waiting in front of Spade's apartment building. Inside Spade's apartment they find Gutman, Wilmer, and Cairo in wait with guns drawn. Gutman presents $10,000 in cash for the falcon, but Spade argues that the police must arrest someone for the murders. During a fight, Spade knocks Wilmer out, and Gutman agrees to give Wilmer to the police. Spade has Effie fetch the falcon. But Gutman discovers it is a fake (a decoy made by General Kemidov). During the excitement, Wilmer escapes. Gutman decides to go to Constantinople for the real falcon; Cairo joins him and they leave. Spade then calls the police and tells them the story, adding that he has Wilmer's guns and other evidence. While they are waiting, he bullies O'Shaughnessy into confessing her real role. Archer was shot with Thursby's gun but by her. She has lied to him and double-crossed him. O'Shaughnessy admits all this, but pleads that she is in love with Spade. Maybe he does care for her, Spade admits, but "I won't play the sap for you" – for personal as well as professional reasons. If she can get off with a long prison term, he'll wait for her; but if she hangs, so be it. When the police arrive, he turns her in, and the police tell him Wilmer has just shot Gutman dead. ===== On Christmas Eve 1945, in Bedford Falls, New York, 38-year-old George Bailey contemplates suicide. The prayers of his family and friends reach heaven, where Angel 2nd class Clarence Odbody is assigned to save George to earn his wings. Clarence is shown flashbacks of George's life. He watches 12-year-old George save his brother, Harry, from drowning but lose hearing in his left ear. Later, George prevents the distraught town druggist, Mr. Gower, from accidentally poisoning a child's prescription. In 1928, George plans a world tour before college and is reintroduced to Mary Hatch, who has always had a crush on him. The attraction is now mutual. When his father suffers a stroke and dies, George postpones his travel to sort out the family business, Bailey Brothers Building and Loan, which avaricious board member Henry F. Potter, who controls most of the town's businesses, seeks to dissolve. The other board members vote to keep the Building and Loan open if George will run it. George acquiesces and works alongside his uncle, Billy, and gives his tuition to Harry, with the understanding that Harry will run the business when he graduates. Harry returns from college married and with an excellent job offer from his father-in-law. George is dejected but doesn't stand in Harry's way and continues running the Building and Loan. Immediately following their wedding, George and Mary witness a run on the bank, and use their $2,000 honeymoon savings to keep the Building and Loan solvent. Under George's leadership, the company eventually establishes Bailey Park, a modern housing development to rival Potter's overpriced slums. Potter offers George $20,000 a year to be his assistant, but, realizing that Potter's true intention is to shut down the Building and Loan, George rebuffs and rebukes him. During World War II, George is ineligible for service because of his deaf ear. Harry becomes a Navy pilot and earns the Medal of Honor for shooting down a kamikaze plane headed for a troop transport. On Christmas Eve 1945, as the town prepares a hero's welcome for Harry, Billy goes to the bank to deposit $8,000 of the Building and Loan's cash. Billy taunts Potter with a newspaper headline about Harry, but unintentionally wraps the envelope of cash in Potter's newspaper and hands it to Potter. Potter finds the envelope but says nothing, while Billy cannot recall how he misplaced the cash. With a bank examiner reviewing the company's records, George realizes scandal and criminal charges will follow. Fruitlessly retracing Billy's steps, George berates him and takes out his frustration on his family. Clarence (Henry Travers) is about to show what life would be like if George had never been born George desperately appeals to Potter for a loan, offering his life insurance policy with $500 in equity as collateral. Based on the policy's $15,000 nominal value, Potter says George is worth more dead than alive, and phones the police to arrest him for misappropriation of funds. George flees, gets drunk at a bar, and prays in vain for help. Suicidal, he goes to a nearby bridge, but before he can jump, Clarence dives into the river. George leaps in and rescues him. When George wishes he had never been born, Clarence shows him a timeline in which he never existed. Bedford Falls is now Pottersville, an unsavory town occupied by sleazy entertainment venues, crime, and amoral people. The lives George touched are vastly different. The druggist, Mr. Gower, was imprisoned for manslaughter since George was not around to prevent him from poisoning the pills. George's mother doesn't know him, and reveals that Billy was institutionalized after the Building and Loan failed. Bailey Park is a cemetery, where George discovers young Harry's grave. Since George did not save Harry, Harry was not there to save the soldiers on the transport ship. George finds that Mary is a spinster librarian. When he claims to be her husband, she screams for the police and George runs away. Now convinced that Clarence is his guardian angel, George returns to the bridge and begs for his life back. The original reality is restored, and a grateful George rushes home to await his arrest. Mary and Billy arrive after rallying the townspeople, who donate more than enough to cover the missing $8,000. Harry arrives and toasts George as "the richest man in town". George receives a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a gift from Clarence, with a note reminding George that no man is a failure who has friends, and thanking him for his wings. At that moment, a bell on the Christmas tree rings. George's youngest daughter explains that it means that an angel has earned his wings, signifying Clarence's promotion. ===== At a performance by the Ballet Lermontov at Covent Garden Opera House, music student Julian is in attendance to hear the ballet score Heart of Fire, composed by his teacher, Professor Palmer. Separately present is Victoria 'Vicky' Page, a young, unknown dancer from an aristocratic background, with her aunt, Lady Neston. As Heart of Fire progresses, Julian recognises the music as one of his own compositions. During the performance, Professor Palmer receives an invitation to an after-ballet party at Lady Neston's residence, also asking Boris Lermontov, the company impresario, to attend. Julian leaves the performance in disillusionment at his professor's plagiarism of his music. Lermontov and Vicky meet, and he invites her to a rehearsal of the company. Julian has written to Lermontov to explain the circumstances behind Heart of Fire, but then tries to retrieve the letter. Lermontov's assistant Dimitri thwarts all attempts by Julian to gain entry to Lermontov's suite, but finally Lermontov gives Julian an audience. Julian says that he wishes to retrieve his letter before Lermontov has seen it, except that Lermontov has already read the letter. Lermontov asks Julian to play one of his own works at the piano. After hearing Julian play, he hires him as a répétiteur for the company orchestra and assistant to the company's conductor, Livingstone Montague (known colloquially to the company as 'Livy'). Lermontov realises that Julian was the true composer of Heart of Fire. Julian and Vicky arrive for work at the Ballet Lermontov on the same day. Later, Vicky dances with Ballet Rambert in a matinee performance of Swan Lake at the Mercury Theatre, Notting Hill Gate, in a production with a company led by Marie Rambert (who appears in the film as herself in a wordless cameo). Watching this performance, Lermontov realises her potential and invites Vicky to go with Ballet Lermontov to Paris and Monte Carlo. He decides to create a starring role for her in a new ballet, The Ballet of the Red Shoes, for which Julian is to provide the music. The Ballet of the Red Shoes is a resounding success and Lermontov revitalizes the company's repertoire with Vicky in the lead roles and Julian tasked with composing new scores. In the meantime, Vicky and Julian have fallen in love, but keep their relationship secret from Lermontov. Lermontov begins to have personal feelings toward Vicky; he resents the romance between her and Julian after learning of it. The impresario fires Julian; Vicky leaves the company with him. They marry and live in London, where Julian works on composing a new opera. Some time later whilst travelling, Vicky receives a visit from Lermontov, who convinces her to return to the company to dance a revival of The Ballet of the Red Shoes. On opening night, Julian appears in her dressing room; he has left the première of his opera at Covent Garden to find her and take her back. Lermontov arrives; he and Julian contend for Vicky's affections, each one arguing that her true destiny is with him only. Torn between her love for Julian and her need to dance, she eventually chooses the latter. Julian, realising that he has lost her, leaves for the railway station; Lermontov consoles Vicky and tries to turn her attention to the evening's performance. Vicky is escorted to the stage wearing the red shoes and, seemingly under their influence, turns and runs from the theatre. Julian, on the platform of the railway station, runs towards her. Vicky leaps from a balcony and falls in front of an approaching train, which hits her. Whether this is suicide or murder (by the red shoes) is left ambiguous. Shortly after, a shaken Lermontov appears before the audience to announce that, "Miss Page is unable to dance tonight—nor indeed any other night". As a mark of respect, the company performs The Ballet of the Red Shoes with a spotlight on the empty space where Vicky would have been. As Vicky bleeds to death on a stretcher, she asks Julian to remove the red shoes, just as the ballet ends. ===== The author employs a third person-omniscient in a dramatic-progressive structure, where Howard is the focal character. Three stories within a story provide historical and social significance for the outer narrative. ===== In 1850, backwoodsman Adam Pontipee comes to town in the Oregon Territory to shop and look for a bride. He eventually comes upon the local tavern, where he sees Milly chopping wood. After being convinced of her worth by the quality of her cooking and her insistence on finishing her chores before she would leave with him, he proposes and she accepts despite knowing him for only a few hours. On the journey home, Milly talks about how she is excited to be cooking and taking care of only one man while Adam begins to look uncomfortable. When they arrive at his cabin in the mountains, Milly is surprised to learn that Adam is the eldest of seven brothers living under the same roof. The brothers have been given Bible names alphabetically: Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank (short for frankincense—supposedly due to no Bible names beginning with F—and their mother thought he smelled sweet), and Gideon. All of the brothers have red hair, and all but Gideon are well over six feet tall. Milly is also shocked at how dirty their house is, along with how unkempt and uncouth Adam and his brothers are. Later that night, Milly is angry and tells Adam that he wanted a servant girl instead of a wife. Adam acknowledges he needed her to be able to work because living in the backwoods is a hard life. After he plans to spend the night sleeping in a tree outside their window so that he won't lose face with his brothers, she relents after explaining she was upset because she had had high hopes of marriage and love. The next morning, Milly decides to teach Adam and his brothers cleanliness and proper manners – especially at the table during meals. After the brothers wash and shave, Milly is shocked at how handsome they are, and that none of them got married. It turns out that the brothers rarely saw girls and never learned how to communicate with them. At first, the brothers have a hard time changing from their "mountain man" ways, but eventually come to see their only chance to get brides of their own is to do things Milly's way. They try out their new manners at a social gathering in the town (a dance and barn-raising), where they meet six women they like – Dorcas, Ruth, Martha, Liza, Sarah, and Alice. The girls take a fancy to the brothers as well. However, all of them already have suitors among the young men of the town, who taunt the brothers into fighting during the barn-raising. At first, the six brothers remember Milly's teachings and try to resist being drawn into a fight. The suitors finally go too far when they attack Adam, provoking Gideon into fighting back. A brawl ensues in which the brothers dominate their physically weaker town rivals. Although the Pontipee brothers did not start the fight, they are kicked out of the town by the townspeople. Winter comes, and the six younger brothers are pining for the girls they had fallen in love with. Milly asks Adam to talk to the brothers as she fears they will want to leave because of missing the girls. Adam reads his brothers the story of "The Sobbin' Women" (taken from Plutarch's story of the Sabine Women), from the book of Stories from Plutarch that Milly had brought to the homestead along with her Bible. He tells them that they should take whatever action is necessary to get their women. Aided by Adam, the brothers kidnap the six girls, then cause an avalanche in Echo Pass so the townspeople can't pursue them. The Pontipee homestead is cut off from the town until the spring thaw opens Echo Pass again. The only problem: the brothers forgot to bring the parson along to perform the marriages. Milly is furious with Adam and his brothers for kidnapping the women, and she kicks Adam and his brothers out of their house and sends them to the barn to "eat and sleep with the rest of the livestock", while the women stay in the house with her. Adam, angered by Milly's action, leaves for the trapping cabin further up the mountain to spend the winter by himself. Gideon tells Milly and begs her to tell Adam not to leave, but Milly refuses, saying: "He's gotta learn that he can't treat people this way." Winter slowly passes, and the women vent their frustrations by pulling pranks on the brothers, though there is clear attraction on both sides. After Milly announces that she's going to have a baby, the women and the brothers come together as a family. Milly gives birth to a daughter, in the spring. The daughter is named Hannah as a continuum to the names in alphabetical order, the last one being Gideon. Gideon rides to the cabin to inform Adam of his daughter's arrival and asks him to come home. Adam refuses, saying that he had said he would return home when the pass was open. Adam does return home, when Echo Pass comes open, to reconcile with Milly and meet his new daughter. As a newly responsible father, he has become aware of how worried the townspeople would be about what has happened to the six abducted girls. Adam admits that he would have hung his daughter's kidnapper(s) on the nearest tree; Milly forgives him for his past behavior. Adam tells his brothers they need to return the women to their families; the brothers are unwilling, believing their parents won't let them marry their daughters, and the other six women refuse to return to their families, lest their parents to force them to return to their former suitors; they run away to hide. When Milly discovers that they are not in the house, Adam tells the brothers to find them and bring them back. The townspeople arrive, intent on hanging the Pontipee brothers for the kidnappings. The fathers, who find the brothers trying to force the women to return to town, misunderstand their efforts as assault, and charge to the girls' rescue. Alice's father, Reverend Elcott (Ian Wolfe) -- the minister the brothers had forgotten to grab when they took the girls—hears baby Hannah cry in the distance, and worries that the baby might belong to one of the kidnapped girls. Elcott asks the girls whose baby he heard, and to not be afraid to tell. They each answer "Mine." This misinformation serves the women's and the brothers' needs: the townspeople, including the girls' fathers, insist on immediate shotgun weddings, which are performed by Reverend Elcott, while Adam and Milly watch and the fathers stand behind their respective daughters' grooms, guns over their arms. The film ends with the brothers kissing their respective brides in the living room of the Pontipee cabin. ===== The protagonist, who is unnamed, travels to Berlin to arrange the defection of a Soviet scientist named Semitsa, this being brokered by Johnny Vulkan of the Berlin intelligence community.Baker, Brian (2006) Masculinity in Fiction and Film: Representing Men in Popular Genres, 1945–2000, p. 42. Continuum International Publishing Group at Google Books. Retrieved 29 April 2013. Despite the protagonist's scepticism, the deal seems to have the support of Russian security-chief Colonel Stok and Hallam at the Home Office. The fake documentation for Semitsa needs to be precisely specified. An Israeli intelligence agent named Samantha Steel is involved in the case but it soon becomes apparent that behind the façade of an elaborate mock funeral lies a game of deadly manoeuvres and ruthless tactics. ===== The unnamed protagonist is ordered to Helsinki by Dawlish, his boss, to suppress a newspaper article, potentially embarrassing to the U.K. government, about to be published by a Finnish journalist. He finds the journalist murdered and coincidentally meets a young woman who attempts to recruit him into the British Intelligence. This woman, Signe Laine, is both romantically connected to and working for the protagonist's old American friend Harvey Newbegin (who also appeared in Funeral in Berlin). Newbegin in turn attempts to recruit him into a private intelligence outfit, whose network is operated by 'The Brain', a billion dollar super-computer owned by eccentric Texan billionaire General Midwinter. Midwinter is using his agency and private army to start an uprising in Latvia, at the time a part of the USSR, in an attempt to end Communism in the Eastern bloc and tip the balance of the Cold War in favour of the West. After discovering this and also the fact that a package Newbegin wants delivered from England to Finland contains virus- contaminated eggs, stolen from a British research institute, the protagonist treks from Finland through Riga, Leningrad, New York City, Texas and back to London. He infiltrates Midwinter's organization, braving unforgiving environments, violence and shifting loyalties, eventually to return to the Baltic to stop the virus from falling into the hands of the Soviets and the madman billionaire and protect British reputations in the process."The Billion Dollar Brain" by Len Deighton, 2015 re-reading. ===== Kim (Kimball O'Hara) is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier (Kimball O'Hara sr., a former colour sergeant and later an employee of an Indian railway company) and a poor Irish mother (a former nanny in a colonel's household) who have both died in poverty. Living a vagabond existence in India under British rule in the late 19th century, Kim earns his living by begging and running small errands on the streets of Lahore. He occasionally works for Mahbub Ali, a Pashtun horse trader who is one of the native operatives of the British secret service. Kim is so immersed in the local culture that few realise he is a white child, although he carries a packet of documents from his father entrusted to him by an Indian woman who cared for him. Kim befriends an aged Tibetan lama who is on a quest to free himself from the Wheel of Things by finding the legendary ″River of the Arrow″. Kim becomes his chela, or disciple, and accompanies him on his journey. On the way, Kim incidentally learns about parts of the Great Game and is recruited by Mahbub Ali to carry a message to the head of British intelligence in Umballa. Kim's trip with the lama along the Grand Trunk Road is the first great adventure in the novel. By chance, Kim's father's regimental chaplain identifies Kim by his Masonic certificate, which he wears around his neck, and Kim is forcibly separated from the lama. The lama insists that Kim should comply with the chaplain's plan because he believes it is in Kim's best interests, and the boy is sent to a top English school in Lucknow. The lama, a former abbot, funds Kim's education. Kim is divided between his love for his Lama master, and his eagerness to become a secret agent and even have a price put on his head, and his natural independence as a free spirit. Throughout his years at school, Kim remains in contact with the holy man he has come to love. Kim also retains contact with his secret service connections and is trained in espionage (to be a surveyor) while on vacation from school by Lurgan Sahib, a sort of benevolent Fagin,I Ousby ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge 1995) p. 512 at his jewellery shop in Simla. As part of his training, Kim looks at a tray full of mixed objects and notes which have been added or taken away, a pastime still called Kim's Game, also called the Jewel Game. Other parts of this training are disguise and the careful study of Indian population, and the characterisic dress, behaviour and "even how they spit" in order to go undercover or to discover those in disguise. After three years of schooling, Kim is given a government appointment so that he can begin to participate in the Great Game. Before this appointment begins, however, he is granted a much-deserved break. Kim rejoins the lama and at the behest of Kim's superior, Hurree Chunder Mookherjee, they make a trip to the Himalayas so Kim can investigate what some Russian intelligence agents are doing. Kim obtains maps, papers and other important items from the Russians, who are working to undermine British control of the region. Mookherjee befriends the Russians undercover, acting as a guide, and ensures that they do not recover the lost items. Kim, aided by some porters and villagers, helps to rescue the lama. The lama realises that he has gone astray. His search for the River of the Arrow should be taking place in the plains, not in the mountains, and he orders the porters to take them back. Here Kim and the lama are nursed back to health after their arduous journey. Kim delivers the Russian documents to Hurree, and a concerned Mahbub Ali comes to check on Kim. The lama finds his river and is convinced he has achieved Enlightenment, and wants to share it with Kim. However, it is not revealed what happens to them next. ===== Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) and Banky Edwards (Jason Lee) are comic book artists and lifelong best friends. They meet fellow comic book artist Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams) at a comic book convention in New York City, where they are promoting their comic Bluntman and Chronic. Holden is attracted to Alyssa, but soon learns that she is a lesbian. The two begin spending time together, and a deep friendship develops. Eventually, Holden is no longer able to contain his feelings, and confesses his love to Alyssa. She is initially angry with him, but that night, the two sleep together and begin a romantic relationship. This new development worsens the tension between Holden and Banky, as Banky resents Alyssa for coming between him and his best friend. He investigates and uncovers dirt on Alyssa's past, and he reports to Holden that Alyssa participated in a threesome with two boys during high school, who gave her the nickname "Finger Cuffs". Holden is deeply upset by this revelation, having previously believed that he was the first man Alyssa had ever slept with. While attending a hockey game, he clumsily attempts to bait her into confessing, and in response she angrily boasts of having had the threesome in question, loudly enough for everyone within earshot to hear. During the argument that ensues, she tearfully tells Holden about her "many" youthful sexual experimentations, and refuses to apologize for her past. Holden leaves feeling disillusioned and furious. Later, during lunch with Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith), Silent Bob reveals that he was once in a relationship similar to Holden's. Despite the fact that he was in love with his girlfriend, Amy, his neurosis about her adventurous sexual past led him to end the relationship. Later realizing that this was wrong decision, he says he has "spent every day since then chasing Amy, so to speak." Moved by Silent Bob's story, Holden devises a plan to fix both his relationship with Alyssa and his estranged friendship with Banky. He invites them both over and tells Alyssa that he would like to get over her past and remain her boyfriend. He also tells Banky that he realizes that Banky is in love with him—kissing him passionately to prove the point. Holden suggests a threesome. Though initially shocked, Banky agrees to participate, but Alyssa refuses, explaining to Holden that it will not save their relationship. Before leaving, she states that she will always love him, but she will not "be his whore". Banky then leaves the room without saying a word. One year later, both Banky and Alyssa are busy promoting their own respective comics at a convention in New York City. It is revealed that Holden and Banky dissolved their partnership of Bluntman and Chronic, the rights to which Holden now exclusively owns. Banky smiles sadly at seeing Holden, who silently congratulates him for his success on his own solo comic. Banky gestures over to a booth hosted by Alyssa, and provides wordless encouragement to Holden to go talk to her. He has a brief, quietly emotional conversation with Alyssa, and gives her a copy of Chasing Amy, his new comic based on their relationship. After Holden leaves, Alyssa's new girlfriend (Virginia Smith) arrives and asks who she was talking to. A shaken, misty-eyed Alyssa replies, "Oh, just some guy I knew." ===== Isis, otherwise The Blessed Very Reverend Gaia-Marie Isis Saraswati Minerva Mirza Whit of Luskentyre, Beloved Elect of God III, is the 19-year-old granddaughter and designated spiritual heir of Salvador Whit, patriarch of the Luskentyrians. They are a religious cult who live in a commune in Stirlingshire and reject most technology. They run their lives according to a collection of beliefs and rituals "revealed" to Salvador after he washed ashore on Harris in the Western Isles and "married" two young Asian ladies (Aasni and Zhobelia Asis). (Haggis pakora becomes a staple of the cult's cuisine.) The novel opens shortly before the Luskentyrian Festival of Love, held every four years, about nine months before every leap year day (29 February). The Luskentyrians believe that those born on that day have special power. This includes Isis herself, Elect of God, and expected to take over leadership of the cult. The bulk of the novel tells of Isis' voyages in the world of "the Unsaved" (also known as "the Obtuse", "the Wretched", "the Bland" and "the Asleep"), through Scotland and southern England in search of Morag, who is feared to have rejected the cult. While searching for her cousin, Isis meets Rastas, policemen, white power skinheads, and other characters of a sort she has never encountered before, and tells the story of the cult and the rationale behind its rules. Isis' maternal grandmother, Yolanda, a feisty Texan woman, appears and lends her support to Isis' quest. Isis' friend Sophi, although not part of the cult, is very close to her. Isis meets her whenever she goes to her house to use the Luskentyrian method of free (if laborious) telephone communication, using coded rings. Returning with enhanced maturity and a lot more information, Isis must decide what to tell the other members of the cult. ===== Arthur Dent plans to sightsee across the Galaxy with his girlfriend Fenchurch, but she disappears during a hyperspace jump, a result of being from an unstable sector of the Galaxy. Depressed, Arthur continues to travel the galaxy using semen donations to fund his travels, assured of his safety until he visits Stavromula Beta, having killed an incarnation of Agrajag at some point in the future at said planet. During one trip, he ends up stranded on the homely planet Lamuella, and decides to stay to become a sandwich maker for the local population. Meanwhile, Ford Prefect has returned to the offices of the Hitchhiker's Guide, and is annoyed to find out the original publishing company, Megadodo Publications, has been taken over by InfiniDim Enterprises, which are run by the Vogons. Fearing for his life, he escapes the building, along the way stealing the yet-unpublished, seemingly sentient Hitchhiker's Guide Mk. II. He goes into hiding after sending the Guide to himself, care of Arthur, for safekeeping. On Lamuella, Arthur is surprised by the appearance of Trillian with a teenage daughter, Random Dent. Trillian explains that she wanted a child, and used the only human DNA she could find, thus claiming that Arthur is Random's father. She leaves Random with Arthur to allow her to better pursue her career as an intergalactic reporter. Random is frustrated with Arthur and life on Lamuella; when Ford's package to Arthur arrives, she takes it and discovers the Guide. The Guide helps her to escape the planet on Ford's ship after Ford arrives on the planet looking for Arthur. Discovering Random, the Guide, and Ford's ship missing, the two manage to find a way to leave Lamuella and head for Earth, where they suspect Random is also heading to find Trillian. Ford expresses concern at the Guide's manipulation of events, noting its "Unfiltered Perception" and fearing its potence and ultimate objective. Reporter Tricia McMillan is a version of Trillian living on an alternate Earth who never took Zaphod Beeblebrox's offer to travel in space. She is approached by an extraterrestrial species, the Grebulons, who have created a base of operations on the planet Rupert, a recently discovered tenth planet in the Solar System. However, due to damage to their ship in arriving, they have lost most of their computer core and their memories, with the only salvageable instructions being to observe something interesting with Earth. They ask Tricia's help to adapt astrology charts for Rupert in exchange for allowing her to interview them. Tricia conducts the interview, but the resulting footage looks fake. She is called away from editing the footage to report on a spaceship landing in the middle of London. As Tricia arrives, Random is leaving the ship. Random yells at Tricia, who she believes to be her mother. Arthur, Ford, and Trillian arrive and help Tricia to calm Random. They remove her from the chaos surrounding the spacecraft and take her to a bar. Trillian tries to warn the group that the Grebulons, having become bored with their mission, are about to destroy the Earth. Random disrupts the discussion by producing a laser gun she took from her ship. Arthur, still believing he cannot die, tries to calm Random, but a distraction causes her to fire the weapon, sending the bar into a panic. Arthur tends to a man hit by the blast, who drops a card with the name of the bar- "Stavro Mueller – Beta". Arthur sees Ford laughing wildly at this turn of events, and experiences a "tremendous feeling of peace". The Grebulons, having determined that removing Earth from the astrological charts will improve their horoscopes, destroy it. It is revealed that the Vogons designed the Guide Mk. II with the ability to see the potential outcome of any event, enabling it to ensure that every version of the Earth in all realities is destroyed. Its mission complete, the Guide collapses into nothingness. ===== Clara Bow as Mary Preston in Wings Jack Powell and David Armstrong are rivals in the same small American town, both vying for the attentions of pretty Sylvia Lewis. Jack fails to realize that "the girl next door", Mary Preston, is desperately in love with him. The two young men both enlist to become combat pilots in the Army Air Service. When they leave for training camp, Jack mistakenly believes Sylvia prefers him. She actually prefers David and lets him know about her feelings, but is too kindhearted to turn down Jack's affection. Jack and David are billeted together. Their tent mate is Cadet White, but their acquaintance is all too brief; White is killed in an air crash the same day. Undaunted, the two men endure a rigorous training period, where they go from being enemies to best friends. Upon graduating, they are shipped off to France to fight against Imperial Germany. Mary joins the war effort by becoming an ambulance driver. She later learns of Jack's reputation as the ace known as "The Shooting Star" and encounters him while on leave in Paris. She finds him, but he is too drunk to recognize her. She puts him to bed, but when two military police barge in while she is innocently changing from a borrowed dress back into her uniform in the same room, she is forced to resign and return to the United States. The climax of the story comes with the epic Battle of Saint-Mihiel. David is shot down and presumed dead. However, he survives the crash landing, steals a German biplane, and heads for the Allied lines. By a tragic stroke of bad luck, Jack spots the enemy aircraft and, bent on avenging his friend, begins an attack. He is successful in downing the aircraft and lands to retrieve a souvenir of his victory. The owner of the land where David's aircraft crashed urges Jack to come to the dying man's side. He agrees and becomes distraught when he realizes what he has done. David consoles him, and before he dies, forgives his comrade. At the war's end, Jack returns home to a hero's welcome. He visits David's grieving parents to return his friend's effects. During the visit he begs their forgiveness for causing David's death. Mrs. Armstrong says it is not Jack who is responsible for her son's death, but the war. Then, Jack is reunited with Mary and realizes he loves her. ===== Chico works in the sewers of Paris. He dreams of becoming a street sweeper and therefore lights candles in the church. He also asks a blonde woman to be his partner. But his wishes are not granted, which makes him bitter. One day Chico saves the young prostitute Diane, who is suffering from her unscrupulous sister Nana. The police want to arrest the innocent and honorable prostitute, who is innocent in spite of her job, but Chico saves her by pretending to be her husband. Now the two have to maintain the facade and act as spouses. So Chico allows Diane to move into his attic with him. In fact, the two find each other. But when the war breaks out, Chico is called up. Diane survives the war working in an ammunition factory. When the news of Chico's death reaches her, she continues. But Chico is not dead. He returns home to Diane, wounded and blind from the fighting. ===== The play's single set is the dingy press room of Chicago's Criminal Courts Building, overlooking the gallows behind the Cook County Jail. Reporters from most of the city's newspapers are passing the time with poker and pungent wisecracks about the news of the day. Soon they will witness the hanging of Earl Williams, a white man and supposed Communist revolutionary convicted of killing a black policeman. Hildy Johnson, cocky star reporter for the Examiner, is late. He appears only to say goodbye; he is quitting to get a respectable job and be married. Suddenly the reporters hear that Earl Williams has escaped from the jail. All but Hildy stampede out for more information. As Hildy tries to decide how to react, Williams comes in through the window. He tells Hildy he is no revolutionary, and that he shot the police officer by accident. The reporter realizes this bewildered, harmless little man was railroaded -- just to help the crooked mayor and sheriff pick up enough black votes to win re-election. It is the story of a lifetime. Hildy helps Williams hide inside a roll-top desk. His daunting challenge now is to get Williams out of the building to a safe place for an interview before rival reporters or trigger-happy policemen discover him. Hildy has no choice but to ask for help from Walter Burns, managing editor of the Examiner — a devious tyrant who would do just about anything to keep Hildy with the newspaper. ===== Jackie Cooper and Robert Coogan in Skippy Skippy (Jackie Cooper) is the feisty son of the strict Dr. Herbert Skinner (Willard Robertson) and his wife Ellen (Enid Bennett). Skinner forbids his son Skippy to play in the pauperized Shantytown, because of the unhygenical and criminal surroundings there. But Skippy and his friend Sidney (Jackie Searl) still go to Shantytown where Skippy meets a new boy named Sooky (Robert Coogan, Jackie Coogan's little brother). He saves the small boy Sooky from the much bigger bully Harley Nubbins (Donald Haines). Skippy and Sooky become friends. One day Harley accidentally breaks the windshield of his father's car with Skippy's yo-yo. Harley, who has a very aggressive and brute father, blames it on Skippy and Sooky. Mr. Nubbins (Jack Rube Clifford), who works as a dog catcher, takes Sooky's dog and demands that they pay him for the damages if they want their dog back. The boys gather three dollars by breaking Skippy's savings bank, but Mr. Nubbins accepts it only for his windshield. He gives them three days to get another three dollars for a dog license and he threatens that he'll kill their dog if they don't get the money. Sooky and Skippy spend the next two days selling bottles, lemonade and wood, and staging a performance to earn money. Skippy's father doesn't want to lend them the remaining thirty cents. Then Mr. Dubbins kills their dog and Skippy blames his father for it. The next morning, Skippy gets a new bicycle from his father. But he trades the bicycle to his friend, Eloise (Mitzi Green), for her new dog. Skippy takes the dog to Sooky. Dr. Skinner has a change of heart and buys Sooky a licensed dog, finds his mother a job, and refrains from ordering Shantytown destroyed, instead offering assistance to its citizens. For the first time, Dr. Skinner plays with Skippy in Shantytown. There they accidentally break Mr. Nubbins' new windshield. Dr. Skinner wins a fight against Mr. Nubbins and shows that he is a good father. ===== The film depicts the adventures of real-life trader and adventurer Alfred Aloysius "Trader" Horn (Harry Carey), while on safari in Africa. Much of the film is fictional, including the discovery of a white blonde jungle queen, the lost daughter of a missionary (Edwina