Charles Winninger

A grandson of a recently deceased millionaire mistakes a beautiful female disc jockey for her aunt, who once dated the grandfather.

Friends Bill Morley and Rosey Blake both spy debutante Penelope Craig at an American Red Cross blood drive and are attracted. Bill, a playboy flyer, pretends to be a doctor in order to meet Penny and get her address and phone number for his "little black book." That night, Bill and Rosey crash Penny's parents' anniversary party at the Craigs' home, and to get even, Penny exposes Bill's deception by introducing him to some old family friends: hypochondriac Mrs. Cartwright and physician Dr. Crane. Before he leaves her parents' home, however, Bill kisses Penny, and she immediately falls in love with him. Penny then follows Bill to a Burbank nightclub, which is near the Vega Aircraft factory where Bill and Rosey work on the assembly lines. Later, Penny and Bill go to the beach, and Bill tells her that she should not get involved with him, as he is not the domestic type and is merely waiting for his papers to join the Air Force. Not to be dissuaded, Penny gets a job at the aircraft factory, and when she is unable to find Bill in the giant plant, she performs a song at lunch to attract his attention. That night, while the Craigs are screening home movies, Bill comes over to their house and tells Penny that he has gotten his orders. They try to break up, but quickly discover that they have fallen in love and decide to spend what little time he has left in the United States together. Just before Bill is about to leave for overseas duty, however, Hannah Gordon, one of Penny's friends at the factory, learns that her flyer husband has been shot down over the Pacific. Penny then goes to her father Judson and asks him to use his influence to keep Bill at the aircraft factory. Judson refuses and tells Penny that it is her duty to support Bill's induction into the military. Penny then returns to the factory to learn that Bill has decided to end their relationship. Later, Bill tells Rosey that he ended his romance with Penny to spare her the pain he saw Hannah suffer. Rosey then goes to the Craig home and tries to give Penny a note, telling her that Bill really loves her, but Judson has ordered Binns, the family butler, not to allow either Bill or Rosey in the house. Penny receives the note, however, and races to the airport in time to say goodbye to Bill. When he tells her that he is still worried about her, Penny, paraphrasing Hannah, replies that "if he flies 'em, then she'll build 'em."

Jimmy goes to work with his uncle, the owner of a food factory. Before he gets there, he befriends an Irish family who happens to be his uncle's worst enemy because of their love for music and in-house band who constantly practices. Jimmy Haskell (James Stewart) closes his struggling music store and goes into business with his wealthy uncle, C.J. (Charles Winninger), who owns a health food business. C.J. hates music and has constant disputes with the McCorkle family, who run a boarding house across the alley from C.J.'s factory and play in Horace Heidt's (himself) band, which currently lives in the boarding house. When Jimmy unintentionally throws a tomato at C.J. during a dispute, it impresses the McCorkles and the band, who don't know that Jimmy is related to C.J. Molly McCorkle (Paulette Goddard) quickly falls for Jimmy. When Jimmy must substitute for C.J. on his radio program, he is confronted by Horace and Molly's brother, Willie (Dick Hogan). Jimmy admits to his identity but works with Horace and Willie to trick C.J. into taking an extended vacation by making C.J. think only he can hear music being played by the band from a hidden location. Jimmy uses the opportunity to have the band play on the radio program to great success, but Molly learns Jimmy's identity and angrily states on air that the radio show will give away $1,000 every week. To protect Molly, Jimmy claims the idea is his, but must now find a legal way to fulfill the promise and prevent C.J. from stopping them. —Patrick Depew Jimmy, the owner of a failed music shop, goes to work with his uncle, the owner of a food factory. Before he gets there, he befriends an Irish family who happens to be his uncle's worst enemy because of their love for music and in-house band who constantly practices. Soon, Jimmy finds himself trying to help the band by getting them gigs and trying to reconcile the family with his uncle, an avid music hater, all while winning the heart of the beautiful Molly. —Nathan Will Sheets

