Porter Hall

Porter Hall

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Clifford Porter Hall (September 19, 1888 – October 6, 1953) was an American character actor known for appearing in a number of films in the 1930s and 1940s. Hall played movie villains or comedic incompetent characters. Hall was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and began his career touring as a stage actor with roles in productions of The Great Gatsby and Naked in 1926. Hall made his film debut in the 1931 drama Secrets of a Secretary. He made his last onscreen appearance in the 1954 film Return to Treasure Island, which was released after his death. He was probably best remembered for four roles: a senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, an atheist in Going My Way, the nervous, ill-tempered Granville Sawyer, who administers a psychological test to Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street, and a train passenger who encounters a man (Fred MacMurray) who has just committed a murder in Double Indemnity. On October 6, 1953, Hall died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California at the age of 65. His interment was at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery. Hall had two children, David and Sarah Jane.

  • Title: Porter Hall
  • Popularity: 3.659
  • Known For: Acting
  • Birthday: 1888-09-18
  • Place of Birth: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
  • Homepage:
  • Also Known As: Clifford Porter Hall
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Porter Hall Movies

  • 1944
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    Double Indemnity

    Double Indemnity

    8.1 1944 HD

    A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy. Against a backdrop of...

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  • 1939
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    Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

    Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

    7.88 1939 HD

    Naive and idealistic Jefferson Smith, leader of the Boy Rangers, is appointed to the United States Senate by the puppet governor of his state. He...

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  • 1940
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    His Girl Friday

    His Girl Friday

    7.4 1940 HD

    Walter Burns is an irresistibly conniving newspaper publisher desperate to woo back his paper’s star reporter, who also happens to be his...

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  • 1934
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    The Thin Man

    The Thin Man

    7.5 1934 HD

    A husband and wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts.

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  • 1936
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    The Princess Comes Across

    The Princess Comes Across

    6.1 1936 HD

    A Swedish princess boards an ocean liner in Europe en route to an acting career in America and finds herself getting inconveniently attached to a...

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  • 1947
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    Miracle on 34th Street

    Miracle on 34th Street

    7.371 1947 HD

    Kris Kringle, seemingly the embodiment of Santa Claus, is asked to portray the jolly old fellow at Macy's following his performance in the...

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  • 1951
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    Ace in the Hole

    Ace in the Hole

    7.8 1951 HD

    An arrogant reporter exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career.

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  • 1952
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    Holiday for Sinners

    Holiday for Sinners

    5.5 1952 HD

    Three old friends reunite during Mardi Gras and try to forget their problems.

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  • 1936
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    Satan Met a Lady

    Satan Met a Lady

    5.9 1936 HD

    In the second screen version of The Maltese Falcon, a detective is caught between a lying seductress and a lady jewel thief.

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  • 1940
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    Dark Command

    Dark Command

    6.3 1940 HD

    When transplanted Texan Bob Seton arrives in Lawrence, Kansas he finds much to like about the place, especially Mary McCloud, daughter of the local...

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  • 1937
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    Make Way for Tomorrow

    Make Way for Tomorrow

    7.6 1937 HD

    At a family reunion, the Cooper clan find that their parents' home is being foreclosed. "Temporarily," Ma moves in with son George's family, Pa with...

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  • 1944
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    The Great Moment

    The Great Moment

    5.8 1944 HD

    The biography of Dr. W.T. Morgan, a 19th century Boston dentist, during his quest to have anesthesia, in the form of ether, accepted by the public...

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  • 1944
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    The Mark of the Whistler

    The Mark of the Whistler

    5.9 1944 HD

    A drifter claims the money in an old bank account. Soon he finds himself the target of two men who turn out to be the sons of the man's old partner,...

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  • 1943
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    The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

    The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

    6.8 1943 HD

    A small-town girl with a soft spot for American soldiers wakes up the morning after a wild farewell party for the troops to find that she married...

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  • 1937
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    Bulldog Drummond Escapes

    Bulldog Drummond Escapes

    5.9 1937 HD

    Drummond manages to save a woman from jumping in front of his car but she runs away with his car. He traces her and she asks him to help her out of a...

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  • 1941
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    Sullivan's Travels

    Sullivan's Travels

    7.4 1941 HD

    Successful movie director John L. Sullivan, convinced he won't be able to film his ambitious masterpiece until he has suffered, dons a hobo disguise...

