William Frawley

Legendary Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle stars with his Yankee teammate Roger Maris in this good-natured story of dreams that really do come true. Young Hutch Lawton brags to his Little League buddies that his dad knows Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. Forced to "put up or shut up" Hutch goes to spring training camp where he is lectured about honesty being the best policy. He returns to face his buddies with the truth to find the entire Little League team invited to camp. —Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>

Rich, eccentric T.J. Banner adopts a feral cat who becomes an affectionate pet. Then T.J. dies, leaving to Rhubarb most of his money and a pro baseball team, the Brooklyn Loons. When the team protests, publicist Eric Yeager convinces them that Rhubarb is good luck. But Eric's fiancée Polly seems to be allergic to cats, and the team's success may mean new hazards for Rhubarb. —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu> Screwball-noir in which curmudgeonly-but-lovable tycoon (T.J. Banner) dies and leaves his fortune, including a Brooklyn baseball franchise, to his lovable-but-curmudgeonly cat Rhubarb, setting into motion a plot involving thwarted romance, court battles, baseball heroics, and gangsters. —Steve Koppelman <skoppel@dorsai.org>

Two bumbling private eyes help a man, wrongly accused of murder who has become invisible, to clear his name. Boxer Tommy Nelson is accused of killing his manager. While detectives Bud and Lou investigate, they come across an invisibility formula with which Tommy injects himself rather than face the police. This sparks an idea for trapping gangster Morgan by having Lou fight champ Rocky Hanlon, with Tommy's invisible help. —Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>

A cowboy competes with a gambling tycoon on the Barbary Coast for the hand of a beautiful dance-hall queen. Duke falls for Flaxen in the Barbary Coast in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. He loses money to crooked gambler Tito, goes home and PL: learns to gamble, and returns. After he makes a fortune he opens his own place with Flaxen as the entertainer. The 1906 quake destroys his place. —Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu> Montana cowboy Duke Fergus travels to 1906 San Francisco to collect a debt from Tito Morell who runs a place on the dodgy Barbary Coast. Though he heads home after losing the money to Morell's card-sharping, Duke takes a crash course on card play and returns with all his savings ready to take on Morell and start up his own place. A lot of this is due to Morell's woman Flaxen whom Duke has fallen for. The earth may soon be moving for him in quite dramatic ways. —Jeremy Perkins {J-26}

During WW2, the U.S. Navy implements a new idea of forming construction battalions that also are fighting units, in case of Japanese attack. Construction workers in World War II in the Pacific are needed to build military sites, but the work is dangerous and they doubt the ability of the Navy to protect them. After a series of attacks by the Japanese, something new is tried, Construction Battalions (CBs=Seabees). The new CBs have to both build and be ready to fight. —John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>

A wildcatter, broke but slick, manages to acquire a lease for oil-rich land but ruthless competitors sabotage his oil company any way they can. Wildcatter Johnny Maverick and his pal, Chicopee Nevins are speeding toward Antril Bend, a small town in the oil region, that has offered $25,000 to the person bringing in the first oil well.They accidentally find oil on the town's outskirts, and Johnny writes a $4000 hot check for the property. He covers that by having Chicopee sell his half interest to oil promoter Gus Sloane for $7000. Sloane hires a crew to start drilling on his half of the property, with Johnny's old enemy, Mile Rawlins as his foreman. Rawlins sabotages Johnny's rig, causing Chicopee's death. Confidence man Oliver Westbrook and his confederate, Nan Dearing hatch a plan to swindle Johnny by having Nan pose as Chicopee's sister. It works and Johnny makes Nan his partner. Another accident staged by Rawlins forces Johnny to sign a note to get money for repair. Nan falls in love with Johnny and abandons her plan to swindle him. As the note deadline approaches, Johnny learns that Sloane has purchased it as a means of taking over the well.

As bare-knuckled boxing enters the modern era, brash extrovert, Jim Corbett, uses new rules and dazzlingly innovative footwork to rise to the top of the top of the boxing world. Because boxing is a considered an illegal and disreputable enterprise in 1880's San Francisco, wealthy and influential members of the prestigious Olympic Club vow to make the sport a "gentlemanly" one. They sponsor a brash, extroverted young bank clerk named Jim Corbett, who quickly becomes an accomplished fighter under the new Marquis of Queensbury Rules. Despite his success, the young Irish-American's social pretensions and boastful manner soon estrange him from his benefactors, who plot to give their conceited former protégé a well-deserved comeuppance. Despite this, his dazzlingly innovative footwork helps him to beat a succession of bigger and stronger men, and he finally finds himself fighting for the world's championship against his childhood idol, John L. Sullivan. —duke1029 The biography of famed boxer James J. "Gentleman Jim" Corbett, the colorful Irish-American fighter who became the first heavyweight champion of the world under the new Marquis of Queensberry rules. —Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

A New York bandleader journeys to Hollywood when he is offered a contract with a studio, but he is determined to do things his way and not theirs. Popular New York band leader Terry Rooney (Cagney) is offered a lucrative film contract out in Hollywood. Rooney and his soon-to-be wife pack up and head for California. Upon arriving, they meet Mr. Regan, the head of the studio, who believes that Rooney's true lack of desire for stardom is arrogance on the band leader's part. When his first film is huge success and a hit for the studio, Regan tries to hide the truth from Rooney. Feeling a need to get away from Hollywood, Rooney takes his wife on a South Seas honeymoon cruise, only to return to the real truth of his fame. —SindyMac