Archie Mayo
1891 - 1968Archie Mayo (29 January 1891, New York City – 4 December 1968, Guadalajara, Mexico) was a movie director and stage actor who moved to Hollywood in 1915 and began working as a director in 1917. His films include Is Everybody Happy? (1929) with Ted Lewis, Night After Night (1932) with Mae West, The Doorway to Hell (1930) with James Cagney and Lew Ayres, Convention City (1933) with Joan Blondell, The Mayor of Hell (1933) with James Cagney, The Petrified Forest (1936) with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, and The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938) with Gary Cooper. Mayo retired in 1946, shortly after completing A Night in Casablanca with the Marx Brothers and Angel on My Shoulder with Paul Muni, Anne Baxter, and Claude Rains. Mayo has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Courage
Archie Mayo
Belle Bennett, Marian Nixon
Belle Bennett plays as the widowed mother of seven children living in Sioux City, Iowa. She moves with them to Cambridge, Massachusetts in order to educate her children with culture and give them every advantage. Bennett, who is unversed in financial matters, soon faces poverty for herself and her children. She takes out a loan from an unscrupulous lender (played by Richard Tucker), who is so impressed by the charm and valiant spirit of Bennett than he neglects to ask her for collateral. Bennett, however, is only able to partially pay her creditors. Marion Nixon, Bennett's eldest daughter, is shocked by her mother's actions and attempts to sacrifice herself to Tucker in order to clear her mother's obligations, even though she is engaged to marry a well to do Harvard undergraduate, played by Rex Bell. This film is believed lost.
Courage
The Petrified Forest
Archie Mayo
Leslie Howard, Bette Davis
Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.
The Petrified Forest
My Man
Archie Mayo
Fanny Brice, Guinn Williams
Fannie Brand, an industrious girl who supports her brother and sister by working in a theatrical costume house, falls in love with Joe Halsey, a young fellow who earns a precarious living demonstrating an elastic exerciser in a drugstore window. Fannie and Joe set a date to be married, but the wedding is called off when Fannie finds Joe making love to her unprincipled sister, Edna. Fannie auditions for Landau, a theatrical producer, and goes on the Broadway stage. Fannie is a great success, and she and Joe soon find their way back into each other's arms.
My Man
The Mayor of Hell
Archie Mayo
James Cagney, Madge Evans
Members of a teenage gang are sent to the State Reformatory, presided over by the callous Thompson. Soon Patsy Gargan, a former gangster appointed Deputy Commissioner, arrives and takes over the administration to run the place on radical principles. Thompson needs a quick way to discredit him.
The Mayor of Hell
The Life of Jimmy Dolan
Archie Mayo
Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Loretta Young
Champion boxer Jimmy Dolan has cultivated a wholesome image for himself, but he's a boozer and womanizer behind the scenes. Intoxicated at a party, he punches a reporter who threatens to expose his hypocrisy, and accidentally kills him. Dolan panics and skips town, winding up on a farm that serves as a home for disabled children run by kindhearted Peggy. As the cynical Dolan falls for Peggy, he begins to change his ways.
The Life of Jimmy Dolan
Orchestra Wives
Archie Mayo
George Montgomery, Ann Rutherford
Connie Ward is in seventh heaven when Gene Morrison's band rolls into town. She is swept off her feet by trumpeter Bill Abbot. After marrying him, she joins the band's tour and learns about life as an orchestra wife, weathering the catty attacks of the other band wives.
Orchestra Wives
