Best movies like A Sporting Chance
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like A Sporting Chance Starring William Russell, Fritzi Brunette, George Periolat, J. Farrell MacDonald, and more. If you liked A Sporting Chance then you may also like: You're a Sweetheart, Noises Off..., The Old-Fashioned Way, Opening Night, All About Eve and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
John Stonehouse (William Russell) checks into a hotel, intending to commit suicide. But instead he winds up helping a girl, Gilberte Bonheur (Fritzi Brunette), out of a jam. He finds her bending over a man who she has apparently killed, and since he's about to kill himself anyway, he offers to assume the blame. Throw a valuable emerald into the works, and the fact that the dead man suddenly comes back to life, and Stonehouse -- not to mention the audience -- becomes thoroughly befuddled by it all. Everything clears up, however, when Gilberte gives him a theater ticket -- it turns out that everything he went through was the plot to a stage play, enacted in real life by the actors. The critics roasted the play, saying it wasn't true to life, and this was their proof that the situations really could happen. Gilberte retires from acting when Stonehouse proposes.
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Noises Off...
Hired to helm an Americanized take on a British play, director Lloyd Fellowes does his best to control an eccentric group of stage actors. With a star actress quickly passing her prime, a male lead with no confidence, and a bit actor that's rarely sober, chaos ensues in the lead up to a Broadway premiere.
The Old-Fashioned Way
The Great McGonigle and his troupe of third-rate vaudevillians manage to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors and the sheriff.
Opening Night
Actress Myrtle Gordon is a functioning alcoholic who is a few days from the opening night of her latest play, concerning a woman distraught about aging. One night a car kills one of Myrtle's fans who is chasing her limousine in an attempt to get the star's attention. Myrtle internalizes the accident and goes on a spiritual quest, but fails to finds the answers she is after. As opening night inches closer and closer, fragile Myrtle must find a way to make the show go on.
All About Eve
From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Eve Harrington is determined to take the reins of power away from the great actress Margo Channing. Eve maneuvers her way into Margo's Broadway role, becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in the lives of Margo's director boyfriend, her playwright and his wife. Only the cynical drama critic sees through Eve, admiring her audacity and perfect pattern of deceit.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
A fading actor best known for his portrayal of a popular superhero attempts to mount a comeback by appearing in a Broadway play. As opening night approaches, his attempts to become more altruistic, rebuild his career, and reconnect with friends and family prove more difficult than expected.
Critic's Choice
Parker Ballantine is a New York theater critic and his wife writes a play that may or may not be very good. Now Parker must either get out of reviewing the play or cause the breakup of his marriage.
Room Service
Broke Gordon Miller tries to land a backer for his new play while he has to deal with with the hotel manager trying to evict him and his cast.
Illuminata
It's the start of the 20th century, and Tuccio, resident playwright of a theatre repertory company offers the owners of the company his new play, "Illuminata". They reject it, saying it's not finished, and intrigue starts that involves influential critic Bevalaqua, theatre star Celimene, young lead actors and other theatre residents
Detective Story
Tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod, leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city's lowlife. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.
Dreamboat
Thornton Sayre, a respected college professor - secretly formerly a silent films romantic action hero - is disturbed, feeling his privacy has been violated, and his professional credibility as a scholar jeopardized, when he learns his old movies have been resurrected and are being aired on TV. He sets out to demand this cease. However, his former co-star is the hostess of the TV show playing the films, and she has other plans.
Ladies' Man
A boy from the country inherits $10 million, and decides to go to New York City to live it up.
Make Me a Star
A grocery clerk, longing to become a cowboy actor, goes to Hollywood in search of fame and fortune. Unfortunately, his acting ability is non-existent.
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a master at solving the most impenetrable mysteries, but he has his work cut out for him on his latest case. Prince Alexis is accused of a theft that he insists he didn’t commit. The evidence is stacked against him, but Holmes’ trusted friend, Dr. Watson, vouches for the prince. As the famed detective investigates, he’s brought face to face with his most devious adversary yet — Professor Moriarty.
The Squaw Man
Blamed for the theft of an orphans fund, Captain James Wynnegate flees to the West where he makes a new life with the Indian woman Nat-U-Rich.
Stage Door
The ups and downs in the lives and careers of a group of ambitious young actresses and show girls from disparate backgrounds brought together in a theatrical hostel. Centres particularly on the conflict and growing friendship between Terry Randall, a rich girl confident in her talent and ability to make it to the top on the stage, and Jean Maitland, a world weary and cynical trouper who has taken the hard knocks of the ruthless and over-populated world of the Broadway apprentice.
One Thrilling Night
A honeymoon couple in New York for one night of wedded bliss before he's to join the army, become involved with gangsters after they find a cadaver under their bed.
The Matinee Idol
The famous matinee idol and blackface comedian, Don Wilson, heads out of town to escape adulation. There, calling himself Harry Mann, he accidentally joins a traveling acting troupe, and falls in love with Ginger Bolivar, who runs the troupe and stars in their Civil War melodrama. Don's producer sees the play, and thinks it's a comic masterpiece, and just what Don's Broadway show needs. But when Ginger finds out she's been played for a fool, will she forgive Don?
