Kenner G. Kemp Movies List

Jobless sportswriter Eddie Willis is hired by corrupt fight promoter Nick Benko to promote his current protégé, an unknown Argentinian boxer named Toro Moreno. Although Moreno is a hulking giant, his chances for success are hampered by a powder-puff punch and a glass jaw. Exploiting Willis' reputation for integrity and standing in the boxing community, Benko arranges a series of fixed fights that propel the unsophisticated Moreno to #1 contender for the championship. The reigning champ, the sadistic Buddy Brannen, harbors resentment at the publicity Toro has been receiving and vows to viciously punish him in the ring. Eddie must now decide whether or not to tell the naive Toro the truth.

Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer, James Lee Bartlow; a star, Georgia Lorrison; and a director, Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.

A New York gangster and his girlfriend attempt to turn street beggar Apple Annie into a society lady when the peddler learns her daughter is marrying royalty.

In prohibition-era Chicago, the corrupt sheriff and Guy Gisborne, a south-side racketeer, knock off the boss Big Jim. Everyone falls in line behind Guy except Robbo, who controls the north side. Although he's out-gunned, Robbo wants to keep his own territory. A pool-playing dude from Indiana and the director of a boys' orphanage join forces with Robbo; and, when he gives some money to the orphanage, he becomes the toast of the town as a hood like Robin Hood. Meanwhile, Guy schemes to get rid of Robbo, and Big Jim's heretofore unknown daughter Marian appears and goes from man to man trying to find an ally in her quest to run the whole show. Can Robbo hold things together?

Mama Rose lives to see her daughter June succeed on Broadway by way of vaudeville. When June marries and leaves, Rose turns her hope and attention to her elder, less obviously talented, daughter Louise. However, having her headlining as a stripper at Minsky's Burlesque is not what she initially has in mind.

Professional daredevil and white-suited hero, The Great Leslie, convinces turn-of-the-century auto makers that a race from New York to Paris (westward across America, the Bering Straight and Russia) will help to promote automobile sales. Leslie's arch-rival, the mustached and black-attired Professor Fate vows to beat Leslie to the finish line in a car of Fate's own invention.

After spending several months in an orbiting lab, three astronauts prepare to return to Earth only to find their de-orbit thrusters won't activate. After initially thinking they might have to abandon them in orbit, NASA decides to launch a daring rescue. Their plans are complicated by a Hurricane headed towards the launch site—and a shrinking air supply in the astronauts' capsule.

Marnie is a thief, a liar, and a cheat. When her new boss, Mark Rutland, catches on to her routine kleptomania, she finds herself being blackmailed.

In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words use by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the Americans, covers the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which plunged America into the Second World War.

Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy General Sternwood regarding a matter involving his youngest daughter Carmen. Before the complex case is over, Marlowe sees murder, blackmail, deception, and what might be love.

Bootleggers on the lam Frankie and Noll split up to evade capture by the police. Frankie is caught and jailed, but Noll manages to escape and open a posh New York City nightclub. 14 years later, Frankie is released from the clink and visits Noll with the intention of collecting his half of the nightclub's profits. But Noll, who has no intention of being so equitable, uses his ex-girlfriend Kay to divert Frankie from his intended goal.

A man is murdered, apparently by one of a group of soldiers just out of the army. But which one? And why?

A nightclub singer and his partner escape mobsters by fleeing to Cuba with a beautiful heiress, who has inherited a haunted castle on an isolated island. The trio hunt for a hidden treasure and encounter a ghost, a zombie, and a mysterious killer...

Don Knotts is Hollis Figg, the dumbest bookkeeper in town. When the city fathers buy a second-hand computer to cover up their financial shenanigans, they promote Figg to look after things, knowing he'll never catch on. Their plan backfires when Figg becomes self-important and accidentally discovers their plot.

Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede". When the killers find the Swede, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight. Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, an investigator, on a hunch, decides to look into the murder. As the Swede's past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman who may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.

In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film production company and cast make a difficult transition to sound.

