Ruth Donnelly

When she was a tot, Sue Talley was given half a Biblical quotation. Now she's in France, eagerly awaiting a reunion with her brother, whom she hasn't seen since early childhood. How will Sue recognize him? He has the other half of the quotation. Put them together and brother and sister can claim a handsome inheritance – but only if they live to collect it. A fine cast, that includes such mystery stalwarts as Ricardo Cortez (1931's The Maltese Falcon) and Minna Gombell (The Thin Man), gathers clues and stumbles over corpses in The White Cockatoo. New love, a kidnapping plot, a missing room key, a miniature sword and a crime-solving cockatoo complicate the action, guided by groundbreaking director Alan Crosland (The Jazz Singer, John Barrymore's Don Juan). The White Cockatoo is one of Crosland's last films, released the year before his death at age 41 from injuries sustained in a car accident.

A singer on a gambling ship is married to a wealthy playboy. When he is found murdered, all evidence points to her as the culprit, and she is put on trial for the crime.

When a gold-digging singer, Flower Belle Lee, is kidnapped by a masked bandit, the town goes wild with speculation. When she returns unharmed, and is later seen kissing the bandit, she is tried by a judge and thrown out of town.

Charming classic of Old Hollywood about a reverend and a nun whose friendly rivalry ends up winning a huge gift for their Catholic school.

A woman with a past tries to get rid of a former lover.

A Broadway director faces cutthroat competition and other complications as he transitions to producing musical numbers for the new talking pictures.

A lady bank robber becomes the cell block boss after she's sent to prison.

The setting: a gas station in the middle of a sweltering, desiccated nowhere. The women: Olga (Aline MacMahon), a wary, weathered loner with a knack for fixing cars, and Myra (Ann Dvorak), her pretty kid sister who dishes up diner chow and dreams of romance. The film: Heat Lightning, an edgy, femme prenoir that turns incendiary when visitors arrive – two bejeweled divorcees and Olga's old love, a killer on the lam. Guiding a cast that also includes Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell, Ruth Donnelly, FrankMcHugh and Jane Darwell, Mervyn LeRoy (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang) ramps up pre-Code wisecracking and vise-like tension into an emotional wallop of an ending.