Marjorie Main

A year in the life of a turn-of-the-century middle class family, leading up to the opening of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

The story of a family of Quakers in Indiana in 1862. Their religious sect is strongly opposed to violence and war. It's not easy for them to meet the rules of their religion in everyday life but when Southern troops pass the area they are in real trouble. Should they fight, despite their peaceful attitude?

A female blackmailer with a disfiguring facial scar meets a plastic surgeon who offers her the possibility of looking like a normal woman.

After a rapid engagement, a dowdy daughter of a chemist weds an industrialist, knowing little of his family or past. He transforms her into an elegant society wife, but becomes enraged whenever she asks about Michael, his mysterious long-lost brother.

Spoiled playboy Henry van Cleve dies and arrives at the entrance to Hell, a final destination he is sure he deserves after living a life of profligacy. The devil, however, isn't so sure Henry meets Hell's standards. Convinced he is where he belongs, Henry recounts his life's deeds, both good and bad, including an act of indiscretion during his 25-year marriage to his wife, Martha, with the hope that "His Excellency" will arrive at the proper judgment.

To Jane Falbury's New England farm comes a troup of actors to put up a show, invited by Jane's sister. At first reluctant she has them do farm chores in exchange for food. Her reluctance becomes attraction when she falls in love with the director, Joe, who happens to be her sister's fiance.

A happily married woman lets her catty friends talk her into divorce when her husband strays.

When transplanted Texan Bob Seton arrives in Lawrence, Kansas he finds much to like about the place, especially Mary McCloud, daughter of the local banker. Politics is in the air however. It's just prior to the civil war and there is already a sharp division in the Territory as to whether it will remain slave-free. When he gets the opportunity to run for marshal, Seton finds himself running against the respected local schoolteacher, William Cantrell. Not is what it seems however. While acting as the upstanding citizen in public, Cantrell is dangerously ambitious and is prepared to do anything to make his mark, and his fortune, on the Territory. When he loses the race for marshal, he forms a group of raiders who run guns into the territory and rob and terrorize settlers throughout the territory. Eventually donning Confederate uniforms, it is left to Seton and the good citizens of Lawrence to face Cantrell and his raiders in one final clash.

A newly wed couple, Tacy and Nicky, travel in a trailer for their honeymoon. The journey is a humorous one that could end up destroying their marriage.

World War II veteran Bob MacDonald surprises his new wife, Betty, by quitting his city job and moving them to a dilapidated farm in the country. While Betty gamely struggles with managing the crumbling house and holding off nosy neighbors and a recalcitrant pig, Bob makes plans for crops and livestock. The couple's bliss is shaken by a visit from a beautiful farm owner, who seems to want more from Bob than just managing her property.

On a train trip out west to become a mail-order bride, Susan Bradley meets a cheery crew of young women traveling out to open a "Harvey House" restaurant at a remote whistle-stop.

The lives of a young man and woman, an infamous gangster and a group of street kids converge one day in a volatile New York City slum.

Young Matt Matthews, an Ozark Mountains moonshiner, hates the father he has never seen, who apparently deserted Matt's mother and left her to die. His obsession contributes to the hatred rampant in the mountains. However, the arrival of a stranger, Daniel Howitt, begins to positively affect the mountain people, who learn to shed their hatred under his gentle influence.

A young French soldier in World War I is overcome with guilt when he kills a German soldier who, like himself, is a musically gifted conscript, each having attended the same musical conservatory in France. The fact that the incident occurred in war does not assuage his guilt. He travels to Germany to meet the man's family.

Jim is a test pilot. His wife Ann and best friend Gunner try their best to keep him sober. But the life of a test pilot is anything but safe.

A former housemaid teams up with an English gentleman thief and works a confidence game to bilk the wealthy but their plans for a big job in California go awry.

Chester Wooley and Duke Egan are travelling salesmen who make a stopover in Wagon Gap, Montana while enroute to California. During the stopover, a notorious criminal is murdered, and the two are charged with the crime.

Nick and Nora Charles are back - and this time, they have a baby, a wealthy new client, and another murder to solve! Retired detective Nick is enjoying family life with Nora and their young son, Nick Jr., when eccentric industrialist Colonel MacFay asks for protection after receiving threatening messages. When MacFay is found dead at his isolated estate, Nick and Nora spring into action, questioning a houseful of suspicious guests and uncovering greed, blackmail, family secrets, and a dangerous inheritance plot. With their trademark wit and sophistication, the glamorous couple balances parenthood, parties, and peril as they race to expose the killer.

Fast-talking con-man and grifter Candy Johnson rises to be the corrupt boss of Yellow Creek, but his wife's alcoholic father tries to set things right.