Postulates the first manned trip to the moon, happening in the (then) near future, and being funded by a consortium of private backers. Assorted difficulties occur and must be overcome in-flight. Attempted to be realistic, with Robert A. Heinlein providing advice.

A circus owner tries to keep his financially troubled circus on the road, despite the efforts of a murderous saboteur who has decided that the show must not go on.

Paris, France, 1482. Frollo, Chief Justice of benevolent King Louis XI, gets infatuated by the beauty of Esmeralda, a young Romani girl. The hunchback Quasimodo, Frollo's protege and bell-ringer of Notre Dame, lives in peace among the bells in the heights of the immense cathedral until he is involved by the twisted magistrate in his malicious plans to free himself from Esmeralda's alleged spell, which he believes to be the devil's work.

Deprived of a normal childhood by her ambitious mother, Lillian Roth becomes a star of Broadway and Hollywood before she is twenty. Shortly before her marriage to her childhood sweetheart, David Tredman, he dies and Lillian takes her first drink of many down the road of becoming an alcoholic.

Dennis O'Keefe, newly married to lovely Sheila Ryan, is in a jam. O'Keefe's former girl friend, exotic dancer Marie McDonald, has in her possession an expensive, jeweled garter given to her by O'Keefe in his bachelor days. McDonald intends to show the garter to O'Keefe's suspicious wife, so Our Hero must retrieve the embarrassing accouterment without tipping off the missus.

Stanton Carlisle joins a seedy carnival, working with "Mademoiselle Zeena" and her alcoholic husband, Pete.

A telephone operator plays homicide detective with her boyfriend, making it harder for the police.

The owner of a tavern is pressured by the local mob to go into business with them, and figures it's better all around if he does that rather than cause trouble. However, when he starts to see what kind of place his nice little neighborhood bar is turning into, and when one of the mob's goons tries to rape his daughter, he decides to fight them.

A young woman falls in love and marries, but withholds from her husband information about her family.

Navy Commander Alan Roberts is assigned to lead an expedition to Little America in Antarctica to investigate reports of a mysterious warm water inland lake discovered a decade earlier. His helicopter and its small party, including reporter Maggie Hathaway, is forced down into a volcanic crater by a fierce storm. They find themselves trapped in a lush tropical environment that has survived from prehistoric times.

Wealthy American, Jervis Pendleton has a chance encounter at a French orphanage with a cheerful 18-year-old resident, and anonymously pays for her education at a New England college. She writes letters to her mysterious benefactor regularly, but he never writes back. Several years later, he visits her at school, while still concealing his identity, and—despite their large age difference—they soon fall in love.

An alcoholic falls in love with and gets married to a young woman, whom he systematically addicts to booze so they can share his "passion" together.

Meeting in a navy recruiting line, Al Crowthers and Melvin Jones become friends. Al has tried to enlist before, but was always rejected. He keeps trying so that he can impress women. Melvin, is allergic to women's cosmetics and his doctor prescribed ocean travel, so he decided to join the navy.

Burdened by a family secret, Adam White lands a job as a newspaper advice columnist. Little does he realize that it's all part of a nasty desire by cynical editor William Shrike to crush the souls of his underlings. Adam feels his readers' pain, and eventually, he takes an assignment to meet with Faye Doyle, who is exasperated by her crippled husband. When Faye tries to seduce Adam, he must choose between his job and his girl.

Bill Benson and Ted Adams are to appear in a Broadway show together and, while in Paris, each 'discovers' the perfect leading lady for the plum female role. Each promises the prize role to the girl they selected without informing the other until they head back across the Atlantic by liner - with each man having brought his choice along! It becomes a stormy crossing as each man has to tell his 'find' that she might not get the role after all.

A scrupulously honest lawyer discovers that the client he's gotten off was really guilty.

Four sisters in New Zealand fall for four U.S. soldiers en route to the Pacific theater in WWII.

After a rapid engagement, a dowdy daughter of a chemist weds an industrialist, knowing little of his family or past. He transforms her into an elegant society wife, but becomes enraged whenever she asks about Michael, his mysterious long-lost brother.