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  • 1936
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    The Petrified Forest

    The Petrified Forest

    7 1936 HD

    Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and...

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  • 1944
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    Going My Way

    Going My Way

    6.7 1944 HD

    Youthful Father Chuck O'Malley led a colorful life of sports, song, and romance before joining the Roman Catholic clergy. After being appointed to a...

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  • 1949
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    Intruder in the Dust

    Intruder in the Dust

    7.321 1949 HD

    Rural Mississippi in the 1940s: Lucas Beauchamp, a local black man with a reputation of not kowtowing to whites, is found standing over the body of a...

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  • 1947
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    Unconquered

    Unconquered

    6.2 1947 HD

    England, 1763. After being convicted of a crime, the young and beautiful Abigail Hale agrees, to escape the gallows, to serve fourteen years as a...

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  • 1947
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    Singapore

    Singapore

    5.8 1947 HD

    After the war, Matt Gordon returns to Singapore to retrieve a fortune in smuggled pearls. Arrived, he reminisces in flashback about his prewar...

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  • 1936
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    The Story of Louis Pasteur

    The Story of Louis Pasteur

    6.9 1936 HD

    A true story about Louis Pasteur, who revolutionized medicine by proving that much disease is caused by microbes, that sanitation is paramount and...

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  • 1945
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    Blood on the Sun

    Blood on the Sun

    5.8 1945 HD

    Nick Condon, an American journalist in 20s Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination. Reaction from the understandably upset...

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  • 1953
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    Vice Squad

    Vice Squad

    5.9 1953 HD

    A Los Angeles police captain (Edward G. Robinson) ties the case of a slain policeman to a bank robbery, all in a day.

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  • 1945
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    Week-End at the Waldorf

    Week-End at the Waldorf

    6 1945 HD

    Anything can happen during a weekend at New York's Waldorf-Astoria: a glamorous movie star meets a world-weary war correspondent and mistakes him for...

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  • 1931
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    Secrets of a Secretary

    Secrets of a Secretary

    5.5 1931 HD

    Society girl becomes a social secretary when her father dies penniless. From a story by Charles Brackett.

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  • 1937
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    This Way Please

    This Way Please

    5.5 1937 HD

    A famous singer and matinée idol helps a pretty young theater usher in her dreams of becoming a singer, but when her career begins to take off...

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  • 1942
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    Butch Minds the Baby

    Butch Minds the Baby

    1 1942 HD

    Aloysius 'Butch' Grogan leads a life of criminal activities motivated to provide for a widow and her child. He's on lookout for a gang of safe...

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  • 1945
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    Murder, He Says

    Murder, He Says

    6.6 1945 HD

    Pete Marshall is sent as a replacement to the mountain district town of Plainville when a public opinion surveyor who went there goes missing....

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  • 1937
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    Wells Fargo

    Wells Fargo

    5 1937 HD

    In the 1840s, Ramsey MacKay, the driver for the struggling Wells Fargo mail and freight company, will secure an important contract if he delivers...

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  • 1936
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    The General Died at Dawn

    The General Died at Dawn

    6.1 1936 HD

    China, 1930s, during the ravaging civil war. General Pen entrusts O'Hara, an intrepid American adventurer, with the mission of providing a large sum...

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  • 1954
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    Return to Treasure Island

    Return to Treasure Island

    4.8 1954 HD

    There's something to be said for finishing what you've started. That's why the gentile Captain Long John Silver is heading back to Treasure Island to...

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  • 1937
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    True Confession

    True Confession

    5.8 1937 HD

    A writer takes a job as a secretary because her scrupulous husband isn't bringing in the dough as an attorney. When her new employer is murdered, she...

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  • 1939
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    They Shall Have Music

    They Shall Have Music

    5.9 1939 HD

    The future is bleak for a troubled boy from a broken home in the slums. He runs away when his step father breaks his violin, ending up sleeping in...

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  • 1938
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    Bulldog Drummond's Peril

    Bulldog Drummond's Peril

    5.7 1938 HD

    Drummond's wedding with Phyllis is interrupted when the inspector guarding their gifts is killed. He tries to trace the killers and uncovers the...

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  • 1935
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    The Case of the Lucky Legs

    The Case of the Lucky Legs

    6 1935 HD

    A con man who stages phony "lucky legs" beauty contests and leaves town with the money is found with a surgical knife in his heart by Mason.