A working-class woman is willing to do whatever it takes to give her daughter a socially promising future.

An exiled king and a film star try to rekindle a romance from the past.

In squeaky-clean New York at the turn of the century, playboy Charlie Hill falls so much in love that he can walk on air. The object of his affections is beautiful Angela Bonfils, a mission house worker in the Bowery. He promises to reform his dissolute life, even trying to do an honest day's work.

Comprised of eight unrelated episodes of inconsistent quality, this anthology piece of American propaganda features some of MGM Studios' best directors, screenwriters and actors; it is narrated by Louis Calhern. Stories are framed by the lecture of a university professor. In one tale a Boston resident becomes angry when the census forgets to record her presence. Another sketch chronicles the achievements of African Americans while still another pays tongue-in-cheek tribute to Texas.

At an exclusive boarding school for adolescent girls, the lives of two very different students intertwine when introverted class monitor Natalie Freeman learns of the more popular Linda Simpson's secret boyfriend.

While in Shanghai reporting on the Sino-Japanese war, Chris Hunter, a shrewd news reporter, meets pilot Alma Harding. She does not trust him, but he manages to hire her as his assistant. During an adventurous expedition through the jungles of South America, her opinion of him begins to change.

On return from Europe Dr. Decker foils glamour girl Georgi from jumping overboard. At Decker's suggestion to keep busy, she assists at his clinic in the slums.

The Kettles and their fifteen children are about to be evicted from their rundown rustic home when Pa wins the grand prize by coming up with a new tobacco slogan. Birdie Hicks is jealous of the family's new wealth, which includes a completely automated modern home, and accuses Pa of stealing the slogan. Reporter Kim Parker proves Birdie wrong and marries Tom Kettle.

A medicine show man tries to con people into believing he's a legitimate stage actor.

A flighty socialite neglects her family to promote a new religious group.

Wallace Beery, in his final film, plays a bandit in this period drama set in Colonial America.

Mary Gillespie is restoring the Col. Gillespie Circus to its former splendor after her father's death. With the help of her publicist boyfriend Jim, the sell-out crowds are returning to the big top. Egotistical equestrian star Senor Martinet, however, holds $60,000 of notes signed by the Colonel and due in 24 hours. When a mysterious shadowy figure is seen on the circus lot, and Martinet is murdered in the center ring during his performance, there are suspects aplenty, including Vindecco, Martinet's badly abused hunchback assistant.

A love story centered on the lives of three young German soldiers in the years following World War I. Their close friendship is strengthened by their shared love for the same woman who is dying of tuberculosis.

Because of a bad investment, Captain and Mrs. Peabody are evicted from their home. Mrs. Peabody finds lodging at a retirement home, but as only single women are allowed, the Captain has to make other arrangements. However, after witnessing their tearful goodbye, the home's residents vote to allow the couple to move in together. The Captain is a reluctant lodger, uncomfortable at being surrounded by so much femininity, and bristles when his pals start referring to him as "Old Lady". The time has come for Captain Peabody to reassert his manhood!

A young man just released from a reformatory moves to a new neighborhood with his sister, intending to start a new life. However, he gets mixed up with the local mob boss and corrupt politicians and soon finds himself being framed for an arson and murder he didn't commit.

Rose Marie Lemaitre, an orphan living in the Canadian wilderness, falls in love with her guardian, Mike Malone, an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The feeling is mutual. But, when she leaves to learn proper etiquette, Rose Marie meets a trapper named James Duval, who also falls for her. Further complications arise when Native American Chief Black Eagle -- a rival of Duval's -- is murdered.

In this tearful crime melodrama, a waitress becomes so taken with her dream of living in posh luxury and comfort that she leaves her honest boyfriend, who has just been promoted to assistant district attorney, to take up with a notorious gangster who lavishes her with stolen furs and fabulous diamonds. Unfortunately, the luxury and comfort come with a life of crime and soon she is wanted for murder and jail-breaking.

Pete Marshall is sent as a replacement to the mountain district town of Plainville when a public opinion surveyor who went there goes missing. Visiting the hillbilly family of Mamie Fleagle, Pete begins to suspect that she and her two sons have murdered the surveyor. Pete also believes that Mamie is slowly poisoning wealthy Grandma Fleagle, who has put a vital clue to her fortune in a nonsensical embroidered sampler.

Ma and the kids head out to help Pa's brother Sedgewick with the his farm in Mournful Hollow, Arkansas. Things get tighter when a couple of bootleggers rent Sedge's barn to manufacture moonshine. With Ma and the kids, the bootleggers get their pay.