Booth). A scene based upon a genuine incident occurs in which Carey as Horn swings on a vine across a river filled with genuine crocodiles, one of which comes very close to taking his leg off. ===== Dorothy Haley (Sally Eilers) and Edna Driggs (Minna Gombell) are store models, first seen in bridal clothes at their job one afternoon. After work Dorothy fends off her boss, who wants to take her for a ride, by claiming to be married to a prizefighter. The girls then go to Coney Island. On the return steamboat trip, the women make a bet about attracting a certain man's attention, and Dorothy proceeds to annoy him by playing a ukulele. This man is Eddie Collins (James Dunn); after his initial grouchy reaction to the women, he slowly forms a connection with Dorothy and sees her home. Eddie works in a radio shop and dreams of having a shop on his own, for which he has been saving. Eddie forgets to show up for a date and Dorothy angrily finds him in his boarding house, where they remain together until 4 a.m. Eddie walks her home but she is afraid to go up, fearing the reaction of her abusive elder brother who is her guardian. Eddie proposes marriage as a solution and Dorothy joyfully accepts. Her brother calls her a tramp and evicts her from her home. Dorothy suffers some anxiety the next day when Eddie seems to have disappeared; he then turns up, having made arrangements for a new place to live, and the two are happily married. Ten weeks later, Dorothy confides to Edna that she is pregnant, but is reluctant to tell Eddie the news when she learns that he is ready to open his new shop, an expensive commitment. Instead she tells Eddie that she would like to return to work, to which he objects. Wrongly guessing that she really wants a larger place to live, Eddie cancels his plans for the shop in favor of a lavish new apartment and the purchase of new furnishings, increasing Dorothy's worries. By the time Eddie finally finds out he is to become a father, the two mutually misunderstand that the other is unhappy about the pregnancy, resulting in a strain on their marriage. The strain intensifies when Eddie stays out late at night to earn extra money as a boxer to pay for the services of Dr. Burgess, the best obstetrician in the city, all without telling Dorothy. Eddie is being pummeled in one of these prizefights while Dorothy leaves for the hospital; when he returns and Dorothy sees him bruised and bandaged, she assumes he was in a barroom brawl and turns her back on him. After their son is born, Dorothy plans to leave Eddie; however, before that can happen the misunderstanding is cleared up, and the couple returns home together to raise their child. ===== Andy "Champ" Purcell (Wallace Beery) is the former world heavyweight champion, now down on his luck and living in squalid conditions with his eight-year-old son "Dink" in Tijuana, Mexico. Champ attempts to train and to convince promoters to set up a fight for him, but his efforts are consistently stymied by his alcoholism. Dink is repeatedly disappointed and let down by his father's irresponsible actions and frequent broken promises to quit drinking, but his utter devotion to his father nonetheless never wavers. In addition to his drinking problem, Champ is also a compulsive gambler, another vice which he repeatedly promises Dink he will surrender (but never does). After a winning streak, he fulfills a previous promise to buy Dink a pony, whom they subsequently name "Little Champ" and decide to enter into a race. At the track, Dink happens across a woman who, unknown to either of them, is actually his mother Linda. She is now remarried to Tony, a wealthy man who owns one of the other horses in the race. Linda and Tony observe Dink and Champ together and realize that Dink is her son. Champ allows Linda to see Dink, who accepts that she is his mother. But Dink feels no emotion toward her, as she has never been part of his life. Linda resolves to remove Dink from the negative atmosphere in which he's growing up and have him live with her family. Catching Champ during an all-night gambling binge, Tony asks him to turn Dink over so that Tony and Linda can put Dink into school. Champ refuses. As the exhausted Dink sleeps on a nearby table, Tony bluntly observes that Champ is not a good father. The night of gambling ends with Champ having lost Little Champ, which devastates Dink. Champ asks Linda for enough money to buy the horse back, and she gives it to him. But before he can buy the horse back, he starts gambling again and loses the money Linda loaned him. He also winds up in jail, breaking Dink's heart once more. Ashamed of his actions and with his spirit broken, Champ finally agrees to send an unwilling Dink to live with Tony and Linda. On the train ride home, Tony and Linda try their best to welcome Dink into their family. Dink does not dislike them, but he is consumed only by thoughts of his father. He runs away back to Tijuana, where he finds that Champ has a fight scheduled with the Mexican heavyweight champion. When he sees Dink, Champ immediately returns to good spirits. He trains hard for the fight and, for the first time, really does stay away from drinking and gambling. Champ is determined to win the fight, make Dink proud of him, and use his prize money to buy back Little Champ. Tony and Linda attend the fight, bringing genuine best wishes and assurances that they will make no further efforts to separate Dink from Champ. The match is brutal, and Champ is seriously injured. Dink and the others in his corner urge him to throw in the towel, but Champ refuses to allow that. He musters a last burst of energy, and knocks out his opponent. After the fight, he triumphantly presents Little Champ to Dink. But after witnessing his son's overjoyed reaction, Champ collapses. Champ is brought into his dressing room, where a doctor determines that his injuries are mortal. Champ urges Dink to cheer up and then dies, leaving Dink inconsolable. Despite the best efforts of all of the men and boys in the room, who one by one attempt to calm him, Dink continually wails, "I want the Champ!" Finally, Dink spots Linda enter the room. Dink looks at her, cries out, "Mother!" and runs into her arms. She picks him up and he sobs, "The Champ is dead, mama." She turns and carries him out of the room as he buries his face in her shoulder, crying. ===== Joseph W. Randall (Edward G. Robinson) is the managing editor of a tabloid newspaper; everyone on The Evening Gazette knows that when he can’t be found he is in the washroom, washing his hands, over and over and over. He has been trying to get the paper “on the up and up,” reduce the sensationalism and improve the reporting, but circulation has dropped 20,000 (to 306,000). When owner Bernard Hinchecliffe (Oscar Apfel) plans to boost the numbers with a retrospective series on a 20-year-old murder, hoping to revive the scandal, Randall reluctantly agrees. He covered the original story (for a now-defunct newspaper) about a stenographer, Nancy Voorhees (Frances Starr) who shot her boss after he reneged on his promise to marry her. Her pregnancy won the jury’s sympathy, and she was acquitted. Unaware of impending doom, Nancy is now married to Michael Townsend (H. B. Warner), an upstanding member of society, and her daughter, Jenny (Marian Marsh), who believes Townsend is her father, is about to marry the son of a socially prominent family, Philip Weeks (Anthony Bushell). Once he accepts the assignment, Randall throws himself into it, using every trick he knows. To dig up dirt about Nancy, he assigns an unscrupulous reporter, "Reverend" T. Vernon Isopod, who masquerades as a minister and wins the confidence of the bride's parents on the eve of the wedding. They have read the headlines in the paper promising a series on the murder. Nancy reacts with horror at the renewed interest in the scandal she had put behind her. In a tragic turn of events, believing Dr. Isopod to be an assistant from the church where the young people are to be married, they confess to Dr. Isopod their concerns that Nancy's past will come out and ask for his help. They even give him a picture of her. Michael realizes just before Isopod leaves that he really knew nothing about them, and that they have made a horrible mistake. With a terrified Nancy embracing him from behind, Townsend phones the church... Randall ‘s secretary, Miss Taylor (Aline McMahon) is so disgusted that she goes to Corcoran’s, the local speakeasy, and gets drunk. Randall returns to his office to find her sitting on the edge of her desk “like a visible conscience.” She tells him what she thinks of the whole affair, and his answer makes it clear that after seeing so many papers fold, he is thinking of his survival in old age. Isopod comes in late, drunk and brimming with information. Randall hesitates for a moment when he sees the picture of Nancy. Then he swings into action, fueled by a shot of whiskey, mocking up a photo layout. The full story will have to wait. Randall sends Ziggie and Carmody to cover the Townsend apartment. Philip’s parents (Evelyn Hall and David Torrence) arrive full of self-righteous indignation. They leave. The Townsends, hoping that if they can stop the full story from coming out they will forestall the notoriety that the Weeks fear and thereby save the marriage, make separate appeals for help. Mr. Townsend goes to Dr. Bevins, the rector of their church, who promises support, and Nancy phones the paper. In a heartrending montage, her calls to the owner and eventually to Randall are bounced back and forth, framed by inane business issues. Miss Taylor forces Randall to take the call, and a distraught Nancy begs Randall, for the sake of her innocent daughter, to back away from the story, but he refuses, telling her the story is on the street. She kills herself by taking poison in the bathroom. Her husband comes home and discovers her. He conceals the fact from Jenny and Philip and, with his wife’s body in the next room, answers the ringing telephone and pretends to have a conversation with her. He persuades the young couple to go ahead to the church. He will “join her mother. “ After they leave, he goes into the bathroom and does. Carmody and Ziggie climb into the apartment from the fire escape. When they open the bathroom door, Ziggie is horrified but Carmody keeps her cool, tells him to take the picture, and calls Randall. He switches her to the city desk for the 5 star final. The next day, with paper boys hawking the headlines of her parents’ suicide outside, Phillip's parents tell Jenny the wedding will be called off. Phillip arrives and defies them. Randall is in Corcoran’s, where he has been drinking for 3 hours. Miss Taylor comes in to tell him a police inspector is waiting for him. He feels like a murderer. At the office, he calls the night desk and tells them to drop the story. A diffident Hinchecliff is frightened of the bad publicity that may come from the inquest, but French and Brannigan are thrilled at the upsurge in numbers and want follow Isopod’s suggestion that the paper offer Jenny $1200 for the right to tell her Mother’s story (which no one really knows). Randall refuses. Miss Taylor announces Jenny, who has slipped away from the apartment where Phillip has been standing by her. All except Randall are afraid to see her. Over and over, Jenny demands of the men there “Why did you kill my mother?” Randall gives her the honest answer: “We killed them for Circulation.” She points the gun at Randall but Philip appears just in time to keep her from pulling the trigger. Holding the weeping and distraught young woman in his arms, Phillip, his voice filled with icy contempt, delivers a chilling speech that ends: “You’ve grown rich on filth and no one’s ever dared rise up and crush you out.“ He turns at the door, gun in hand, promising that if his wife’s name is ever mentioned in the paper again, he will hunt them down. A guilty Randall denounces Hinchecliffe at length and resigns. Miss Taylor comes in, beaming, to write the resignation. While Randall is washing his hands, the phone rings. The night city desk has news of a “love nest killing” a murder/homicide. He tells them to take the story to Hinchecliffe “and shove it up his....” throwing the phone through the glass office door on the missing word. He runs out and a smiling Miss Taylor, who's been in love with him for years, follows.TCM Full synopsisAllmovie Plot synopsisStephan, Ed Plot summary (IMDB) A copy of the Evening Gazette, with the headline “Suicide victims buried” is swept away down a filthy gutter, disappearing instantly in the muck. The film is full of one-liners, jokes, asides, slang and double-entendres, with the sexual, social, ethnic allusions spinning by like pages on a press running at top speed. From top to bottom of the newspaper’s hierarchy, boosting Circulation is the only good. Examples include: office boy and would-be reporter Arthur Goldberg (Harold Waldridge) wondering if he should change his name; Hinchcliffe’s plan to put a moral and educational spin on covering rape; Contest Editor Ziggie Feinstein’s (George E. Stone) dangerous—and crooked—relay speed race involving 1,000 taxis driving four abreast (“only 100 people will die”); firing a flat-chested woman reporter and hiring a well-endowed replacement (Kitty Carmody (Ona Munson ) ) who will be able to “ vamp stories out of shyster lawyers.” Carmody scoops the picture of the Townsends lying dead in their bathroom. ===== Parisian doctor Andre Bertier (Maurice Chevalier) is faithful to his loving wife, Colette (Jeanette MacDonald), much to the surprise of his lovely female patients. But when Colette's best friend Mitzi Olivier (Genevieve Tobin) insists upon being treated by Dr. Bertier, it looks to many of those concerned that Mitzi may succeed where the other willing ladies failed.Green, Stanley (1999) Hollywood Musicals Year by Year (2nd ed.), pub. Hal Leonard Corporation page 15 ===== In 1931, China is embroiled in a civil war. Friends of British Captain Donald "Doc" Harvey (Clive Brook) envy him because the fabulously notorious Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich) is a fellow passenger on the express train from Peking to Shanghai. Because the name means nothing to him, they inform him that she is a "coaster" or "woman who lives by her wits along the China coast" – in other words, a courtesan. On the journey, Harvey encounters Lily, who turns out to be his former lover Madeline. Five years earlier, she had played a trick on him to gauge his love for her, but it backfired and he left her. She frankly informs him that, in the interim, "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily." When Lily makes it clear that she still cares deeply for him, it becomes apparent that his feelings also have not changed when she inadvertently sees the watch she gave him with her photograph still in it. Among the other passengers are fellow coaster Hui Fei (Anna May Wong), Lily's companion; Christian missionary Mr. Carmichael (Lawrence Grant), who at first condemns the two "fallen women"; inveterate gambler Sam Salt (Eugene Pallette); opium dealer Eric Baum (Gustav von Seyffertitz); boarding house keeper Mrs. Haggerty (Louise Closser Hale); French officer Major Lenard (Emile Chautard) and a mysterious Eurasian, Henry Chang (Warner Oland). Chinese government soldiers board and search the train and apprehend a high-ranking rebel agent. Chang then makes his way to a telegraph office and sends a coded message. Later, the train is stopped and taken over by the rebel army and its powerful warlord, who turns out to be Chang. Chang begins to question the passengers, looking for someone important enough to exchange for his valued aide. He finds what he wants in Harvey, who is on his way to perform brain surgery on the Governor-General of Shanghai. Chang offers to take Shanghai Lily to his palace, but she claims she has reformed. When Chang refuses to accept her answer, Harvey breaks in and knocks him down. Because Chang needs Harvey alive, he swallows (but does not forget) the insult. Chang then has Hui Fei brought to him in his quarters, where he forces himself on her. The government releases Chang's man, but Chang decides to blind Harvey for his insolence. Out of love, Lily offers herself in return for Harvey's safe release. Harvey remains unaware of the danger that he is in and of Lily's reason for going with Chang. Chang is stabbed to death by Hui Fei, who tells Harvey what has transpired. Finding Lily, the trio boards the train and departs before the body is discovered. The missionary Carmichael, trusting his instincts, gets Lily to reveal the truth about saving Harvey. She insists that he not tell Harvey because love must go hand in hand with faith. When the train finally reaches Shanghai safely, Lily offers Harvey her love unconditionally, but demands the same in return. Harvey finally breaks down and embraces her. ===== In Vienna, Lieutenant Nikolaus "Niki" von Preyn (Maurice Chevalier) meets Franzi (Claudette Colbert), the leader of an all-female-orchestra. They soon fall in love with each other. While standing in formation before a parade honoring the visiting royal family of Flausenthurm, Niki takes the opportunity to wink at Franzi in the crowd. Unfortunately the gesture is intercepted by Anna, the Princess of Flausenthurm (Miriam Hopkins). The naive Princess assumes offense, leading the lieutenant to convince her that he slighted her because she is thought to be very beautiful. Besotted, the Princess demands she has to marry the lieutenant, or, she'll marry an American instead. The international incident is narrowly averted by having them get married. The Lieutenant sneaks away from his bride to wander the streets of Flausenthurm to find his girlfriend. The princess learns of this and decides to confront Franzi. After the initial confrontation, Franzi sees that the princess is in fact deeply in love with the lieutenant, and decides to save the marriage by giving the princess a makeover, singing "Jazz up your lingerie!" The results are a complete success as the Lieutenant follows his satin-clad, cigarette-puffing bride into the bedroom and closes the door – only to open it and give the audience a last song and a suggestive wink.Green, Stanley (1999) Hollywood Musicals Year by Year (2nd ed.), pub. Hal Leonard Corporation page 15 ===== The show's namesake star "Skippy", is a female eastern grey kangaroo, who is befriended by Sonny Hammond, younger son of Matt Hammond, the Head Ranger of Waratah National Park. The stories revolved around events in the park, including its animals, the dangers arising from natural hazards, and the actions of visitors (featuring numerous stars, predominately of the period in guesting roles) The boy's mother is said (in Episode 48 "The Mine") to have died shortly after Sonny was born. The series was often characterised as a kangaroo version of Flipper or Lassie. ===== The novel is divided into five sections or 'books'. Frederic Henry is first person narrator of the story. ===== Sergeant James Allen (Muni) returns to civilian life after World War I, but his war experience makes him restless. His family feels he should be grateful for a tedious job as an office clerk, and when he announces that he wants to become an engineer, his brother reacts with outrage but his mother accepts it, though regretfully. He leaves home to find work on any sort of project, but unskilled labor is plentiful and it is hard for him to find a job. Wandering and sinking into poverty, he visits a cafe with a new acquaintance who forces him at gunpoint to participate in a robbery. The police arrive immediately and Allen foolishly runs and is caught (the film offers no explanation why the witness doesn't testify in defense of Allen being forced to participate in the crime). Allen is tried and sentenced to prison at hard labor. He escapes and makes his way to Chicago, where he becomes a success in the construction business. He becomes involved with the proprietor of his boardinghouse, Marie Woods (Glenda Farrell), who discovers his secret and blackmails him into an unhappy marriage. He then meets and falls in love with Helen (Helen Vinson). When he asks his wife for a divorce, she betrays him to the authorities. He is offered a pardon if he will turn himself in; Allen accepts, only to find that it was just a ruse. He escapes once again. In the end, Allen visits Helen in the shadows on the street and tells her he is leaving forever. She asks, "Can't you tell me where you're going? Will you write? Do you need any money?" James repeatedly shakes his head in answer as he backs away. Finally, Helen says, "But you must, Jim. How do you live?" James' face is barely seen in the surrounding gloom, and he replies, "I steal," as he backs into the darkness. ===== The story focuses on Apple Annie (May Robson), an aging and wretched fruit seller in New York City, whose daughter Louise (Jean Parker) has been raised in a Spanish convent since she was an infant. Louise has been led to believe her mother is a society matron named Mrs. E. Worthington Manville who lives at the Hotel Marberry. Annie discovers her charade is in danger of being uncovered when she learns Louise is sailing to New York with her fiancé Carlos (Barry Norton) and his father, Count Romero (Walter Connolly). Among Annie's patrons are Dave the Dude (Warren William), a gambling gangster who believes her apples bring him good luck, and his henchman Happy McGuire (Ned Sparks). Annie's friends from the street ask Dave to rent her an apartment at the Marberry and, although he initially declines, he has a change of heart and arranges for her to live in the lap of luxury in a palatial residence belonging to a friend. His girlfriend, nightclub owner Missouri Martin (Glenda Farrell), helps transform Annie from a dowdy street peddler to an elegant dowager. Dave arranges for erudite pool hustler Henry D. Blake (Guy Kibbee) to pose as Annie's second husband, the dignified Judge Manville. At the pier, an elegantly dressed Annie tearfully reunites with Louise. A group of Annie’s friends from the streets are watching from a distance. One of the street people says that she can remember when Annie “always looked like that.” (We never know the details of Annie’s history, but her upper-crust origins are clear.) When three society reporters become suspicious about Mrs. E. Worthington Manville, of whom they can find no public records, they are kidnapped by members of Dave's gang, and their prolonged disappearance leads the local newspapers to accuse the police department of incompetence. A few days later, Blake – in the role of Judge Manville – announces he is planning a gala reception for Louise, Carlos, and Count Romero before they return to Spain, and he enlists Dave's guys and Missouri's dolls to pose as Annie's society friends. On the night of the reception, the police – certain Dave is responsible for the missing reporters – surround Missouri's club, where the gang has assembled for a final rehearsal. Dave calls Blake to advise him of their predicament, and Annie decides to confess everything to Count Romero. But fate – in the form of a sympathetic mayor and governor and their entourages – unexpectedly steps in and allows Annie to maintain her charade and keep Louise from learning the truth before she sails back to Spain with her husband-to-be. ===== ===== King Henry VIII (Charles Laughton) and Anne of Cleves (Elsa Lanchester) on their wedding night in The Private Life of Henry VIII The film begins 20 years into King Henry's reign. In May 1536, in the immediate aftermath of the execution of his second wife, Anne Boleyn (Merle Oberon), King Henry VIII (Charles Laughton) marries Jane Seymour (Wendy Barrie), who dies in childbirth eighteen months later. He then weds a German princess, Anne of Cleves (played by Laughton's real-life wife Elsa Lanchester). This marriage ends in divorce when Anne deliberately makes herself unattractive so she can be free to marry her sweetheart. (In an imaginative and high-spirited scene, Anne "wins her freedom" from Henry in a game of cards on their wedding night.) After this divorce, Henry marries the beautiful and ambitious Lady Katherine Howard (Binnie Barnes). She has rejected love all her life in favour of ambition, but after her marriage, she finally falls in love with Henry's handsome courtier Thomas Culpeper (Robert Donat) who has attempted to woo her in the past. Their liaison is discovered by Henry's court and the two are executed. The weak and aging Henry consoles himself with a final marriage to Catherine Parr (Everley Gregg) who proves domineering. In the final scene, while Parr is no longer in the room, the king breaks the fourth wall, saying "Six wives, and the best of them's the worst." ===== Norma Shearer, Maureen O'Sullivan and Charles Laughton in The Barretts of Wimpole Street In her bedroom where she has been sequestered for years, Elizabeth ("Ba") (Norma Shearer), the eldest Barrett daughter, consults with her doctor. She is recovering from an undisclosed illness and is apparently extremely physically weak, but the doctor advises that a full recovery is possible. She has a vivacious and brilliant mind, her poetry is frequently published, and she loves fooling around with her siblings, especially her youngest sister, Henrietta (Maureen O'Sullivan). Her stern father Edward (Charles Laughton), however, wastes no opportunity to remind Elizabeth that she is near death. He seems, perversely, determined to keep her confined, and contravenes the doctors' orders if they conflict with his own feelings. His abusive tyranny over his offspring (three daughters and six sons) is so complete that none dare to defy him. Henrietta is interested in marrying her brothers' friend Surtees (Ralph Forbes), who has a promising career in the military, but she cannot see any way around her insanely possessive father, who has forbidden any of his children to marry, for reasons they do not understand. Robert Browning (Fredric March), who has been corresponding with Elizabeth for some time, arrives in person and immediately sweeps her off her feet. When she expresses her fear that death may be at hand, he laughs it off and promises to call again. When he leaves her room, she rises from her settee and drags herself to the window so she can see him as he departs. Months pass, and with a new lease on life, Elizabeth is able to walk and even go downstairs to see Robert. Edward insists she is still very sick, and when the doctors prescribe a trip to Italy for the winter, Edward passive-aggressively forbids it. Exasperated, Robert makes his feelings towards Edward plain to Elizabeth, and they declare their love for each other. One day, the Barretts' flirtatious, ditzy cousin Bella (Marion Clayton) thoughtlessly reveals Elizabeth's relationship with Robert is in fact romantic. Edward arranges a scheme to get Elizabeth away from Robert, by selling the house and move the family to Surrey, six miles from the nearest railway station. Film still with Norma Shearer and Fredric March. Unexpectedly, Edward returns from London and catches Henrietta and Surtees modeling his dress uniform for Elizabeth. Brutally grasping her wrists, he forces Henrietta to confess her secret affair. Denouncing her as a whore, he makes her swear on the Bible never to see Surtees again and to lock herself in her room. Ba witnesses all of this. When Edward starts to blame her for aiding and abetting Henrietta's illicit relationship, she reveals her true feelings. Smashing the facade that has allowed her father to keep a dictatorial control over every minute of her waking life – she says that, far from obeying him out of love, she hates him, and denounces him as a tyrant. Unrepentant, her father walks out of the room, saying she can send for him when she has repented of her sins. Ba conspires with her maid Wilson to let Robert know she will elope with him and Wilson is coming along. Henrietta, when set free, runs to Ba and exclaims that she will break her Bible oath, lie to her father if necessary, and run away with Surtees if she must. Edward enters and dismisses Henrietta to speak to Ba alone. He opens up to her and confesses his real feelings and the motivation for his "dragon" behavior. Edward apparently thinks of himself as having a sex addiction, and although the language in this scene is extremely euphemistic, we can gather that he tyrannized his wife as well, and that some of the children may actually have been conceived through rape. Edward now suppresses all his desires, equating all sex with sin, and he wants his children never to fall prey to carnal passion. As he goes into detail about how he wants Ba all to himself, to have her confide in him all her thoughts and feelings, he embraces her and actually comes close to making a sexual pass. Horrified by his inhuman behavior, Ba repulses him, and cries out that he must leave her. He apologizes and leaves, saying he'll pray for her. Ba summons Wilson, puts on her cloak and hat, takes her little dog Flush and departs. As the two sneak down the stairs, we hear Edward saying grace over dinner. A few moments later, we hear the hysterical laughter of Ba's sister Arabel (Katharine Alexander). The boys rush upstairs, followed by Henrietta, to find that Ba has left one letter for each of the siblings and Edward. Edward reads his letter and staggers to the window. As if drunk, he insanely mutters "I'll have her dog", and bids his son Octavius take Flush to the vet and have her killed. Octavius cries out that it is unjust, and Henrietta triumphantly drives the final blow; "In her letter to me Ba writes that she has taken Flush with her..." The film closes with a brief scene of Elizabeth's and Robert's marriage, with Wilson as a witness and Flush waiting patiently by the church door. ===== Mimi Glossop (Ginger Rogers) seeks a divorce from her geologist husband Cyril Glossop (William Austin), whom she has not seen for some time. Under the guidance of her domineering and much-married Aunt Hortense (Alice Brady), she consults incompetent and bumbling lawyer Egbert Fitzgerald (Edward Everett Horton), once a fiancé of her aunt. He arranges for her to spend a night at a seaside hotel and to be caught in an adulterous relationship, for which purpose he hires a professional co-respondent, Rodolfo Tonetti (Erik Rhodes). But Egbert forgets to arrange for private detectives to "catch" the couple. By coincidence, Guy Holden (Fred Astaire) an American dancer and friend of Egbert's, who briefly met Mimi on his arrival in England, and who is now besotted with her, also arrives at the hotel, only to be mistaken by Mimi for the co-respondent she has been waiting for. While they are in Mimi's bedroom, Tonetti arrives, revealing the truth, and holds them "prisoner" to suit the plan. They contrive to escape and dance the night away. In the morning, after several mistakes with the waiter, Cyril arrives at the door, so Guy hides in the next room, while Mimi and Tonetti give a show of being lovers. When Cyril does not believe them, Guy comes out and embraces Mimi in an attempt to convince him that he is her lover, but to no avail. It is an unwitting waiter (Eric Blore) who finally clears the whole thing up by revealing that Cyril himself is an adulterer, thus clearing the way for Mimi to get a divorce and marry Guy. ===== Riveter "Chesty" O'Conner (James Cagney) and his best friend, "Droopy" (Frank McHugh), join the US Navy to annoy O'Connor's nemesis, Chief Petty Officer "Biff" Martin (Pat O'Brien). O'Conner gets himself court- martialled for being AWOL while visiting Martin's sister Dorothy (Gloria Stuart). Disgruntled at his treatment, O'Connor angrily derides the Navy and finds himself ostracized by his fellow sailors. During gunnery practice, O'Conner helps put out a fire in a gun room and receives the Navy Cross medal, but is still determined to get out of the Navy. Later. O'Conner transfers to the US Naval Air Service and is assigned to the rigid airship . When the Macon tries to dock, Martin is accidentally caught on a guide rope and is hoisted into the air. Despite orders, O'Conner climbs down the rope and saves Martin's life by parachuting both of them to the ground. Later, at the wedding of O'Conner to Dorothy, Martin finds out that O'Conner has been promoted to boatswain and now outranks him. ===== In 1780 in Frankfurt (spelled as Frankfort in the film), Germany, youngster Nathan Rothschild warns his parents Mayer Amschel Rothschild and Guttle that the taxman is coming. They hurry and hide their wealth, including currency, silver, etc. The taxman demands 20,000 gulden, an exorbitant sum, but accepts a bribe of 5000 in exchange for assessing 2000 in taxes. Mayer's satisfaction is short-lived, however; a courier bringing him 10,000 gulden is intercepted and the money confiscated by the taxmen. Mayer tells his sons that he tries to be as honest as possible, but the antisemitic authorities will not let him; he admonishes his children to acquire money, for "money is power" and a defense for their people. Later, as Mayer Rothschild is lying on his deathbed, he instructs his five sons to start banks in different countries across Europe: Amschel in Frankfurt, Salomon Mayer von Rothschild in Vienna, Nathan in London, Carl in Rome, and James in Paris. That way, they can avoid having to send gold back and forth as the need arises, for in war they are in danger of being robbed by the enemy and in peace by their own countrymen. Instead, they can draw on each other's banks. Thirty-two years later, the sons have established banking houses. Then France overruns Europe in the Napoleonic Wars. Austrian Prince Metternich asks Salomon to raise 15 million florins to help defeat Napoleon. The other brothers are approached with similar requests. Even in France itself, Talleyrand asks for 50 million francs. Nathan refuses to loan the British Government five million pounds (on top of previous loans) to hold off the enemy, but offers the Duke of Wellington twice that amount to smash him. After the war is won, Wellington is disappointed to find that Nathan Rothschild has not even been invited to a party in the duke's honour. He insists on going to see Nathan. His aide, Captain Fitzroy, knows the address, as he is in love with Nathan's daughter, Julie, and vice versa. While there, Wellington tells Nathan that the victorious powers are going to make a very large loan to France to help it recover from the war. The winning underwriter will become the most powerful and prestigious bank in Europe. Nathan's bid is the best, but is rejected in favor primarily of Barings Bank. When Nathan demands to know the reason, Prussian Count Ledrantz (despite having himself sought a war loan from the Rothschilds) explains it was discarded on a "technicality", because Nathan is a Jew. Nathan surmises that the quarter of the loan not awarded to Barings will fall to Ledrantz, Metternich and Talleyrand, who stand to make enormous profits. Nathan outmanoeuvres them financially, bringing them to the brink of ruin and dishonour; they capitulate and surrender to him the entire loan. However, this has somewhat embittered him. Where once he accepted Julie's choice, he now tells the non-Jewish Fitzroy to stay away from her. Anti-Jewish riots break out all over Germany, instigated by Ledrantz. Nathan returns to Frankfurt and, under pressure from his own people, agrees to submit to Ledrantz. However, before he can, he receives word that Napoleon has escaped from exile. Nathan's brothers, fearful of their positions, want to support the restored French dictator. However, Nathan refuses to do so. With Ledrantz and others once again desperately in need of financial support, he extracts a treaty from them granting Jews rights, freedoms and dignity long denied them. He also tells Fitzroy that he can once again see Julie. With Napoleon seemingly invincible, Nathan determines to risk all in support of the allies. Just before he is bankrupted, he receives word that Wellington has won the Battle of Waterloo, and he is not only saved, he becomes the richest man in the world and a baron. ===== Set in the 1910s at "the Shore" of New Jersey, the novel explores issues of race and class in early 20th-century America. Bea Chipley is a quiet, mousy Atlantic City teenage girl whose mother dies, leaving her to keep house for her father (Mr. Chipley) and Benjamin Pullman, a boarder who peddles ketchup and relish on the boardwalk and sells maple syrup door-to-door. Within a year, her father and Pullman decide that she should marry Pullman; she soon becomes pregnant and has a daughter named Jessie. Her father suffers an incapacitating stroke, confining him to a wheelchair, and Pullman is killed in a train accident. Bea is left to fend for her father and Jessie by herself. She takes in boarders to defray expenses, as well as peddling Pullman's maple syrup door-to-door, using his "B. Pullman" business cards to avoid the ubiquitous sexism of the 1910s. To care for her infant daughter and disabled father, Bea Pullman hires Delilah, an African-American mammy figure, who has an infant daughter Peola. The girl has "light skin" (as described then). As Delilah is a master waffle-maker, Bea capitalizes on Delilah's skills to open a "B. Pullman" waffle restaurant. It attracts many of the tourists at the Shore. She eventually builds a nationwide and then international chain of highly successful restaurants. Frank Flake, a young man intent on entering medical school, becomes Bea's business manager. Jessie and Peola have grown up side by side. Peola is painfully aware of the tension between her white appearance and black racial identity. She continually attempts to pass as white to gain wider advantages. Disturbed by her daughter's unhappiness, Delilah encourages the girl to take pride in her black "race." Eventually, after living in Seattle for several years as a white woman, Peola severs all ties with her family. She marries a white man and moves to Bolivia to pass permanently. Heartbroken, Delilah dies soon after. Bea falls in love with Flake, who is eight years her junior. Jessie, by now in her late teens, comes home for a visit just as Bea is planning on selling the "B. Pullman" chain and marrying Flake. The three are mired in a love triangle, resulting in a tragic ending. ===== Opera singer Mary Barrett (Grace Moore) leaves to study music in Milan, Italy to the disappointment of her family in New York City. Mary gets a job at the Cafe Roma, where Giulio Monteverdi (Tullio Carminati), a famous vocal coach, hears her sing. Giulio promises to make Mary a star if she will allow him to control her life. He also tells her that there cannot be any romance