William Gargan

Looks at the stereotype-breaking films of the period from 1929, when movies entered the sound era, until 1934 when the Hays Code virtually neutered film content. No longer portrayed as virgins or vamps, the liberated female of the pre-code films had dimensions. Good girls had lovers and babies and held down jobs, while the bad girls were cast in a sympathetic light. And they did it all without apology.

Wartime romance about a lonely man and woman who meet one rainy afternoon in New York.

Ben Matthews gives up the flashy life of a riverboat gambler, hoping to settle down in Galena with his girlfriend, luscious entertainer Zoe. But Galena's leading citizen is murdered on the boat; Ben, on arrival, finds a lynch mob after his neck, and flees. Three years of wandering later, Zoe's letters stop coming and Ben returns to find her and attempt the hopeless task of clearing himself.

Beat cop Bragan is about to go off duty when he discovers a man standing on the ledge of a hotel more than a dozen stories up. Bragan tries to talk the man, Robert Cosick, down from his threatening perch and in the process learns the reasons for the Robert's suicide attempt.

Two members of a dynamite crew--a rugged veteran and a young college drop-out--finds themselves at odds regarding safety precautions for their co-workers.

Hoping to put the cuffs on criminal mastermind Socks Barstow, detective Mike Hanrohan is stymied by the fact that his younger brother Denny has joined Barstow's gang. Things get worse after a bloody shootout, in which Mike apparently guns down his own brother.

A framed reporter and the crooks on his trail scramble to locate a book containing the names of American war profiteers and traitors who collaborated with the Nazis during the war.

A female research scientist conducting experiments on a new anesthetic has a very bad week. Her scheming assistant intentionally scars her face, her almost-fiancee appears to have deserted her and she finds herself being blackmailed by a women she accidentally knocked down with her car.

Two discharged service men go to the redwood country in northern California to visit the family of a buddy killed in the war. There, they find the family's trucking business is being threatened by a rival who will stop at nothing to ruin their business. They take up the fight against the crooks.

A daily news editor recalls a married detective and the deadly woman behind his downfall.