The Indians try to make a fire in the Kettles fireplace the old fashion way, the smoke signal way. Judges are a comin' to award a child with a scholarship. However, who ever has the nicest looking farm and raises their kids in a good enviroment has a chance of winning.

When Pa wins a jingle-writing contest, he and Ma head for New York City. They they get in trouble with gangsters when they lose some stolen money which they had already agreed to deliver to one of the thugs.

An heiress takes a job as a department store clerk.

A songwriter's young daughter (June Lang) begins to dream of stardom when she's offered the lead role in a new operetta.

The future is bleak for a troubled boy from a broken home in the slums. He runs away when his step father breaks his violin, ending up sleeping in the basement of a music school for poor children.

Joyce and Fred MacNeil's honeymoon comes to an abrupt and unsatisfying halt when Fred is accused of murder. Railroaded into prison through the efforts of politically ambitious assistant DA Marlin, Fred awaits his doom on Death Row, while Joyce works overtime on the outside to clear her husband's name

Bickering husband and wife Tim and Sally Willows mutter a few angry words to a statue who grants their wish and they wind up living each other's life.

Ma and Pa, along with daughter Rosie, go off to Hawaii in answer to cousin Rodney's call for help running his pineapple farm while he recovers from an illness. Pa soon causes a major explosion and gets himself kidnapped.

Members of a well-to-do small community become worried when it is revealed that one of their maids is writing a telling exposé.

A poor young man's girlfriend leaves him for a gangster, who has the money and power she wants and the young man doesn't have. Determined to show her that he can be a success--and how much of a mistake she made by leaving him--he starts up a newspaper distribution business that is soon the biggest in the city, but things don't turn out exactly the way he wanted them to.

A compilation of clips from 19 Abbott & Costello features: The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap, In the Navy, Hit the Ice, Who Done It?, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Mexican Hayride, Hold That Ghost, Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, Little Giant, In Society, Ride 'Em Cowboy, The Naughty Nineties, Buck Privates Come Home, Buck Privates, Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops, Lost in Alaska, Comin' Round the Mountain, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. - Written by Tom Weaver

Chaos is brought to a family when daughter marries a brash young man met on a blind date.

The Kettles are in Paris along with their daughter-in-law's parents the Parkers. Pa tries to buy racy postcards. He also gets in big trouble when he is given a letter to deliver to Adolph Wade, a spy who gets killed by spies Inez and Cyrus Kraft.

Ma and Pa do their bit to hook lumberman Brad Johnson up with spoiled socialite Sally Flemming. Ma teaches Sally how to behave like a hick so she'll be compatible with Brad.

The Kettles leave their ultra-modern home and return to the country looking for uranium. Ma and Tom's mother-in-law, Mrs. Parker, fight over whether their grandchild will be raised "hygiencially."

A fast-talking salesman is "kidnapped" by a town, which intends to use him in its annual race with a rival community.

Cocky young street kid worships his father, a sleazy political operative.

A New England fisherman's second wife prefers his son.

The Goss family live on a farm they call the dust bowl where the wind blows during the day and the coyotes howl at night. When the train is robbed, everyone thinks that Cotton and Violet were the ones that did the job, but no one has any proof. US Marshal Lloyd Richland comes into town in disguise to find the truth and he finds that the sheriff is corrupt and that the Goss family is gosh darn nice. They take in Richland and a stranded woman named Mary without any questions. Cotton believes that Sheriff Tatum shot their pa in the back, and the sheriff is now trying to plug the boys. Richland is looking for the train robbers, and at the same time is keeping an eye on Tatum and the lovely young Mary.

Harriet O'Malley tries to solve a murder aboard a train en route to New York.

Ma and Pa are trying to raise enough money at the county fair to send their daughter Rosie to college. Ma competes in baking and Pa enters a trotter in a horse race, while Rosie takes up with handsome young Marvin Johnson.

Discussion of the making of the film Summer Stock (1950).

The story of a D.A. who becomes a prison warden and winds up overseeing the sentence of a man he prosecuted.

Follows the tumultuous presidency of the 19th President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, whose story begins with his boyhood and early life. During the Civil War, Johnson remains a staunch Unionist and, upon Lincoln's reelection in 1864, becomes his Vice President. After Lincoln is assassinated, Johnson becomes the first U.S. President ever to be impeached.

An actor plots "the perfect crime" by confessing to murders he didn't commit.

A pretty but virtuous small-town bank clerk is the victim of a vicious rumor from an unsuccessful suitor that she spent the night with a notorious womanizer.

Shirley Ross plays an innocent young girl convicted for complicity in a crime committed by her boy friend (Lloyd Nolan). The male crook is sentence to six months on a prison farm populated by both men and women (segregated, of course). Ross is also incarcerated, suffering the cruelties of the sadistic male and female guards (including J. Carroll Naish and future "Ma Kettle" Marjorie Main!)