between the two of them, as that would distract from the process of growing her talent. Mary discovers she has stagefright as she prepares for a tour of provincial opera houses, however Giulio helps her overcome it. Years later, still under Giulio's tutelage, Mary begins to tire of his dominance and discipline. The two meet one of Giulio's old pupils, Lally (Mona Barrie), while in Vienna. Lally once tried to be romantic with Giulio, but was rejected. This past history renders Mary jealous and she pretends to have laryngitis. Mary thinks Giulio has gone to Lally to rekindle a romance, and so visits Bill Houston (Lyle Talbot), a longtime friend who has proposed marriage. In a jealous huff, Mary decides not to sing that night in order to punish Giulio. Giulio realizes what is going on and tells Mary that Lally will replace her on stage, but then proposes to Mary. She decides to go on, and Mary's performance of Bizet's Carmen wins her an invitation to the Metropolitan Opera, her dream venue. Giulio, however, still does not believe that she is ready for such a venue. Later at dinner, Lally lies to Mary by telling her that she is still involved with Bill, who has actually returned to New York. On the night of her debut in Madame Butterfly, Mary is too nervous to go on stage until she sees Giulio in his usual place in the prompter's box.Green, Stanley (1999) Hollywood Musicals Year by Year (2nd ed.), pub. Hal Leonard Corporation page 32 ===== William Powell, Myrna Loy and Skippy (Asta) in The Thin Man Nick Charles (William Powell), a retired detective, and his wealthy wife Nora (Myrna Loy), are visiting New York City to spend the Christmas holidays. There, Nick is pressed back into service by Dorothy Wynant (Maureen O'Sullivan), a young woman whose father, Clyde (Edward Ellis), was an old client of Nick's. Clyde, the title's "thin man", was supposed to be on a secret business trip and promised to be home before his daughter's wedding, but has mysteriously vanished. She convinces Nick to take the case, with the assistance of his socialite wife, eager to see him in action. What appears to be a missing person case turns into a murder case when Julia Wolf (Natalie Moorhead), Clyde's former secretary and love interest, is found dead, and evidence points to Clyde as the prime suspect. Dorothy refuses to believe that her father is guilty. The detective uncovers clues and eventually solves the mystery of the disappearance. The murderer is exposed at a dinner party: A skeletonized body, found buried in Wynant's workshop during the investigation, had been assumed to be that of a "fat man" because it was wearing oversized clothing. However, Nick alleges that the clothes were planted to hide the true identity of the body, which still has shrapnel from an old war wound in one leg and belongs to a "thin man": the missing Wynant. Nick deduces that the real culprit murdered Clyde once Clyde found out he had been embezzling from him, then murdered Julia who knew about Clyde's murder, then also murdered Nunheim, who witnessed Julia's murder. Nick reveals the identity of the killer as Wynant's attorney Herbert MacCauley (Porter Hall). Panicked, MacCauley tries to shoot Nick, but Nick punches him out. Finally, Nick and Nora, as well as Dorothy and her new husband Tommy (Henry Wadsworth), celebrate as they take a train back to California. ===== After seeing his poor father lose his land and be whipped to death for protesting, young Pancho Villa stabs one of the killers, then heads off into the hills of Chihuahua, Mexico during the 1880s. As a grown man, Villa and a band of rebel bandits, including his trusted ally Sierra, kill wealthy landowners and become heroes to their fellow "peons." A wealthy aristocrat, Don Felipe, arranges an introduction for Villa to the distinguished and eloquent Francisco Madero, who resents what has become of Mexico under the rule of president Porfirio Díaz and persuades Villa to help him fight for liberty, not just for personal gain. The coarse and illiterate Villa is humbled in the presence of Madero and agrees to fight for his cause. He also is attracted to Don Felipe's beautiful sister Teresa, although there are many women in Villa's life, including one he is married to, Rosita. Villa's exploits are made even more colorful by an American newspaper reporter, Johnny Sykes, to whom Villa has taken a great liking. While drunk, Sykes is misinformed and reports that Villa has already overtaken the village of Santa Rosalia in a great victory for his men. Disobeying the orders of Madero and the arrogant General Pascal, simply to help his newspaper friend, Villa stages a raid on Santa Rosalia, as well as on Juarez. Madero ultimately assumes office in Mexico City, then commands Villa to disband his personal army. Villa agrees, but when Sierra kills a bank teller just so Villa can withdraw his money, Villa himself ends up sentenced to death. A gloating General Pascal mocks the way Villa pleads for his life, then reads a telegram from Madero, ordering that Villa instead be exiled from the country. Alone and drunk in El Paso, Texas, feeling forsaken by his homeland, Villa is visited by Sykes, who informs him that Madero has been assassinated by the power-mad Pascal and his men. Villa returns to Mexico and rebuilds his own army, recruiting tens of thousands to ride by his side. Together they storm the capital, where Pascal is subjected to a particularly gruesome death. Villa takes what he wants, but when Teresa resists and he physically assaults her, she draws a gun that her brother Don Felipe has given her for protection. Sierra intervenes and murders her. Villa appoints himself president but is ineffectual, unable to restore Madero's dream of land reform for Mexico's poor. He ultimately agrees to step aside and go back to where he belongs, including to his wife. Before he can, with Sykes by his side, Villa is gunned down by Don Felipe out of revenge for his sister. Sykes vows to keep Villa's memory alive, telling his dying friend that he is no longer news, but history. ===== The story is narrated by Overton, godfather to the central character. The novel takes its beginnings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to trace Ernest's emergence from previous generations of the Pontifex family. John Pontifex was a carpenter; his son George rises in the world to become a publisher; George's son Theobald, pressed by his father to become a minister, is manipulated into marrying Christina, the daughter of a clergyman; the main character Ernest Pontifex is the eldest son of Theobald and Christina. The author depicts an antagonistic relationship between Ernest and his hypocritical and domineering parents. His aunt Alethea is aware of this relationship, but dies before she can fulfill her aim of counteracting the parents' malign influence on the boy. However, shortly before her death she secretly passes a small fortune into Overton's keeping, with the agreement that once Ernest is twenty-eight, he can receive it. As Ernest develops into a young man, he travels a bumpy theological road, reflecting the divisions and controversies in the Church of England in the Victorian era. Easily influenced by others at university, he starts out as an Evangelical Christian, and soon becomes a clergyman. He then falls for the lures of the High Church (and is duped out of much of his own money by a fellow clergyman). He decides that the way to regenerate the Church of England is to live among the poor, but the results are, first, that his faith in the integrity of the Bible is severely damaged by a conversation with one of the poor he was hoping to redeem, and, second, that under the pressures of poverty and theological doubt, he attempts a sexual assault on a woman he has incorrectly believed to be of loose morals. This assault leads to a prison term. His parents disown him. His health deteriorates. As he recovers he learns how to tailor and decides to make this his profession once out of prison. He loses his Christian faith. He marries Ellen, a former housemaid of his parents; they have two children and set up shop together in the second-hand clothing industry. However, in due course he discovers that Ellen is both a bigamist and an alcoholic. Overton at this point intervenes and pays Ellen a stipend, and she happily leaves with another for America. He gives Ernest a job, and takes him on a trip to Continental Europe. In due course Ernest becomes 28, and receives his aunt Alethea's gift. He returns to the family home until his mother's death; his father's influence over him wanes as Theobald's own position as a clergyman is reduced in relative stature, though to the end Theobald purposefully finds small ways to annoy him. Ernest becomes an author of controversial literature. ===== Joan Manning, the daughter of a police sergeant, secretly marries Chick Williams, a gangleader who convinces her that he is leading an honest life. Chick attends the theater with Joan and, at the intermission, sneaks away, committing a robbery during which a policeman is killed. Chick is suspected of the crime but is able to use Joan to substantiate his alibi. The police plant Danny McGann, an undercover agent, in Chick's gang; but he is discovered, and Chick murders him. Chick is later cornered by the police in his own home. Before they can arrest him, he flips the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. In the midst of the chaos, Chick escapes to the roof. He attempts to jump off to a nearby building, but stumbles on the landing, thus falling to his death. ===== During the American Revolutionary War in 1776, Captain Benjamin Martin, a veteran of the French and Indian War and a widower with seven children is called to Charleston to vote in the South Carolina General Assembly on a levy supporting the Continental Army. Fearing war against Great Britain, Benjamin abstains; the vote is nonetheless passed, and, against his father's wishes, Benjamin's eldest son Gabriel joins the Continentals. Two years later, Charleston falls to the British and a wounded Gabriel returns home carrying dispatches. The Martins care for both British and American wounded from a nearby battle, before British Dragoons, led by Colonel William Tavington, arrive, capture Gabriel with the intention of hanging him as a spy, and take captive the African American free men and women who work on Benjamin's land. When Benjamin's second son Thomas tries to free Gabriel, he is shot and killed by Tavington, who then orders the Martins' house burned, and all wounded Americans executed. After the British leave, Benjamin gives his next two eldest sons muskets, and they ambush the British unit escorting the captive Gabriel. Benjamin skillfully, yet brutally, kills many soldiers with his tomahawk. A British survivor tells Tavington of the attack, earning Benjamin the moniker of the "Ghost." Gabriel decides to rejoin the Continentals and Benjamin soon follows, leaving the younger children in the care of Benjamin's sister-in-law, Charlotte. On their way to the Continental Army's camp, they witness the southern Continental Army under General Horatio Gates engaging the British Army. Benjamin recognizes the foolishness of the action, having served in the British Army; sure enough, the Continentals are decisively routed. Benjamin meets his former commanding officer, Colonel Harry Burwell, who makes him colonel of the local colonial militia due to his combat experience and also places Gabriel under Benjamin's command. Benjamin is tasked with keeping Lord Cornwallis's regiments pinned south through guerrilla warfare. French Major Jean Villeneuve helps train the militia and promises more French aid. Gabriel asks why Villeneuve and others often mention Benjamin's participation in an incident at Fort Wilderness. Benjamin, having been hesitant to answer the question up to now, finally tells his son. Benjamin had been fighting in the British Army in the previous war when he and several other soldiers discovered a French atrocity against the British. The enraged men caught up with the French at Fort Wilderness and slowly, methodically butchered all but two of them. The survivors were forced to admit what happened to their Cherokee allies and to bring their comrades' heads as proof. Benjamin reveals that he has been haunted by guilt ever since. Benjamin's militia harasses British supply lines, even capturing some of Cornwallis' personal effects and his two Great Danes, and burn half the bridges and ferries leading to Charleston. Lord Cornwallis blames Tavington for creating this reaction with his brutal tactics. However, irritated at the lack of progress, and insulted by Benjamin's clever ploy to free some of the captured militia, Cornwallis reluctantly allows Tavington to stop Benjamin by any means necessary. With the reluctant aid of the Loyalist Captain Wilkins, Tavington learns the identities of some militia members and attacks their families and burns their homes. Benjamin's family flees Charlotte's plantation as it is burned to live in a Gullah settlement with former black slaves. There, Gabriel marries his betrothed Anne. Tavington's brigade rides into the town that supplies the militia. He assembles all the townspeople, including Anne, into the church, promising freedom in exchange for the whereabouts of the rebels. After their location is given, he has the doors barricaded, and orders the church to be burned, killing everyone inside. When they discover the tragedy, Gabriel and several other soldiers race to attack Tavington's encampment. In the ensuing battle, Gabriel shoots Tavington, but Tavington mortally wounds Gabriel before fleeing. Benjamin arrives soon thereafter, only to have another of his sons die in his arms. Benjamin mourns and wavers in his commitment to continue fighting, but is resolved when reminded of his son's dedication to the cause by finding an American flag he repaired. Martin's militia, along with a larger Continental Army regiment, confronts Cornwallis' regiment in a decisive battle at the Battle of Cowpens. The British appear to have the upper hand until Benjamin rallies the troops forward against their lines and Tavington rushes to attack him. The two fight and Tavington attains the upper hand, delivering several wounds to Benjamin. Benjamin slumps to his knees, and Tavington prepares to deliver the coup de grâce. At the last second, Benjamin dodges the attack and impales Tavington in the heart, killing the colonel and avenging his sons' deaths. The battle is a Continental victory, and Cornwallis sounds the retreat. After many retreats, Cornwallis is besieged at Yorktown, Virginia where he surrenders to the surrounding Continental Army and the long-awaited French naval force. After the conflict ends, Benjamin returns with his family, with Charlotte carrying their new baby, and discovers his militia soldiers rebuilding his homestead in their old town road. ===== Chester Morris and Wallace Beery in The Big House Kent (Robert Montgomery), a drunk driver who carelessly kills a man, is sentenced to ten years for manslaughter. In an overcrowded prison designed for 1800 and actually holding 3000, he is placed in a cell with Butch (Wallace Beery) and Morgan (Chester Morris), the two leaders of the inmates. Butch is alternately menacing and friendly, while Morgan tries to help out the frightened, inexperienced youngster, but Kent rebuffs his overtures. When Butch is ordered into solitary confinement for sparking a protest over the prison food, he passes along his knife before being searched. It ends up in Kent's hands. Meanwhile, Morgan is notified that he is to be paroled. Prior to a search of their cell, Kent hides the knife in Morgan's bed. When it is found, Morgan's parole is canceled, and he is put in solitary as well. He vows to make Kent pay for what he has done. When Morgan is let out of solitary, he escapes by switching places with a corpse on the way to the morgue. He makes his way to the bookstore run by Kent's beautiful sister, Anne (Leila Hyams). She, however, recognizes him. She manages to get his gun and starts to call the police, but then changes her mind and gives him back his pistol. Morgan (who has been attracted to Anne since he saw Kent's photograph of her) gets a job and becomes better acquainted with Anne and her family. They all like him, especially Anne. However, he is caught and sent back to prison. When Butch tells Morgan of his plan for a jailbreak on Thanksgiving, Morgan tells him that he is going straight. In return for a promise of freedom, Kent informs the warden (Lewis Stone) of the attempt, though he is not privy to the details. Despite the warning, the inmates succeed in taking over the prison, capturing many of the guards, though they are unable to force their way out. Thwarted, Butch threatens to shoot the guards one by one unless they are allowed to escape. When the warden stands firm, Butch shoots the warden's right-hand man in cold blood, then tosses the dying man out for all to see. Army tanks are called to break down the entrance. Morgan grabs a pistol from the prisoner assigned to watch the guards. He finds Kent cowering with the guard but spares him. Kent panics and flees before Morgan locks the guards in to save their lives. When Kent tries to open the front doors, he is killed in the crossfire. Butch is told that Morgan was the "stoolie" who tipped off the warden and learns he has put the guards out of danger. He sets out to kill his former friend. In the ensuing gunfight, both are wounded, Butch fatally. Before he dies, he learns that Kent was actually the informer, and he and Morgan reconcile. For his efforts, Morgan is given a full pardon. When he exits the prison, Anne rushes to embrace him. ===== In 1874, Disraeli's ambitious foreign policy, aimed at extending the British empire, is voted down by the House of Commons after a speech by his great rival, William Gladstone. Later, Disraeli receives the welcome news that the spendthrift Khedive of Egypt is in dire need of money and is willing to sell the controlling shares in the Suez Canal. The purchase of the canal would secure control of India, but Michael Probert, head of the Bank of England, makes it clear to Disraeli that he is vehemently opposed to any such plan. Disraeli then summons Hugh Myers, a leading Jewish banker. Meanwhile, Lord Charles Deeford proposes to Lady Clarissa Pevensey. Although she is in love with him, she turns him down. He is content to enjoy his wealth and high social standing, and lacks the ambition she wants in a husband; further, she is a great admirer of the Prime Minister and Charles has no strong opinion about him. Disraeli, seeing promise in the young man and wanting Clarissa to be happy, convinces Charles to come work for him, and tells him about the canal purchase. But he does not tell him about the spies. Russia, eager to seize India for itself, has assigned two spies to watch Disraeli: Mrs. Travers, who has entree to the highest social circles, and Mr. Foljambe. Disraeli was not fooled; he has hired Foljambe as his personal government secretary, the better to deceive him. When Foljambe asks Charles if Myers is there to provide financial backing for the purchase of the canal, Charles says nothing, but his manner makes it clear that Foljambe has guessed correctly. Mrs. Travers orders Foljambe to leave the country and warn their masters. Disraeli soon discovers what has happened. When he decides to send an agent to the khedive immediately, Clarissa suggests he send Charles. Charles persuades the khedive to accept Myers' cheque in exchange for the shares, also proving his own worth to Clarissa. Disraeli is elated when he receives the news. However, Myers comes and informs him that his banking house has been driven into bankruptcy by sabotage; the cheque is worthless. Disraeli tells him to keep his situation secret for the moment. When the prying Mrs. Travers arrives, Disraeli allows her to learn of the purchase, and she exultantly admits to her key part in sabotaging Myers. Thinking quickly, Disraeli summons Probert. Though the banker initially refuses to help, Disraeli forces him to sign a paper giving unlimited credit to Myers by threatening to have Parliament revoke the bank's charter. (After Probert leaves, Disraeli confesses to his wife and Clarissa that he was bluffing.) Myers' solvency is restored, the deal is completed, and as a result of Disraeli's success, Queen Victoria can add Empress of India to her other titles. ===== Ted (Chester Morris), Jerry (Norma Shearer), Paul (Conrad Nagel), and Dorothy (Helen Johnson) are part of the New York in-crowd. Jerry's decision to marry Ted crushes Paul. He gets drunk, and is involved in an accident that leaves Dorothy's face disfigured. Out of pity, Paul marries Dorothy. Ted and Jerry have been married for three years when she discovers that he had a brief affair with another woman—and when she confronts him on their third anniversary, he tells her it did not "mean a thing". Upset, and with Ted away on a business trip, Jerry spends the night with his best friend, Don. Upon Ted's return, she tells him that she "balanced [their] accounts", withholding Don's name. Ted is hypocritically outraged, and they argue, which ends with Ted leaving her and the couple filing for a divorce. While Jerry turns to partying to forget her sorrows, Ted becomes an alcoholic. Paul and Jerry run into each other, and she discovers that he still loves her and is willing to leave Dorothy, to whom he is in a loveless, resentful marriage with, to be with her. The two spend weeks together and plan for a future together. Dorothy comes to speak with Jerry at her home but Paul is coincidentally meeting Jerry for dinner and the three meet for an awkward exchange. Despite good arguments from Paul, Dorothy’s desperation to not lose him forces Jerry to evaluate her decision to be with another man, and breaking Paul’s heart, she decides to see if her husband will take her back. Weeks later on her third attempt to locate Ted in Paris, Jerry finally finds him at a New Year’s eve party. After a friendly exchange, Jerry tells Ted her true feelings, and the two kiss at midnight to begin the new year, and presumably their new lives, together. ===== Count Alfred (Maurice Chevalier), military attaché to the Sylvanian Embassy in Paris, is ordered back to Sylvania to report to Queen Louise for a reprimand following a string of scandals, including an affair with the ambassador's wife. In the meantime Queen Louise (Jeanette MacDonald), ruler of Sylvania in her own right, is royally fed-up with her subjects' preoccupation with whom she will marry. Intrigued rather than offended by Count Alfred's dossier, Queen Louise invites him to dinner. Their romance progresses to the point of marriage when, despite his qualms, for love of Louise Alfred agrees to obey the Queen.Green, Stanley (1999) Hollywood Musicals Year by Year (2nd ed.), pub. Hal Leonard Corporation page 10 ===== The novel begins with Virgil Adams confined to bed with an unnamed illness. There is tension between Virgil and his wife over how he should go about recovering, and she pressures him not to return to work for J.A. Lamb once he is well. Alice, their daughter, attempts to keep peace in the family (with mixed results) and then walks to her friend Mildred Palmer's house to see what Mildred will wear to a dance that evening. After Alice's return, she spends the day preparing for the dance, going to pick violets for a bouquet because she cannot afford to buy flowers for herself. Her brother Walter initially refuses to accompany her to the dance, but because Alice cannot go without an escort, Mrs. Adams prevails upon Walter, and he rents a Tin Lizzie to drive Alice to the dance. Walter's attitude towards the upper class is one of obvious disdain—he would rather spend his time gambling with the African-American servants in the cloakroom than be in the ballroom at the dance. Alice forces him to dance with her at first because it will be a grave embarrassment for her to stand alone, but Walter eventually abandons her. Alice tries to give the impression that she is not standing by herself, and then dances with Frank Dowling (whose attentions she does not welcome) and Arthur Russell (a rich newcomer to town who is rumored to be engaged to Mildred), who she believes danced with her out of pity and at Mildred's request. She leaves the dance horribly embarrassed after Arthur discovers Walter gambling with the servants. The next day, Alice goes into town on an errand for her father, passing Frincke's Business College on the way with a shudder, seeing it as a place that drags promising young ladies down to "hideous obscurity". On the walk back home, she encounters Arthur Russell, who shows an obvious interest in her. As she assumes he is all but spoken for, she doesn't know how to handle the conversation. She warns him not to believe the things girls like Mildred will say about her, and she tells a number of lies to obscure her family's humble economic status. Arthur returns several days later, and his courtship of Alice continues. All seems well between them until he mentions a dance being thrown by the young Miss Henrietta Lamb; Arthur wants to escort Alice to the dance, and she lies to cover up that she wasn't invited. Mrs. Adams uses Alice's distress to finally goad Virgil into setting up a glue factory (which she has long insisted would be the family's ticket to success). It is eventually revealed that the glue recipe was developed by Virgil and another man under the direction and in the employ of J.A. Lamb, who over the years declined to take up its production despite repeated prodding from Virgil. Although initially reluctant to "steal" from Mr. Lamb, Virgil finally persuades himself that his improvements to the recipe over the years has made it his. As Arthur continues his secret courtship of Alice (he never talks about her nor tells anyone where he spends his evenings), Alice continues spinning a web of lies to preserve the image of herself and her family that she has invented. This becomes especially difficult when she and Arthur encounter Walter in a bad part of town, walking with a young woman who gives the appearance of being a prostitute. At home, Walter is confronted by his father, who demands that Walter quit Lamb's to help in setting up the glue factory. Walter refuses to help his father without a $300 cash advance, which Virgil cannot afford. Virgil arranges to resign from Lamb's employ without speaking to him face-to-face because he fears the old man's reaction, and puts the glue factory into operation. Meanwhile, Alice works frantically to convince Arthur that the things other people will say about her won't be true, and continues to press the point even when Arthur insists that no one has spoken about her behind her back and that nothing anyone else could say would change his opinion of her. Mrs. Adams decides to arrange a dinner so that Arthur can meet the family, and sets about planning an elaborate meal and hiring servants for the day, so that Arthur will be impressed. Walter again demands cash from his father (the amount has now risen to $350) without explaining why he needs it, and he again is rebuffed. While these events occur at the Adams house, Arthur finally overhears things about Alice, which strikes a chord, and her family, including the fact that Virgil Adams has "stolen" from J.A. Lamb in setting up a factory with Lamb's secret recipe for glue. The dinner is a total disaster: The day is unbearably hot, the food far too heavy, the hired servants surly and difficult to manage, capped by Virgil's unwittingly acting like his lower-middle-class self, not the well-to-do businessman his wife and daughter wish him to act. Arthur, still reeling from what he heard about the Adamses earlier in the day, is stiff and uneasy throughout the evening, and Alice feels increasingly uncomfortable. By the end of the night, it's apparent to her that he will not come courting again, and she bids him farewell. That night, word reaches the family that Walter has skipped town, leaving behind him a massive debt to J.A. Lamb, which will have to be paid to keep Walter out of jail. The following morning, Virgil arrives at work to see that Lamb is opening his own glue factory on such a huge scale that Adams will not be able to compete, and he never will make enough money to either pay his son's debts or pay off the family's mortgage. Virgil confronts Lamb about the situation, working himself into such a state that he collapses, and returns to the same sickbed at home where he began the book. Lamb takes pity on the man, and arranges to buy the Adams glue factory for a sufficient price to pay off Walter's debts and the family's mortgage. The Adams family takes in boarders to help keep the family afloat economically, and Alice heads downtown to Frincke's Business College to train herself in employable skills so that she can support the family. She encounters Arthur Russell on the road, and she is pleased that their conversation is both polite and brief. She calmly accepts that there's no possibility of renewing the romance between them. ===== Irene Foster (Eleanor Powell) tries to convince her high school sweetheart, Broadway producer Robert Gordon (Robert Taylor), to give her a chance to star in his new musical, but he is too busy with the rich widow (June Knight) backing his show. Irene tries to show Gordon that she has the talent to succeed, but he will not hire her. Things become complicated when she begins impersonating a French dancer, who was actually the invention of a gossip columnist (Jack Benny). ===== In 17th-century England, Irish doctor Peter Blood is summoned to aid Lord Gildoy, a wounded patron who participated in the Monmouth Rebellion. Arrested while performing his duties as a physician, he is convicted of treason against King James II and sentenced to death by the infamous Judge Jeffreys. By the whim of the king, who sees an opportunity for profit, Blood and the surviving rebels are transported to the West Indies to be sold into slavery. In Port Royal, Blood is purchased by Arabella Bishop, the beautiful niece of local military commander Colonel Bishop. Attracted by Blood's rebellious nature, Arabella does her best to improve his situation by recommending him as the personal physician of the colony's governor, who suffers from painful gout. Outwardly resentful towards Arabella, yet silently appreciative for her efforts on his behalf, Blood develops an escape plan for himself and his fellow slaves. The plan is almost uncovered by the suspicious Colonel Bishop, who has one of Blood's men flogged and interrogated. Blood is spared a similar fate when a Spanish man-o-war attacks Port Royal. During the raid, Blood and his fellow slaves seize the Spanish ship from its drunken night watch, and sail away to begin lives of piracy. Blood and his men quickly achieve great fame among the brotherhood of buccaneers. When the old governor is unable to contain the pirate menace, Colonel Bishop is appointed governor. He sends Arabella to England on an extended holiday, but three years later she returns to the Caribbean. Her ship, also carrying royal emissary Lord Willoughby, is captured by Blood's treacherous partner, the French buccaneer Captain Levasseur, who plans to hold them for ransom. Blood forces Levasseur to sell them to him, while relishing the opportunity to turn the tables on Arabella. When Levasseur vehemently objects, Blood is forced to kill him in a duel. Blood offers Arabella valuable jewelry from his conquests as a sign of his love for her. Ungrateful for her "rescue", Arabella is indignant at having been purchased by Blood, and calls him thief and pirate. Although angered by her rejection, he orders his men to set sail for Port Royal where he will deliver Arabella and Lord Willoughby, despite the danger to himself and his crew. As they approach Port Royal, they sight two French warships attacking the city; Bishop has left it undefended in his single-minded pursuit of Blood. With England now at war with France, Lord Willoughby pleads with Blood to save the colony, but the captain and his crew refuse to fight for the corrupt king. Willoughby reveals that James II has been deposed in the Glorious Revolution; England's new king, William III, has sent Willoughby to offer Blood and his men full pardons and commissions in the Royal Navy. This startling news quickly changes the pirates' minds, and they prepare for battle with the French. After ferrying Arabella ashore, Blood and his men approach Port Royal flying French colors, but soon that ensign is replaced with the British Union Jack. A pitched ship-to-ship battle ensues, leading to frenzied hand-to-hand deck combat. Blood and his men defeat the French frigates, saving the colony, but not before losing their ship in the battle. As a reward, Blood is appointed the new governor of Port Royal by Lord Willoughby and has Arabella confess that she loves him. He also has the pleasure of dealing with his hostile predecessor, now returned from his pirate hunt and under arrest for dereliction of duty in a time of war. As Arabella playfully pleads with the new governor to spare her uncle's life, Blood reveals his face to the astonished Bishop, greeting him with the words, "Good morning, Uncle." ===== In Dublin in 1922, Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen) has been kicked out of the outlaw Irish Republican Army (IRA) for not killing a Black and Tan who killed an IRA man. He becomes angry when he sees his streetwalker girlfriend Katie Madden (Margot Grahame) trying to pick up a customer. After he throws the man into the street, Katie laments that she does not have £10 for passage to America to start afresh. Gypo later runs into his friend and IRA comrade Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford), a fugitive with a £20 bounty on his head. Frankie, tired of hiding for six months, is on his way home to visit his mother (Una O'Connor) and sister Mary (Heather Angel) under cover of the foggy night. The slow-witted Gypo decides to turn informer for the £20 reward, enough for passage to America for the both of them. The Black and Tans find Frankie at his house, and Frankie is killed in the ensuing gunfight. The British contemptuously give Gypo his blood money and let him go. Gypo subsequently buys a bottle of whiskey and tells Katie that he obtained money by beating up an American sailor. He goes to Frankie's wake, and acts suspiciously when coins fall out of his pocket. The men there tell him that they do not suspect Gypo of informing, but he then meets with several of his former IRA comrades, who wonder who informed on Frankie. Gypo claims it was a man named Mulligan (Donald Meek). Though Gypo is drunk and talking nonsense, the others begin to suspect him but do not have enough evidence as yet. Gypo leaves and gives out £1 notes to a blind man (D'Arcy Corrigan) and some bar patrons, but people wonder why he had such a sudden influx of cash. Meanwhile, Mary tells the IRA that the only person Frankie talked to that day was Gypo, and the men decide to hold an inquest into the death. Gypo goes to an upper- class party to look for Katie, but gets drunk and buys rounds of drinks. Gypo is then taken away by his former IRA comrades when they figure out it was he. He is taken to a kangaroo court, where Mulligan is questioned and is accused once again by Gypo. However, the comrades do not believe Gypo, and give him a detailed accounting of where he spent his entire £20 reward. Gypo then confesses to ratting out Frankie. Gypo is locked up, but before he can be killed he escapes through a hole in the ceiling. He runs to Katie's apartment, where he tells her that he informed on Frankie. Katie goes to see the commissioner who presided over the trial, Dan Gallagher (Preston Foster), to beg him to leave Gypo alone. The rigid Gallagher says he cannot do anything, and Gypo might turn in the entire organization to the police if he is allowed to live. However, other IRA members, having overheard Katie, go to her apartment and shoot Gypo, much to Katie's horror as she hears the shots. Gypo wanders into a church where Frankie's mother is praying and begs forgiveness as he confesses to her. She does forgive him, telling him that he did not know what he was doing, and the absolved Gypo dies content on the floor of the church after calling out to Frankie with joy. ===== Stone (left) and McGregor hunting wild boar during a training exercise before a desert assault. On the northwest frontier of India during the British Raj, Scottish Canadian Lieutenant Alan McGregor (Gary Cooper), in charge of newcomers, welcomes two replacements to the 41st Bengal Lancers: Lieutenant John Forsythe (Franchot Tone) and Lieutenant Donald Stone (Richard Cromwell), the son of the unit's commander, Colonel Tom Stone (Guy Standing). Lieutenant Stone, a "cub" (meaning a newly commissioned officer), volunteered to serve on the Indian frontier in the belief that his father specifically sent for him; while Lieutenant Forsythe, an experienced cavalrymen and something of a teasing character, was sent out as a replacement for an officer who was killed in action. After their formal introduction, Lieutenant Stone, during a heated argument with his father, realizes his father did not send for him, a discovery that breaks his heart. Attempting to show impartiality, the colonel treats his son very properly. The Colonel's military behavior and adherence to protocol is misinterpreted by young Stone, who resents such treatment from the father he has not seen since he was a boy. Lieutenant Barrett, (Colin Tapley) disguised as a native rebel in order to spy on Mohammed Khan (Douglass Dumbrille), reports that Khan is preparing an uprising against the British. He plans to intercept and hijack a military convoy transporting two million rounds of ammunition. When Khan discovers that Colonel Stone knows of his plan, he orders Tania Volkanskaya, a beautiful Russian agent, to seduce and kidnap Lieutenant Stone in an attempt to extract classified information about the ammunition caravan from him. When the colonel refuses to attempt his son's rescue, McGregor and Forsythe, appalled by the "lack of concern" the colonel has for his own son, leave the camp at night without orders. Disguised as native merchants trying to sell blankets, they successfully get inside Mohammed Khan's fortress. However, they are recognized by Tania, who met the two men before at a civil event. McGregor and Forsythe are taken prisoner. During a seemingly friendly interrogation, Khan says "We have ways of making men talk," and has the prisoners tortured. Their nails are ripped off and the