Jean Arthur

An ex-gunfighter defends homesteaders in 1889 Wyoming. Shane rides into a conflict between cattleman Ryker and a bunch of settlers, like Joe Starrett and his family, whose land Ryker wants. When Shane beats up Ryker's man Chris, Ryker tries to buy him. Then Shane and Joe take on the whole Ryker crew. Ryker sends to Cheyenne for truly evil gunslinger Wilson. Shane must clear out all the guns from the valley. —Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu> Enigmatic gunslinger Shane rides into a small Wyoming town with hopes of quietly settling down as a farmhand. Taking a job on homesteader Joe Starrett's farm, Shane is drawn into a battle between the townsfolk and ruthless cattle baron Rufus Ryker. Shane's growing attraction to Starrett's wife, Marian, and his fondness for their son Joey, who idolizes Shane, force Shane to realize that he must thwart Ryker's plan. —Jwelch5742

An escaped prisoner must prove his innocence to a stuffy law professor with help from a spirited schoolteacher. In suburban Lochester, New England, three people end up living together in high-school teacher Nora Shelley's rental house. The first is her new tenant, renowned Harvard law professor Michael Lightcap, who has rented the house for the summer while he writes his new book. The second is Nora herself. After an auspicious first meeting, Lightcap hires Nora to be his live-in cook and secretary for a week until his manservant Tilney arrives. The third is Joseph, the property's gardener, who is currently laid up with a sprained ankle. In reality, Joseph is Nora's childhood friend Leopold Dilg, who has just escaped from prison. Leopold was being tried for the arson of the factory where he worked, and for murder for the death of the factory foreman Clyde Bracken, whose body was never recovered but who is assumed to have died in the fire. Despite the danger to herself, Nora hides Leopold since she believes his story that although he, as an activist, did speak out about the dangerous conditions at the factory, he did not set the fire, which he assumes was done by the factory's owner, Andrew Holmes, to collect the insurance money, while having Leopold as a scapegoat. Nora campaigned to get the job with Lightcap to be able to better hide Leopold in the house. Leopold escaped because he knew he would not get a fair trial because of the rabble-rousing Holmes conducted against him. Lightcap and who he knows as Joseph end up getting along famously, although activist Leopold believes Lightcap's view of the law is too clinical for him to truly be a great lawyer or great judge. Nora and Leopold learn clandestinely that Lightcap is being appointed to the Supreme Court. Nora, Leopold, and Sam Yates, Leopold's lawyer, try to get Lightcap involved in helping Leopold by showing him that Leopold indeed will not get a fair trial. In the process, Lightcap might show Leopold and Nora that his current way of thinking has much merit. —Huggo When the Holmes Woolen Mill burns down, Leopold Dilg is jailed for arson (and murder; one man was lost). Escaping, Leopold hides out in the home of his childhood sweetheart Nora Shelley--which she has just rented to unsuspecting law professor Michael Lightcap. As Lightcap's unwelcome guests, Nora and Leopold drag the professor willy-nilly from theory to practice. The story blends comedy, thriller, philosophy, mystery and romance. —billaknz@gmail.com When accused arsonist Leopold Dilg escapes jail, he hides out in the home of old friend and sweetheart Nora, who happens to be renting a farmhouse to Supreme Court candidate Michael Lightcap, but she lets Dilg hide in the attic while Lightcap gets settled. The next day, she introduces Dilg as the gardener. In conversation, though, Lightcap realizes that the gardener has a lot to say about the law. Nora and Dilg team up to convince him that Dilg was framed. The three dodge the cops, try to capture the real crooks, and discover that both men have fallen for Nora. Two different endings were filmed, one in which Nora gives her heart to Dilg, the other in which she leaves with Lightcap. Guess which one remains at the classic comic conclusion. —Fiona Kelleghan <fkelleghan@aol.com>

A tycoon goes undercover to ferret out agitators at a department store, but gets involved in their lives instead. Department store owner J.P. Merrick finds that several of his employees are unionizing to get more money and better working conditions. In order to find out who the organizers are, he gets a job at the store as a shoe salesman. Not realizing his true identity, he's befriended by Mary Jones and Joe O'Brien, the two ringleaders, and Elizabeth Ellis, a charming older woman with whom he develops a romance. —Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com> J.P. Merrick, a wealthy department store owner, uses a pseudonym and takes a job at his store in order to find out who organized a union of his employees. —Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com> Tycoon John P. Merrick is startled to see an effigy of himself hanging on the front page of the New York Times, courtesy of union organizers at Neeley's Department Store, which Merrick didn't even know he owned. On a sudden impulse, he goes undercover there as a shoe salesman. Soon he's so involved in the lives of his fellow employees (especially one young couple and a delightful single woman his own age) as to forget his original purpose. But his two lives are on a collision course... —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu> The wealthiest man in the world, John P. Merrick, is a private person who likes to stay anonymous. One of his many assets, and a minor one at that, is Neeley's Department Store. There is labor unrest at the store, most of the employees' anger directed at Merrick, who they hang in effigy outside the store despite not knowing what he looks like. Merrick, not happy at what he sees going on, decides to go undercover working at the store to mete out the rabble-rousers. Undercover as Thomas Higgins, Merrick gets assigned as a sales clerk in the shoe department, where he is taken under the caring wing of his colleague Mary Jones, who sees in Higgins a poor man needing the guidance of friends. One of those other friends is Elizabeth Ellis, who Mary sees as a possible "Mrs. Higgins". Mary's boyfriend is Joe O'Brien, the chief organizer of the employees, four hundred of whom are following Joe in the charge against the store and Merrick. At the store, Merrick not only wants the list of the four hundred, but also wants to change those things he doesn't like at the store, chief amongst those being his shoe department section manager, Mr. Hooper. But as Higgins, Merrick also begins to see things a little differently, specifically from an employee's point of view. —Huggo