Cora, an heiress who gives it all up for the excitement of looking for a job and living on her own, meets up with unemployed and flat broke Dick. The two of them embark on a wild night of gambling and winning, where everything they touch turns to gold. Pretty soon they're in love and, to the horror of Cora's father, married.

A radio contest brings together a woman renting a bungalow, and her squatter. Version of Hi, Beautiful! (1944), both from the story "Be It Ever So Humble," by Eleanore Griffin and William Rankin.

With the army after him and his partner deserting, Reb decides that a change of scenery would be nice so he heads for Wyoming with Dave.

A penniless former princess weds an equally cash-strapped baron, so they support themselves by becoming houseguests at the homes of wealthy American socialites.

An unknowing orphan idolizes the horse thief/mail robber who has shot his father.

Mary Dugan is a young woman accused of murdering her billionaire lover. In the process, his defense lawyer acts wrongly against them, and is replaced by a young lawyer, the brother of the accused

A western bandit is reformed by his love for a little girl.

A farm boy trains a wild colt on his own.

Harry Gribbon and Shemp Howard enter the world of fine art in Paris.

An old-time cavalry sergeant's resistance to change could cost him his post.

Viewers are provided a visit to Ken Maynard's private circus; Bette Davis poses for her portrait; Frank McHugh plays with his children; a visit to the West Side Tennis Club affords glimpses of many stars.

A fishing boat captain searches for romance in hopes of improving his financial picture.

In this comedy, the town gossip fills her time running the lives of others. Naturally, she is also a matchmaker.

Roscoe believes he is in line to receive a large inheritance, but the reality is considerably more psychopathic-- no, nuts.

A young married couple whose plans for their life together haven't turned out as expected decide to rob the bank where the husband works of $100,000, then hide the money in a safe place and return for it after they serve out their sentences. All goes according to plan until they get out of prison, when they find that they're being trailed by an insurance investigator and the husband's old cellmate, who has decided that he wants a cut of the money.

Cagney is a human dynamo as a drifter who helps save ailing Grace George from losing her newspaper. The pace is fast, and audiences of all ages will be pleased. The supporting cast, have all the small-town characterizations down pat -- with Margaret Hamilton a standout. Cagney himself, had genuine affection for this film, and listed it among his top five movie-making experiences at a retrospective the year before he died. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, in 2013.

An orphaned girl is being raised in the Limberlost by her aunt, who hates her because the girl's mother married the man that the aunt loved. The girl's existence is close to being servitude bondage, and her only companions are the birds and the animals of the forest. She meets and falls in love with a young man whose ambition is to be a lawyer. But her aunt is arranging for her to be married to the wealthiest man in the Limberlost, a drunken, coarse bully.

The son of a man sentenced to death for a murder he didn't commit vows to become a criminal himself. He starts his own street gang, and their crime spree is financed by a mysterious young man--who turns out to be the son of the District Attorney who sent the boy's father to the electric chair.

Marjorie Main is the whole show in the Universal programmer Ricochet Romance. Playing the outspoken new cook at a rundown dude ranch, Marjorie forces everyone around her to pitch in and bring some life back into the place. She also sets her sights on old layabout Chill Wills, scheming to rope the critter into marriage. Veteran comedy director Charles W. Lamont moves the proceedings along with style, never missing an opportunity for a low-comedy slapstick turn. The most surprising aspect of Ricochet Romance is that it is not an entry in Marjorie Main's Ma and Pa Kettle series.

Director Karl Brown's 1938 circus drama stars Marjorie Main as a tough, fur-coat-wearing circus boss who raises her orphaned niece to be a trapeze star.

When Carol Maldon inherits her family's stable and a horse with strong racing potential, she begins working with suave trainer Rick Grayton. Intent on owning the horse himself, Rick hinders its true abilities so that he can buy the steed on the cheap. Rick's plan is complicated, however, when he realizes that he's falling for Carol. Making matters worse, the jealous Mercedes Bellway uncovers Rick's deception and uses the information to cause trouble.

A small-town butcher has problems coping with meat rationing.

Caddish lawyer Lee Gentry is going out with Katy Costello, but carrying on an affair with dancer Carmen Brown. When he wants to end the dalliance with Carmen, she is so distraught that she becomes suicidal. Seizing the gun from Carmen, he accidentally shoots her, and thinking she's dead, concocts a series of increasingly outlandish alibis to cover his tracks under the guidance of a ghostly apparition that is his alter ego.

Harry Fox performs his vaudeville act.

Plotless musical revue celebrating President Franklin D. Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration.