Robert Cummings

Jonas Cord is a disagreeable young tycoon who's building planes, directing films, and catting around on the corporate make in 1930s Hollywood. Upon the death of his father in 1928, Jonas Cord Jr., who has thus far led a wild life, assumes control of the Cord business empire centered on a Nevada chemical company, that control despite the animosity that existed between father and son about business issues. With the exception of a few trusted people including his best friend, aging cowboy Nevada Smith, business manager "Mac" McAllister, and longtime butler Jedidiah, Jonas in turn trusts no one in his effort to take complete control of the business and his life, buying out other "friends", business associates and adversaries in his "I know best" attitude. In the process, he begins to diversify his business interests into areas which he either has an interest and/or believes will be industries of the immediate future, including aviation and the movie industry. The poor way he treats people extends to his personal life, including the many women closest to him, such as his stepmother, Rina Marlowe, who was his girlfriend before she married his father, and who would become his wife, Monica Winthrop, the daughter of a business associate. The question becomes if this life is sustainable for him, especially as people try to usurp him, and those he trusts may no longer be able to tolerate his behavior, which he may not be able to let go of in much of it stemming from issues ingrained into him when he was a child. —Huggo George Peppard plays a hard-driven industrialist more than a little reminiscent of Howard Hughes. While he builds airplanes, directs movies, and breaks hearts, his friends and lovers try to reach his human side--and find that it's an uphill battle. The film's title is a metaphor for self-promoting tycoons who perform quick financial takeovers, impose dictatorial controls for short-term profits, then move on to greener pastures. —Jeanne Baker <jbaker@erim.org>

An actress disguises herself as a geisha in order to land the lead role in her director husband's film version of 'Madam Butterfly'. Paul Robaix is a well known director, married to Lucy Dell, a famous movie star. Robaix wants to make a movie of the classic play Madame Butterfly, but he doesn't want his wife to play the leading part, as in his previous pictures. Producer Sam Lewis and Lucy Dell think up a scheme to get her in the picture after all. Lucy disguises as a Geisha, and gets the leading part in the picture. When Robaix finds out he gets so mad, he wants to divorce Lucy... —Christian Siemons <siemons@bigfoot.com>

When Tony finds out his wife had an affair, he plans to take revenge and murder her. He ropes in an old colleague to help him, but things do not go the way he planned.

To win back her husband, a divorcee pretends to be married to a loser.

Munitions worker Barry Kane is falsely accused of setting fire to the Stuarts Aircraft Factory in Los Angeles, a fire that caused the death of his best friend, Ken Mason. Barry realizes that the real saboteur is Frank Fry, the man who handed him a fire extinguisher, which turned out to be full of gasoline. Remembering that Fry had an envelope addressed to him from the Deep Springs Ranch in Springfield, California, Barry goes there to find the killer, but the ranch's owner, Charles Tobin, tells him that he does not know Fry. Tobin's granddaughter, however, hands Barry a telegram addressed to Tobin from Fry stating that Fry is going to Soda City. Although Tobin has Barry arrested, Barry manages to escape from the police by jumping off a bridge. He then seeks refugee from a rainstorm in the home of blind composer Philip Martin. His sanctuary is invaded by the arrival of Martin's niece, New York model Patricia Martin, and though Philip senses Barry's innocence, Pat attempts to turn him over to the police. The fugitive is then forced to abduct her, and when their car breaks down in the California desert, Barry and Pat hitch a ride with a circus troupe. Later, they arrive in the ghost town of Soda City, which, they discover, is the hideout of saboteurs Freeman and Neilson. Barry is able to convince the killers that he is one of them, so Freeman offers him safe passage to New York City. Pat is convinced of Barry's duplicity as well, so she goes to the police. Once in New York, Freeman takes Barry to the mansion of society woman Mrs. Henrietta Sutton, where Pat is now being held by the saboteurs. Tobin then arrives and declares that his operation has been exposed by Pat's uncle and that Barry is not a part of their operation. As the fifth columnists discuss their plans to kill Barry and Pat, the two sneak into Mrs. Sutton's society ball. After Pat is snatched away from him, however, Barry is forced to turn himself over to Tobin. The next day, the saboteurs, posing as newsreel photographers, plot to blow up the battleship U.S.S. Alaska during its christening at the Brooklyn naval yards. Barry manages to escape from the Sutton mansion by setting off the fire alarm, and he stops Fry and the other saboteurs from blowing up the battleship, though the dock itself is destroyed. The saboteurs then take Barry back to their skyscraper hideout, where the police await them, as Pat had managed to escape herself and get help. Fry escapes to a nearby movie theater, but Barry is unable to convince the police to go after him, so Pat follows the saboteur to the Statue of Liberty. There, she calls the FBI and they rush to the monument with Barry. Barry chases Fry to the statue's torch, where the saboteur slips into the statue's hand and clings desperately to the giant palm. Barry tries to save him, but when the hem of Fry's jacket sleeve tears, the murderer is sent plunging to his death.

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