sensitive skin underneath burned with bamboo slivers. When McGregor and Forsythe, despite the agonizing pain, refuse to speak, Stone cracks and reveals what he knows to end their torture. As a result, the ammunition convoy is captured. After receiving news of the stolen ammunition, Colonel Stone takes the 41st to battle Mohammed Khan. From their cell, the captives see the overmatched Bengal Lancers deploy to assault Khan's fortress. They manage to escape and blow up the ammunition tower, young Stone redeeming himself by killing Khan with a dagger. With their ammunition gone, their leader dead, and their fortress in ruins as a result of the battle, the remaining rebels surrender. However, McGregor, who was principally responsible for the destruction of the ammunition tower, was killed when it exploded. In recognition of their bravery and valor in battle, Lieutenants Forsythe and Stone are awarded the Distinguished Service Order. McGregor posthumously receives the Victoria Cross, Great Britain's highest award for military valor, with Colonel Stone pinning the medal to the saddle cloth of McGregor's horse as was the custom in the 41st Lancers (according to the film). ===== The film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer shares nothing with the source book, except the setting. Reid noted in Award-Winning Films of the 1930s that "none of the characters in the book appear in the screenplay, not even Yeats-Brown himself. The plot of the film is also entirely different." ===== ===== To avoid an arranged marriage to Don Carlos, an elderly Spanish duke, Princess Marie masquerades as her uncle's former servant, Marietta, and escapes from France on a ship with casquette girls who are traveling to New Orleans to marry colonists. On board, Marietta befriends Julie. En route, the women discuss what type of man they want to marry. "Marietta" shocks the other girls by stating that she does not intend to marry anyone. Shortly after, the ship is boarded by pirates, who kill the entire crew and take the girls ashore. After the pirates divide the loot, they turn their attention to the girls. Just then, singing is heard ("Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!"). The pirates extinguish their torches and fire to try to avoid detection, but Marietta takes one of the torches and runs towards the sound of the singing, crying out "help, help". Mercenaries rout the pirates and rescue the women. The mercenaries' leader, Captain Richard Warrington, sings "Neath a Southern Moon" to Marietta. Despite his attraction to her, however, Warrington declares that he does not intend to marry. Warrington and his men take the casquette girls to New Orleans, where they are welcomed by the governor. The women are housed in the convent while they get to know their potential husbands. When some men approach Marietta, she declares that she does not want to marry any of them. The governor feels that he has seen Marietta before in Paris, but she denies it. When she pretends to have a disreputable past, the governor orders a pair of soldiers to escort her away in disgrace. Warrington relieves them of their duty and finds her a place to stay, even paying the first month's rent. Though Marietta tries to rid herself of Warrington, he is undaunted. Just then, a group of gypsies stroll by, advertising their Marionette Theater. The gypsy leader, Rodolpho, has his daughter sing, and Warrington joins in ("Italian Street Song"). Stung by Warrington's remark that she might not be able to sing as well as the gypsy, Marietta surprises him by doing so beautifully. While he is distracted getting rid of three would-be suitors, she slips away. The following day, Warrington discovers that Marietta is working at the Marionette Theater. When he visits her after the performance, he receives a warmer reception. Soon after, however, a large award is offered for information about her whereabouts. Warrington persuades her to trust him, and takes her away by boat. During this time together, they discover that they are falling in love with each other ("I'm Falling in Love with Someone"). Later, however, they are found by French soldiers, and her true identity is revealed. Her uncle and Don Carlos are expected on the next ship to take her back. Marietta is to attend a ball arranged by the governor in her honor. Julie comes to see her; she tells Marietta that Warrington had been ordered to leave New Orleans that day, but intends to come to the ball. Her uncle warns her that "if Warrington attempted to see her again, he would be arrested for treason and shot". Marietta asks Julie to stop Warrington from coming, but they realize it is too late when they hear him and his men singing ("Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!"). When Warrington enters the ballroom, the governor tries to get him to leave in order to save his life. Marietta pretends to have been toying with him to deceive her uncle. As Warrington is leaving, Marietta sings "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life", joined by Warrington. The lovers then flee to the wild frontier. ===== David's father dies before his birth and therefore the young man is forced to spend his childhood without the presence of a father figure. He therefore finds valid support in his mother and housekeeper Peggotty. David's mother, however, feels the need to have a husband and therefore remarries with Mr. Murdstone, a severe and insensitive man, and welcomes his sister into the house who proves to be even more insensitive than his brother. When David's mother dies Murdstone sends David to London to work in his family's wine bottling plant. During this time he is assisted by the Micawber family and forms a close friendship with its members. Mr. Micawber, with his courtly language and with his head a little in the air, is unable to look after the expenses of the house and gets into debt; at this point David decides to run away from London. After a thousand adventures, he reaches Dover on foot, where his great-aunt, Betsie Trotwood, lives. His aunt welcomes him together with her roommate Mr. Dick and they send him to boarding school in Canterbury where he rents a room with the lawyer Wickfield and forms a sincere friendship with the latter's daughter, Agnes. David meets Dora Spanlow at the ballet and falls in love, eventually marrying her. Dora is young and flighty and inept at running a household, and dies not long after their marriage. David and Micawber then help to unmask Uriah Heep as the forger and cheat that he is and return Wickfield's firm to its rightful owner. David and Agnes end the film finally expressing their love for each other. ===== In 1908 the Earl of Burnstead (Roland Young) gambles away his eminently correct English manservant, Marmaduke Ruggles (Charles Laughton). Ruggles's new masters, crude nouveau riche American millionaires Egbert and Effie Floud (Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland), bring Ruggles back to Red Gap, Washington, a remote Western boomtown. Mistaken for a wealthy retired Englishman colonel, Ruggles becomes a celebrity in the small town. As he attempts to adjust to his unfamiliar new community, he learns to live life on his own terms, achieving a fulfilling independence as a result. With deliberate irony, Ruggles bemoans his fate as having been relegated to America, "the land of slavery," after having his employment change hands with no input from himself. A key part of the film is Laughton’s recitation of the Gettysburg Address in a saloon filled with rough Western characters held spellbound by the speech. By the end of the film Ruggles finds a way of making a new life for himself on his own terms. ===== Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in Top Hat An American dancer, Jerry Travers (Fred Astaire) comes to London to star in a show produced by the bumbling Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton). While practicing a tap dance routine in his hotel bedroom, he awakens Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) on the floor below. She storms upstairs to complain, whereupon Jerry falls hopelessly in love with her and proceeds to pursue her all over London. Dale mistakes Jerry for Horace, who is married to her friend Madge (Helen Broderick). Following the success of Jerry's opening night in London, Jerry follows Dale to Venice, where she is visiting Madge and modelling/promoting the gowns created by Alberto Beddini (Erik Rhodes), a dandified Italian fashion designer with a penchant for malapropisms. Jerry proposes to Dale, who, while still believing that Jerry is Horace, is disgusted that her friend's husband could behave in such a manner and agrees instead to marry Alberto. Fortunately, Bates (Eric Blore), Horace's meddling English valet, disguises himself as a priest and conducts the ceremony; Horace had sent Bates to keep tabs on Dale. On a trip in a gondola, Jerry manages to convince Dale and they return to the hotel where the previous confusion is rapidly cleared up. The reconciled couple dance off into the Venetian sunset, to the tune of "The Piccolino".Adapted from Billman(1997) ===== In 1773, young Scottish beauty Maria Bonnyfeather (Anita Louise) is the new bride of the cruel and devious middle- aged Spanish nobleman Marquis Don Luis (Claude Rains). Don Luis suffers horribly from gout, so the consummation of their marriage must be postponed until his cure at a famous spa is complete. Meanwhile, Maria’s true love, Denis Moore (Louis Hayward), the man she loved before being forced to marry Don Luis, follows them and stays near the château where they are living. While the marquis is away taking the cure, they contrive to meet in the woods, and after 3 months Maria tells him she is carrying his child. The marquis returns home, cured, and Maria is horrified at what awaits her. The lovers plan to flee that night, but the marquis discovers Maria waiting for Denis. Don Luis takes her across Europe, but Denis at last tracks them down at an inn, where Don Luis treacherously kills him in a sword duel. Months later, Maria dies giving birth to her son at a chalet in the Alps in northern Italy. Don Luis leaves the infant in the foundling wheel of a convent near the port city of Leghorn (Livorno), Italy, where the nuns christen him Anthony because he was found on January 17, the feast day of St. Anthony the Great. Don Luis lies to Maria's father, wealthy Leghorn-based merchant John Bonnyfeather (Edmund Gwenn), telling him that the infant is also dead. Ten years later, completely by coincidence, Anthony (Billy Mauch) is apprenticed to Bonnyfeather, his real grandfather, who discovers his relationship to the boy but keeps it a secret from him. The only explanation for Don Luis’ behavior is that Maria’s child was illegitimate, and Bonnyfeather cannot bear to have his daughter—or his grandson—bear that stigma. He gives the boy the surname Adverse in acknowledgement of the difficult life he has led. From his arrival at Bonnyfeather’s Anthony and the cook’s daughter, Angela Giuseppe are attracted to each other, and as they grow they fall in love. Angela Giuseppe (Olivia de Havilland) has ambitions to become a great singer. Anthony (Fredric March) wants to serve Bonnyfeather and marry Angela, but fate intervenes. Angela’s father wins the lottery and the family leaves Leghorn. Years later, Anthony finds her, singing professionally, in the opera chorus. Eventually, the couple wed. Soon after the ceremony, Anthony is asked by Bonnyfeather to depart for Havana to save Bonnyfeather's fortune from a laggard debtor, the merchant trading firm Gallego & Sons. On the day his ship is supposed to set sail, he and Angela are supposed to meet at the convent before departing together, but she arrives first, and he is late. Unable to wait any longer, she leaves a note outside the convent to inform him that she is leaving for Rome with her opera company. But the note Angela leaves for Anthony is blown away, and he is unaware that she has gone to Rome. Confused and upset, he sails without her. Meanwhile, assuming he has abandoned her, she departs and continues her career as an opera singer. Learning that Gallego has quit Havana, Anthony leaves to take control of Gallego & Sons' only remaining asset--a slave trading post on the Pongo River in Africa. Three years in the slave trade (so he can recover Bonnyfeather's debt) corrupts him, and he takes slave girl Neleta into his bed. Anthony eventually is redeemed by his friendship with Brother François (Pedro de Cordoba). After the monk is crucified and killed by the natives, Anthony returns to Italy to find Bonnyfeather has died. His housekeeper, Faith Paleologus (Gale Sondergaard) (Don Luis' longtime co-conspirator and now wife), has inherited Bonnyfeather's fortune. Anthony goes to Paris to rectify the situation and claim his inheritance. In Paris, Anthony is reunited with his friend, prominent banker Vincent Nolte (Donald Woods), whom he saves from bankruptcy by loaning him his entire fortune, having learned from Brother François that "there's something besides money and power". All Paris is buzzing with gossip about Mademoiselle Georges, the famous opera star and mistress of Napoleon Bonaparte,The historical character Marguerite Georges (nicknamed "Mademoiselle Georges") was indeed a famous actress and Napoleon's mistress in the years in which the plot of Anthony Adverse is set. She was, however, French and not Italian; and the documented facts about her life are very different from those of Angela in the novel and in this film adaptation. and the magnificent diamond necklace he has given to her, although Josephine wanted it. Through the intercession of impresario Debrulle (Ralph Morgan), Anthony is reunited with Angela and discovers that she bore him a son. They spend a blissful day or two together. Angela tells him that she is singing at the opera and he goes with Nolte to hear her. He searches the program in vain for her name, but then he hears her voice coming from the stage. He exclaims, “that’s Angela” and Nolte replies, “That’s Mademoiselle Georges!” Angela continues the aria and emerges from the shadows, descending a long staircase. Her voice is superb, she is magnificently costumed—and she is wearing Napoleon’s gift. She whispers “Goodbye, Anthony,” as he stands and leaves the box. Shaken, he returns home to find that she has sent him their son, with a letter stating that he is better suited to raise the boy, and apologizing for not seeing him again. Anthony departs for America with his son, Anthony Adverse (Scotty Beckett), in search of a better life. ===== The novel is set in the period between late 1925 and late 1927. Samuel ('Sam') Dodsworth is an ambitious and innovative automobile designer, who builds his fortunes in fictional Zenith, Winnemac. In addition to his success in the business world, he had also succeeded as a young man in winning the hand of Frances 'Fran' Voelker, a beautiful young socialite. While the novel provides the courtship as a backstory, the real story begins upon his retirement. Retiring at the age of fifty as a result of his selling of his successful automobile company (The Revelation Motor Company) to a far larger competitor, he sets out to do what he had always wanted to experience: a leisurely trip to Europe with his wife, with aspirations to visit some manufacturing plants looking for his next challenge. His forty-one-year-old wife, however, motivated by her own vanity and fear of lost youth, is dissatisfied with married life and small town Zenith, and wants to live in Europe permanently as an expatriate, not just visit for a few months. Passing up advancement in his recently sold company, Dodsworth leaves for Europe with Fran. Her motivations upon visiting Europe become quickly known. In their extensive travels across Europe, they are soon caught up in vastly different lifestyles. Fran falls in with a crowd of frivolous socialites, while Sam plays more of an independent tourist. 'With his red Baedeker guide book in hand, he visits such well-known tourist attractions as Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame Cathedral, Sanssouci Palace, and the Piazza San Marco. But the historic sites that he sees prove to be far less significant than the American expatriates that he meets on his extensive journeys across Great Britain and continental Europe' Wenzl, Bernhard. "American Expatriates in Interwar Europe: Sinclair Lewis's Dodsworth". In: The Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter. Vol. 20 (1), Fall 2011, 3 & 15–19. He meets Edith Cortright, an expatriate American widow in Venice, who is everything his wife is not: self-assured, self-confident, unselfish and able to take care of herself. As Sam and Fran follow their own pursuits, their marriage is strained to the breaking point. Both are forced to choose between marriage and the new lifestyles they have pursued. The novel includes detailed descriptions of Sam and Fran's tours across Europe. In the beginning, they leave their mid-Western hometown of Zenith, board a steam liner in New York and cross the Atlantic Ocean. Their first stop is England. They visit the sights in London and are invited by Major Clyde Lockert to join a weekend trip to the countryside. Later, after Lockert has made an indecent proposal to Fran, they depart for Paris, where she soon engages in a busy social life and he takes up sightseeing. When Sam decides to go back to America for his college reunion in New Haven, Fran spends the summer months on the lakes near Montreux and Stresa, where she has a romance with Arnold Israel. Once Sam has picked her up in Paris, they agree to continue their travels together, touring France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Hungary and Germany. Their marriage comes to an end when she falls in love with Kurt von Obersdorf in Berlin. Whereas she stays on with her new love, he criss-crosses Europe in an attempt to cope with his new situation. When Sam happens to run into Edith in Venice, she persuades him to accompany her on a visit to a village in the vicinity of Naples. Fran's fiancé calls off the marriage, and Sam joins his former wife on her voyage back to New York. Three days later, he is back on the next ship to meet Edith in Paris. The schematic itinerary of Sam and Fran Dodsworth's travels across Europe from late 1925 to late 1927 ===== Wealthy Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy) is falsely accused of breaking up a marriage and sues the New York Evening Star newspaper for $5,000,000 for libel. Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy), the managing editor, turns in desperation to former reporter and suave ladies' man Bill Chandler (William Powell) for help. Bill's scheme is to maneuver Connie into being alone with him when his wife shows up, so that the suit will have to be dropped. Bill is not married, so Warren volunteers his long-suffering fiancée, Gladys Benton (Jean Harlow), to marry Bill in name only, over her loud protests. Bill arranges to return to America from England on the same ocean liner as Connie and her father J. B. (Walter Connolly). He pays some men to pose as reporters and harass Connie at the dock, so that he can "rescue" her and become acquainted. On the voyage, Connie initially treats him with contempt, assuming that he is just the latest in a long line of fortune hunters after her money, but Bill gradually overcomes her suspicions. Complications arise when Connie and Bill actually fall in love. They get married, but Gladys decides that she prefers Bill to a marriage-averse newspaperman and interrupts their honeymoon to reclaim her husband. Bill reveals that he found out that Gladys' Yucatán divorce was not valid, but Gladys states she got a second divorce in Reno, so she and Bill are actually man and wife. Connie and Bill manage to show Gladys that she really loves Warren. ===== During the Great Depression, Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), the co-owner of a tallow works, part-time greeting card poet, and tuba-playing inhabitant of the (fictional) hamlet of Mandrake Falls, Vermont, inherits 20 million dollars (equivalent to US$ million in ) from his late uncle, Martin Semple. Semple's scheming attorney, John Cedar (Douglass Dumbrille), locates Deeds and takes him to New York City. Cedar gives his cynical troubleshooter, ex-newspaperman Cornelius Cobb (Lionel Stander), the task of keeping reporters away from Deeds. Cobb is outfoxed, however, by star reporter Louise "Babe" Bennett (Jean Arthur), who appeals to Deeds' romantic fantasy of rescuing a damsel in distress by masquerading as a poor worker named Mary Dawson. She pretends to faint from exhaustion after "walking all day to find a job" and worms her way into his confidence. Bennett proceeds to write a series of enormously popular articles mocking Longfellow's hick ways and odd behavior, giving him the nickname "Cinderella Man". Cedar tries to get Deeds' power of attorney in order to keep his own financial misdeeds secret. Deeds, however, proves to be a shrewd judge of character, easily fending off Cedar and other greedy opportunists. He wins Cobb's wholehearted respect and eventually Babe's love. She quits her job in shame, but before she can tell Deeds the truth about herself, Cobb finds it out and tells Deeds. Deeds is left heartbroken, and, in disgust, he decides to return to Mandrake Falls. After he has packed and is about to leave, a dispossessed farmer (John Wray) stomps into his mansion and threatens him with a gun. He expresses his scorn for the seemingly heartless, ultra-rich man, who will not lift a finger to help the multitudes of desperate poor. After the intruder comes to his senses, Deeds realizes what he can do with his troublesome fortune. He decides to provide fully equipped farms free to thousands of homeless families if they will work the land for three years. Alarmed at the prospect of losing control of the fortune, Cedar joins forces with Deeds' only other relative Semple (and the man's grasping, domineering wife) in seeking to have Deeds declared mentally incompetent. Along with Babe's betrayal, this finally breaks Deeds' spirit, and he sinks into a deep depression. A sanity hearing is scheduled to determine who should control the Deeds fortune. During the hearing, Cedar calls an expert who diagnoses manic depression based on Babe's articles and Deeds' current behavior; he gets Deeds' Mandrake Falls tenants, eccentric elderly sisters Jane and Amy Faulkner (Margaret Seddon and Margaret McWade), to testify that Deeds is "pixilated" (i.e., "barmy"). Deeds is too depressed to defend himself and the situation looks bleak when Babe finally speaks up passionately on his behalf, castigating herself for what she did to him. When he realizes that she truly loves him, he begins speaking, systematically punching holes in Cedar's case. For example, when he asks the Faulkners who else is pixilated, they reply: "Why everyone, but us!" Deeds ultimately closes out his rebuttal by punching Cedar in the face, to general acclaim. In the end, the judge declares him to be "the sanest man who ever walked into this courtroom"."Mr. Deeds Goes to Town". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 2011-11-16 from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027996/. ===== In Paris in 1860, a distraught man murders his wife's doctor. Chemist Louis Pasteur (Paul Muni) has been publicizing a theory that diseases are caused by microbes, which doctors should avoid spreading by washing their hands and sterilizing their instruments in boiling water. The doctor did not do this and the wife died of puerperal fever after giving birth. Pasteur is dismissed by France's medical academy--particularly his most vocal critic, Dr. Charbonnet (Fritz Leiber Sr.)--as a crank whose recommendations are tantamount to witchcraft. Pasteur frankly calls attention to the risks of Charbonnet's non-sterile methods and correctly predicts that a member of Napoleon III's royal family who Charbonnet is attending will die of puerperal fever, but Pasteur is the one who is considered dangerous, because his ideas have led to murder. When the Emperor comes down against him, Pasteur leaves Paris and moves to the small town of Arbois. In the 1870s, when the new French government tries to restore the economy after the Franco-Prussian War, they learn that many sheep are dying of anthrax, except around Arbois. They send representatives who learn that, working with a small group of loyal researchers, Pasteur has developed a vaccine against the disease and put it into use locally. The medical academy still opposes him and says Arbois must simply be free of anthrax, so the government buys land there and invites sheep farmers to use it. Pasteur objects strongly, saying the soil is full of anthrax spores, and eventually an experiment is proposed. He will vaccinate 25 of the newly arrived sheep; then they and a control group of 25 others will be injected with blood from a sheep with anthrax. Joseph Lister (Halliwell Hobbes), the pioneer of antiseptic surgery in England, is interested enough to attend, and witnesses Pasteur's total success as all the vaccinated sheep remain healthy after the other 25 have died. At this point Jean Martel (Donald Woods), a young doctor who was formerly Charbonnet's assistant but now is a follower of Pasteur, becomes engaged to Pasteur's daughter Annette (Anita Louise). The celebrations are short-lived, as a rabid dog runs through the town and a man is bitten. As a woman attempts to cure him by witchcraft, Pasteur laments that doctors would have no more chance of success. Moving back to Paris, he makes rabies his next project. He is able to spread the disease from one animal to another by injection, but finds himself unable to detect any microbe being transferred (viruses had not yet been discovered), and the method he used to create the anthrax vaccine does not work. Charbonnet visits the lab to gloat over Pasteur's failure. He is so certain Pasteur is a quack that he injects himself with rabies--and is triumphant, as he does not get the disease. Pasteur is puzzled, until his wife Marie (Josephine Hutchinson) suggests that the sample may have gotten weak with age. This sets him on the right path at last, giving dogs a series of progressively stronger injections. But before his experiments reach a conclusion, a frantic mother begs him to try his untested treatment on her son (Dickie Moore), who has been bitten by a rabid dog. Risking imprisonment or even execution, Pasteur decides he must try to save the child. During the attempt, a Dr. Zaranoff (Akim Tamiroff) arrives from Russia with a group of peasants who have been exposed to rabies, and who have volunteered to receive Pasteur's treatment. Annette goes into labor with Martel's child. The doctor who was to attend her is unavailable, and Martel is urgently needed for the boy. Pasteur searches frantically for another doctor, but the only one he can find is none other than Charbonnet. He begs Charbonnet to wash his hands and sterilize his instruments just this once; Charbonnet finally agrees on condition that if Charbonnet lives another month, Pasteur will retract and denounce all his work on rabies. Both men are honorable enough to respect the agreement. The birth goes well, but Pasteur collapses with a mild stroke. Days later, word comes that Pasteur has permission to treat those of the Russians who are still alive. He attends them in hospital for the first injections using a wheelchair, and later using a cane. The experiment is a success, and now even Charbonnet concedes that he was wrong, tearing up Pasteur's retraction and asking for the shots for himself. Afterwards, Pasteur hears that he is to be denounced by Lister at the medical academy. He angrily attends, but it was just a way to surprise him. He is praised by Lister, presented with a Russian medal by Zaranoff, and honored by the very doctors who once scoffed at his discoveries. ===== The film opens with a portion of the famed introduction to the novel: “ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us... In short, it was a period very like the present...” Lucie Manette (Elizabeth Allan) and her servant and companion Miss Pross (Edna May Oliver) are informed by banker Mr. Jarvis Lorry (Claude Gillingwater) that her father, Dr. Alexandre Mannette (Henry B. Walthall) is not dead, but has been a prisoner in the Bastille for eighteen years before finally being rescued. She travels with Mr. Lorry to Paris to take her father to her home in England. Dr. Manette has been cared for by a former servant, Ernest De Farge (Mitchell Lewis), and his wife (Blanche Yurka). The old man's mind has given way during his long ordeal, but Lucie's tender care begins to restore his sanity. On the return trip across the English Channel, Lucie meets Charles Darnay (Donald Woods), a French aristocrat who, unlike his uncle, the Marquis de St. Evremonde (Basil Rathbone), is sympathetic to the plight of the oppressed and impoverished French masses. He has denounced his uncle, relinquished his title and is going to England to begin a new life. The marquis has Darnay framed for treason, but he is saved by the highly proficient but cynical lawyer Sydney Carton (Ronald Colman). Carton goes drinking with Barsad (Walter Catlett), the main prosecution witness, and tricks him into admitting that he framed Darnay. When Barsad is called to testify, he is horrified to discover that Carton is a member of the defense. He recants his testimony to save himself, and Darnay is acquitted. Carton is thanked by Lucie. He quickly falls in love with her, but comes to realize that it is hopeless. At Christmas, Darnay tells Dr. Manette about his family; Manette forgives him, but reserves the right to tell Lucie himself. On their way to church, the family invites Carton to join them. Afterwards, she invites him into the house. He declines because he is drunk; she tells him she would love to have him for a friend. Lucie and Darnay marry and have a daughter, also named Lucie, who is very fond of Carton. By this time, the French Revolution is beginning. Charles' uncle is one of its first victims, stabbed in his bed by a man whose child had been fatally run down by his coach. The long-suffering peasants vent their fury on the aristocrats, condemning scores daily to Madame Guillotine. Darnay is tricked into returning to Paris and is arrested. Dr. Manette pleads for mercy for his son-in-law, but Madame De Farge, seeking revenge against all the Evremondes (for a past wrong done to her sister), convinces the tribunal to sentence him to death, using a letter Dr. Manette wrote while in prison, cursing and denouncing the entire Evremonde family. Upon learning of Darnay's imprisonment, Carton travels to Paris to comfort Lucie. He devises a desperate rescue plan. Carton finds Barsad and discovers he is now a spy in the prisons. Carton overcomes Barsad's reluctance to help him with his scheme by threatening to reveal that Barsad had been a spy for the marquis. Carton visits Darnay in his cell. There he renders the prisoner unconscious with a drug, switches clothes with him, and finishes the letter Darnay has been writing to Lucie and puts it in Darnay's pocket. Darnay is carried out without anyone noticing the switch. Madame De Farge, her thirst for vengeance still unquenched, goes to provoke Lucie into denouncing the Republic, but she is intercepted by Miss Pross inside the now-vacated apartment. Madame De Farge, suspecting the truth, pulls out a pistol, but in the ensuing struggle, Pross kills her. Meanwhile, only a condemned, innocent seamstress (Isabel Jewell) notices Carton's substitution, but keeps quiet. She draws comfort from his bravery as they ride in the same cart to the guillotine. As Carton stands at the foot of the guillotine, drums roll and then fade away as the camera pans up past the guillotine to the city and the sky above. Colman's voice is heard, saying, "It's a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done. It's a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known." ===== Three sisters living in Switzerland hear their father is going to marry a younger woman in New York. They travel there to stop it. Their plan involves getting a man to seduce her father's fiancée. They accidentally hire a genuinely rich man who falls for one of the sisters. ===== Jerry Warriner (Cary Grant) tells his wife he is going on vacation to Florida, but instead spends the week at his sports club in New York City. He returns home to find that his wife, Lucy (Irene Dunne), spent the night in the company of her handsome music teacher, Armand Duvalle (Alexander D'Arcy). Lucy claims his car broke down unexpectedly. Lucy discovers that Jerry did not actually go to Florida. Their mutual suspicion results in divorce proceedings, with Lucy winning custody of their dog. The judge orders the divorce finalized in 90 days. Lucy moves into an apartment with her Aunt Patsy (Cecil Cunningham). Her neighbor is amiable but rustic Oklahoma oilman Dan Leeson (Ralph Bellamy), whose mother (Esther Dale) does not approve of Lucy. Jerry subtly ridicules Dan in front of Lucy, which causes Lucy to tie herself more closely to Dan. Jerry begins dating sweet-natured but simple singer Dixie Belle Lee (Joyce Compton), unaware that she performs an embarrassing, sexually suggestive act at a local nightclub. Convinced that Lucy is still having an affair with Duvalle, Jerry bursts into Duvalle's apartment only to discover that Lucy is a legitimate vocal student of Duvalle and is giving her first recital. Realizing he may still love Lucy, Jerry undermines Lucy's character with Mrs. Leeson even as Dan and Lucy agree to marry. When Jerry attempts to reconcile with Lucy afterward, he discovers Duvalle hiding in Lucy's apartment and they have a fistfight while Dan and his mother apologize for assuming the worst about Lucy. When Jerry chases Armand out the door, Dan breaks off his engagement to Lucy and he and his mother return to Oklahoma. Some weeks pass, and Jerry begins dating high-profile heiress Barbara Vance (Molly Lamont). Realizing she still loves Jerry, Lucy crashes a party at the Vance mansion the night the divorce decree is to become final. Pretending to be Jerry's sister, she undermines Jerry's character, implying that "their" father was working class rather than wealthy. Acting like a slatternly showgirl, she recreates Dixie's risqué musical number from earlier in the film. The snobbish Vances are appalled. Jerry attempts to explain away Lucy's behavior as drunkenness, and says he will drive Lucy home. Lucy repeatedly sabotages the car on the ride to delay their parting. Pulled over by motorcycle police officers, who believe Jerry is drunk, Lucy manages to wreck the car. The police give the couple a lift to Aunt Patsy's nearby cabin. Although sleeping in different (but adjoining) bedrooms, Jerry and Lucy slowly overcome their pride and a series of comic mishaps in order to admit "the awful truth" that they still love one another. They reconcile at midnight, just before their divorce is to be finalized. ===== In the slums of New York, on the East River just below the Queensboro Bridge, wealthy people live in opulent and luxurious apartments because of the picturesque views of the river, while the destitute and poor live nearby in crowded, cockroach-infested tenements. At the end of the street is a dock on the East River; to the left are the luxury apartments and to the right are the slums. The Dead End Kids, led by Tommy Gordon (Billy Halop), are a gang of street urchins who are already well on the path to a life of petty crime. Members of the gang besides Tommy include, Dippy (Huntz Hall), Angel (Bobby Jordan), Spit (Leo Gorcey), T.B. (Gabriel Dell), and Milty (Bernard Punsly), the new kid on the block in search of friends. Spit is a bit malicious with a cruel streak and initially bullies the newcomer and takes his pocket change. However, Tommy eventually lets Milty join the gang, and he turns out to be both a loyal and generous friend. Tommy's sister, Drina (Sylvia Sidney), dreams of marrying some dashing, rich stranger who will save her and Tommy from this miserable life of poverty and help prevent Tommy from growing up to be a mobster like Hugh "Baby Face" Martin (Humphrey Bogart), who has returned to the neighborhood to visit his mother and childhood girlfriend. Dave Connell (Joel McCrea), raised on the same street as Martin, recognizes him and warns him to stay away, but Martin contemptuously ignores him. Dave, a frustrated architect who currently works odd jobs, is Drina's childhood friend. He is having an affair with a rich man's mistress, Kay Burton (Wendy Barrie). Although Dave and Kay love each other, they know they can't be together because Dave cannot provide Kay with the kind of lifestyle she desires. Meanwhile, the kids lure Philip (Charles Peck), a rich kid from the apartments, into a cellar where they beat and rob him. When the boy's father tries to intervene, Tommy winds up stabbing him in the arm. He escapes the police and goes into hiding. Martin is subsequently rejected by his mother (Marjorie Main), who denounces him as a murderer, and repulsed by his ex-girlfriend, Francie (Claire Trevor), who is now a prostitute and "sick" (a coded reference to her suffering late term stages of syphilis). Despondent over the failed visit, he decides to kidnap the rich child for ransom to make the trip back worthwhile. Dave sees Martin and his accomplices planning the kidnapping and again warns him to leave. Martin knifes him and Hunk (Allen Jenkins) pushes him into the river. Managing to pull himself out of the river, Dave pursues the hoodlums, knocking out Hunk and chasing Martin on the rooftops before cornering him on a fire escape. Among a hail of bullets, he manages to mortally wound Martin who falls onto the street below. While on the ground Martin engages oncoming police officers in a fire fight, shooting a couple before they open fire and kill him. As the police and a crowd of people gather around Martin's body, the doorman (Ward Bond) recognizes Spit as being a member of the gang that attacked the rich kid's father and identifies him to Officer Mulligan (James Burke). Spit exonerates himself by informing the police that the man was cut by Tommy, who has returned to say goodbye to Drina before running away. Meanwhile, Kay approaches Dave asking him to go away with her, using the reward money that he received for killing Martin. Dave refuses, and Kay returns to the man whom she doesn't love, but can provide her with financial security. Tommy hears of Spit's betrayal and tries to give him the mark of the "squealer", which is a knife wound