Movies & TV Shows from 1939

Young Dorothy finds herself in a magical world where she makes friends with a lion, a scarecrow and a tin man as they make their way along the yellow brick road to talk with the Wizard and ask for the things they miss most in their lives. The Wicked Witch of the West is the only thing that could stop them.

G-Man Bill Collins swings into action when a crooked sweepstakes racket begins insinuating itself upon the honest citizenry of the US. The crooks have flooded the market with counterfeit lottery tickets, reducing many an unwary speculator to poverty.

The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.

The wife of a stable manager will try everything to clear her husband, a very violent being, accused of the assassination of a trainer.

Alexander Graham Bell falls in love with deaf girl Mabel Hubbard while teaching the deaf and trying to invent means for telegraphing the human voice. She urges him to put off thoughts of marriage until his experiments are complete. He invents the telephone, marries and becomes rich and famous, though his happiness is threatened when a rival company sets out to ruin him.

1865. Katharina goes to a ball in Moscow. There she meets again Tchaikowsky, her first and only love. The young, who is now married to wealthy Michael Iwanowitsch Murakin, a man she does not love, has not forgotten Piotr Illich, the (not yet) famous composer. Both are still in love with each other but Piotr is engaged to Nastassia, a dancer, while for her part Katharina cannot leave her husband. Tchaikowky's first love then decides to sacrifice her happiness to the success of the composer, sponsoring him in secret. Something Piotr will learn only years after. When Katharina finds herself free at last it is too late: Tchaikowsky is dying of cholera and she only has time to close his eyes.

A good-hearted reporter attempts to find the loneliest woman in New York so he can give her an old-fashioned Christmas on a farm..

Not even the joys of parenthood can stop married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles from investigating a murder on a Long Island estate.

This short subject is a lavish costumed color production which dramatizes the birth of the American Bill of Rights. It depicts leading political figures of the American Revolution and the despotic British colonial rule which led to the creation of the Bill of Rights.

Johnnie learns crime from petty thug Frank Wilson. When Wilson kills a pawnbroker with a gun stolen from Johnnie's sister Madge's fiance Fred Burke, Fred goes to Sing Sing's death house. Wilson uses all the pressure can to keep Johnnie silent, even after he and Johnnie themselves wind up in the big house.

Italian filmmaker Carmine Gallone was still in his "operetta" mode when he helmed 1938's Il Sogno di Butterfly (Dream of the Butterfly) Maria Cebotari plays opera diva Rosa Belloni, currently starring in a production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. The plot thickens when Rosa's backstage life begins to mirror the travails of the character she is portraying. The climax comes when Harry Peters (Fosco Giachetti), the American father of Rosa's illegitimate child, returns after four years with his new wife in tow, leading inexorably to a doleful ending both on- and offstage. Critics complained about the substandard photography in Il Sogno di Butterfly, but this might have been due to poor laboratory work.

A young woman and her doctor husband are victims of a blackmail scheme when it is discovered that she was born in prison.

Dr. Henryk Savaard is a scientist working on experiments to restore life to the dead. When he is unjustly hanged for murder, he is brought back to life by his trusted assistant. Re-animated he turns decidedly nasty and sets about murdering the jury that convicted him.

Blondie and Dagwood are in charge of operations at a mountain motel. The elderly owners of the establishment are in danger of losing their life savings. Among other things, arson threatens.

Killer Diller and his gang are robbing every bank in town in numerical order (except the 13th National Bank, which they skip out of superstition). Despite their predictable actions, the police are unable to catch them...until they get a tip from an unlikely source.

After the death of a United States Senator, idealistic Jefferson Smith is appointed as his replacement in Washington. Soon, the naive and earnest new senator has to battle political corruption.

Collection of the most famous short films starring Cantinflas, where the great comedian plays a taxi driver who makes his passengers work without taking them to their destination, and even tries his luck in a boxing ring

A capricious rich woman has fun while humiliating a poor musician, who becomes famous thanks to his compositions, and in an accusation of plagiarism he manages to ridicule the her.

The Man From Montreal is a lively entry in Universal's Richard Arlen-Andy Devine action series. The stars are cast respectively as fur trapper Clark Manning and constable Bones Blair, who carry on a friendly rivalry in the Canadian Northwest. Our heroes team up in the final reels to put the kibosh on a fur-smuggling racket, permitting Universal to plunge deeply into its stock-footage files. The leading ladies this time out are Anne Gwynne and Kay Sutton, their billing status indicating which one of the two ladies will land Clark Manning in the last scene. Incredibly, the Arlen-Devine series lasted for 14 films, none of them classics but all of them worthwhile Saturday-matinee fare.

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