The ghosts of three elderly industrialists killed in an airplane crash return to Earth to help reunite a young couple they initially brought together. Melton (Harry Carey), Chadwick (C. Aubrey Smith) and O'Brien (Charles Winninger), rich but lonely heads of an engineering firm, invite three strangers to dinner on Christmas Eve. Only two show up, James (Richard Carlson) and Jean (Jean Parker). They fall in love and become friends with their three benefactors, until the latter are killed in a plane crash and come back to their old home as ghosts. In the coming months, true love encounters some rough spots. Can ghostly O'Brien help the young folks? —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu> Christmas Eve. Michael O'Brien (Charles Winninger), George Melton (Harry Carey) and Allan Chadwick (C. Aubrey Smith) are three aging friends and millionaires businessmen that live alone in a mansion with Josef (Alex Melesh), the butler, and Madam Tanya (Maria Ouspenskaya), the innkeeper. After knowing that their party guests can't celebrate with them because one of them is sick, the three old men decide make a bet about the existence the goodness on the people, throwing by the window three wallets with ten dollars and a calling card, hoping that someone returns (the loser pays a dinner to the people that take back any wallet). Although the first wallet lost, the other two are found and returned in an independent way by two young ones, aspiring singer James Houston (Richard Carlson) and Jean Lawrence (Jean Parker), who works as teacher in a children's hospital. Meeting in the home of O'Brien, Melton and Chadwick, Houston and Lawrence fall in love, making a strong friendship with the old men and helping to these ones to recovery the joyful of life. But when the three travel to Pittsburgh by business reasons, their airplane crashes and they die, returning as ghosts to their former house. Josef and Madam Tanya ask Houston and Lawrence to live with them at the house, to have someone for whom to care. Having a chance to sing on the radio, Houston meets beautiful performer Arlene Terry (Helen Vinson), who put her eye on Houston, causing a distancing between he and Lawrence. It causes O'Brien, Melton and Chadwick try to help the innocent Houston to stay away from manipulative Terry and Jace Taylor (James Bush)--Terry's ex-husband and a singer in professional decline. Can the three old men save the situation and reunite Houston and Lawrence before the afterlife calls them to pass away from Earth? —Chockys It's Christmas Eve, and elderly Allan Chadwick (C.Aubrey Smith), George Melton (Harry Carey) and Michael O'Brien (Charles Winninger), the partners of Chadwick, Melton and O'Brien Engineers located in Radio Center in New York City, are working late as usual before having a small dinner party at their home, which also serves as their office. While they treat their servants as friends, such as Josef (Alex Melesh) the butler and especially Madam Tanya (Maria Ouspenskaya) their housekeeper, she a deposed Russian countess (Josef her longtime servant before the two came to the US), they realize that they have lost many friends over the years in being workaholics when their dinner guests cancel at the last minute due to unforeseen circumstances, George further believing their cancellation stemming from they learning of his attendance and not wanting to associate with him due to an unseemly issue from his past. Wanting to spend the evening with who they consider deserving people, Michael comes up with an idea to hold a lottery of sorts to find those replacement dinner guests with only the truly deserving who would come forward. Who shows up are James Houston (Richard Carlson), a Texas cowboy feeling emotionally lost in New York City, and Jean Lawrence (Jean Parker), a kindergarten teacher at a children's clinic. This entire collective end up as close friends, but that friendship is short-lived when the three partners are unexpectedly killed in an accident. Before they are called to their final afterlife resting place where they will spend eternity, Allan, George and Michael return as spirits to their home, Michael in particular who believes they sent back to ensure their friends are well taken care of, especially that there is a happily ever after for James and Jean who he could see were falling in love with each other. However, Michael may feel powerless, especially within the short time-frame he has before he goes to his final resting place, as he watches James, who becomes a singing star, take a wrong path in falling under the spell of his stage partner Arlene Terry (Helen Vinson), whom Michael considers a soulless woman. —Huggo The ghosts of three elderly industrialists (Harry Carey as George, C. Aubrey Smith as Allen, and (Charles Winninger as Michael) killed in an airplane crash return to Earth to help reunite a young couple (Richard Carlson as James, and Jean Parker as Jean) they initially brought together.

Destry rides again! Thomas Jefferson Destry, Jr. (Jimmy Stewart) is the deputy sheriff without a gun. He believes the law and public opinion is the answer to outlaws and gunfights. Bottleneck is a lawless town run by bad guys and gunslingers. Kent (Brian Donlevy), a host of gunslingers, the corrupt Judge Slade (Samuel S. Hinds), crooked gamblers and dishonest saloon gal Frenchy (Marlene Dietrich) were cheating, stealing, and forcing farmers to sell them their land against their will in order to have control of all the land when the railroad comes through the territory. The outlaws kill the old sheriff because he is wise to their game. In order to keep law and order out of Bottleneck, Judge Slade appoints the town drunk and apparently incompetent Washington Dimsdale (Charles Winninger) to be the new sheriff. Charles sobers up and is shocked by the news, but steps up to the challenge. Before he was a drunk he had been deputy for Sheriff Tom Destry Sr., who was the roughest, toughest sheriff of all time. Destry Sr. used his fists and his guns to clean up the lawless town, and was Sheriff there until gutless outlaws shot him in the back. Sheriff Dimsdale wires for the younger Destry, the most crack-shot Sheriff of Bottleneck since Destry, Sr. The towns villains hear about Destrys reputation and decide to meet his stagecoach in Bottleneck, and give him a not-quite-warm welcome. When the stage arrives, to everyones surprise, Destry is carrying a birdcage and parasol because he is helping a female passenger - a sweet Bottleneck girl he fancies - debark from the stage. The entire town roars with laughter at the sight of the new deputy who appears to fall short of the lawman ideal. The new sheriff is agreeable and unconcerned about the mocking. Later, he goes to the saloon and attends unarmed: I dont believe in guns, he tells the astounded locals. This prompts more ridiculing from the outlaws. Destry then meets Frenchy, who has a cat fight with a Russians wife who has come to claim her husbands pants after Frenchy won them in a fixed poker game earlier. Destry stops the fight, pouring a bucket of water on Frenchy. Naturally, this enrages the theatrical lady, but her scrap with the new sheriff sparks a romantic interest between Destry and Frenchy. Destry then makes the Russian a deputy; Bottlenecks new triumvirate then decide to trick the outlaws to find out who killed the previous sheriff and why. They make an arrest. The outlaws and people of Bottleneck soon learn that there is more to their laughable deputy sheriff than friendly talk, especially after his friend Dimsdale gets shot in the back while guarding the new prisoner. It is revealed that Frenchy was implicit in Dimsdales death, and she deliberately distracted Destry whilst Dimsdale is murdered and the imprisoned outlaw is freed. Destry straps on his guns and goes looking for those responsible. A large brawl erupts, and Frenchy changes her allegiances once more, catching a bullet for the otherwise doomed deputy. Destry, as formidable as his father, vanquishes the outlaws and cleans up Bottleneck. The Russian finally gets his pants, Destry falls in love with a girl from the stage, Bottleneck is saved, and Destry rides again!