across the cheek. Before he can do so, Dave intervenes, and he and Drina convince Tommy to surrender to the police. Dave then offers to use his reward money to pay for Tommy's defense. As Drina, Dave, and Tommy leave with Mulligan, the rest of the Dead End Kids meander off into the night, singing "If I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I would fly." ===== The O'Leary family are traveling to Chicago to start a new life when Patrick O'Leary tries to race a steam train in his wagon. He is killed when his horses bolt. His wife Molly and their three boys are left to survive on their own. In town she agrees to prove her skills as a laundress when a woman's dress is accidentally spattered with mud. She quickly proves herself and builds a laundry business in an area known as "the Patch". Her sons are educated. One, Jack, becomes a reforming lawyer, but another, Dion, is involved in gambling. While washing a sheet, Mrs. O'Leary discovers a drawing, apparently created by Gil Warren, a devious local businessman. Her sons realize that it reveals that he has a plan to run a tramline along a street that he and his cronies intend to buy up cheaply. Dion becomes enamored with a feisty saloon-bar singer, Belle, who works for Warren. After a stormy courtship they become lovers. Meanwhile, Bob, the youngest O'Leary son, who helps his mother, is in love with Gretchen, an innocent German girl. They meet in the barn watched by the O'Leary's cow Daisy and plan to marry. Mrs. O'Leary approves of the match, but expresses disdain for the loose-living Belle. Dion and Belle bribe the local politicians to set up a saloon on the street where the tramline will pass. Dion makes a deal to support Warren's political career and carve up business in the town. However, Dion's dishonest practices lead to conflict with his brother Jack when one of Dion's cronies is arrested for multiple voting. Dion later decides to support his brother rather than Warren in the election, convinced he can cut out Warren altogether and reign-in Jack's reformist zeal. He is increasingly attracted by the daughter of the corrupt local senator, leading to conflicts with Belle. Bob and Gretchen marry and have a baby. At a Warren election rally a fight breaks out, arranged by Dion. All Warren's election workers are arrested. Jack is elected mayor. He soon announces a campaign against corruption, targeting his brother's fiefdom in the Patch, which he intends to demolish. Belle and Dion separate when Jack asks her to support him. When he realizes Belle might testify against him, Dion asks her to marry him, making her testimony inadmissible. As mayor, Jack marries the couple, but knocks Dion out in a fist fight as soon he realizes he has been deceived. Mrs. O'Leary is told about the fight while helping Daisy's calf to suckle. In her distress, she leaves a lamp in the barn, and Daisy knocks it over. A fire breaks out. Soon the whole of the Patch is on fire. Dion, Warren and their cronies are convinced that Jack has set the fire. Warren's men look for Jack, seeking revenge. Advised by Philip Sheridan, Jack plans to create a firebreak by dynamiting buildings to stop the fire reaching the gasworks, but Warren's gang try to stop him. When Dion learns from Bob how the fire really started, he rushes to Jack's aid. In the struggle, Jack and Dion fight off the gang and set off the dynamite, but Jack is shot by one of Warren's thugs and then killed by a falling building. Warren attempts to flee but is trampled to death by stampeding cattle from the stockyards. Dion and Bob help to save Gretchen and the baby, while Belle rescues Mrs O'Leary. They all manage to escape to the river. Belle and Dion are reconciled, and Mrs. O'Leary predicts that the city will be rebuilt and flourish after her son's sacrifice for its future. ===== ===== John Cardwell, a trombone player, is only one of a large group of unemployed musicians. He tries unsuccessfully to gain an interview and audition with Leopold Stokowski, but not to disappoint his daughter, Patricia (Patsy), he tells her that he has managed to get the job with Stokowski's orchestra. Patsy soon learns the truth and also learns that her father, desperate for rent money, has used some of the cash in a lady's evening bag he has found to pay his debts. The irrepressible and wilful Patsy seeks an interview with Mrs. Frost, whose bag it was, and confesses her father's actions. Mrs. Frost, a society matron and wife of rich radio station owner John R. Frost, lightheartedly offers to sponsor an orchestra of unemployed musicians. Taking her at her word, Patsy and her father recruit 100 musicians, rent a garage space and start to rehearse. Realizing that Patsy took her seriously, Mrs. Frost flees to Europe. Mr. Frost tells John and his friends that he will not sponsor them, as they had supposed, unless they can attract a well-recognized guest conductor to give them a 'name' and launch them on their opening night. Patsy, undaunted, sets out to recruit none other than Leopold Stokowski to be that conductor. Stokowski at first definitely refuses—though when Patsy sings as the orchestra is rehearsing Mozart's "Alleluia" from Exsultate, jubilate, he strongly suggests that she seek professional voice training and eventual representation. By mistake, Patsy conveys the story to a newspaper music critic that Stokowski will conduct an orchestra of unemployed musicians, and that John R. Frost would broadcast the concert on the radio. When the story breaks, Frost protests his embarrassment to his friends, but they suggest valuable publicity would result. Frost immediately signs the one-hundred-man orchestra to a contract, though Patsy tries to tell them that Stokowski has not agreed. Stokowski is astonished and offended at the news, but Patsy enters Stokowski's palatial house surreptitiously, along with the entire orchestra. She apologizes to him and insists that he listen to the players. The conductor is so moved by their performance of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 that he postpones a European tour and agrees to the engagement. The concert is a rousing success for everyone, especially when Patsy, called upon to make a speech, instead agrees to sing the "Brindisi" (Drinking Song) from Verdi's opera La traviata. ===== Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers in Stage Door Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn) moves into the Footlights Club,Inspired by the real-life Rehearsal Club, according to Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies a theatrical boarding house in New York. Her polished manners and superior attitude make her no friends among the rest of the aspiring actresses living there, particularly her new roommate, flippant, cynical dancer Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers). From Terry's expensive clothing and her photograph of her elderly grandfather, Jean assumes she has obtained the former from her sugar daddy, just as fellow resident Linda Shaw (Gail Patrick) has from her relationship with influential theatrical producer Anthony Powell (Adolphe Menjou). In truth, Terry comes from a wealthy Midwest family. Over the strong objections of her father, Henry Sims (Samuel S. Hinds), she is determined to try to fulfill her dreams. In the boarding house, Terry's only supporter is aging actress Anne Luther (Constance Collier), who appoints herself Terry's mentor and acting coach. When Powell sees Jean dancing, he decides to dump Linda. He arranges for Jean and her partner Annie (Ann Miller) to get hired for the floor show of a nightclub he partly owns. He then starts dating Jean, who starts falling for him. Meanwhile, well-liked Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds) had a great success and rave reviews in a play the year before but has had no work since and is running out of money. She clings desperately to the hope of landing the leading role in Powell's new play, Enchanted April. She finally gets an appointment to see Powell, only to have him cancel. She faints in the reception area, the result of malnutrition and disappointment. Seeing this, Terry barges into Powell's private office and berates him for his callousness. As a result, the other boarding house residents start to warm to the newcomer. Terry's father secretly finances Enchanted April on condition that Terry be given the starring role, hoping she will fail and return home. Powell invites Terry to his penthouse to break the news. When Jean shows up unannounced, Terry sees the opportunity to save her friend from the philandering Powell. She pretends that Powell is trying to seduce her. It works. However, it makes things uncomfortable around the boarding house. Terry's landing of the plum part breaks Kay's heart. The inexperienced Terry is so woodenly bad during rehearsals that Powell tries to get out of his contract with Sims. On opening night, after she learns from Jean that Kay has committed suicide, Terry decides she cannot go on. Anne Luther tells her that she must, not just for herself and the tradition of the theatre, but also for Kay. She does and gives a heartfelt performance. She and the play are a hit, much to the chagrin of her father, who is in the audience. At her curtain call, Terry gives a speech in tribute to her dead friend, and Terry and Jean are reconciled. The play remains a success after months, but Terry continues to board at the Footlights Club. A newcomer shows up looking for a room. ===== The film centers on Manuela (Cecilia Roth), an Argentine nurse who oversees donor organ transplants in Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid and single mother to Esteban (Eloy Azorín), a teenager who wants to be a writer. On his seventeenth birthday, Esteban is hit by a car and killed while chasing after actress Huma Rojo (Marisa Paredes) for her autograph following a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire, in which she portrays Blanche DuBois. Manuela has to agree with her colleagues at work that her son's heart be transplanted to a man in A Coruña. After travelling after her son's heart, Manuela quits her job and journeys to Barcelona, where she hopes to find her son's father, Lola, a transgender woman Manuela has kept secret from her son, just as she never told Lola they had a son. In Barcelona, Manuela reunites with her old friend Agrado (Antonia San Juan), a warm and witty transgender sex worker. She also meets and becomes deeply involved with several new friends: Rosa (Penélope Cruz), a young nun who works in a shelter for sex workers who have experienced violence, but is pregnant by Lola and is HIV positive; Huma Rojo, the actress her son had admired; and the drug-addicted Nina Cruz (Candela Peña), Huma's co-star and lover. Her life becomes entwined with theirs as she cares for Rosa during her pregnancy and works for Huma as her personal assistant and even acts in the play as an emergency understudy for Nina during one of her drug abuse crises. On her way to the hospital, Rosa asks the taxi to stop at a park where she spots her father's dog, Sapic, and then her own father (Fernando Fernán Gómez), who suffers from Alzheimer's; he does not recognize Rosa and asks for her age and height, but Sapic recognizes Rosa. Rosa dies giving birth to her son, and Lola (Toni Cantó) and Manuela finally reunite at Rosa's funeral. Lola (whose birth name was Esteban), who is dying from AIDS, talks about how she always wanted a son, and Manuela tells her about her own Esteban and how he died in an accident. Manuela then adopts Esteban, Rosa's child, and stays with him at Rosa's parents' house. The father does not understand who Manuela is, and Rosa's mother (Rosa Maria Sardà) says it's the new cook, who is living there with her son. Rosa's father then asks Manuela her age and height. Manuela introduces Esteban (Rosa's son) to Lola and gives her a picture of their own Esteban. Rosa's mother spots them from the street and then confronts Manuela about letting strangers see the baby. Manuela tells her that Lola is Esteban's father; Rosa's mother is appalled and says: "That is the monster that killed my daughter?!" Manuela flees back to Madrid with Esteban; she cannot take living at Rosa's house any longer, since the grandmother is afraid that she will contract HIV from the baby. She writes a letter to Huma and Agrado saying that she is leaving and once again is sorry for not saying goodbye, like she did years before. Two years later, Manuela returns with Esteban to an AIDS convention, telling Huma and Agrado, who now run a stage show together, that Esteban had been a miracle by becoming HIV free. She then says she is returning to stay with Esteban's grandparents. When Manuela asks Huma about Nina, Huma becomes melancholic and leaves. Agrado tells Manuela that Nina went back to her town, got married, and had a fat, ugly baby boy. Huma then rejoins the conversation briefly before exiting the dressing room to go perform. ===== On a cold day, the fictional 304th New York Infantry Regiment awaits battle beside a river. Eighteen-year-old Private Henry Fleming, remembering his romantic reasons for enlisting as well as his mother's resulting protests, wonders whether he will remain brave in the face of fear or turn and run. He is comforted by one of his friends from home, Jim Conklin, who admits that he would run from battle if his fellow soldiers also fled. During the regiment's first battle, Confederate soldiers charge, but are repelled. The enemy quickly regroups and attacks again, this time forcing some of the unprepared Union soldiers to flee. Fearing the battle is a lost cause, Henry deserts his regiment. It is not until after he reaches the rear of the army that he overhears a general announcing the Union's victory. Ashamed, Henry escapes into a nearby forest, where he discovers a decaying body in a peaceful clearing. In his distress, he hurriedly leaves the clearing and stumbles upon a group of injured men returning from battle. One member of the group, a "tattered soldier", asks Henry where he is wounded, but the youth dodges the question. Among the group is Jim Conklin, who has been shot in the side and is suffering delirium from blood loss. Jim eventually dies of his injury, defiantly resisting aid from his friend, and an enraged and helpless Henry runs from the wounded soldiers. He next comes upon a retreating column that is in disarray. In the panic, a man hits Henry on the head with his rifle, wounding him. Exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and now wounded, Henry decides to return to his regiment regardless of his shame. When he arrives at camp, the other soldiers believe his injury resulted from a grazing bullet during battle. The other men care for the youth, dressing his wound. The next morning Henry goes into battle for the third time. His regiment encounters a small group of Confederates, and in the ensuing fight Henry proves to be a capable soldier, comforted by the belief that his previous cowardice had not been noticed, as he "had performed his mistakes in the dark, so he was still a man". Afterward, while looking for a stream from which to obtain water with a friend, he discovers from the commanding officer that his regiment has a lackluster reputation. The officer speaks casually about sacrificing the 304th because they are nothing more than "mule drivers" and "mud diggers." With no other regiments to spare, the general orders his men forward. In the final battle, Henry acts as the flag-bearer after the color sergeant falls. A line of Confederates hidden behind a fence beyond a clearing shoots with impunity at Henry's regiment, which is ill-covered in the tree-line. Facing withering fire if they stay and disgrace if they retreat, the officers order a charge. Unarmed, Henry leads the men while entirely escaping injury. Most of the Confederates run before the regiment arrives, and four of the remaining men are taken prisoner. The novel closes with the following passage: ===== Richard the Lionheart (Ian Hunter), King of England, is taken captive in 1191 by Leopold V, Duke of Austria while returning from the Holy Land. Richard’s treacherous brother Prince John (Claude Rains) usurps the throne and proceeds to oppress the Saxons, raising taxes to secure his own position. Only the Saxon nobleman Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn) opposes him. Robin acquires a loyal follower when he saves Much the Miller's Son (Herbert Mundin) from being arrested for poaching by Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone). At Gisbourne's castle, Robin boldly tells Prince John and his Norman followers, and the contemptuous Lady Marian Fitzwalter (Olivia de Havilland), that he will do all in his power to restore Richard to the throne. Robin escapes, despite attempts by John's men to stop him. Robin, Much, and friend Will Scarlet (Patric Knowles) take refuge in Sherwood Forest and recruit Little John (Alan Hale, Sr.), while other men join their growing band, including the rotund Friar Tuck (Eugene Pallette), an accomplished English swordsman. Branded as outlaws, Robin binds his men by an oath: to fight for a free England until the return of Richard, to rob the rich and give to the poor, and treat all women with courtesy, "rich or poor, Norman or Saxon". Robin and his band begin a guerrilla war against Prince John, systematically killing the Prince's tax collectors and any Norman nobleman or man-at-arms who abuses his power. Robin and his men capture a large party of Normans transporting tax money extorted from the Saxons. Among Robin's "guests" are Sir Guy of Gisbourne, the cowardly Sheriff of Nottingham (Melville Cooper), and the Lady Marian. Disdainful of Robin at first, Marian comes to accept his good intentions and to see the reality of Norman brutality. Robin allows the humiliated Sir Guy and the Sheriff to leave Sherwood, telling them that they have Lady Marian's presence to thank for their lives being spared. The Sheriff devises a cunning scheme to capture Robin by announcing an archery tournament with the prize of a golden arrow to be presented by the Lady Marian. All goes as planned: Robin wins the prize and is taken prisoner and is sentenced to hang. Marian helps Robin's men rescue him, and he later scales a high castle wall to thank her. Each pledges their love for each other, but Marian declines to leave with him, believing she can best help by staying to be a spy for the men of Sherwood. King Richard and several trusted knights have returned to England, disguised as monks. At a roadside inn, the Bishop of the Black Canons (Montagu Love) discovers them and alerts Prince John and Gisbourne. Dickon Malbete (Harry Cording), a degraded former knight, is given the task of disposing of Richard in return for the restoration of his rank and Robin's manor and estate. Marian overhears their plot and writes a note to Robin, but Sir Guy finds it and has her arrested, pending trial and execution. Marian's confidant, Bess (Una O'Connor), sends Much to warn Robin. On his way, he intercepts and kills Dickon but is wounded in the process. As Richard and his liegemen journey through Sherwood Forest, they are stopped by Robin and his men. Richard assures Robin that he is traveling on the King's business; when asked if he supports Richard, the incognito King replies, "I love no man better". He accepts Robin's invitation to dine with the men of Sherwood and Robin's rebuke for him not staying in England instead of fighting in foreign lands. Will finds the injured Much, who tells Robin of Marian's peril and that Richard is now in England. Robin orders a thorough search to find Richard and bring him to Robin for safety. Now certain of their loyalty, Richard reveals his identity. Robin devises a plan to sneak into Nottingham Castle. He coerces the Bishop of the Black Canons to include his men, disguised as monks, in his entourage for John's coronation. In the great hall Richard reveals himself to the assembled nobles, and a huge melee breaks out. Robin and Sir Guy engage in a prolonged sword fight, ending with Gisbourne's death. Robin releases Marian from her prison cell, and Prince John's men, now defeated, throw down their swords, shields, and banners in surrender. Richard exiles John and his followers for his lifetime and pardons the outlaws. He elevates Robin Hood to be Baron of Locksley and Earl of Sherwood and Nottingham, and commands that Robin marry the Lady Marian. With Marian now by his side, from across the great hall, Robin replies with enthusiasm, "May I obey all your commands with equal pleasure, Sire!" ===== The Lemp sisters, Emma (Gale Page), Thea (Lola Lane), Kay (Rosemary Lane), and Ann (Priscilla Lane) are prodigies in a musical family headed by their father, Adam (Claude Rains). The Lemps also run a boarding house, and among the tenants is Felix Deitz (Jeffrey Lynn), a young composer whom the four daughters want to attract. Emma, the oldest daughter, is the object of affection of a neighbor, Ernest (Dick Foran), but she rebuffs his attentions. Thea, a pianist and the second eldest, is courted by wealthy Ben Crowley (Frank McHugh), another neighbor, but she is not sure she loves him. Kay, the third daughter, is a talented singer and has a chance at a music school scholarship but doesn't want to leave home. The youngest daughter is Ann, a violinist. Mickey (John Garfield), an orchestral arranger and friend of Felix, falls for Ann, but Felix also has had his eyes on her and proposes marriage. An hour before Ann and Felix are to marry, Mickey tells Ann that Emma is in love with Felix. Ann then observes Emma's distress after parting from Felix for the ceremony, and decides to step out of their way. She leaves and sends a telegram the wedding participants get, telling them she has eloped with Mickey. Ernest is prominent in calming people. Four months later, Ann and Mickey are living a hard life in New York, professing love for each other but penniless and unhappy. Mickey is invited to form a band and go to South America with some fellow-musicians, but cannot afford passage, and Ann does not want to go. The family meets at the Lemps' house for Christmas, except Kay, who is singing on the radio that night. Emma has not gotten together with Felix, but is now engaged to Ernest; she tells Ann that she had thought she was in love with Felix and would have kept on thinking so and spoiled her life if Ann had married him, but she was awakened to Ernest's qualities when he took charge at the abortive wedding. Felix is alone and unhappy, though he has a good conducting job awaiting him in Seattle. Mickey observes all this, and feels like an outsider and a failure. When he and Ben go to see Felix off at the train station in a snowstorm, he drives Ben's car and drops Ben off for an errand; as the train pulls out, Felix presses some money on him and tells him to use it for Ann, and Mickey, realizing that Felix and Ann really belong together, speeds through the snow until he crashes the car. The family comes to the hospital, and he dies with Ann at his bedside. A while later, all four daughters are home making music with their loved ones when Felix returns, and he and Ann renew their love. ===== Pierre Fresnay and Erich von Stroheim in The Grand Illusion During the First World War, two French aviators, the aristocratic Captain de Boëldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin), set out on a flight to examine the site of a blurred spot found on photographs from an earlier air reconnaissance mission. They are shot down by a German aviator and aristocrat, Rittmeister von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim), and both are taken prisoner by German ground forces. Upon returning to base, von Rauffenstein sends a subordinate to find out if the aviators are officers and, if so, to invite them to lunch. During the meal, Rauffenstein and Boëldieu discover they have mutual acquaintances—a depiction of the familiarity, if not solidarity, within the upper classes that crosses national boundaries. Boëldieu and Maréchal are then taken to a prisoner-of-war camp, where they meet a colorful group of French prisoners and stage a vaudeville-type performance just after the Germans have taken Fort Douaumont in the epic Battle of Verdun. During the performance, word arrives that the French have recaptured the fort. Maréchal interrupts the show, and the French prisoners spontaneously burst into "La Marseillaise". As a result of the disruption, Maréchal is placed in solitary confinement, where he suffers badly from lack of human contact and hunger; the fort changes hands once more while he is imprisoned. Boëldieu and Maréchal also help their fellow prisoners to finish digging an escape tunnel. However, just before it is completed, everyone is transferred to other camps. Because of the language barrier, Maréchal is unable to pass word of the tunnel to an incoming British prisoner. Boëldieu and Maréchal are moved from camp to camp, finally arriving in Wintersborn, a mountain fortress prison commanded by Rauffenstein, who has been so badly injured in battle that he has been promoted, but given a posting away from the front, much to his regret. Rauffenstein tells them that Wintersborn is escape-proof. At Wintersborn, the pair are reunited with a fellow prisoner, Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), from the original camp. Rosenthal is a wealthy French Jew, a naturalized French citizen, the son of a Polish father and a Danish mother, who generously shares the food parcels he receives. Boëldieu comes up with an idea, after carefully observing how the German guards respond to an emergency. He volunteers to distract the guards for the few minutes needed for Maréchal and Rosenthal to escape. After a commotion staged by the prisoners, the guards are ordered to assemble them in the fortress courtyard. During the roll call, it is discovered that Boëldieu is missing. He makes his presence known high up in the fortress, drawing the German guards away in pursuit. Maréchal and Rosenthal take the opportunity to lower themselves from a window by a homemade rope and flee. Rauffenstein stops the guards from firing at Boëldieu with their rifles and pleads with his fellow aristocrat to give himself up. Boëldieu refuses, and Rauffenstein reluctantly shoots at him with his pistol, aiming for his legs but hitting him in the stomach. Nursed in his final moments by a grieving Rauffenstein, Boëldieu laments that their usefulness to society (as aristocrats) will end with this war. He also pities Rauffenstein, who will have to find a new purpose in the emerging social order. Maréchal and Rosenthal journey across the German countryside, trying to get to nearby Switzerland. Rosenthal injures his foot, slowing Maréchal down. They quarrel and part, but then Maréchal returns to help his comrade. They take refuge in the modest farmhouse of a German woman, Elsa (Dita Parlo), who has lost her husband at Verdun, along with three brothers, at battles which, with quiet irony, she describes as "our greatest victories." She generously takes them in, and doesn't betray them to a passing German army patrol. Maréchal begins to fall in love with her, and she with him, but he and Rosenthal eventually leave from a sense of duty to the war effort after Rosenthal recovers from his injury. Maréchal declares his intention to come back for Elsa and her daughter, Lotte, after the war. A German patrol sights the two fugitives crossing a snow-covered valley. The soldiers fire a few rounds, but then the patrol leader orders them to cease fire, saying the pair have crossed into Switzerland. We last glimpse them from a distance, trudging through deep snow, their future uncertain. Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, which appears in the film. ===== Gable and Loy acted alongside the racing aircraft of the day. Reckless test pilot Jim Lane (Clark Gable) is forced to land on a Kansas farm in his aircraft, the "Drake Bullet", where he meets Ann "Thursday" Barton (Myrna Loy). They spend the day together and fall in love. Once Jim's best friend and mechanic, Gunner Morris (Spencer Tracy), arrives, Jim ignores Ann. To spur him, she gets engaged to her sweetheart. Jim leaves in the morning, but soon comes back for her. They quickly get married. Jim loses his job at Drake, when he clashes with the owner (Lionel Barrymore), and takes a job with another outfit, flying a very experimental aircraft. Ann soon finds out how dangerous her husband's occupation is, but she promises Gunner that she will stick to her man. Jim wins the race, but Benson, the man Drake sends in Jim's place, dies, leaving a wife and three children behind. Jim tries to reform his ways and begins by taking a job testing aircraft, even conducting dangerous flights as he wants to give Ann a real home. Gunner remains true to his friend. One day, Gunner accompanies Jim on a test flight of a new bomber (a Y1B-17, an early Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress prototype). Upon reaching 30,000 feet, something goes wrong; the bomber goes into a spin and sandbags (substituting for the weight of bombs) break loose, pinning Gunner. Unwilling to bail out without his buddy, Jim manages to crash land, and pulls a badly injured Gunner out of the wreckage right before it burst into flames; but it is too late for Gunner. When Jim realizes the toll his job has taken on his wife, he gives it up and joins the United States Army Air Corps. ===== From the trailer Judith “Judy” Traherne (Bette Davis) is a young, carefree, hedonistic Long Island socialite and heiress with a passion for horses, fast cars, and too much smoking and drinking. She initially ignores severe headaches and brief episodes of dizziness and double vision, but when she uncharacteristically takes a spill while riding, and then tumbles down a flight of stairs, her secretary and best friend Ann King (Geraldine Fitzgerald) insists she see the family doctor, who refers her to a specialist. Dr. Frederick Steele (George Brent) is in the midst of closing his New York City office in preparation of a move to Brattleboro, Vermont, where he plans to devote his time to brain cell research and scientific study on their growth. He reluctantly agrees to see Judy, who is cold and openly antagonistic toward him. She shows signs of short-term memory loss, but dismisses her symptoms. Steele convinces her the ailments she is experiencing are serious and potentially life-threatening, and puts his career plans on hold to tend to her. When diagnostic tests confirm his suspicions, Judy agrees to surgery to remove a malignant glioma brain tumor. Steele discovers the tumor cannot be completely removed, and realizes she has less than a year to live. The end will be painless but swift—shortly after experiencing total blindness, Judy will die. In order to allow her a few more months of happiness, Steele opts to lie to Judy and Ann and assures them the surgery was a success. As he is a poor liar, Ann is suspicious and confronts Steele, who admits the truth. Steele tells Ann, "she must never know" she is going to die soon. She agrees to remain silent and continue the lie. Geraldine Fitzgerald and Bette Davis, after “Judy” has lost her sight, in final minutes of Dark Victory Judith and Steele become involved romantically and eventually engaged. While helping his assistant pack the office prior to their departure for Vermont, Judith discovers her case history file containing letters from several doctors, all of them confirming Steele's prognosis. Assuming Steele was marrying her out of pity, Judy breaks off the engagement and reverts to her former lifestyle. One day, her stablemaster Michael O'Leary (Humphrey Bogart), who for years has loved her from afar, confronts her about her unruly behavior, and she confesses she is dying. Their conversation convinces her she should spend her final months happy, dignified, and with the man she loves. She apologizes to Steele, and they marry and move to Vermont. (Throughout the film Judith and O'Leary engage in arguments about the prospects of a colt, Challenger. O'Leary insists Challenger will never make a racehorse, while Judith sees him as a future champion. Just before her death, O'Leary admits to her that she was correct.) Three months later, Ann comes to visit. She and Judith are in the garden planting bulbs when Judy comments on how odd it is she still feels the heat of the sun under the rapidly darkening skies. She and Ann immediately realize she actually is losing her vision and approaching the end. Judy makes Ann stay mum, as Steele is leaving that day to present his most recent medical findings—which hold out the long-term prospect of a cure for her type of cancer—in New York. Judy makes an excuse to remain home, helps him pack and sends him off, telling him “What we have now can’t be destroyed. That’s our victory, our victory over the dark. It’s a victory because we’re not afraid.” Then, after bidding Ann, her housekeeper Martha (Virginia Brissac) (who has silently deduced the situation), and her dogs farewell, she goes to her bedroom. She kneels briefly, apparently praying, then lies down on the bed. Martha enters and drapes a blanket over her, then withdraws when Judy asks to be left alone. The camera focuses on the motionless Judith as the screen becomes blurry, then fades to black. ===== French painter Michel Marnet (Charles Boyer) meets American singer Terry McKay (Irene Dunne) aboard a liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean. They are both already engaged, he to heiress Lois Clarke (Astrid Allwyn), she to Kenneth Bradley (Lee Bowman). They begin to flirt and to dine together on the ship, but his notoriety and popularity on the ship make them conscious that others are watching. Eventually, they decide that they should dine separately and not associate with each other. At a stop at Madeira, they visit Michel's grandmother Janou (Maria Ouspenskaya), who approves of Terry and wants Michel to settle down. As the ship is ready to disembark at New York City, the two make an appointment to meet six months later on top of the Empire State Building. Michel chooses six months because that is the amount of time he needs to decide whether he can start making enough money to support a relationship with Terry. When the rendezvous date arrives, they both head to the Empire State Building. However, Terry is struck by a car right as she arrives, and is told that she may not be able to walk, though that will not be known for certain for six months. Not wanting to be a burden to Michel, she does not contact him, preferring to let him think the worst. Meanwhile, Terry finds a job working at an orphanage teaching the children how to sing. Six months go by, and during Terry's first outing since the accident, the two couples meet by accident at the theater, though Terry manages to conceal her condition. Michel then visits her at her apartment and finally learns the truth. He assures her that they will be together no matter what the diagnosis will be. ===== The governor of an unnamed western state, Hubert "Happy" Hopper (Guy Kibbee), has to pick a replacement for recently deceased U.S. Senator Sam Foley. His corrupt political boss, Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold), pressures Hopper to choose his handpicked stooge, while popular committees want a reformer, Henry Hill. The governor's children want him to select Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), the head of the Boy Rangers. Unable to make up his mind between Taylor's stooge and the reformer, Hopper decides to flip a coin. When it lands on edge – and next to a newspaper story on one of Smith's accomplishments – he chooses Smith, calculating that his wholesome image will please the people while his naïveté will make him easy to manipulate. Junior Senator Smith is taken under the wing of the publicly esteemed, but secretly crooked, Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), who was Smith's late father's friend. Smith develops an immediate attraction to the senator's daughter, Susan (Astrid Allwyn). At Senator Paine's home, Smith has a conversation with Susan, fidgeting and bumbling, entranced by the young socialite. Smith's naïve and honest nature allows the unforgiving Washington press to take advantage of him, quickly tarnishing Smith's reputation with ridiculous front-page pictures and headlines branding him a bumpkin. To keep Smith busy, Paine suggests he propose a bill. With the help of his secretary, Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur), who was the aide to Smith's predecessor and had been around Washington and politics for years, Smith comes up with a bill to authorize a federal government loan to buy some land in his home state for a national boys' camp, to be paid back by youngsters across America. Donations pour in immediately. However, the proposed campsite is already part of a dam-building graft scheme included in an appropriations bill framed by the Taylor political machine and supported by Senator Paine. Unwilling to crucify the worshipful Smith so that their graft plan will go through, Paine tells Taylor he wants out, but Taylor reminds him that Paine is in power primarily through Taylor's influence. Through Paine, the machine in his state accuses Smith of trying to profit from his bill by producing fraudulent evidence that Smith already owns the land in question. Smith is too shocked by Paine's betrayal to defend himself and runs away. Saunders, who looked down on Smith at first, but has come to believe in him, talks him into launching a filibuster to postpone the appropriations bill and prove his innocence on the Senate floor just before the vote to expel him. In his last chance to prove his innocence, he talks non-stop for about 25 hours, reaffirming the American ideals of freedom and disclosing the true motives of the dam scheme. Yet none of the Senators are convinced. The constituents try to rally around him, but the entrenched opposition is too powerful, and all attempts are crushed. Owing to the influence of Taylor's machine, newspapers and radio stations in Smith's home state, on Taylor's orders, refuse to report what Smith has to say and even distort the facts against the senator. An effort by the Boy Rangers to spread the news in support of Smith results in vicious attacks on the children by Taylor's minions. Although all hope seems lost, the senators begin to pay attention as Smith approaches utter exhaustion. Paine has one last card up his sleeve: he brings in bins of letters and telegrams from Smith's home state, purportedly from average people demanding his expulsion. Nearly broken by the news, Smith finds a small ray of hope in a friendly