Sydney Greenstreet

A corrupt small town sheriff manipulates local candidates to the state legislature but he eventually comes into conflict with a visiting carnival dancer. Carnival dancer Lane Bellamy finds herself stranded in a southern town ruled by corrupt political boss Titus Semple. Lane becomes romantically involved with sheriff Fielding Carlisle, a weakling whose career is being driven by Titus. Seeing Lane as a liability to his own political ambitions, Titus mounts a campaign to get her driven out of town. She finds she can't get a job and even gets arrested on a trumped-up morals charge. Released from jail, Lane finds work as a "hostess" at Lutie-Mae's road house, where she meets Dan Reynolds, another member of the town's political machine. They marry and move to a home on Flamingo Road, the town's social pinnacle. Their marriage is soon marked by scandal when a drunken Carlisle visits Lane at home one evening and shoots himself. —Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com> In Boldon, the corrupt Sheriff Titus Semple rules the town and elects whoever he wants with the support of the powerful group led by the constructor Dan Reynolds. Now he wants to elect his deputy Fielding Carlisle, who is the son of a former judge, to the Senate. When a carnival is forced to leave Boldon, the dancer Lane Bellamy has no place to go and stays in a tent. Titus sends Fielding to the carnival and he helps Lane to find a job as waitress in a diner and a place to stay. They have a romantic relationship, but Titus sees Lane as a liability to the political career of his protégé. So he forces her boss to fire Lane; he does not let Lane get a job; and he frames Lane to send her to prison. When she is released, she finds a job working for Lute Mae Sanders in her roadhouse. She meets Dan and soon they get married and move to the fancy Flamingo Road. But the ambitious Titus has different political plans from Dan and his group and wants to elect Fielding as Governor. Dan refuses the request and Titus uses blackmail to force Dan and his group to support Fielding. Dan does not accept and Titus decides to destroy Dan and Lane. Will he succeed? —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Lane Bellamy works in a carnival and finds herself in the smallish town of Boldon. She gets a job as a waitress and starts a relationship with the Deputy Sherriff Carlisle Fielding. Unfortunately, Sherriff Titus Semple has great political ambitions for Fielding and him seeing a waitress would hinder those aims so he has Bellamy fired, arrested and thrown in jail. However, Ms Bellamy isn't one to go quietly or avoid a fight. —grantss

A food writer who has lied about being the perfect housewife must try to cover her deception when her boss and a returning war hero invite themselves to her home for a traditional family Christmas. Journalist Elizabeth Lane is one of the country's most famous food writers. In her columns, she describes herself as a hard working farm woman, taking care of her children and being an excellent cook. But this is all lies. In reality she is an unmarried New Yorker who can't even boil an egg. The recipes come from her good friend Felix. The owner of the magazine she works for has decided that a heroic sailor will spend his Christmas on *her* farm. Miss Lane knows that her career is over if the truth comes out, but what can she do? —Mattias Thuresson In her Smart Housekeeping column, Elizabeth Lane provides amazing recipes and homemaking hints. However, Elizabeth's got a little secret: SHE needs a recipe to boil water! Elizabeth has no cooking skills, no Connecticut farm, no adoring hubby and no baby-makes-three as suggested in her column. Something her boss, the magazine publisher, doesn't know when he decides to invite himself and a recently returned war hero to her home for a traditional family Christmas. Watch as Elizabeth tries to be a good wife and doting mother, with absolutely NO experience. —Carolyn Weiss The destroyer of Jefferson Jones and his partner Sinkewicz is sunk by the Germans and they float adrift in a raft for eighteen days. When they are rescued, they are sent to a hospital and Jefferson has to follow a stringent diet imposed by the doctors. He seduces his nurse expecting to get solid food and she decides to write to Alexander Yardley, who is the owner of the Smart Housekeeping magazine where the famous journalist Elizabeth Lane writes a column about recipes and food, asking him to allow Jefferson to spend Christmas with Elizabeth and her family in her farm in Connecticut. The prepotent Yardley sees the chance of free promotion of his magazine and forces Elizabeth to invite the hero Jones. However, Elizabeth is single, does not have a baby and lives alone in a small apartment in New York and she made-up a perfect married life for her fans. Further, she does not how to cook and the recipes belong to her Hungarian friend Felix Bassenak, who owns a restaurant in New York. The architect John Sloan, who has been wooing Elizabeth for a long, proposes to marry her in his farm in Connecticut and she brings Felix with her to help to proceed the farce. The things get complicated when Yardley also decides to spend Christmas with Elizabeth while she falls in love with Jones. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Elizabeth Lane is the perfect homemaker in so many ways. She's an outstanding cook and interior decorator who lives in a beautiful house in the countryside, is happily married and recently had a baby - as her regular column in Smart Housekeeping magazine recounts to her wide readership. There's only one big catch: she isn't any of those things - she can't cook, doesn't know the first thing about decorating and lives in a tiny, dingy apartment. It all begins to unravel when her publisher, Alexander Yardley, arranges for recently rescued sailor Jefferson Jones to spend the weekend at Lane's country home. To top it off, Yardley invites himself to spend the weekend there as well. Elizabeth scrambles, getting her friend Felix Bassenak to cook for her and borrows her friend John Sloan's country house. She even gets a baby from a neighbor. As if she doesn't have enough to deal with, she and Jones become quite attracted to one another. Somehow it all works out in the end. —garykmcd

A jaded nightclub owner in war-torn Casablanca finds his loyalties are put to the test when his old flame reappears to seek his help in escaping from the Nazis.

After being dressed down in a court-martial and dishonorably discharged from the United States Army in December 1941 for misappropriation of funds, Lieutenant Rick Leland (Humphrey Bogart) tries to get into the Canadian Army but is blacklisted. Deciding to take a Japanese boat via the Panama Canal to China, Rick meets lovely Alberta Marlow (Mary Astor), a slightly mysterious woman travelling alone whom he immediately falls for. He also meets the rotund sociologist Dr. Lorenz (Sydney Greenstreet) whose Japanese connections are far more involved than normal. When on one particular night Rick saves Lorenz from an assassin's bullet, the good doctor begins suggesting that the ex-Army man may have valuable information to sell to the right people for the right price. Leland delivers the goods but is waylaid by Lorenz' henchman, and recovers just in time to get to a mysterious plantation where some harsh anti-American activities against the nation are in motion. Along the way he runs into happy-go-lucky Joe Totsuiko (Victor Sen Yung) who's a little too friendly for the wrong reasons and Rick discovers why Lorenz, Alberta, and a host of Japanese operatives are convening in a desolate location and finds he's in for the fight of his life.

Private detective Sam Spade gets involved with a band of international thieves who lie, double cross and commit murder for a jewel-encrusted statue known as The Maltese Falcon.