A young girl is left with the notoriously cheap Sorrowful Jones as a marker for a bet. When her father doesn't return, he learns that taking care of a child interferes with his free-wheeling lifestyle. Sorrowful must also evade crooked gangsters and indulge in a bit of horse-thieving.

As a result of nuclear testing, gigantic, ferocious mutant ants appear in the American desert southwest, and a father-daughter team of entomologists join forces with the state police officer who first discovers their existence, an FBI agent and, eventually, the US Army to eradicate the menace, before it spreads across the continent, and the world.

The life story of the famous pianist and band-leader of the 1930s and 1940s.

The film pivots around the local Norwegian doctor and his family. The doctor's wife (Ruth Gordon) wants to hold on to the pretence of gracious living and ignore their German occupiers. The doctor, Martin Stensgard (Walter Huston), would also prefer to stay neutral, but is torn. His brother-in-law, the wealthy owner of the local fish cannery, collaborates with the Nazis. The doctor's daughter, Karen (Ann Sheridan), is involved with the resistance and with its leader Gunnar Brogge (Errol Flynn). The doctor's son has just returned to town, having been sent down from the university, and is soon influenced by his Nazi-sympathizer uncle. Captain Koenig (Helmut Dantine), the young German commandant of the occupying garrison, whose fanatic determination to do everything by the book and spoutings about the invincibility of the Reich hides a growing fear of a local uprising.

When Miss Vicki's father dies, she becomes the world's greatest philanthropist. Unfortunately, she is flat broke! Her loyal butler, Claude Fitzwilliam, leads the household staff to rob from various businesses by charging goods to various wealthy people and misdirecting the shipments, all to keep Miss Vicki's standard of living.

Alan Mitchell returns to New York to work for his father Walter, the owner of a fashion house that designs and manufactures dresses. To stay non-union, Walter has hired Artie Ravidge, a hood who uses strong-arm tactics to keep the employees in line.

A sports store clerk poses as a famous jockey as an advertising stunt, but gets more than he bargained for.

A young novelist, Richard Harland, meets beautiful Ellen Berent on a train where they fall in love and are soon married. When tragedies take first his handicapped young brother, then his unborn son from him, Harland gradually realises that his wife's insane jealousy may be the cause of the tragedies in his life. Yet another shock awaits them all, as Ellen's emotions become uncontrollable.

Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver (Marlon Brando) is reassigned to a Japanese air base, and is confronted with US racial prejudice against the Japanese people. The issue is compounded because a number of the soldiers become romantically involved with Japanese women, in defiance of US military policy. Ordinarily an officer who is by-the-book, Gruver must take a position when a buddy of his, an enlisted man Joe Kelly (Red Buttons) falls in love with a Japanese woman Katsumi (Miyoshi Umeki) and marries her. Gruver risks his position by serving as best man at the wedding ceremony.

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 can't seem to make up her mind as to whether she "dunnit" or not.

Attorney Anthony Keane agrees to represent Londonite Mrs. Paradine, who has been fingered in her husband's murder. From the start, the married lawyer is drawn to the enigmatic beauty, and he begins to cast about for a way to exonerate his client. Keane puts the Paradine household servant on the stand, suggesting he is the killer. But Keane soon loses his way in the courtroom, and his half-baked plan sets off a stunning chain of events.

A U.S. Army colonel alerts the president of a planned military coup against him.

Richard Dadier is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupils frequently engage in anti-social behavior. Dadier makes various attempts to engage the students' interest in education, challenging both the school staff and the pupils. He is subjected to violence as well as duplicitous schemes.

An assortment of diverse characters gather at the Hotel Berlin in World War II Germany as the Third Reich falls.

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.

Shortly before Christmas, a family moves into an apartment where Rupert the squirrel lives in the attic rafters. Just as it seems that the holiday will come and go without so much as a Christmas tree, Rupert acts as the family's guardian angel - not only saving Christmas, but changing their lives forever.