smile from the President of the Senate (Harry Carey). Smith vows to press on until people believe him but immediately collapses in a faint. Overcome with guilt, Paine leaves the Senate chamber and attempts to commit suicide by gunshot, but is stopped by onlooking senators. He then bursts back into the Senate chamber, shouting a confession to the whole scheme; Paine further insists that he should be expelled from the Senate and affirms Smith's innocence, to the delight of Clarissa. The President of the Senate observes the ensuing chaos with amusement. ===== Three Soviet agents, Iranoff (Sig Ruman), Buljanoff (Felix Bressart), and Kopalski (Alexander Granach), arrive in Paris to sell jewellery confiscated from the aristocracy during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Count Alexis Rakonin (Gregory Gaye), a Russian nobleman reduced to employment as a waiter in the hotel where the trio are staying, overhears details of their mission and informs the former Russian Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire) that her court jewels are to be sold by the three men. Her debonair paramour, Count Leon d'Algout (Melvyn Douglas) offers to help retrieve her jewellery before it is sold. In their hotel suite, Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski negotiate with Mercier (Edwin Maxwell) a prominent Parisian jeweller, when Leon interrupts the meeting. He explains that the jewels are stolen and a petition has been filed preventing their sale or removal. Mercier withdraws his offer to purchase the jewellery until the lawsuit is settled. The amiable, charming and cunning Leon treats the three Russians to an extravagant lunch, gets them drunk and easily wins their confidence and friendship. He sends a telegram to Moscow in their name suggesting a compromise. Moscow, angered by the telegram, then sends Nina Ivanovna "Ninotchka" Yakushova (Greta Garbo), a special envoy whose goal is to win the lawsuit, complete the jewellery sale and bring back the three renegade Russians. Ninotchka is methodical, rigid and stern, chastising Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski for failing to complete their mission. Ninotchka and Leon first meet outside the hotel, their respective identities unknown to one another. He flirts, but she is uninterested. Intrigued, Leon follows her to the Eiffel Tower and shows her his home through a telescope. Intrigued by his behavior, Ninotchka tells him he might warrant study and suggests they go to his apartment. Ninotchka becomes attracted to Leon and eventually, they kiss, but they are interrupted by a phone call from Buljanoff. Ninotchka and Leon both realize they are each other's adversaries over the jewellery and she leaves the apartment, despite Leon's protestations. While attending to the various legal matters over the lawsuit, Ninotchka gradually becomes seduced by the west and by Leon, who has broken down her resistance and fallen in love with her. At a dinner date with Leon where she unexpectedly meets her rival for the jewellery and for Leon's affections, Swana, face-to-face, she consumes champagne for the first time and quickly becomes intoxicated. The next day, a hungover Ninotchka wakes to find that Swana has procured Rakonin to steal the jewellery. Swana informs Ninotchka that she will return the jewels and drop the litigation if Ninotchka leaves Paris for Moscow immediately so that Swana can have Leon to herself. Ninotchka reluctantly agrees and after completing the sale of the jewellery to Mercier, Ninotchka, Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski fly that evening to Moscow. After Swana informs Leon that Ninotchka has left for Russia, he immediately tries to follow her but is denied a Russian visa, because of his nobility. Sometime later in Moscow, Ninotchka invites her three comrades to her shared apartment for dinner and they nostalgically recall their time in Paris. Ninotchka finally receives a letter from Leon, but it has been completely censored by the authorities, and she is devastated. Time passes. Against her wishes, Ninotchka is sent to Constantinople by Commissar Razinin (Bela Lugosi) to again retrieve Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski after they fail at their mission to sell furs. After she arrives in Constantinople, the three Russians inform Ninotchka that they have opened a restaurant and will not be returning to Moscow. When Ninotchka asks them who was responsible for this idea, they point to the balcony where Leon is standing. He explains that he was barred from entering Russia to win Ninotchka back, so he and the three Russians conspired to get her to leave the country. He asks her to stay with him and she happily agrees. The final shot in the film is of Kopalski carrying a sign protesting Iranoff and Buljanoff are unfair after his name on the electric sign at their restaurant does not illuminate. ===== Two migrant field workers in California on their plantation during the Great Depression—George Milton, an intelligent but uneducated man, and Lennie Small, a bulky, strong man but mentally disabled—are in Soledad on their way to another part of California. They hope to one day attain the dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie's part of the dream is merely to tend and pet rabbits on the farm, as he loves touching soft animals, although he always accidentally kills them. This dream is one of Lennie's favorite stories, which George constantly retells. They had fled from Weed after Lennie grabbed a young woman's skirt and would not let go, leading to an accusation of rape. It soon becomes clear that the two are close and George is Lennie's protector, despite his antics. After being hired at a farm, the pair are confronted by Curley— the Boss's small, aggressive son with a Napoleon complex who dislikes larger men. Curley starts to target Lennie. Curley's flirtatious and provocative wife, to whom Lennie is instantly attracted, poses a problem as well. In contrast, the pair also meets Candy, an elderly ranch handyman with one hand and a loyal dog, and Slim, an intelligent and gentle jerkline-skinner whose dog has recently had a litter of puppies. Slim gives a puppy to Lennie and Candy, whose loyal, accomplished sheep dog was put down by fellow ranch- hand Carlson. In spite of problems, their dream leaps towards reality when Candy offers to pitch in $350 with George and Lennie so that they can buy a farm at the end of the month, in return for permission to live with them. The trio are ecstatic, but their joy is overshadowed when Curley attacks Lennie, who defends himself by easily crushing Curley's fist while urged on by George. Nevertheless, George feels more relaxed, to the extent that he even leaves Lennie behind on the ranch while he goes into town with the other ranch hands. Lennie wanders into the stable, and chats with Crooks, the bitter, yet educated stable buck, who is isolated from the other workers due to being black. Candy finds them and they discuss their plans for the farm with Crooks, who cannot resist asking them if he can hoe a garden patch on the farm albeit scorning its possibility. Curley's wife makes another appearance and flirts with the men, especially Lennie. However, her spiteful side is shown when she belittles them and threatens to have Crooks lynched. The next day, Lennie accidentally kills his puppy while stroking it. Curley's wife enters the barn and tries to speak to Lennie, admitting that she is lonely and how her dreams of becoming a movie star are crushed, revealing her personality. After finding out about Lennie's habit, she offers to let him stroke her hair, but panics and begins to scream when she feels his strength. Lennie becomes frightened, and unintentionally breaks her neck thereafter and runs away. When the other ranch hands find the corpse, George realizes that their dream is at an end. George hurries to find Lennie, hoping he will be at the meeting place they designated in case he got into trouble. George meets Lennie at their camping spot before they came to the ranch. The two sit together and George retells the beloved story of the dream, knowing it is something they will never share. He then kills Lennie by shooting him, because he sees it as an action in Lennie's best interest. Curley, Slim, and Carlson arrive seconds after. Only Slim realizes what happened, and consolingly leads him away. Curley and Carlson look on, unable to comprehend the subdued mood of the two men. ===== Two migrant field workers in California during the Great Depression, George Milton, an intelligent and quick-witted man (despite his frequent claims of being "not that smart"), and Lennie Small, an ironically-named man of large stature and immense strength who, due to his mental disability, has a mind of a young child, hope to one day attain their shared dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie's part of the dream, which he never tires of hearing George describe, is merely to tend to (and touch) soft rabbits on the farm. George protects Lennie at the beginning by telling him that if Lennie gets into trouble George won't let him "tend them rabbits." They are fleeing from their previous employment in Weed where they were run out of town after Lennie's love of stroking soft things resulted in an accusation of attempted rape when he touched and held onto a young woman's dress. While on a bus en route to the new ranch, Lennie—who, because of his mental disability, is prone to forget the simplest things—asks George where they are going. George is annoyed by this and tells him about the work cards they got at the bus entrance; Lennie does remember this, but incorrectly remembers having them in his pocket, since George has both of them. After being dropped off 10 miles from their destination, George and Lennie decide to camp for the night by the Salinas River. When George points Lennie to the river, Lennie runs to the river and dunks his whole head in it, drinking from it like an animal. George soon catches Lennie petting a dead bird, takes it away from him and, for safety, throws it to the other side of the river. When Lennie hears that they are going have beans for dinner, he requests ketchup, to which George responds that they do not have any. At night, as George and Lennie are eating beans for dinner, Lennie again requests ketchup; George responds angrily, stating that whatever they do not have is what Lennie always wants to have. This leaves Lennie puzzled, as he had forgotten that first response from earlier. This also causes George to make a long speech about Lennie's ungratefulness, his childlike behavior, and why they had to escape from Weed. Eventually, George eases the tensions by telling Lennie his favorite story about their future farm. The next day, they arrive at the ranch near Soledad. They meet Candy, the aged, one-handed ranch-hand with his old dog he had raised since it was a puppy. After meeting with the ranch boss, Jackson, the pair are confronted by Curley, the small-statured, jealous and violent son of the ranch owner, who threatens to beat Lennie as Curley hates men who are of large stature. To make matters worse, Curley's seductive yet sadistic and conniving wife, Mae, to whom Lennie is instantly attracted, flirts with the other ranch hands. George orders Lennie not to look at or even talk to her, as he senses the troubles that Mae could bring to the men. One night, Mae enters the barn to talk with Slim. Even when Mae explains how her life has been during the Depression, Slim refuses to listen to her and shuns her, saying "You got no troubles, except what you bring on yourself" and tells her to go back to the house. When this statement causes Mae to sob, Slim gives in and lets her talk. Back at the bunkhouse, Candy offers to join with George and Lennie after Carlson puts down his dog, so they can buy the farm, and the dream appears to move closer to reality. Curley appears and makes a scene in the bunkhouse as the workers mock him after he accused Slim of keeping company with his wife. George and Lennie's dream is overshadowed when Curley catches Lennie laughing, grabs him from his bunk and starts punching him in the face. Lennie asks for help from George, who tells him to fight back. Upon hearing George say this, Lennie catches Curley's hand and crushes it. Slim gives Curley an ultimatum: if Curley tells his father to get Lennie and George fired, Slim will tell everyone what happened. Curley is told to say that he got his hand caught in a piece of machinery. On Saturday night, everyone except Lennie, Candy and Crooks (because of his race) are in town, enjoying themselves. Crooks asks Lennie to stay in his room and Lennie explains to him about the farm that he, George and Candy are going to own, forgetting his promise to George not to tell this to anyone. Candy gets into the conversation too and, when George comes back first, he sees Lennie smoking a cigar and takes it away, guessing what Lennie had done. At that moment, Mae enters the bunkhouse, trying to ask Crooks who crushed Curley's hand. When Crooks refuses to respond, Mae callously calls the four "bindlestiffs" in an attempt to belittle them. When Candy responds with proof of what they are going to do in the future, Mae refuses to accept their American dream, calling him an "old goat." When Mae tries to get Crooks to explain what happened to Curley's hand (despite the fact that he was not present), George mentions that nobody did it, briefly leading Mae to believe that George was the one who crushed his hand. George tries to explain what they are going to do in the future, and that, if Mae keeps constantly flirting with them, she is going to cause the dream to crash. The callous Mae refuses to listen, and, while looking for the person who crushed her husband's hand, sees Lennie's bloodied and bruised face, and she finds out that he is the one responsible. When Mae tries to be kind to Lennie and to "thank" him for what he did, George grabs her by the shoulder, berates her and tells her to return to the house. Mae refuses to do so, saying that she has the right to talk to and flirt with whomever she comes across. Jackson, who happened to be standing by Crooks' door, catches George with his hand raised, with the intention to slap Mae across the face because of her arrogance and negligence. Holding a horsewhip in his hand, Jackson silently dissuades him from doing so and to let Mae go back to the house unharmed. The next morning, Mae confronts Curley, who repeats the same statement Slim gave him earlier but. because Mae knows the truth, she taunts him, calling him "a punk with a crippled hand!" Curley then tells her that their marriage is over, and that she is going to be kicked out of the ranch due to her carnal behavior with the ranch hands. She continues to laugh hysterically until she starts to weep, realizing she is now done for. Before she can leave, Mae enters the barn to pet a few of Slim's puppies, when she spots Lennie sobbing, as he killed his puppy by stroking it too hard. When Lennie tries to leave, knowing he should not be talking to Mae as ordered by George, she stops him from leaving and forces him to talk to her. Mae explains to Lennie what she wanted to be before Curley shattered her dream. When Lennie tells Mae that he loves to stroke soft things, Mae allows him to stroke her hair, telling him not to "muss it up." Mae starts to resist and scream when Lennie strokes her hair too hard. However, when Lennie tries to silence Mae, he accidentally kills her by breaking her neck. This puts an end to their own American dream. When Candy and George find Mae's body, they tell the others, including Curley, who grows infuriated. As a result, a lynch mob gathers to kill Lennie. However, George and Slim go off alone to find Lennie. After he and Candy see Mae's dead body, George tells Slim that he has Carlson's Luger. George and Slim separate and go to find Lennie. George finds him first and, realizing he is doomed to a life of loneliness and despair like the rest of the migrant workers, wants to spare Lennie a painful death at the hands of the furious and cold-hearted Curley. After giving Lennie one last retelling of their dream of buying their own land, George shoots Lennie in the back of the head with Carlson's Luger before the mob can find him. When the mob arrives too late, only Slim realizes what George has done, and he hands the Luger to a local police officer as they leave the river. ===== In June 1880, a group of strangers boards the stagecoach from Tonto, Arizona Territory, to Lordsburg, New Mexico. Among them are Dallas, a prostitute driven out of town by the "Law and Order League"; the alcoholic Doc Boone; pregnant Lucy Mallory, who is travelling to join her cavalry officer husband; and whiskey salesman Samuel Peacock, whose samples Doc Boone takes charge of and starts drinking. When the stage driver, Buck, looks for his shotgun guard, Marshal Curley Wilcox tells him that the guard is off searching for a fugitive. The Ringo Kid has broken out of prison after hearing that his father and brother had been murdered by Luke Plummer. Buck tells Curley that Ringo is heading for Lordsburg and, knowing that Ringo has vowed vengeance, Curley decides to ride along as guard. As the stage sets out, U.S. Cavalry Lieutenant Blanchard announces that Geronimo and his Apaches are on the warpath; his small troop will provide an escort to Dry Fork. Upon seeing her distress, gambler and Southern gentleman Hatfield offers his protection to Mrs. Mallory and climbs on. At the edge of town, another passenger flags down the stage: an assertive banker Henry Gatewood, who is absconding with money embezzled from his bank. Further along the road, the stage comes across the Ringo Kid, stranded after his horse has gone lame. Even though they are friends, Curley has to take Ringo into custody and crowds him too into the coach. But when they reach Dry Fork, the expected cavalry detachment has gone on to Apache Wells. Buck wants to turn back, but most of the party vote to proceed. At lunch before departing, the group is taken aback when Ringo invites Dallas to sit at the main table. Hatfield offers Mrs. Mallory his silver folding cup, rather than have her drink from the canteen directly. She recognizes the family crest on the cup and asks Hatfield whether he was ever in Virginia. He says that he served in the Confederate Army under her father's command. On arriving at Apache Wells, Mrs. Mallory learns that her husband had been wounded in battle. When she faints and goes into labor, Doc Boone has to sober up and deliver the baby with Dallas assisting. Later that night, Ringo asks Dallas to marry him and live on a ranch he owns in Mexico. Afraid to reveal her past, she does not answer immediately. The next morning, she accepts, but does not want to leave Mrs. Mallory and the new baby, so she tells Ringo to go on alone to his ranch, where she will meet him later. As Ringo is escaping he sees smoke signals heralding an Apache attack and returns into custody. The stage reaches Lee's Ferry, which Apaches have destroyed. Curley uncuffs Ringo to help lash logs to the stagecoach and float it across the river. Just when they think that danger has passed, the Apaches attack and a long chase scene follows, where some of the party are injured fighting off their pursuers. Just as they run out of ammunition and Hatfield is getting ready to save Mrs Mallory from capture by killing her with his last bullet, the 6th U.S. Cavalry rides to the rescue. At Lordsburg, Gatewood is arrested by the local sheriff and Mrs. Mallory learns that her husband's wound is not serious. She thanks Dallas, who gives Mrs. Mallory her shawl. Dallas then begs Ringo not to confront the Plummers, but he is determined to settle matters and as they walk through town he sees the brothel to which she is returning. Luke Plummer, who is playing poker in one of the saloons, hears of Ringo's arrival and gets his brothers to join him. Ringo survives the three- against-one shootout that follows and then surrenders to Curley, expecting to go back to prison. As Ringo boards a wagon, Curley invites Dallas to ride with them to the edge of town, but when she does so Curley and Doc stampede the horses, letting Ringo "escape" with Dallas toward the Mexican border. ===== Left alone with a governess one snowy afternoon (Alice's sister does not appear in this version since Alice is indoors in this version), a bored Alice idly starts to wonder what life is like on the other side of the drawing-room mirror. With a sudden surge of confidence, she climbs upon the mantelpiece to look. She discovers that she can pass through the looking glass and finds herself in a strange room where many things seem to be the exact reverse of what is in the drawing-room. Strangely, through all of this, the governess doesn't seem to notice what has happened. Alice looks out the window and suddenly sees a White Rabbit. She follows it to a rabbit hole and falls in. Seeing nobody else there, she comes upon a table with a key to a locked door, and a bottle that bears the sign "Drink Me". In a situation exactly reversed from the book, she grows to enormous size after drinking the bottle's contents. Unable to pass into the room beyond the locked door, she begins to cry. A cake with a sign saying "Eat Me" appears. She eats the cake, shrinks to a tiny size, and is immediately swept along into a flood caused by her own tears. Many more of her adventures follow, combining sections of Through the Looking Glass with the original Alice. In the end, Alice is awakened from her dream, not by the "pack of playing cards", but by a riotous celebration that goes completely haywire after she is crowned Queen. ===== In 1936, in the waning years of the Great Depression. Johnny Hooker, a grifter in Joliet, Illinois, cons $11,000 in cash in a pigeon drop from an unsuspecting victim with the aid of his partners Luther Coleman and Joe Erie. Buoyed by the windfall, Luther announces his retirement and advises Hooker to seek out an old friend, Henry Gondorff, in Chicago to teach him "the big con". Unfortunately, their victim was a numbers racket courier for vicious crime boss Doyle Lonnegan. Corrupt Joliet police Lieutenant William Snyder confronts Hooker, revealing Lonnegan's involvement and demanding part of Hooker's cut. Having already blown his share on a single roulette spin, Hooker pays Snyder in counterfeit bills. Lonnegan's men murder both the courier and Luther, and Hooker flees for his life to Chicago. Hooker finds Henry Gondorff, a once- great con-man now hiding from the FBI, and asks for his help in taking on the dangerous Lonnegan. Gondorff is initially reluctant, but he relents and recruits a core team of experienced con men to dupe Lonnegan. They decide to resurrect an elaborate obsolete scam known as "the wire", using a larger crew of con artists to create a phony off-track betting parlor. Aboard the opulent 20th Century Limited, Gondorff, posing as boorish Chicago bookie Shaw, buys into Lonnegan's private, high-stakes poker game. He infuriates Lonnegan with obnoxious behavior, then outcheats him to win $15,000. Hooker, posing as Shaw's disgruntled employee Kelly, is sent to collect the winnings and instead convinces Lonnegan that he wants to take over Shaw's operation. Kelly reveals that he has a partner named Les Harmon (actually con man Kid Twist) in the Chicago Western Union office, who will allow them to win bets on horse races by past-posting. Meanwhile, Snyder has tracked Hooker to Chicago, but his pursuit is thwarted when he is summoned by undercover FBI agents led by Agent Polk, who orders him to assist in their plan to arrest Gondorff using Hooker. At the same time, Lonnegan has grown frustrated with the inability of his men to find and kill Hooker for the Joliet con. Unaware that Kelly is Hooker, he demands that Salino, his best assassin, be given the job. A mysterious figure with black leather gloves is then seen following and observing Hooker. Kelly's connection appears effective, as Harmon provides Lonnegan with the winner of one horse race and the trifecta of another. Lonnegan agrees to finance a $500,000 bet at Shaw's parlor to break Shaw and gain revenge. Shortly thereafter, Snyder captures Hooker and brings him before FBI Agent Polk. Polk forces Hooker to betray Gondorff by threatening to incarcerate Luther Coleman's widow. The night before the sting, Hooker sleeps with a waitress named Loretta. The next morning, he sees Loretta walking toward him. The black-gloved man appears behind Hooker and shoots her dead. She was Lonnegan's hired killer, Loretta Salino, and had not yet killed him because they were seen together. The gunman was hired by Gondorff to protect Hooker. Armed with Harmon's tip to "place it on Lucky Dan", Lonnegan makes the $500,000 bet at Shaw's parlor on Lucky Dan to win. As the race begins, Harmon arrives and expresses shock at Lonnegan's bet: when he said "place it" he meant, literally, that Lucky Dan would "place" (i.e., finish second). In a panic, Lonnegan rushes the teller window and demands his money back. A moment later Polk, Lt. Snyder, and a half dozen FBI agents storm the parlor. Polk confronts Gondorff, then tells Hooker he is free to go. Gondorff, reacting to the betrayal, shoots Hooker in the back. Polk then shoots Gondorff and orders Snyder to get the ostensibly respectable Lonnegan away from the crime scene. With Lonnegan and Snyder safely away, Hooker and Gondorff rise amid cheers and laughter. The gunshots were faked; Agent Polk is actually Hickey, a con man, running a con atop Gondorff's con to divert Snyder and ensure Lonnegan abandons the money. As the con men strip the room of its contents, Hooker refuses his share of the money, saying "I'd only blow it", and walks away with Gondorff. ===== Tracy Lord is the elder daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia Main Line socialite family. She was married to C.K. Dexter Haven, a yacht designer and member of her social set, but divorced him two years prior, because, according to her father, he does not measure up to the standards she sets for all her friends and family: He drank too much for her taste, and, according to him, as she became critical of him, he drank more. Their only interaction while married, the film's opening scene, is her breaking his golf clubs and him pushing her to the ground. Now, she is about to marry nouveau riche "man of the people" George Kittredge. Cut to New York - Spy magazine publisher Sidney Kidd is eager to cover the wedding, and assigns reporter Macaulay "Mike" Connor and photographer Liz Imbrie. He can get them into the affair with the assistance of Dexter Haven, who has been working for Spy in South America. Dexter tells Kidd that he will introduce them as friends of Tracy's brother Junius (a U.S. diplomat in Argentina). Tracy is not fooled, but Dexter tells her that Kidd has threatened the reputation of her family with an innuendo-laden article about her father's affair with a dancer. Tracy deeply resents her father's infidelity, which has caused her parents to live separately. But, to protect her family's reputation, she agrees to let Mike and Liz stay and cover her wedding. Mike carries Tracy into the house from a midnight dip. Dexter is welcomed back with open arms by Tracy's mother Margaret and teenage sister Dinah, much to Tracy's frustration. She soon discovers that Mike has admirable qualities, and even seeks out his book of short stories in the public library. As the wedding nears, she finds herself torn between her fiancé George, Dexter, and Mike. The night before the wedding, Tracy gets drunk for only the second time in her life, kisses Mike, and ultimately takes an innocent midnight swim with him. When George sees Mike carrying an intoxicated Tracy into the house afterward, he assumes the worst. The next day, he tells her that he was shocked and feels entitled to an explanation before going ahead with the wedding. Yet, she admits she really has none, and realizes that he does not really know her at all. He has loved her as a perfect, ideal goddess - a virginal statue - and not as a human being and so she breaks off the engagement. By now she has a better understanding of her own imperfections and criticalness towards others. Tracy realizes that all the guests have arrived and are waiting for the ceremony to begin. Mike volunteers to marry her (much to Liz's distress), but she graciously declines. Then, Dexter, who clearly planned to get her back all along, offers to marry her again, and she gladly accepts. Tracy is short a groom, with a roomful of wedding guests waiting. ===== In Seattle, teenagers Katie Embry and Becca Kotler discuss the legend of a cursed videotape; whoever watches it dies seven days later. Katie claims she watched the tape with three friends a week ago. Minutes later, Katie is killed by an unseen force, and Becca is institutionalized after witnessing it. At Katie's funeral, her mother, Ruth, urges her sister Rachel Keller, a journalist, to investigate her daughter's death. Rachel lives with her young son Aidan, who possesses a degree of mediumship. Rachel learns that Katie's friends Josh Turandot, Scott Conduroy, and Stacey Miller all died on the same night, sporting disfigured appearances. Rachel travels to Shelter Mountain Inn where Katie stayed, discovering the rumoured cursed videotape. Renting the same cabin as Katie, Rachel watches the tape, which contains disturbing, gruesome imagery. Once the tape ends, Rachel receives a phone call from an unknown caller who whispers "seven days". Rachel recruits Noah Clay, her ex-boyfriend and Aidan's father, to study the tape, making a copy after he watches the original. Rachel begins to suffer supernatural symptoms as the week passes, haunted by a young girl with soaking wet hair. Investigation into the tape's imagery leads Rachel to Anna Morgan, a horse breeder from Moesko Island, who committed suicide after her prize-winning horses drowned themselves. Rachel catches Aidan watching the tape, and discovers Noah is suffering similar symptoms. Leaving Aidan in Ruth's care, Rachel travels to Moesko Island to speak to Anna's widower Richard. On the ferry journey, a horse is spooked by Rachel's presence, leaping to its death. Noah goes to Eola Psychiatric Hospital to view Anna's medical files. Both separately discover Anna had an adopted daughter, Samara, who possessed an ability to psychically etch mental images onto surfaces and into minds, driving her parents mad. Rachel tries to speak with Richard about Samara, but he denies her existence. Rachel speaks with Dr. Grasnik, the island's general practitioner, who explains Samara was adopted due to Anna's infertility, recommending them to admit her to Eola, assuming Samara is still there. Rachel sneaks into the Morgan farmhouse, watching a videotape of Samara in a psychotherapy session, who claims she has no control over her abilities. Rachel confronts Richard, who electrocutes himself in a bathtub with a horse bridle upon learning Samara's powers are still at large. Noah arrives, he and Rachel go to the barn, where Samara was isolated in the loft. They find a burnt image of a tree, Rachel recognizing it from Shelter Mountain. They return to the cabin, locating a stone well hidden under the floorboards; the final image on the tape. Rachel falls in the well, experiencing a vision of Anna suffocating Samara and throwing her down the well, sealing her in, where she drowned seven days later. Samara's corpse surfaces after Noah tells Rachel that the seven-day deadline has passed. The next day, Rachel reassures Aidan that the curse has been lifted by liberating Samara. In a twist, a distressed Aidan tells Rachel that it was a mistake to help Samara, revealing he is still cursed. In his apartment, Noah encounters the vengeful ghost of Samara emerging from his television, murdering him. Rachel, upon finding his disfigured corpse, returns home and destroys the original tape in a furious rage, asking why Noah was killed but she was not. She realizes that the difference is that she made a copy of the tape, which Aidan watched, thereby continuing the cycle that Samara wants to spread of duplicating the video and showing it to someone else to save oneself. Rachel shows Aidan how to make his own copy. He remarks that the curse will never stop and asks what will happen to the person who watches the new tape, to which Rachel does not answer. ===== Screenshot of Charles Boyer and Bette Davis from the film's original trailer Mademoiselle Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, a French woman, starts teaching at an American girls school. She is confronted by the tales and gossip about her that circulate among her pupils and, thus provoked, she decides to tell them her life story. Deluzy-Desportes is governess to the four children of the Duc and Duchesse de Praslin in Paris during the last years of the Orleans monarchy. As a result of the Duchesse's constantly erratic and temperamental behavior, all that remains is an unhappy marriage, but the Duc remains with his wife for sake of their children. Deluzy-Desportes with her warmth and kindness, wins the love and affection of the children and their father, but also the jealousy and hatred of their mother. She is forced to leave and the Duchess refuses to give her a letter of recommendation to future employers. The Duc confronts his wife and she invents alternative letters taking opposite attitudes, which in fact she has not written and does not intend to write. Her account enrages him and, at the breaking point, he kills her. The Duc de Praslin is in a privileged position; as a peer his case can only be heard by other nobles. He refuses to confess his guilt or openly to admit his love for Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, knowing that his fellow nobles wish to use such an admission to blame her for the murder by declaring that he was acting at her bidding. Ultimately the Duc takes poison to prevent himself from ever publicly proclaiming his love for Henriette, since he knows that would convict her; however, he lives long enough to reveal it to another of his servants, Pierre, a kindly old man who had warned the governess to leave the de Praslin household. With the Duc's death, the authorities accept that they have no evidence upon which to base a judgment that Henriette solicited the murder and she is released. Deluzy-Desportes had been recommended for the teaching position "in the land of the free" by an American minister, Rev. Henry Field, to whom she had expressed a loss of faith while in prison. He proposes marriage, and it is implied that Henriette will accept. ===== Trailer for Foreign Correspondent In mid-August 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, the editor of the New York Morning Globe, Mr. Powers (Harry Davenport), is concerned about the crisis in Europe, the growing power of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and the inability of celebrated foreign correspondents to get answers about whether war will ensue. After searching for a good, tough crime reporter for a fresh viewpoint, he appoints John Jones (Joel McCrea) as a foreign correspondent, under the pen name Huntley Haverstock. Joel McCrea as "John Jones", foreign correspondent Jones sails for England and arrives in London. His first assignment is to interview Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), the leader of the Universal Peace Party, at an event held by Fisher in honor of a Dutch diplomat named Van Meer (Albert Basserman). Unbeknownst to Powers and Jones, Fisher is actually a German agent. On the way to the party, Jones sees Van Meer entering the car that is to take him to the party, and runs to interview him; Van Meer invites him to ride along, but diplomatically evades his questioning during the trip. At the party, Jones meets Fisher's daughter, Carol (Laraine Day). Johnny at first rubs Carol the wrong way, but later in the film, in Amsterdam, they fall in love. Van Meer disappears mysteriously. Fisher receives a telegram from Van Meer saying he will not be able to attend the meeting. Fisher informs the guests that Van Meer, who was supposed to be the guest of honor at the event, will not be attending; instead he will be at a political conference in Amsterdam. Fisher calls upon his daughter Carol to make the keynote speech in place of Van Meer. She fumbles her speech because she is distracted by Johnny, who keeps looking at her and has stuck personal messages among her speech notes. Powers wires Johnny to rush to Amsterdam to interview Van Meer at his political conference. There, a man who looks like Van Meer is shot in front of a large crowd by a man disguised as a photographer. Jones commandeers a car to follow the assassin's getaway car. The car he jumps into happens to have in it Carol and another reporter, Scott ffolliott (George Sanders), who explains that the capital letter in his surname was dropped in memory of an executed ancestor. The group follows the assassin to the countryside, where Jones sees a windmill's sail begin turning backwards: he concludes that the sail's direction is a signal to a plane flying overhead. While Carol and ffolliott go for help, Jones searches the windmill and finds a live Van Meer; the man shot in front of witnesses was an imposter substituted to make everyone believe Van Meer was killed. The old man has been drugged and is unable to tell Jones anything. Jones is forced to flee when the kidnappers become aware of him. They escape with Van Meer in the aircraft before the police arrive. Later, back at Jones' hotel room in Amsterdam, two spies dressed as policemen arrive to kidnap him. When he suspects who they really are, he escapes out the window and into Carol Fisher's room. Jones and Carol board a British ship to England, and while a furious storm thunders overhead, he proposes marriage to her, which she accepts. In England they go to Carol's father's house, where Jones sees Krug (Eduardo Ciannelli), whom he recognizes from the windmill as the operative running the assassination and kidnapping. He informs Fisher, who promises to provide a bodyguard who will protect him. The bodyguard, Rowley (Edmund Gwenn), whose true task is to kill Jones, is working with Fisher and Krug in the plot against Van Meer. At the instant when Rowley tries pushing the reporter off the top of Westminster Cathedral tower, Jones steps aside and the chatty thug plunges to his death. George Sanders as "ffolliott" Jones and ffolliott are convinced that Fisher is a traitor, so they come up with a plan: Jones will take Carol to Cambridge and ffolliott will pretend she has been kidnapped to force Fisher to divulge Van Meer's location. After a misunderstanding with Jones, Carol returns to London. Just as Fisher is about to fall for ffolliott's bluff, he hears her car pull up. Fisher heads to a hotel where Van Meer is being held with ffolliott on his tail. Van Meer is being interrogated using sleep deprivation to discover a secret clause in a treaty he signed. Just as he is being forced to divulge the information the organization wants, ffolliott distracts the interrogators. When Jones arrives, Fisher and his bodyguards escape, leaving Van Meer behind. Van Meer is rushed to the hospital in a coma. Britain and France declare war on Germany. While Jones, ffolliott and the Fishers are on a Short S.30 Empire flying boat to America, Fisher confesses his misdeeds to his daughter. Carol believes Jones does not really love her but only used her to pursue her father. Jones protests that he was just doing his job as a reporter. Seconds later, the aircraft is shelled by a German destroyer and crashes into the ocean. The survivors perch on the floating wing of the downed aircraft. Realizing that it cannot support everyone, Fisher sacrifices himself by allowing himself to drown. Jones and ffolliott attempt to save him, but are unsuccessful. They are rescued by an American ship, the Mohican. The captain refuses to allow the reporters to file their story using the ship's communications citing American neutrality in the war, but Jones, ffolliott, and Carol surreptitiously communicate the story by radio-telephone to Mr. Powers. Later, back in London and now a successful war correspondent, Jones, with Carol at his side, describes London being bombed in a live radio broadcast to the United States, urging Americans to fortify their country and "keep the lights burning" as they go dark in the studio. ===== On the Western Front in 1918, a Jewish Private (Charlie Chaplin) fighting for the Central Powers nation of TomainiaThe spelling of the country's name is derived from the numerous local newspapers flashed onscreen between 14 and 15 minutes into the film that indicate the end of World War I, such as The Tomainian past, thus establishing the proper spelling. valiantly saves the life of a wounded pilot, Commander Schultz (Reginald Gardiner), who carries valuable documents that could secure a Tomainian victory. However, their plane crashes mid-flight, and the Private subsequently suffers memory loss. Upon being rescued, Schultz is informed that Tomainia has officially surrendered to the Allied Forces, while the Private is carried off to a hospital. Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel. Twenty years later, still suffering from amnesia, the Private leaves the hospital to return to his previous profession as a barber in the ghetto. The ghetto is now governed by Schultz, who has been promoted in the Tomainian regime under the ruthless dictator Adenoid Hynkel (also Chaplin). The Barber falls in love with a neighbor, Hannah (Paulette Goddard), and together they try to resist persecution by military forces. The troops capture the Barber and are about to hang him, but Schultz recognizes him and restrains them. By recognizing him, and reminding him of World War I, Schultz helps the Barber regain his memory. Meanwhile, Hynkel tries to finance his ever-growing military forces by borrowing money from a Jewish banker called Hermann Epstein, leading to a temporary ease on the restrictions on the ghetto. However, ultimately the banker refuses to lend him the money. Furious, Hynkel orders a purge of the Jews. Schultz protests against this inhumane policy and is sent to a concentration camp. He escapes and hides in the ghetto with the Barber. Schultz tries to persuade the Jewish family to assassinate Hynkel in a suicide attack, but they are dissuaded by Hannah. Troops search the ghetto, arrest Schultz and the Barber, and send both to a concentration camp. Hannah and her family flee to freedom at a vineyard in the neighboring country of Osterlich. Hynkel has a dispute with the dictator of the nation of Bacteria, a man named Benzino Napaloni (Jack Oakie), over which country should invade Osterlich. The two dictators argue over a treaty to govern the invasion, while dining together at an elaborate buffet, which happens to provide a jar of "English Mustard". The quarrel becomes heated and descends into a food fight, which is only resolved when both men eat the hot mustard and are shocked into cooperating. After signing the treaty with Napaloni, Hynkel orders the invasion of Osterlich. Hannah and her family are trapped by the invading force and beaten by a squad of arriving soldiers. The squad leader strikes Hannah to the ground, stands over her, and cruelly eats her basket of grapes. Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel (right) with Jack Oakie as Benzino Napaloni (left). Escaping from the camp in stolen uniforms, Schultz and the Barber, dressed as Hynkel, arrive at the Osterlich frontier, where a huge victory-parade is waiting to be addressed by Hynkel. The real Hynkel is mistaken for the Barber while out duck hunting in civilian clothes and is knocked out and taken to the camp. Schultz tells the Barber to go to the platform and impersonate Hynkel, as the only way to save their lives once they reach Osterlich's capital. The Barber has never given a public speech in his life, but he has no other choice. The terrified Barber mounts the steps but is inspired to seize the initiative. Announcing that he (as Hynkel) has had a change of heart, he makes an impassioned plea for brotherhood and goodwill. > "I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I > don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if > possible. Jew, Gentile, Black Man, White, we all want to help one another, > human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not > by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. And > this world has room for everyone, and the good Earth is rich and can provide > for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost > the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, > has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but > we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in > want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We > think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. > More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these > qualities life will be violent, and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the > radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions > cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for > the unity of us all. Even now, my voice is reaching millions throughout the > world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a > system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can > hear me, I say do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the > passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. > The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from > the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will > never perish. ... Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise > you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to > think, and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use > you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine > men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not > cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't > hate! Only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don't > fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is > written: "the Kingdom of God is within man" not one man nor a group of men, > but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power, the power to create > machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to > make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. > Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power, let us all unite! Let > us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to > work, that will give youth a future, and old age a security. By the promise > of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not > fulfill that promise! They never will! Dictators free themselves, but they > enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight > to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, > with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where > science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers! In the name > of democracy, let us all unite!" Finally, he addresses a message of hope to Hannah, in case she can hear him. > "Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is > beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, > into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me, and to all > of us."Eidenmuller, Michael E. The Great Dictator' (1940)". American > Rhetoric. Retrieved April 1, 2012. Hannah hears the Barber's voice on the radio. She turns her face, radiant with joy and hope, toward the sunlight, and says to her fellows: "Listen." ===== The film tells the story of the crew aboard a British tramp steamer named the SS Glencairn on the long voyage home from the West Indies to Baltimore and then to England. The crew is a motley, fun-loving, hard-drinking lot. Among them is their consensus leader, a middle-aged Irishman named Driscoll ("Drisk") (Thomas Mitchell), a young Swedish ex-farmer Ole Olsen (John Wayne), a spiteful steward nicknamed Cocky (Barry Fitzgerald), a brooding Lord Jim-like Englishman Smitty (Ian Hunter), and a burly, thoroughly dependable bruiser Davis (Joseph Sawyer), among others. The film opens on a sultry night in a port in the West Indies where the crew have been confined to their ship by order of the captain, yet they yearn as ever for an opportunity to drink and have fun with the ladies. Drisk has arranged to import a boat- load of local ladies, who along with baskets of fruit, have agreed to smuggle bottles of rum on board where, with the acquiescence of the captain, the crew carouse until a minor drunken brawl breaks out and the ladies are ordered off the ship and denied any of their promised compensation. The next day the ship sails to pick up its cargo for its return trip to England. When the crew discovers that the cargo is high explosives, they at first rebel and grumble among themselves that they won't crew the ship if it is carrying such a cargo. But they are easily cowed into submission by the captain and the ship sails, crossing the Atlantic and passing through what they all know is a war zone and potential disaster. After the ship leaves Baltimore with its load of dynamite, the rough seas they encounter become nerve-racking to the crew. When the anchor breaks loose, Yank (Ward Bond) is injured in the effort to secure it. With no doctor on board, nothing can be done for his injury, and he dies. They're also concerned that Smitty might be a German spy because he's so aloof and secretive. After they assault Smitty and restrain and gag him, they force him to give up the key to a small metal box they have found in his bunk which they at first think is a bomb. Opening the box against Smitty's vigorous protests, they discover a packet of letters. When Drisk reads a few, it becomes clear that they are letters from Smitty's wife revealing the fact that Smitty has been an alcoholic, disgraced and perhaps dishonorably discharged from his service with the British navy, and that he is now too ashamed to show himself before his family even though his wife urges him to come home. In the war zone as they near port, a German plane attacks the ship, killing Smitty in a burst of machine gun fire. Reaching England without further incident, the rest of the crew members decide not to sign on for another voyage on the Glencairn and go ashore, determined to help Ole return to his family in Sweden, whom he has not seen in ten years. In spite of their determination to help the simple, gullible Ole get on his ship for Stockholm, the crew is incapable of passing up the opportunity for a good time drinking and dancing in a seedy bar to which they have been lured by an agent for ships in port looking for crew members. He has his eye on Ole because he is the biggest and strongest of the lot. He drugs Ole's drink, and calls his confederates in to shanghai Ole aboard another ship, the Amindra. Driscoll and the rest of the crew, even though drunk and almost too late, rescue Ole from the Amindra, but Driscoll is clubbed and left on board as the crew makes its escape with Ole. The next morning, the crew straggles back somewhat dejectedly and resignedly to the Glencairn to sign on for another voyage. A newspaper headline reveals that the Amindra has been sunk in the Channel by German torpedoes, killing all on board. ===== Implicitly set in the early 1990s, Ishmael begins with a newspaper advertisement: "Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person".Hilgartner, C. A. (1998). "Ishmael and general Semantics Theory". ETC: A Review of General Semantics Vol. 55, No. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 167-168. The nameless narrator and protagonist thus begins his story, telling how he first reacted to this ad with scorn because of the absurdity of "wanting to save the world", a notion he feels that he once naïvely embraced himself as an adolescent during the counterculture movement of the 1960s. Feeling he must discover the ad's publisher, he follows its address, surprisingly finding himself in a room with a live gorilla. On the wall is a sign with a double meaning: "With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?"Chameides, Bill (2013). "The Art of Connecting to the Other". The Huffington Post. Oath Inc. Suddenly, the gorilla, calling himself Ishmael, begins communicating to the man telepathically. At first baffled by this, the man learns the story of how the gorilla came to be here and soon accepts Ishmael as his teacher, regularly returning to Ishmael's office. The novel continues from this point mainly as a dialogue between Ishmael and his new student. Ishmael's life began in the African wilderness, though he was captured at a young age and has lived mostly in a zoo and a menagerie (before living permanently in a private residence), which caused Ishmael to start thinking about ideas that he never would have thought about in the wild, including self-awareness, human language and culture, and what he refers to as the subject he specifically teaches: "captivity". The narrator admits to Ishmael that he has a vague notion of living in some sort of cultural captivity and being lied to in some way by society, but he cannot articulate these feelings fully. The man frequently visits Ishmael over the next several weeks, and Ishmael proceeds to use the Socratic method to deduce with the man what "origin story" and other "myths" modern civilization subscribes to. Before proceeding, Ishmael lays down some basic definitions for his student: * A story is an interrelation between the gods, humans, and the earth--with a beginning, middle, and end. * To enact is to behave in such a way to make a story (however true or not) come true. * A culture is a people who are enacting a story. * Takers are "civilized" people, particularly, members of the culture that first emerged in an Agricultural Revolution starting 10,000 years ago in the Near East that has developed into today's globalized society (the culture of Ishmael's pupil and, presumably, the reader). * Leavers are people of all other non-civilized cultures existing in the past and the present; often derogatorily referred to by Takers as "primitive". At first, the narrator is certain that civilized people no longer believe in any "myths", but Ishmael proceeds to gradually tease from him several hidden but widely accepted premises of "mythical" thinking being enacted by the Takers: *Humans (especially Takers) are the pinnacle of evolution. *The world was made for humans, and humans are thus destined to conquer and rule the world. *This conquest is meant to bring about a paradise, as humans increase their mastery over controlling nature. *However, humans are always failing in this conquest because they are flawed beings, who are unable to ever obtain the knowledge of how to live best. *Therefore, however hard humans labor to save the world, they are just going to go on defiling and destroying it. *Even so, civilization—the great human project of trying to control the whole world—must continue, or else humans will go extinct. Ishmael points out to his student that when the Takers decided all of this, especially the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with humans, they took as evidence only their own particular culture's history: "They were looking at a half of one percent of the evidence taken from a single culture. Not a reasonable sample on which to base such a sweeping conclusion".Quinn, 1992, p. 84. On the contrary, Ishmael asserts that there is nothing inherently wrong with humans and that a story that places humans in harmony with the world will cause humans to enact this harmony, while a destructive story such as this will cause humans to destroy the world, as humans are doing now.Quinn, 1992, p. 84. Ishmael goes on to help his student discover that, contrary to this Taker world-view, there is indeed knowledge of how humans should live: biological "laws" that life is subject to, discernible by studying the ecological patterns of other living things. Together, Ishmael and his student identify one set of survival strategies that appear to be true for all species (later dubbed the "law of limited competition"): in short, as a species, "you may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war". All species inevitably follow this law, or as a consequence go extinct; the Takers, however, believe themselves to be exempt from this law and flout it at every point, which is therefore rapidly leading humanity towards extinction. To illustrate his philosophy, Ishmael proposes a revision to the Christian myth of the Fall of Man. Ishmael's version of why the fruit was forbidden to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is: eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil provides gods with the knowledge of who shall live and who shall die—knowledge which they need to rule the world. The fruit nourishes only the gods, though. If Adam ("humanity") were to eat from this tree, he might think that he gained the gods' wisdom (without this actually happening) and consequently destroy the world and himself through his arrogance. Ishmael makes the point that the myth of the Fall, which the Takers have adopted as their own, was in fact developed by Leavers to explain the origin of the Takers. If it were of Taker origin, the story would be of liberating progress instead of a sinful fall. Ishmael and his student go on to discuss how, for the ancient herders among whom the tale originated, the Biblical story of Cain killing Abel symbolizes the Leaver being killed off and their lands taken so that it could be put under cultivation.Webster, Matthew (2003). "Daniel Quinn's Ishmael turns the tables on man and nature". Daily Collegian. Collegian, Inc. These ancient herders realized that the Takers were acting as if they were gods themselves, with all the wisdom of what is good and evil and how to rule the world: agriculture is, in fact, an attempt to more greatly create and control life, a power that only gods can hold, not humans. To begin discerning the Leavers' story, Ishmael proposes to his student a hypothesis: the Takers' Agricultural Revolution was a revolution in trying to strenuously and destructively live above the laws of nature, against the Leavers' more ecologically peaceful story of living by the laws of nature. The Takers, by practicing their uniquely envisioned form of agriculture (dubbed by Quinn "totalitarian agriculture" in a later book) produce enormous food surpluses, which consequently yields an ever-increasing population, which itself is leading to ecological imbalances and catastrophes around the world. Ishmael finishes his education with the student by saying that, in order for humanity to survive, Takers must relinquish their arrogant vision in favor of the Leaver humility in knowing that they do not possess any god-like knowledge of some "one right way to live". Ishmael tells his student to teach a hundred people what he has learned, who can each pass this learning on to another hundred. The student becomes busy at work, later discovering that Ishmael has fallen ill and died of pneumonia. Returning to Ishmael's room one day, he collects Ishmael's belongings. Among them he discovers that the sign he saw before ("With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?") has a backside with another message: "With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?""Kirkus Review: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn". Kirkus Reviews. Kirkus Media LLC. ===== The England of David Copperfield. The story follows the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David was born in Blunderstone, Suffolk, England, six months after the death of his father. David spends his early years in relative happiness with his loving, childish mother and their kindly housekeeper, Clara Peggotty. They call him Davy. When he is seven years old his mother marries Edward Murdstone. To get him out of the way, David is sent to lodge with Peggotty's family in Yarmouth. Her brother, fisherman Mr Peggotty, lives in a beached barge, with his adopted relatives Emily and Ham, and an elderly widow, Mrs Gummidge. "Little Em'ly" is somewhat spoiled by her fond foster father, and David is in love with her. They call him Master Copperfield. On his return, David is given good reason to dislike his stepfather, who believes exclusively in firmness, and has similar feelings for Murdstone's sister Jane, who moves into the house soon afterwards. Between them they tyrannize his poor mother, making her and David's lives miserable, and when, in consequence, David falls behind in his studies, Murdstone attempts to thrash him – partly to further pain his mother. David bites him and soon afterwards is sent away to Salem House, a boarding school, under a ruthless headmaster named Mr Creakle. There he befriends an older boy, James Steerforth, and Tommy Traddles. He develops an impassioned admiration for Steerforth, perceiving him as someone noble, who could do great things if he would, and one who pays attention to him. David goes home for the holidays to learn that his mother has given birth to a baby boy. Shortly after David returns to Salem House, his mother and her baby die, and David returns home immediately. Peggotty marries the local carrier, Mr Barkis. Murdstone sends David to work for a wine merchant in London – a business of which Murdstone is a joint owner. David's landlord, Wilkins Micawber, is arrested for debt and sent to the King's Bench Prison, where he remains for several months, before being released and moving to Plymouth. No one remains to care for David in London, so he decides to run away, with Micawber advising him to head to Dover, to find his only known remaining relative, his eccentric and kind-hearted great-aunt Betsey Trotwood. She had come to Blunderstone at his birth, only to depart in ire upon learning that he was not a girl. However, she takes pity on him and agrees to raise him, despite Murdstone's attempt to regain custody of David, on condition that he always try to 'be as like his sister, Betsey Trotwood' as he can be, meaning that he is to endeavour to emulate the prospective namesake she was disappointed not to have. David's great-aunt renames him "Trotwood Copperfield" and addresses him as "Trot", one of several names David is called by in the novel. David's aunt sends him to a better school than the last he attended. It is run by Dr Strong, whose methods inculcate honour and self- reliance in his pupils. During term, David lodges with the lawyer Mr Wickfield, and his daughter Agnes, who becomes David's friend and confidante. Wickfield's clerk, Uriah Heep, also lives at the house. By devious means, Uriah Heep gradually gains a complete ascendancy over the aging and alcoholic Wickfield, to Agnes's great sorrow. Heep hopes, and maliciously confides to David, that he aspires to marry Agnes. Ultimately with the aid of Micawber, who has been employed by Heep as a secretary, his fraudulent behaviour is revealed. At the end of the book, David encounters him in prison, convicted of attempting to defraud the Bank of England. After completing school, David apprentices to be a proctor. During this time, due to Heep's fraudulent activities, his aunt's fortune has diminished. David toils to make a living. He works mornings and evenings for his former teacher Doctor Strong as a secretary, and also starts to learn shorthand, with the help of his old school-friend Traddles, upon completion reporting parliamentary debate for a newspaper. With considerable moral support from Agnes and his own great diligence and hard work, David ultimately finds fame and fortune as an author, writing fiction. David's romantic but self-serving school friend, Steerforth, also re-acquaints himself with David, but then goes on to seduce and dishonour Emily, offering to marry her off to his manservant Littimer before deserting her in Europe. Her uncle Mr Peggotty manages to find her with the help of Martha, who had grown up in their part of England, and then settled in London. Ham, who had been engaged to marry Emily before the tragedy, dies in a fierce storm off the coast in attempting to succour a ship. Steerforth was aboard the ship and also died. Mr Peggotty takes Emily to a new life in Australia, accompanied by Mrs Gummidge and the Micawbers, where all eventually find security and happiness. David, meanwhile, has fallen completely in love with Dora Spenlow, and then marries her. Their marriage proves troublesome for David in the sense of everyday practical affairs, but he never stops loving her. Dora dies early in their marriage after a miscarriage. After Dora's death, Agnes encourages David to return to normal life and his profession of writing. While living in Switzerland to dispel his grief over so many losses, David realises that he loves Agnes. Upon returning to England, after a failed attempt to conceal his feelings, David finds that Agnes loves him too. They quickly marry and in this marriage, he finds true happiness. David and Agnes then have at least five children, including a daughter named after his great- aunt, Betsey Trotwood. ===== A zombie apocalypse has ravaged the entire world, with zombies outnumbering humans 400,000 to 1. The surviving humans live in security within barricaded camps and secure underground bunkers. In an underground facility in the Everglades housing scientists and soldiers, the scientists are trying to find a solution to the zombie pandemic; the soldiers have been assigned to protect them. Dr. Sarah Bowman, her lover and soldier Private Miguel Salazar, radio operator Bill McDermott, and helicopter pilot John fly from their underground base to Fort Myers, Florida, in an attempt to locate additional survivors. They find only a large horde of the undead, and they return to the base, where they are told that the military detachment's officer-in-charge Major Cooper has died. Sarah becomes concerned over Miguel's worsening mental state. Dr. Logan, the lead scientist (whom the soldiers nickname "Frankenstein" because of his grisly surgical dissections of zombies), believes that the zombies can be made docile by training and conditioning. He keeps a collection of captive zombies for use as test subjects, in a large underground corral in the compound. The angry and reactionary Captain Rhodes and the soldiers that he leads vehemently object to the dangers involved in capturing zombies and keeping them inside the compound. The tension between soldiers and scientists worsens in the face of dwindling supplies, loss of communication with other survivors, and slow, uncertain progress in research. During a meeting between the scientists and the soldiers, Rhodes declares that, following the death of Major Cooper, he is taking command of the base. He only grants the scientists "some" time to prove results, and declares that he will execute anyone who interferes with his leadership. He also threatens to abandon the scientists and leave the compound, cutting off their protection from the zombies. Shaken by Rhodes' threats, Sarah goes to the quarters shared by John and Bill to discuss the situation. John professes his conviction that the zombie-plague is a form of divine punishment against mankind, that the scientific mission is doomed to failure, and that the effort to preserve records of civilization is pointless. He suggests that the three of them should take the helicopter, abandon the soldiers, and fly to a desert island somewhere where they could live off the land and start a family. Dr. Logan hopes to secure Rhodes' goodwill by showing him the results of his research. Logan is especially proud of "Bub", a friendly and non-aggressive zombie who remembers some parts of his past life and engages in rudimentary human behavior: listening to music, aiming a pistol, saluting Captain Rhodes, and repeating a string of garbled words. "Civility must be rewarded," Logan tells Rhodes. "If it's not rewarded, there's no use for it." Rhodes, however, is not impressed. During a zombie roundup mission, a zombie escapes his harness when Miguel loses his focus, and the zombie fatally wounds Sergeant Miller, who fires his gun with his dying breath and accidentally shoots and kills a friendly soldier named Johnson. Miguel attempts to kill the creature, but another zombie bites him on the arm. Sarah amputates the arm and cauterizes it with fire to stop the spreading infection from killing Miguel and re-animating him into a zombie. Rhodes then calls off the experiments and demands that all captive zombies be destroyed, as well as severing any further help from him and his remaining men. Sarah and Fisher later discover that Logan had been experimenting on the remains of the dead soldiers and an audio recording of him rambling to himself. Fearing that Logan has gone insane and with the conditions worsening, Bill decides that they should leave in the helicopter immediately. Rhodes finds out that Logan has been feeding the flesh of his dead soldiers to Bub as a reward for his docility and positive behavior. Enraged, Rhodes kills Logan and seizes the remaining scientists and non-military personnel, stripping them of their weapons. Rhodes brings his prisoners and attempts to force John to fly him and his remaining soldiers away from the base, which John refuses to do. In response, Rhodes kills Fisher, locks Sarah and Bill inside the zombie corral with the zombies, and orders Steel to beat John into submission. Back in Dr. Logan's laboratory, Bub manages to escape from his chains, and finds Dr. Logan's corpse. In a display of human emotion, he mourns the loss of his instructor. He then picks up a pistol and goes in search of revenge. Meanwhile, a suicidal Miguel heads off unnoticed to the outside fence, where he first opens the gate to allow hundreds of zombies to walk through, and then allows the zombies to begin tearing him apart before he presses the release button that lowers the steel loading gate and gives the zombies access to the base. While he is doing this, John overcomes his captors, steals their weapons and goes into the zombie corral to rescue Sarah and Bill. As the zombies rapidly enter the complex, Rhodes abandons his men and flees on a cart. Rhodes' subordinates are all killed. Bub finds Rhodes and fires at him. Rhodes hastily tries to escape, but he runs into a huge mass of zombies, and is cornered by Bub, who shoots him in the stomach. Bub sarcastically salutes Rhodes, who is then torn apart by the zombies. John reunites with Sarah and Bill inside the zombie corral. They manage to get to the surface, and fly in the helicopter to a desert island, as John had earlier suggested. Sarah marks another day off her calendar. ===== The novel is divided into three parts, following a third- person omniscient narrative with no main character. In some editions, the short first chapter is a separate prologue rather than the beginning of the first part. ===== Orson Welles (Quinlan), Victor Millan (Sanchez), Joseph Calleia (Menzies), and Charlton Heston (Vargas) in Touch of Evil. In Los Robles, a Mexican town along the U.S.–Mexico border, a time bomb is planted in a car. Rudy Linnekar (Jeffrey Green) and Zita (Joi Lansing) enter the vehicle and make a slow journey through town to the U.S. border, during which Zita insists that she can hear something ticking. Newlyweds Miguel "Mike" Vargas (Charlton Heston), a drug enforcement official in the Mexican government and his wife Susie (Janet Leigh) pass the car several times on foot. The car crosses the border, then explodes. Realizing the implications of a Mexican bomb exploding on American soil, Vargas takes an interest in the investigation. Police Chief Pete Gould (Harry Shannon) and District Attorney Adair (Ray Collins) arrive on the scene, followed by the game-legged police captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) and Quinlan's longtime partner, Pete Menzies (Joseph Calleia)—who clearly worships Quinlan. The obese and disheveled Captain nostalgically visits a brothel run by Tanya (Marlene Dietrich), who barely recognizes him because he's gained so much weight. Quinlan's and Menzies' prime suspect is Sanchez, a young Mexican secretly married to the victim's daughter (Joanna Moore). They interrogate Sanchez in his apartment with Vargas present. Vargas visits the bathroom and accidentally knocks over an empty shoebox. Moments later, Menzies enters the bathroom and announces that two sticks of dynamite were found in the same shoebox. Vargas accuses Quinlan of planting the evidence and begins to suspect that he may have been doing so for years, to help win convictions. Quinlan dismisses Vargas's claim, saying he is just biased in favor of fellow Mexicans. The stress of these accusations, along with pressure from "Uncle" Joe Grandi (Akim Tamiroff), the brother of a man Vargas has been investigating, to strike a deal to discredit Vargas, causes Quinlan—who has been sober for 12 years—to fall off the wagon. With assistance from District Attorney's Assistant Al Schwartz (Mort Mills), Vargas studies the public records on Quinlan's cases, revealing his findings to Gould and Adair. Quinlan arrives in time to overhear the discussion and angrily threatens to resign. Janet Leigh and Charlton Heston. Susie Vargas moves from her Mexican hotel to a remote American motel to escape the unwanted attention of Grandi. The motel, which Menzies recommended to her, has no other guests and is staffed only by a very peculiar night manager (Dennis Weaver); unknown to Susie, the hotel is owned by Grandi. Grandi's family members take over the motel and terrorize Susie. Vargas becomes concerned when his attempts to telephone Susie at the motel are blocked. Quinlan conspires with Grandi, arranging for Susie to be knocked unconscious, kidnapped and made to look like she had overdosed on drugs by placing them around her unconscious body. Quinlan double-crosses Grandi, strangles him and leaves Susie, still unconscious, in the room with Grandi's body, all to discredit Vargas. Exhausted, drunk and shaken from killing Grandi, Quinlan carelessly leaves his cane at the scene of the murder, implicating himself. When Susie wakes up, she sees Grandi's body, screams for help and is arrested on suspicion of murder. Orson Welles as Hank Quinlan. Vargas confronts Menzies about the history of evidence "discovered" by Quinlan. When he goes to Susie's motel but cannot find her, Vargas learns that the motel is owned by Grandi and that his handgun has been stolen. He rushes back to town and enters a bar, where he confronts the gang members who attacked his wife. When they refuse to answer his questions, Vargas beats them, destroying the bar in the process. Schwartz then informs a shocked Vargas that Susie has been arrested for murder. At the lockup, Vargas finds her barely conscious. Menzies reveals to Vargas that he discovered Quinlan's cane at the murder scene. Vargas fits Menzies with a wire. Quinlan is at Tanya's brothel, where he asks her to use her tarot cards to tell his future; she tells him that he has no future. A loud player piano prevents recording, so Menzies lures Quinlan out to "talk". They walk to a nearby oil field while being tracked on foot by Vargas, who is carrying a recorder and taping the conversation. Quinlan admits to Menzies that he planted evidence on people but insists that he did so only because he knew they were guilty. Quinlan hears an echo from the secret microphone and says his "game leg" has informed him of Menzies' betrayal. Quinlan demands that Vargas show himself, then shoots Menzies with Vargas's gun, which he had earlier stolen from Vargas's briefcase. Quinlan prepares to shoot Vargas but is shot by the dying Menzies. Quinlan staggers backwards into a filthy pool of wastewater and dies. Schwartz arrives at the scene and tells Vargas that the planted dynamite was unnecessary because Sanchez confessed to the crime. Vargas is reunited with Susie, having been exonerated from prison after evidence of Quinlan's confession was found. Tanya finds Quinlan in the wastewater and is asked by Schwartz about what she has to say about Quinlan. Tanya replies, "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?" Tanya then walks away as the movie ends. ===== Gordon "Gordie" LaChance reminisces about his childhood in Castle Rock, Maine. At that time, Gordie's elder brother Dennis, whom his parents favored, had recently died, leaving Gordie's parents too depressed to pay much attention to him. In 1960, Gordie and his three friends − Chris Chambers, Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio − learn that a gang of hooligans led by John "Ace" Merrill have accidentally discovered the dead body of a missing boy named Ray Brower, who was hit by a train. Because the gang found the body while driving a stolen car, they elected not to report the body to the police. The boys get the idea to find the body "officially" so that they may become famous. In preparation for the expedition, Chris steals a gun from his father, and the boys camp out in a nearby field. Over the course of the narrative, the adult Gordie recalls his first published story, Stud City, about the life of a simple man named Edward "Chico" May whose older brother also died. He has a girlfriend, Jane, who he does not have particularly strong feelings for. Chico knows that his stepmother Virginia slept with his brother before he died, but he hesitates to tell his father about it. One day, Chico has a fight with his father over Virginia and leaves the house. Along the way, the boys trespass at the town dump and are chased by Chopper, the dump custodian Milo Pressman's dog. Teddy gets into a verbal skirmish with Milo when the latter insults Teddy's father. Gordie and Vern are nearly run over by a train while crossing a trestle. While at a resting point, Gordie tells his friends another story, "The Revenge of Lard-Ass Hogan", in which the titular Davie "Lard-Ass" Hogan exacts vengeance on the town locals for ridiculing his wide girth by downing a whole bottle of castor oil before engaging in the town's annual pie-eating contest and vomiting on the previous year's champion, which causes a chain reaction that nauseates the entire audience. The next morning, the boys stumble upon a small pond and partake in a swim, but jump out in horror when they find that the pond is teeming with leeches. After a thunderstorm, the boys finally find the dead body, but Ace's gang arrives shortly after. During an argument, Chris pulls the gun on the gang and forces them to leave, but Ace promises reprisals. Tired, depressed and fearing retaliation, the boys decide there is nothing more to be done with the body and return home. Subsequently, one of the gang members reports the body as an anonymous tip, and the gang members severely beat all four boys. The four friends eventually drift apart, but Gordie and Chris remain close. Chris decides to prepare for higher education, and with Gordie's support, they both graduate from the University of Maine. In the present day, Gordie tells how he learned of Chris's death after he was fatally stabbed while trying to stop an argument in a restaurant, about the deaths of Vern and Teddy (in a house fire and car accident respectively), about his successful writing career, and about his recent visit to Castle Rock, where he found that Ace has become an alcoholic and ordinary worker. ===== Title page from the original 1984 Philtrum Press edition (book issued without cover) The Eyes of the Dragon takes place entirely within the realm of Delain (which itself is located within In-World from The Dark Tower series, as established in "The Little Sisters of Eluria"). It is told from the perspective of an unnamed storyteller/narrator, who speaks casually and frankly to the reader, frequently adding his own commentary on characters' motivations and the like. King Roland's magician, Flagg, seeking to destroy the Kingdom of Delain, sees his plans being ruined by the good heart of Queen Sasha. After Sasha gives birth to Peter, a noble and worthy future king, Flagg realizes that his position, his plans, and his life may be in danger because of Peter. When Sasha is pregnant with a second son, Flagg seizes the opportunity. He forces the Queen's midwife to cut Sasha as the second son, Thomas, is born. Sasha bleeds to death and Flagg begins plotting to remove Peter. As Peter becomes a teenager, he begins the custom of bringing a glass of wine to his father before bed each night. Flagg decides to use this as a means of framing Peter. He dissolves a poison called "Dragon Sand" in a glass of wine and delivers it to the king after Peter leaves. Previously, in an attempt to win Thomas' friendship, Flagg had shown him a secret passage where Thomas could spy on his father. Unbeknownst to Flagg, when he delivers the poison, Thomas is watching through the glass eyes of the mounted head of Roland's greatest trophy, Niner the dragon. Flagg plants evidence incriminating Peter. After a brief trial, during which the judge decides Peter is guilty, he is locked up in the enormous tower called the Needle in the center of the city. Thomas is then crowned King, although he is only twelve years old; due to his youth and his fearful inexperience, he allows Flagg enormous amounts of power. At the start of his long stay in the Needle, Peter manages to send a note to the judge who convicted him, Anders Peyna, with the seemingly innocuous requests to have his mother's old dollhouse and napkins with his meals. Peyna is puzzled by the requests, but, seeing no harm in them, grants them. Five years later, Peter escapes from the Needle, having used the toy loom in the dollhouse and threads from the napkins to make a rope. After the escape he and his allies rush to get Roland's bow and arrow. However, it is not to be found because Thomas had it once they got into the king's "sitting room". Flagg, now revealed as a demonic being, is about to kill them when Thomas reveals himself and tells Flagg that he (Thomas) watched Flagg poison Roland. Thomas shoots Flagg in the eye, but Flagg uses magic to disappear and escape. At the end of the novel, Peter is declared to be the rightful king. Thomas, who has become deeply hated in Delain, sets off alongside his butler, Dennis, to find Flagg. They find him and confront him, but the narrator does not reveal the outcome. ===== The story begins as a Raymond Chandler pastiche, and follows a private investigator named Clyde Umney as he goes about what he thinks is just another morning in 1930s Los Angeles. He soon discovers that his life as he knows it is falling apart. All of his lifelong friends and associates are abruptly departing in one fashion or other, for reasons ranging from winning the lottery to terminal cancer, and many of them express disdain towards Umney in place of farewells. He is brooding alone in his office when he receives his final client: Landry, the crime-fiction author who created him. Having suffered the loss of his wife and child as well as a severe case of shingles, Landry took an overdose of medication and found himself in the world of his creation. He demonstrates that his will is law in this world, and explains to a helpless Umney that he intends to take Umney's place to live a life of eternal adventure and excitement. Umney is cast into oblivion—or so it seems. Instead, Umney finds himself in the year 1994, occupying the vacated body of his creator. Although he realizes/acknowledges that his previous existence was a sham (and falling apart), he also finds himself equally despising the ugly, bland, and generally inadequate nature of the "real" world. He announces that he has begun to practice the craft of writing so that he might return to his fictional home in order to take back his world and his life, and end Landry's. ===== Alan Parker is a student at the University of Maine who is trying to find himself. He gets a call from a neighbor in his hometown of Lewiston, telling him that his mother has been taken to the hospital after having a stroke. Lacking a functioning car, Parker decides to hitchhike the 120 miles (200 km) south to visit his mother. His first ride is with an old man who continually tugs at his crotch in a car that stinks of urine. Eventually frightened and glad to escape the vehicle, Alan starts walking, thumbing his next ride. Coming upon a graveyard, he begins to explore it and notices a headstone for a stranger named George Staub (in German, Staub means dust), which reads: "Well Begun, Too Soon Done". Sure enough, the next car to pick him up is driven by George Staub, complete with black stitches around his neck where his head had been sewn on after being severed and wearing a button saying, "I Rode The Bullet At Thrill Village, Laconia." During the ride, George talks to Alan about the amusement park ride he was too scared to ride as a kid: The Bullet in Thrill Village, Laconia, New Hampshire. George tells Alan that before they reach the lights of town, Alan must choose who goes on the death ride with George: Alan or his mother. In a moment of fright, Alan saves himself and tells him: "Take her. Take my mother." George shoves Alan out of the car. Alan reappears alone at the graveyard, wearing the "I Rode The Bullet At Thrill Village" button. He eventually reaches the hospital, where he learns that despite his guilt and the impending feeling that his mother is dead or will die any moment, she is fine. Alan takes the button and treasures it as a good (or bad) luck charm. His mother returns to work. Alan graduates and takes care of his mother for several years, and she suffers another stroke. One day, Alan loses the button and receives a phone call; he knows what the call is about. He finds the button underneath his mother's bed and, after a final moment of sadness, guilt, and meditation, decides to carry on. His mother's "ride" is over. ===== Dolores Claiborne, an opinionated 65-year-old widow living on the tiny Maine community of Little Tall Island, is suspected of murdering her wealthy, elderly employer, Vera Donovan. The novel is presented as a transcript of her statement, told to the local constable and a stenographer. Dolores wants to make clear to the police that she did not kill Vera, whom she has looked after for years, but does confess to orchestrating the death of her husband, Joe St. George, almost 30 years before. Dolores's confession develops into the story of her life, her troubled marriage, and her relationship with her employer. She first describes her relationship with her employer, which began when Vera and her millionaire husband purchased a summer home on Little Tall Island in 1949 and hired Dolores as a maid. Able to cope with Vera's brutally exacting standards, Dolores rises from maid to housekeeper at the Donovan home. After her husband's death in a car crash in the late '50s, Vera spends increasing time at her island house, eventually moving in permanently. After Vera suffers a series of strokes in the 1980s, Dolores becomes the woman's live-in caretaker and reluctant companion. As the wealthy woman slips into dementia, Dolores comforts her from terrifying hallucinations of a force she calls "the dust bunnies." When Vera is lucid, Dolores combats her increasing mind games and power plays. Dolores further reveals that when began working at the Donovan house, her marriage to Joe St. George was already in distress due to his drinking problem, as well as verbal and physical abuse. Their children, Selena, Joe Jr., and Pete, are unaware of the abuse. The marriage problems come to a head one night in 1960 when Joe viciously hits Dolores in the small of her back with a piece of stove wood over a perceived slight. In retaliation, Dolores smashes a ceramic cream pot over his head and threatens him with a hatchet, swearing she will kill him if he ever strikes her again. This confrontation is witnessed by their teenaged daughter, Selena. Joe stops beating Dolores and she allows him to leave the island community in an effort to save face. Selena does not realize Dolores was abused and acted in self-defense, and Joe uses the hatchet incident to gain sympathy from her. A rift grows between mother and daughter. In 1962, Dolores notices Selena has become increasingly withdrawn, frightened, and unsociable. After speculating she has met a boy or become involved in drugs, Dolores finally confronts her daughter as they return home on the island ferry. She explains the truth of the hatchet incident and, against her wishes, Selena then admits her father molested her. Overwhelmed, Selena nearly jumps off the side of the ferry, but Dolores stops her and comforts her, vowing to protect her. That night, she considers murdering Joe on the spot, describing the urge to kill him as the opening of an "inside eye." Instead, she confronts him, promising to have him arrested if he ever touches Selena again. Dolores then resolves to protect her children by leaving Joe. When she attempts to withdraw her children's savings accounts to fund their escape, she discovers Joe has stolen everything she had saved. In despair, she breaks down crying at work, confiding in Vera. An unusually sympathetic Vera reveals she has had some sort of experience with Dolores' "inside eye", and casually remarks that men like Joe often die in accidents, leaving their wives everything. As she departs, she implies she arranged the car crash that killed her own husband and advises Dolores "sometimes, an accident can be an unhappy woman's best friend." Dolores begins plotting Joe's death, but does not find an opportunity to put her plan into action until the summer of 1963. Vera becomes obsessed with a total solar eclipse that will be visible from the island, convinced the event will convince her estranged children to visit her. She plans a massive viewing party on the island ferry. Knowing the island will be mostly empty at that time, Dolores ensures Selena is sent to camp and her sons, Joe Jr. and Pete, are sent on a trip to visit family, and marks the location of a dried-up stone well in a patch of brambles on the edge of their property. When it becomes clear her children will not be joining her during this time, Vera becomes despondent and lashes out at her hired help, calming only after Dolores confronts her over the unjust firing of one of the maids. On the day of the eclipse, Dolores buys Joe a bottle of fine scotch and makes him a sandwich, getting him drunk and comfortable, and they share a moment of physical affection for the first time in many years. As the eclipse begins, Dolores has a vision of a young girl in the path of the eclipse who is being sexually abused by her father at that same moment. Reminded of what she has set out to do, she deliberately enrages Joe by claiming she has recovered the money he had stolen, provoking him into attacking her. She flees into the brambles, leading Joe to the well and tricking him into stepping on the rotted boards that cover it. The planks break and he falls into the well, but is not instantly killed. He calls out for help for some time before eventually falling unconscious. Dolores returns to the house and falls asleep, but has a nightmare and forces herself to check the well. She arrives to discover Joe has regained consciousness and has nearly managed to climb out. He grabs at Dolores and attempts to pull her in with him. She finally kills him by hitting him in the face with a rock, and he falls back into the well. Dolores reports Joe missing, and his body is found after several days of searching. Joe's death is ruled an accident despite the suspicions of the local coroner and the rumor mill of Little Tall Island. Dolores is free of Joe, but her actions damage her relationship with Selena, who also suspects her mother killed her father. The narration finally comes to the circumstances of Vera's death, an incident which has led Dolores to tell her story. She confesses that Vera, in one of her hallucinations, managed to get out of her wheelchair and fled in terror from "the dust bunnies", falling down a flight of stairs. As Vera falls, Dolores has a terrifying vision of Joe's ghost covered in dust. Somehow alive and lucid despite her injuries, Vera begs Dolores to help end her suffering. Dolores fetches a rolling pin, but Vera dies before she can use it. The incriminating scene is discovered by the local mailman, who suspects Dolores of killing the old woman and forces her to call the police. That night, Dolores is harassed and threatened by members of the island community who believe she has gotten away with murder in the past. The next day, Dolores receives a phone call from Vera's lawyer, who informs a shocked Dolores that she has inherited Vera's entire fortune, which amounts to nearly $30 million. Dolores initially refuses the money in favor of Vera's estranged children but then learns they were killed in a car crash in 1961, and Vera had spent the last 40 years of her life only pretending they were still alive. Knowing the inheritance will be seen as a motive for murder and worsen the case against her, Dolores convinces herself the only way to clear her name is to confess everything. Feeling at peace with herself at long last, she ends her statement. Several newspaper articles provide an epilogue to the story, revealing Dolores was cleared of any blame in Vera's death and anonymously donated Vera's entire fortune to the New England Home For Little Wanderers. The final article implies Dolores and Selena have reconciled and that Selena will be coming home for the first time in 20 years. ===== Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald, a successful and aggressive lawyer, travel to their secluded lakehouse in western Maine for an unplanned romantic getaway. The titular "game" involves handcuffing Jessie to the bed for lovemaking, a recent addition to their marriage that both partners find exciting. This time, however, Jessie finds herself reluctant after being handcuffed to the bedposts and asks to stop, only to be ignored by Gerald, who pretends her protests are only part of their game. Realizing her husband is deliberately feigning ignorance and that he plans to rape her, Jessie lashes out, kicking Gerald in the chest. The shock causes him to have a fatal heart attack. He dies, leaving Jessie still handcuffed to the bed. At first Jessie is only horrified at her husband's death and fears the embarrassment of being discovered semi-naked and handcuffed, but she quickly realizes the situation is far more dire: it is unlikely that she or Gerald will be missed for several days, no one will think to look for them at the lakehouse, and all the usual lake residents have gone for the season. There is a real possibility that Jessie will die if she cannot escape. While Jessie frantically explores and rejects plans, a combination of panic and thirst causes her to hallucinate voices: "The Goodwife" or "Goody Burlingame," a Puritanical version of herself that undermines her escape attempts by insisting that things will be fine and that she should wait to be rescued; "Punkin," a representation of Jessie as a young girl; Ruth, a college roommate whom Jessie abandoned after a conversation that strayed dangerously close to uncovering Jessie's childhood; and Nora, Jessie's former psychologist with whom she had a similar encounter and who she likewise abandoned. Guided by these voices, Jessie is able to recall the long-repressed memory of being sexually abused by her father during a solar eclipse when Jessie was ten. She also begins to acknowledge how unhappy and controlling her marriage to Gerald was, suspecting that she gave up her independent and courageous spirit for the security of being Gerald's trophy wife. Waking from an imaginary confrontation with all these characters to a dark bedroom, Jessie sees a tall, gaunt apparition in the corner of the room, whom she initially mistakes for the spirit of her long-dead father and whom she nicknames "Space Cowboy" (after a line from a Steve Miller song, "The Joker"). The figure shows her a wicker basket of jewelry mixed with human bones. Unsure if the figure is another hallucination, Jessie dismisses it, saying aloud that it is "only made of moonlight," which seems to make it vanish. Her inner voices, however, believe that the figure is real and will return to harm Jessie if she does not escape by the next night. The following morning, Jessie manages to secure a drink of water from a glass on the bedside table. Refreshed and encouraged by her own ingenuity in getting the water, she renews her efforts to escape, first by trying to break the headboard, then by trying to slip off the bed and push it to the bureau where the keys are placed. Inspired by her memory of the eclipse, in which her father warned her not to cut herself on the glass panes they used as eclipse viewers, Jessie breaks the water glass and uses a sharp shard to slice her wrist, giving herself a degloving injury to lubricate her skin enough to slide her right hand from the cuff. She is then able to escape the bed, reach the keys, and free her other hand, only to faint from blood loss. When she awakens, it is nearly dark and the Space Cowboy, now undeniably real, has returned. Jessie throws her wedding ring at his box of jewelry and bones, thinking that is what he wanted all along, then runs to her car and drives away, only to discover the Space Cowboy hidden in the back seat. Jessie crashes and is knocked unconscious. Months later, Jessie is still recuperating from her ordeal. An attorney at Gerald's law firm assists her in covering up the incident to protect her and the law firm from scandal, but Jessie feels this is another version of burying her trauma, just as she buried her childhood abuse years before. To free herself, Jessie writes to the real Ruth, with whom she has not spoken in decades, detailing what really happened at the lakehouse and subsequent events. The "Space Cowboy" was a serial killer and necrophile named Raymond Andrew Joubert who had been living in and robbing lakehouses in the area. Jessie confronted Joubert at his court hearing, where Joubert mocked her "made of moonlight" statement, confirming that the encounter really occurred and causing Jessie to spit in his face. Being able to directly confront the man who once terrified her allowed her to face the other manipulative men in her life, including her father and Gerald, freeing her of fear and allowing her to deal more honestly with her past. She apologizes for abandoning Ruth, acknowledging that Ruth had confronted her with a truth she could not then face, and hopes they can resume their friendship. After mailing the letter, Jessie is able to sleep without nightmares for the first time since her ordeal at the lakehouse. ===== David, the narrator of the frame tale, is a middle-aged Manhattan lawyer. At the invitation of a senior partner, he joins a strange men's club where the members, in addition to reading, chatting and playing pool and chess, like to tell stories, some of which range into the bizarre and macabre. The club and its butler are also featured in King's short story "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands". One Thursday before Christmas, the elderly physician Dr. Emlyn McCarron tells a story about an episode that took place early in his long and varied career: that of a patient, Sandra Stansfield, who was determined to give birth to her illegitimate child, no matter what, despite financial problems and social disapproval. McCarron comes to admire her bravery and humor, and the implication is that he has even fallen a bit in love with her. Sandra masters Dr. McCarron's unusual (for the 1930s) breathing method intended to help her through childbirth. However, when she goes into labor and is on the way to the hospital on an icy winter night, her taxi crashes and she is decapitated. McCarron arrives at the crash site and realizes that Sandra is somehow still alive. Her lungs in her decapitated body are still pumping air, as her head, some feet away, is working to sustain the breathing method so that the baby can be born. McCarron manages to deliver the infant alive and well. On a sweet but haunting end note, Sandra whispers "Thank you"—her severed head mouthing the words, which are distortedly heard from the throat jutting from her headless body. McCarron is able to tell her that her baby is a boy and to see that she has registered this before she dies. McCarron and his office nurse pay for the woman's burial, for she has no one else. The child is adopted, but despite the confidential nature of adoption records, McCarron is able to keep track of him over the years. When the man is "not yet 45", and an accomplished college professor, McCarron arranges to meet him socially. "He had his mother's determination, gentlemen," he tells the club members, "and his mother's hazel eyes." ===== A first-person narrative told by Paul Edgecombe, the novel switches between Paul as an old man in the Georgia Pines nursing home writing down his story in 1996, and his time in 1932 as the block supervisor of the Cold Mountain Penitentiary death row, nicknamed "The Green Mile" for the color of the floor's linoleum. This year marks the arrival of John Coffey, a 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m) tall powerfully built black man who has been convicted of raping and murdering two young white girls. During his time on the Mile, John interacts with fellow prisoners Eduard "Del" Delacroix, a Cajun arsonist, rapist, and murderer; and William Wharton ("Billy the Kid" to himself, "Wild Bill" to the guards), an unhinged and dangerous multiple murderer who is determined to make as much trouble as he can before he is executed. Other inhabitants include Arlen Bitterbuck, a Native American convicted of killing a man in a fight over a pair of boots; Arthur Flanders, a real estate executive who killed his father to perpetrate insurance fraud; and Mr. Jingles, a mouse, to whom Del teaches various tricks. Paul and the other guards are irritated throughout the book by Percy Wetmore, a sadistic guard who enjoys antagonizing the prisoners. The other guards have to be civil to him despite their dislike of him because he is the nephew of the Governor's wife. When Percy is offered an administrative position at the nearby Briar Ridge psychiatric hospital, Paul thinks they are finally rid of him. However, Percy refuses to leave until he is allowed to supervise an execution, so Paul hesitantly allows him to run Del's. Percy deliberately avoids soaking a sponge in brine that is supposed to be tucked inside the electrode cap to ensure a quick death in the electric chair. When the switch is thrown, the current causes Del to catch fire in the chair and suffer a prolonged, agonizing demise. Over time, Paul realizes that John possesses inexplicable healing abilities, which he uses to cure Paul's urinary tract infection and revive Mr. Jingles after Percy stomps on him. Simple-minded and shy, John is very empathic and sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others around him. One night, the guards drug Wharton, then put a straitjacket on Percy and lock him in the padded restraint room so that they can smuggle John out of prison and take him to the home of Warden Hal Moores. Hal's wife Melinda has an inoperable brain tumor, which John cures. When they return to the Mile, John passes the "disease" from Melinda into Percy, causing him to go mad and shoot Wharton to death before falling into a catatonic state from which he never recovers. Percy is committed to Briar Ridge. Paul's long-simmering suspicions that John is innocent are proven right when he discovers that it was actually Wharton who raped and killed the two girls and that John was trying to revive them. Later, John tells Paul what he saw when Wharton grabbed his arm one time, how Wharton had coerced the sisters to be silent by threatening to kill one if the other made a noise, using their love for each other. Paul is unsure how to help John, but John tells him not to worry, as he is ready to die anyway, wanting to escape the cruelty of the world. John's execution is the last one in which Paul participates. As Paul approaches the conclusion of his written story, he offers it to his friend Elaine Connelly to read. After she finishes doing so, he introduces Mr. Jingles to her just before the mouse dies, having lived 64 years past these events. Paul explains that those healed by John gained an unnaturally long lifespan. Elaine dies shortly after, never learning how Paul's wife died in his arms immediately after they suffered a bus accident, and that he then saw John Coffey's ghost watching him from an overpass. Paul seems to be all alone, now 104 years old, and wondering how much longer he will live. ===== Mort Rainey is a successful novelist in Maine. One day, he is confronted by a man from Mississippi named John Shooter who claims Mort plagiarized a story he wrote. Mort vehemently denies ever plagiarizing anything. Shooter leaves, but not before leaving his manuscript, "Secret Window, Secret Garden." Mort throws the manuscript into the trash can. When Mort's housemaid recovers the manuscript—thinking it belongs to Mort—he finally reads Shooter's story, discovering that it is almost identical to his short story "Sowing Season." The only differences are the title, the character's name, the diction, and the ending. Mort is disturbed by these findings. Shooter returns a few days later. Having learned that "Sowing Season" was published two years before Shooter claimed to have written "Secret Window, Secret Garden," Mort confronts Shooter with this information. An enraged Shooter accuses Mort of lying and demands proof, giving Mort three days to show him his published story. Overnight, he kills Mort's cat and burns down the house of Mort's ex-wife, which contained the magazine issue in which "Sowing Season" was published. Mort orders a new copy of the magazine. He also asks his caretaker Greg Carstairs to tail Shooter and to talk to a man named Tom Greenleaf, who drove past Mort and Shooter. Shooter, angry that Mort has involved other people in their business, kills both men and plants evidence framing Mort for the murders. Upon receiving the magazine and returning home, Mort finds that "Sowing Season" has been removed. Mort realizes that John Shooter is really his own split personality. Mort had created "Shooter" out of guilt for stealing a story early in his career titled "Crowfoot Mile" and had recently been suspected of another act of plagiarism, although he was innocent the second time. Tom had not seen Shooter while driving by—he saw Mort, by himself. Mort realizes he burned down his own home, killed his own cat, and murdered two people. He blacks out. Fifteen minutes later he awakens, only to hear who he believes to be Shooter pulling into his driveway. Desperate for any sign of his own sanity, he rushes outside only to find his ex-wife, Amy. Devastated, he loses control of his body and mind to Shooter. Amy discovers that Mort has gone insane, having written the word "Shooter" all over the house. She goes to Mort's study, where "Shooter" attempts to kill her in an ambush. She manages to escape. "Shooter," chasing Amy outside, is shot by her insurance agent. Mort becomes himself again, addresses Amy, and dies. Later, Amy and Ted Milner—a man she had an affair with before divorcing Mort—discuss her ex-husband's motives. She insists that Mort had become two people, one of them a character so vivid it became real. She then recalls something Tom witnessed—when he drove past Mort alone, he saw Shooter and Mort in his rear view mirror, but Shooter was transparent. Amy then reveals that while digging through Mort's house, she found Shooter's trademark hat. She left it right- side up on a trash bag. When she returned, she found a note from Shooter inside the overturned hat, revealing that he has traveled back to Mississippi with the story he came for, "Crowfoot Mile." Amy remarks that Mort had created a character so vivid, he actually came to life. ===== ===== Solaris chronicles the ultimate futility of attempted communications with the extraterrestrial life inhabiting a distant alien planet named Solaris. The planet is almost completely covered with an ocean of gel that is revealed to be a single, planet-encompassing entity. Terran scientists conjecture it is a living and a sentient being, and attempt to communicate with it. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, arrives aboard Solaris Station, a scientific research station hovering near the oceanic surface of Solaris. The scientists there have studied the planet and its ocean for many decades, mostly in vain. A scientific discipline known as Solaristics has degenerated over the years to simply observing, recording and categorizing the complex phenomena that occur upon the surface of the ocean. Thus far, the scientists have only compiled an elaborate nomenclature of the phenomena, and do not yet understand what such activities really mean. Shortly before Kelvin's arrival, the crew exposed the ocean to a more aggressive and unauthorized experimentation with a high-energy X-ray bombardment. Their experimentation gives unexpected results and becomes psychologically traumatic for them as individually flawed humans. The ocean's response to this intrusion exposes the deeper, hidden aspects of the personalities of the human scientists, while revealing nothing of the ocean's nature itself. It does this by materializing physical simulacra, including human ones; Kelvin confronts memories of his dead lover and guilt about her suicide. The "guests" of the other researchers are only alluded to. All human efforts to make sense of Solaris's activities prove futile. As Lem wrote, "The peculiarity of those phenomena seems to suggest that we observe a kind of rational activity, but the meaning of this seemingly rational activity of the Solarian Ocean is beyond the reach of human beings."Stanisław Lem, Fantastyka i Futuriologia, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1989, vol. 2, p. 365 He also wrote that he deliberately chose to make the sentient alien an ocean to avoid any personification and the pitfalls of anthropomorphism in depicting first contact. ===== The film jumps between various sections of Bruce's life, including scenes of when he was in his prime and the burned-out, strung-out performer who, in the twilight of his life, used his nightclub act to pour out his personal frustrations. We watch as up-and-coming Bruce courts his "Shiksa goddess", a stripper named Honey. With family responsibilities, Lenny is encouraged to do a "safe" act, but he cannot do it. Constantly in trouble for flouting obscenity laws, Lenny develops a near-messianic complex which fuels both his comedy genius and his talent for self-destruction. Worn out by a lifetime of tilting at establishment windmills, Lenny Bruce dies of a morphine overdose in 1966. ===== ===== Two children, Jacques Mayol and Enzo Molinari, have grown up on the Greek island of Amorgos in the 1960s. Enzo challenges Jacques to collect a coin on the sea floor but Jacques refuses. Later, Jacques' father — who harvests shellfish from the seabed using a pump-supplied air hose and helmet — goes diving. His breathing apparatus and rope gets caught and punctured by rocks on the reef and weighed down by water, he drowns. Jacques and Enzo can do nothing but watch in horror as he is killed. By the 1980s, both are well known freedivers, swimmers who can remain underwater for great times and at great depths. Enzo is on Sicily now, where he rescues a trapped diver from a shipwreck. He is a world champion freediver with a brash and strong personality, and now wishes to find Jacques and persuade him to return to no limits freediving in order to prove he is still the better of the two, in a friendly sports rivalry. Jacques himself works extensively with scientific research as a human research subject, and with dolphins, and is temporarily participating in research into human physiology in the iced-over lakes of the Peruvian Andes, where his remarkable and dolphin-like bodily responses to cold water immersion are being recorded. Insurance broker Johana Baker visits the station for work purposes and is introduced to Jacques. She secretly falls in love with him. When she hears that Jacques will be at the World Diving Championships in Taormina, Sicily, she fabricates an insurance problem that requires her presence there, in order to meet him again. She and Jacques fall in love. However none of them realize the extent of Jacques' allurement with the depths. Jacques beats Enzo by 1 meter, and Enzo offers him a crystal dolphin as a gift, and a tape measure to show the small difference between Jacques' and Enzo's records. Johana goes back home to New York but is fired after her deception is discovered; she leaves New York and begins to live with Jacques. She hears the story that if one truly loves the deep sea, then a mermaid will appear at the depths of the sea, and will lead a diver to an enchanted place. At the next World Diving Championships, Enzo beats Jacques' record. The depths at which the divers are competing enter new territory and the dive doctor suggests they should cease competing, but the divers decide to continue. Jacques is asked to look at a local dolphinarium where a new dolphin has been placed, and where the dolphins are no longer performing; surmising that the new dolphin is homesick, the three of them break in at night to liberate the dolphin and transport her to the sea again. Back at the competition, other divers attempt to break Enzo's new record but all fail. Jacques then attempts his next dive and reaches 400 ft (122 m) breaking Enzo's world record. Angered by this, Enzo prepares to break Jacques' new world record. The doctor supervising the dive warns that the competitors must not go deeper - based upon Jacques' bodily reactions, at around 400 ft, conditions, and in particular the pressure, will become lethal and divers will be killed if they persist in attempting such depths. Enzo dismisses the advice and attempts the dive anyway, but is unable to make his way back to the surface. Jacques dives down to rescue him. Enzo, dying, tells Jacques that he was right and that it is better down there, and begs Jacques to help him back down to the depths, where he belongs. Jacques is grief- stricken and refuses, but after Enzo dies in his arms, finally honors his dying wish and takes Enzo's body back down to 400ft, leaving him to drift to the ocean floor. Jacques - himself suffering from cardiac arrest after the dive - is rescued and brought back to the surface by supervising scuba divers and requires his heart to be restarted with a defibrillator before being placed in medical quarters to recover. Jacques appears to be recovering from the diving accident, but later experiences a strange hallucinatory dream in which the ceiling collapses and the room fills with water, and he finds himself in the ocean depths surrounded by dolphins. Johana, who has just discovered she is pregnant, returns to check up on Jacques in the middle of the night, but finds him lying awake yet unresponsive in his bed with bloody ears and a bloody nose. Johana attempts to help him, but Jacques begins to get up and walk to the empty diving boat and gets suited up for one final dive. Desperately, Johana begs Jacques not to go, saying she is alive but whatever has happened at the depths is not, but he says he has to. She tells Jacques that she is pregnant, and sorrowfully begs him to stay, but finally understands he feels he must go. The two embrace and Johana breaks down crying. Jacques then places the release cord for the dive ballast in her hand, and - still sobbing - she pulls it, sending him down to the depths he loves. Jacques descends and floats for a brief moment staring into the darkness. A dolphin then appears and - dreamlike - Jacques lets go of his harness and swims away with it into the darkness. =====