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  • 1938
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    Stolen Heaven

    Stolen Heaven

    1 1938 HD

    Two attractive jewel thieves, one female (Olympe Bradna), one male (Gene Raymond) escape together after their latest escapade and hide out in the...

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  • 1943
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    A Stranger in Town

    A Stranger in Town

    6.5 1943 HD

    In the small town of Crownport local attorney Bill Adams is trying to break up the ring of corrupt town officials by running for mayor. The cards...

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  • 1936
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    Too Many Parents

    Too Many Parents

    5 1936 HD

    Boys are sent to military school in order to get them out of the way of their too-busy-to-bother parents or guardians. Lonely young Philip Stewart...

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  • 1949
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    Chicken Every Sunday

    Chicken Every Sunday

    6 1949 HD

    A woman takes in boarders to support her husband's harebrained financial schemes.

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  • 1936
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    Snowed Under

    Snowed Under

    7 1936 HD

    Alan Tanner's new play opens in a week, but Tanner just can't finish the third act. He's retreated to a snowbound cottage to work, but blonde...

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  • 1944
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    Standing Room Only

    Standing Room Only

    5 1944 HD

    During WWII, an executive and his secretary arrive in Washington, DC on business but, because of the housing shortage, are unable to find hotel...

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  • 1938
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    The Arkansas Traveler

    The Arkansas Traveler

    6 1938 HD

    The Arkansas Traveler, an itinerant printer, returns to a small town to help save The Daily Record, a newspaper started by Mr. Allen, an old friend...

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  • 1938
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    Men with Wings

    Men with Wings

    6 1938 HD

    Reporter Nicholas Ranson is jubilant when, on 17 Dec 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright take their first airplane flight....

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  • 1945
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    Kiss and Tell

    Kiss and Tell

    5.6 1945 HD

    Film adaptation of the Broadway hit, about the comic mayhem that erupts in a small town when a 15-year old high-schooler (Shirley Temple) is wrongly...

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  • 1938
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    Tom Sawyer, Detective

    Tom Sawyer, Detective

    5.2 1938 HD

    The further adventures of Twain's most beloved fictional characters of Tom Sawyer and his friend, Huckleberry Finn.

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  • 1937
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    Souls at Sea

    Souls at Sea

    5.9 1937 HD

    Michael 'Nuggin' Taylor and Powdah save lives during a sea tragedy in this story about the slave trade on the high seas during 1842.

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  • 1934
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    Murder in the Private Car

    Murder in the Private Car

    5.4 1934 HD

    Ruth Raymond works on the telephone switchboard of a large NYC office building. One day, a private detective informs her that she is actually the...

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  • 1953
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    Pony Express

    Pony Express

    5.5 1953 HD

    Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok join forces to establish a mail route that can get mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, in...

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  • 1938
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    Dangerous to Know

    Dangerous to Know

    6.5 1938 HD

    Racketeer Steve Recka, art patron and political power-maker, rules his town and Madame Lan Ying, his beautiful friend and hostess (read:mistress),...

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  • 1936
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    The Plainsman

    The Plainsman

    6.2 1936 HD

    Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill go up against Indians and a gunrunner.

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  • 1948
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    That Wonderful Urge

    That Wonderful Urge

    6.2 1948 HD

    When an heiress finds out that the friendly young man she's met at Sun Valley is really an investigative reporter, she ruins his career by falsely...

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  • 1940
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    Arizona

    Arizona

    6.1 1940 HD

    Phoebe Titus is a tough, swaggering pioneer woman, but her ways become decidedly more feminine when she falls for California bound Peter Muncie. But...

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  • 1938
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    Prison Farm

    Prison Farm

    5.7 1938 HD

    Shirley Ross plays an innocent young girl convicted for complicity in a crime committed by her boy friend (Lloyd Nolan). The male crook is sentence...

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  • 1939
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    Henry Goes Arizona

    Henry Goes Arizona

    6 1939 HD

    A New Yorker moves West when he inherits an Arizona ranch.

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  • 1939
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    Grand Jury Secrets

    Grand Jury Secrets

    1 1939 HD

    A newspaper reporter gets involved with shady stock promoters when he listens in on a jury room session.