In Tucson of the 1860s, a pioneer woman struggles to succeed in the freight and cattle business while at risk at the hands of corrupt and violent local businessmen and rampaging Indians. Phoebe Titus is a tough, swaggering pioneer woman, but her ways become decidedly more feminine when she falls for California bound Peter Muncie. But Peter won't be distracted from his journey and Phoebe is left alone and plenty busy with villains Jefferson Carteret and Lazarus Ward plotting at every turn to destroy her freighting company. She has not seen the last of Peter, however. —Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

A naive idealist fights the corrupt political machine that engineered his appointment to the U.S. Senate.

The son of a snobbish Wall Street banker becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family not realizing that his father is trying to force her family from their home for a real estate development. Stenographer Alice Sycamore is in love with her boss Tony Kirby, who is the vice-president of the powerful company owned by his greedy father Anthony P. Kirby. Kirby Sr. is dealing a monopoly in the trade of weapons, and needs to buy one last house in a 12-block area owned by Alice's grandfather, Martin Vanderhof. However, Martin is the patriarch of an anarchic and eccentric family where the members do not care for money but for having fun and making friends. When Tony proposes to Alice, she states that it would be mandatory to introduce her simple and lunatic family to the snobbish Kirbys, and Tony decides to visit Alice with his parents one day before the scheduled get-together. There is an inevitable clash of classes and lifestyles: the Kirbys spurn the Sycamores and Alice breaks with Tony, changing the lives of the Kirby family. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Tony Kirby Jr., vice president of Kirby and Company, and his stenographer Alice Sycamore are in love with each other and want to get married. They both realize that a major problem in doing so is the incompatibility of their respective families. Tony's father, the company's owner and president Anthony P. Kirby, is a cutthroat businessman who doesn't care who he steps on to earn the almighty dollar, the amount of which being how he measures his worth and the worth of others. Tony's mother is a pretentious snob. Both his parents openly but quietly disapprove of the union. Alice's extended family, on the other hand, are an eccentric lot. They all have a "do whatever you want to do because you like doing it" mentality, which was initially fostered by the family patriarch, Alice's maternal grandfather, Martin Vanderhof, in whose house they all live. With the exception of Alice, they are somewhat blissfully unaware that their lives are unconventional. However, their attitude of openness and inclusion has reaped them the rewards of a multitude of unconditional friends, some who live with them solely because they came one day, liked what they saw, were welcomed with open arms, and have never left. Tony and Alice want to deal with the incompatibility issue head-on, although they both take differing paths in how to deal with it. Another problem is that A.P. Kirby is working on the biggest deal of his career - cornering the munitions market, especially lucrative in the lead up to probable war--that requires a massive land acquisition, which includes Grandpa Vanderhof's house, but he refuses to sell. Grandpa is unaware of who wants to buy his house, while A.P. is unaware that Grandpa is the one hold-out who could ruin his entire plan. —Huggo Anthony P Kirby is a wealthy banker. In order to clinch his next deal, his company, Kirby and Company, is buying up all the properties in a neighborhood. Everyone has sold, except one. Martin Vanderhof won't budge, not for any offer. He is happy where he is, living with his daughter, son-in-law, two granddaughters, grandson-in-law and a few other people in a community largely free of life's pressures. Mr Kirby's son Tony, is a new-appointed Vice President of Kirby and Company and is in love with his secretary, Alice Sycamore, Mr Vanderhof's granddaughter. Their relationship, and the property issue, puts the two families, the Kirbys and Vanderhofs, on a collision course. It's more than a clash of families but a clash of outlooks, ideals and what's important in life. —grantss Sweet-natured Alice Sycamore falls for banker's son Tony Kirby. But when she invites her snooty prospective in-laws to dinner to give their blessing to the marriage, Alice's peculiar extended family--including philosophical grandfather Martin Vanderhof, hapless fledgling ballerina sister Essie and fireworks enthusiast father Paul--might be too eccentric for the staid Kirbys. —Jwelch5742

A unassuming greeting card poet from a small town in Vermont heads to New York City upon inheriting a massive fortune and is immediately hounded by those who wish to take advantage of him. Longfellow Deeds lives in a small town and leads a small-town kind of life, including playing the tuba in the town band. When a relative dies and leaves Deeds a fortune, Longfellow picks up his tuba and moves to the big city, where he becomes an instant target for everyone from the greedy opera committee to the sensationalist daily newspaper. Deeds outwits them all until Babe Bennett comes along. Babe is a hot-shot reporter who figures that the best way to get close to Deeds is to pose as a damsel in distress. When small-town boy meets big-city girl, anything can, and does, happen.