Crime School with Humphrey Bogart, Gale Page, and the Dead End Kids.  Neighborhood delinquents Frankie, Squirt, Spike, et al (The Dead End Kids) almost kill their pawnshop 'fence' in a disagreement over the payment for stolen goods.  They are caught and sent to a corrupt reform school with a reputation for graduating hardened criminals.  Luckily for them there is new Deputy Commissioner, Mark Braden (Humphrey Bogart).  Braden sweeps into the reform school the day after the Kids arrive and cleans house of the crooked superintendent and most of the bad guards.  He takes over operations and slowly wins the respect of the Kids (and starts to date Frankie's pretty sister, Sue (Gale Page)).  Unfortunately the corrupt head guard has managed to survive the house cleaning and works to undermine Braden and ruin the Kids' chances of parole.

This is the second of five 1938 Bogart movies that TCM showed as part of a Bogie weekend. Busy fellow.

Gale Page and Humphrey Bogart

The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse with Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart.  Edward G. Robinson plays Dr. T. S. Clitterhouse, a physician who has a theory that a criminal's occupational stress causes physical changes in him.  In order to test his theory he needs to perform physical examinations of criminals at various stages during the commission of their crimes.  His difficulty finding subjects leads him to commit crimes himself, taking his own vital signs along the way.  In his calm, analytical way, he's actually very good at crime.  He ends up as the boss of a local burglary gang, although next-in-command 'Rocks' Valentine (Humphrey Bogart) is not overjoyed at this.  Clitterhouse is having such a high time that he takes a sabbatical from his medical practice to lead his gang on a crime spree, taking blood samples from his men after every job.  He gathers enough research data to write a book.  When 'Rocks' tries to kill him, he decides that his research is finished and returns to his practice.  His evil past follows him, though, and events culminate with him being put on trial for murder.  His best defense? Insanity!

Familiar faces:

Gale Page (the only Lane Sister who wasn't a Lane) as Nurse Randolph.

Irving Bacon, who I mistakenly thought was Tom Fadden (the toll keeper from It's a Wonderful Life) when I wrote about Hard to Get.  Here he was again and since he was actually in the credits (as Foreman of Jury) I was able to positively identify him.  The two look alike to me.

Nurse Randolph discovers stolen jewels in Clitterhouse's medical bag

A Christmas Carol with Reginald Owen and Gene Lockhart.  Miserly businessman Ebenezer Scrooge (Reginald Owen) has no patience for Christmas or those who celebrate it.  He has a change of heart after being visited by four spirits (Marley plus the three ghosts of Christmases) who remind him what he is missing.  Gene Lockhart plays Bob Cratchit, Gene's wife Kathleen Lockhart plays Mrs. Cratchit, and Gene's preteen daughter June Lockhart plays one of his daughters, Belinda.  Leo G. Carroll plays the ghost of Marley.

 

The Cratchits are frightened of the suddenly generous Scrooge (June Lockhart on the left).

Leo G. Carroll as Marley

The Adventures of Marco Polo with Gary Cooper.  Venetian explorer Marco Polo (Gary Cooper) travels to China to secure a trade agreement with Kublai Khan.  There he discovers spaghetti, gunpowder, and coal.  He also woos the Emperor's daughter.  Kublai Khan sends Polo to spy on the leader of a rebellious province.  Kaidu, the leader of this province, catches Polo and forces him to distract his hectoring wife so that Kaidu can make whoopee with a servant girl.

 

Familiar faces: Basil Rathbone as Khan's evil advisor; Alan Hale as Kaidu the rebel; Binnie Barnes as Kaidu's wife, and Lana Turner as the amorous servant girl.  Also, H.B. Warner (Mr. Gower from It's a Wonderful Life) plays the Chinese man who introduces Marco Polo to spaghetti and gunpowder.

Alan Hale and Lana Turner

Block-Heads with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.  Stan and Ollie are doughboys together in WWI.  When the rest of the platoon is to charge forward, Stan is given orders to stay and guard the trench.  He stays at his post for the next twenty years until he is discovered and returned to the States.  When Ollie discovers that Stan has returned he fetches his old friend from the Soldiers' Home and brings him home.  Several dozen sight gags later the movie ends.

In this scene, after Stan has tried to light the oven and failed (but left the gas on), Ollie has gone to light the oven himself.

Hard to Get with Dick Powell and Olivia de Havilland.  Maggie Richards (Olivia de Havilland) is the daughter of a wealthy Park Avenue family.  In a pique she declares that she will not be accompanying the family to their summer house in Newport and takes off for a spur of the moment drive.  On a country road, she finds herself in need of gas and stops at an auto court managed by Bill Davis (Dick Powell).  She is outraged to learn that the $3.48 (fourteen gallons of gas and a quart of oil) she owes cannot just be "charged" to her father.  Bill insists that she work off her debt by cleaning the ten cabins of the motor lodge.  She does so, but not willingly, and she vows to get revenge for this humiliation.  She returns the following day full of apologies and woos Bill, setting up a dinner date. She pretends to be a maid in her Park Avenue house and learns that Bill is an aspiring architect with a business idea.  With this knowledge she sets him up for a series of humiliating business pitches to her father, Ben Richards (Charles Willinger), and his friend and competitor, John Atwater (Thurston Hall).  To everyone's surprise and despite getting the bum's rush over and over, Bill never ever EVER gives up. Until, that is, he learns that he is the target of a joke and washes his hands of the lot of them.  Then Ben Richards and Atwater cannot rest until they get a piece of Bill's business plan, and Ben must patch up Bill and Maggie's romance as well.

Dick Powell and Olivia de Havilland

Dick Powell sings "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" and later dresses in blackface and does a Jolson impersonation.

Familiar faces:
Penny Singleton (from the Blondie movies) as Maggie's personal maid
Melville Cooper (Sheriff of Nottingham from The Adventures of Robin Hood) as Mr. Richards' valet
Tom Fadden* (the toll keeper from It's a Wonderful Life) as a gas station attendant
Looks like I was wrong about this one.  It was Irving Bacon.

 *IMDb doesn't even list this one!

Man from Music Mountain with Gene Autry and Smiley Burnette.  Gene Autry plays a singing cattle rancher named Gene Autry.  Evil businessman John Scanlon (Ivan Miller) concocts a real estate scam to sell worthless property in an abandoned ghost town, on the promise that it will soon have electricity from the the just completed Boulder Dam.  To sweeten the deal, he includes an interest in a worthless community gold mine.  Gene knows that there are no plans to build power lines to the area and that the mine is worthless, but he cannot convince the naive people moving in from the city.  Gene decides to scam the scammer by seeding the mine with real gold, but inadvertently convinces even more people to move into town.  This gold rush causes the power company to change their plans and run power lines to the town.  Just when Gene has convinced Scanlon to buy back his worthless mine, real gold is uncovered.  Gene must then rush to stop the sale.  In this movie Autry was much more dishonest than the bad guy, but in the end the good guys win and the bad guys lose.

Familiar face: Dick Elliot as a representative of the Southwest Water & Power Company, who played the man on the porch in It's a Wonderful Life ("Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death!")

Smiley opens an electric appliance shop