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  • 1943
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    The Desperadoes

    The Desperadoes

    5.7 1943 HD

    Popular mailcoach driver Uncle Willie is in fact in league with the town's crooked banker. They plan to have the bank robbed after emptying it, and...

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  • 1949
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    The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend

    The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend

    5.8 1949 HD

    Saloon-bar singer Freddie gets very angry whenever boyfriend Blackie seems to be playing around. She always packs a six-shooter, so this is bad news...

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  • 1937
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    Wild Money

    Wild Money

    1 1937 HD

    A tightwad accountant for a newspaper becomes friends with a reporter. The bookkeeper goes on vacation, and while there he learns of a kidnapping...

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  • 1941
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    The Parson of Panamint

    The Parson of Panamint

    5 1941 HD

    As he looks over the dusty, deserted remains of the western "boom town" of Panamint, grizzled old prospector Chuckawalla Bill Redfield recalls the...

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  • 1940
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    Trail of the Vigilantes

    Trail of the Vigilantes

    1 1940 HD

    A reporter goes undercover to break up an outlaw gang.

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  • 1943
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    The Woman of the Town

    The Woman of the Town

    6 1943 HD

    Bat Masterson, who after failing to secure a job as a newspaper reporter becomes marshal of Dodge City. Preferring socializing to peacekeeping,...

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  • 1937
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    King of Gamblers

    King of Gamblers

    7 1937 HD

    Working for a slick restaurateur who has fallen for her, a down-on-life songstress falls instead for a crusading crime reporter, unaware that her...

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  • 1936
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    And Sudden Death

    And Sudden Death

    1 1936 HD

    An heiress with a penchant for speeding runs afoul of a traffic cop. Romance develops between the two, but it's soon complicated when he believes she...

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  • 1945
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    Bring on the Girls

    Bring on the Girls

    6.1 1945 HD

    A millionaire joins the Navy hoping to find a girl who'll marry him for himself, not for his money. A beautiful gold-digger who works at a resort...

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  • 1952
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    The Half-Breed

    The Half-Breed

    5 1952 HD

    An Apache of mixed blood tries to make peace between Indians and whites.

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  • 1931
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    The Cheat

    The Cheat

    6 1931 HD

    Elsa Carlyle is impulsive and a gambler. Though loved by her husband Jeff, she's spoiled and selfish, concerned with social standing. Meanwhile, Jeff...

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  • 1942
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    The Remarkable Andrew

    The Remarkable Andrew

    8.2 1942 HD

    When Andrew Long, hyper-efficient small town accountant, finds a $1240 discrepancy in the city budget, his superiors try to explain it away. When he...

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  • 1938
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    Scandal Street

    Scandal Street

    1 1938 HD

    Joe McKnight temporarily leaves his fiancée, Nora Langdon, for an expedition in a South American jungle. Nora gets a position as librarian in...

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  • 1938
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    King of Alcatraz

    King of Alcatraz

    5.7 1938 HD

    A convict who has just escaped from Alcatraz Prison takes over a passenger ship. Two of the ship's crew hatch a plot to overpower him and rescue the...

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  • 1939
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    Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police

    Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police

    6.1 1939 HD

    Captain Drummond and his girlfriend want to marry but a hidden treasure in the house in which they want to celebrate their marriage is complicating...

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  • 1948
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    You Gotta Stay Happy

    You Gotta Stay Happy

    6.4 1948 HD

    Indecisive heiress Dee Dee Dillwood is pushed into marrying her sixth fiancée, but unable to face the wedding night, she flees into the...

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  • 1936
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    Let's Make a Million

    Let's Make a Million

    1 1936 HD

    A wealthy mama's boy finds himself the victim of con artists involved in an oil stocks racket.

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  • 1942
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    Mr. and Mrs. North

    Mr. and Mrs. North

    4.5 1942 HD

    Married sleuths (Gracie Allen, William Post Jr.) find a corpse in their closet and round up suspects.

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  • 1952
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    Carbine Williams

    Carbine Williams

    6.3 1952 HD

    David Marshall Williams is sent to a prison farm where he works in the tool shop and eventually develops the precursor of the famous M-1 Carbine...

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  • 1952
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    Four Star Playhouse

    Four Star Playhouse

    5.7 1952 HD

    Four Star Playhouse is an American television anthology series that ran from 1952 to 1956, sponsored in its first bi-weekly season by The Singer...

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