FRANCETTA MALLOY in TAXI TANGLE (1931)

Screen capture of a Broadway actress Francetta Malloy (1906-1978) chatting up a very young Jack Benny during the world's longest wait for a stoplight. Benny, seated in an adjoining cap, manages to propose marriage, locating a justice-of-the-peace, get hitched to Francetta and receive an annulment before the light changes from red to green. This delightful short comedy proved Miss Malloy's only screen appearance of any importance but is well worth a visit. Especially for the surprise denouement.

THEONA BRYANT in COLLEGE CONFIDENTIAL (1960)

Former Powers model and 20th Century-Fox contract player Theona Bryant is but one socalled legitimate actor trapped in this cheap Albert Zugsmith Peyton Place rip-off. Steve Allen plays a college  professor dabbling in a Kinsey-like project about the sexual mores of modern kids. Yuck! And yucky it becomes with over aged performers like Mamie Van Doren, Conway Twitty and the inimitable Woo Woo Grabowsky pretending to be teenagers. But no one looks more pained in this than classic Hollywood performer Herbert Marshall, who plays Miss Bryant's college professor father. Theona Bryant, we are bound to report, makes Mamie Van Doren look positively Shakespearean in comparison and although signing a long-term contract with MGM, her career lasted but a few more years. Our final impression if Confidential, meanwhile, is that producer Zugsmith tried very hard to turn Conway Twitty, as Mamie's boyfriend, into another Elvis.

HELEN TRENHOLME in THE CASE OF THE HOWLING DOG (1935)

Warner Bros. filmed a total of seven whodunits featuring Erle Stanley Gardner's popular defense atty. sleuth Perry Mason. Warren William portrayed a suave Perry in the first three before leaving in favor of Ricardo Cortez, who did only one. As did Donald Woods, who made perhaps the best-looking Mason of them all. William Lundigan played the role in the final film in 1941, after which fans had to wait 16 years before Raymond Burr took over the mantle, on television, and made the character his signature role for life. Barbara Hale played Burr's faithful secretary Della Street and she, too, created the definitive version. But Helen Trenholme was the first cinematic Della, in The Case of the Howling Dog, and for my money she offered the most faithful interpretation until the arrival of Miss Hale. By far the best of the WB series, and arguably one of the best whodunits of its period, Howling Dog proved Trenholme's second and final film. Why this Broadway actress failed to click with the powers at be at Warners we do not know; perhaps she just didn't feel comfortable away from the boards. She returned to The Great White Way but seems to have retired in the late 1930s. Yet she will always be remembered as the very first Miss Della Street.

ANITA KERRY in THE CASE OF THE LUCKY LEGS (1935)

New York-born Anita Kerry had appeared opposite Walter Kingsford in the hit Broadway melodrama The Criminal Code in 1929 before heeding the call of the talking pictures. She landed at Warner Bros., but that studio was already top heavy with tough talking broads like Anita and her 1933-'36 Hollywood career proved disappointing. She is, however, quite funny in The Case of the Lucky Legs, the third of WB's "Perry Mason" whodunits starring Warren William, where she is the leg model who can finger the sap who murdered a con man. Sadly, by this third go-around, the series had already lost its steam and Kerry's performance is lost in an avalanche of silliness. 

                                             

CAROLYN HUGHES in THE BEAT GENERATION (1959)

This long forgotten starlet turns up in the opening scene in The Beat Generation, a typical Albert Zugsmith potboiler for the once proud industry leader and now fast-sinking MGM. She plays the tough looking fiancé of Ray Danton's wealthy father, according to the dialogue having dropped Ray after eyeing dad's new Buick. Naturally, as this is a Zugsmith movie, the plot is a hard-driving mess peopled with such time capsule performers as Mamie Van Doren, Jackie Coogan, Woo Woo Grabowsky, Fay Spain, Steve Cochran and, of course, Vampira. Louis Armstrong and his All Star Band perform the title number during the opening credits. Did we mention the kitchen sink?