An eccentric woman learns she is not dying of radium poisoning as earlier assumed, but when she meets a reporter looking for a story, she feigns sickness again for her own profit. Hazel Flagg of Warsaw, Vermont receives the news that her terminal case of radium poisoning from a workplace incident was a complete misdiagnosis with mixed emotions. She is happy not to be dying, but she, who has never traveled the world, was going to use the money paid to her by her factory to go to New York in style. She believes her dreams can still be realized when Wally Cook arrives in town. He is a New York reporter with the Morning Star newspaper. He believes that Hazel's valiant struggle concerning her impending death is just the type of story he needs to resurrect his name within reporting circles after a recent story he wrote led to scandal and a major demotion at the newspaper. He proposes to take Hazel to New York both to report on her story but also to provide her with a grand farewell to life. She accepts. Wally's story results in Hazel becoming the toast of New York. In spending time together, Wally and Hazel fall in love. Hazel not only has to figure out what to do about her relationship with Wally, but also how to conclude her now very public story, which all of New York expects will be a public and imminent death. Others, however, may conclude the story for her. —Huggo To redeem himself after a hoax, reporter Wallace Cook proposes a series of stories on doomed Hazel Flagg. Hazel discovers she really doesn't have radium poisoning, but still accepts the big fling in New York that Cook offers her. At first, she has a great time, but complications arise when she and Wally fall in love, and an Austrian specialist discovers that Hazel is faking. —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>

Three sisters scheme to reunite their divorced parents before their wealthy father marries a conniving gold digger. The three Craig sisters, in Switzerland with their ten-years-divorced mother, run away to New York to prevent their father from marrying calculating socialite Donna Lyons. The overpowering vivacity of the Smart Girls (nominal ages 14-20) sweeps all before it, but a romantic complication between middle sister Kay and their accidental ally, Lord Michael Stuart, threatens shipwreck to their schemes... —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu> Teenage sisters Joan, Kay and Penny Craig have lived with their mother Dorothy Craig in Switzerland ever since their parents divorced ten years ago, their wealthy New York banker father, Judson Craig, who they have not seen since. As they know their mother still loves their father and has always dreamed of a reconciliation, the sisters, with help from their faithful housekeeper Martha and without telling their mother beforehand, decide to travel to New York upon media reports that their father is thinking about remarrying, to a younger woman named Donna Lyons. Upon arriving in New York, their father barely remembers or recognizes them which does not deter their mission of breaking up their father and Donna, especially when their fears are confirmed: that Donna is nothing but a gold-digger. Judson has to do a balancing act between keeping Donna happy against getting reacquainted with his daughters who he really does love. While the sisters find they have extra reinforcements in their father's investment manager Bill Evans and their father's faithful longtime butler Binns who too believe Donna only has dollar signs in her eyes, Donna and her mother can see what the girls are up to, setting the battle grounds. In the process which includes many hiccups along the way, some due to some misunderstandings, Joan and Kay may embark on their own romances, adding to the mix Australian banker Lord Michael Stuart, and penniless alcoholic, Hungarian Count Arisztid. —Huggo Hoping to reunite their divorced parents, the three Craig sisters plot to prevent the marriage of their father to a gold-digger. Their scheme to match her up with a penniless Count backfire, but but a wealthy Australian saves the day. —Herman Seifer <alagain@aol.com>