Exit Smiling
The travails of a third-rate traveling theatre company and its wardrobe lady / maid who dreams of stepping in as their melodramatic production's (Flaming Women) female lead.
The Decision of Christopher Blake
A young boy begins to have fantasies when he learns his parents are planning to divorce. Director Peter Godfrey's 1948 drama stars Ted Donaldson, Alexis Smith, Robert Douglas, Cecil Kellaway, John Hoyt, Mary Wickes and Harry Davenport.
The Actors
During the run of a particularly awful interpretation of Richard III, the star, Anthony O'Malley, begins to frequent a rough pub to develop his character. He meets Barreller who he discovers owes someone he's never met a considerable sum of money. Seeing an opportunity to make some fast money, O'Malley convinces hapless extra, Tom, to meet Barreller as the debt collector.
Hollywood Cavalcade
Starting in 1913 movie director Connors discovers singer Molly Adair. As she becomes a star she marries an actor, so Connors fires them. She asks for him as director of her next film. Many silent stars shown making the transition to sound.
No Time for Comedy
Director William Keighley's 1940 film adaptation of S. N. Behrman's stage hit, about an aspiring playwright who finds himself an overnight Broadway success, stars James Stewart, Rosalind Russell, Genevieve Tobin, Louise Beavers, Charles Ruggles and Allyn Joslyn.
Burton and Taylor
Drama telling the story of Hollywood's most glamorous couple, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who acted together for the last time in Noel Coward's Private Lives in 1983.
Sing and Like it
While breaking into a bank safe, a gangster overhears a bank employee singing and decides to put her in a Broadway revue
The Sealed Envelope
Peter James Slaney, just released from prison, is the only boarder who is kind to Lena, the maid at the cheap Paris Hotel. So that Lena can leave her abusive landlady, Slaney accepts $2,500 from a stranger, who threatens to send Slaney back to prison unless he undertakes a job. Slaney is sent to the home of political boss John Biggs with a sealed envelope which he is to open after entering.
Curtain at Eight
An elderly detective sets out to find who murdered a lecherous stage actor. His estranged wife? His would-be fiancee? Her father? Her boyfriend? A suicided actress's sister? The temperamental prop man? Or maybe the show's talented female chimpanzee?
The House of Fear
A detective goes undercover as a producer to investigate an actor's murder, which occurred during the performance of a play...
Here Come the Girls
Bob Hope stars as an inept member of the chorus boy in a turn of the century stage show. After being fired, he finds himself starring acting as a decoy when a killer goes after the real star.
The Opening Night
When theatrical producer Robert Chandler (E. Alyn Warren), believed drowned in a fishing accident, turns up as a lonely, broken amnesiac three months later, he arrives just in time to see his actress wife Carol Chandler (Claire Windsor), thought to be a widow, marrying her leading man Jimmy Keane (John Bowers). Rather than mar her new-found happiness, he takes a job washing cars. New York City is a small town. Will Carol need her car washed?
One Night at Susie's
A woman gets help from her gangster friends after her foster son takes the blame for a murder he did not commit.
Christmas Encore
A struggling actress is cast in her last off (off) Broadway show - a modern take on “A Christmas Carol” - before giving up her dream and moving home. Instead, she finds romance with her director and a renewed passion for her craft and the city. But when the historic theater loses its lease and the show is set to fold, she and her cast mates are need of a Christmas miracle.
The Crusader
Veteran action hero William Russell starred opposite his offscreen wife Helen Ferguson in this typical Fox oater about a miner who finds himself up against a master swindler (George Webb).
John Stonehouse (William Russell) checks into a hotel, intending to commit suicide. But instead he winds up helping a girl, Gilberte Bonheur (Fritzi Brunette), out of a jam. He finds her bending over a man who she has apparently killed, and since he's about to kill himself anyway, he offers to assume the blame. Throw a valuable emerald into the works, and the fact that the dead man suddenly comes back to life, and Stonehouse -- not to mention the audience -- becomes thoroughly befuddled by it all. Everything clears up, however, when Gilberte gives him a theater ticket -- it turns out that everything he went through was the plot to a stage play, enacted in real life by the actors. The critics roasted the play, saying it wasn't true to life, and this was their proof that the situations really could happen. Gilberte retires from acting when Stonehouse proposes.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like A Sporting Chance Starring William Russell, Fritzi Brunette, George Periolat, J. Farrell MacDonald, and more. If you liked A Sporting Chance then you may also like: You're a Sweetheart, Noises Off..., The Old-Fashioned Way, Opening Night, All About Eve and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
You're a Sweetheart
A Broadway producer is in a quandary when he discovers that the opening of his newest big production coincides with that of a major charity event. He despairs that the show will close after opening night until an ingenious writer suggests that he simply give the production snob-appeal by making the tickets nearly impossible to get by fabricating a story that they were all purchased by a flamboyant Texas oil baron who is totally besotted by the show's star.