Wendell Niles (December 29, 1904 – March 28, 1994) was one of the great announcers of the American golden age of radio. He was an announcer on such shows as The Charlotte Greenwood Show, Hedda Hopper's Hollywood,The Adventures of Philip Marlowe,The Man Called X,The Bob Hope Show, The Burns & Allen Show, The Milton Berle Show and The Chase and Sanborn Hour . On February 15, 1950, Wendell starred in the radio pilot for The Adventures of the Scarlet Cloak along with Gerald Mohr.
He began in entertainment by touring in the 1920s with his own orchestra, playing with the Dorsey Brothers and Bix Beiderbecke.
Niles moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1935 to join George Burns and Gracie Allen.
He and his brother, Ken, developed one of the first radio dramas, which eventually became Theatre of the Mind.
He toured with Bob Hope during World War II and narrated a 1936 Academy Award-winning short film on the life of tennis great Bill Tilden.
Among his film credits is Knute Rockne, All American with Ronald Reagan.
Actors: Kevin Chamberlain (actor), Patrick Horne (actor), John Say (actor), Leanne Bernard (actress), Ryan Chamberlain (producer), Patrick Horne (producer), Patrick Horne (director), Pandora Spocks (editor),
Plot: "Speak-It!" Pictures orchestrated a cast of talent to revive a vintage NBC radio broadcast of Mae West and Don Ameche's infamous skit portraying Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. On the eve of December 12, 1937 and during the Chase and Sanborn Hour show, with a plot (approved by censors) that was innocent enough, the characteristic inflection in Miss West's delivery created a nationwide uproar. Up and down the country people threatened "crusades against smut on the radio". NBC was bombarded with complaints, nationwide, denouncing the show and thusly Miss West's radio career came to an abrupt end. This production breathes new life into on an old scandal, which only existed through audio recordings. The actors are lip-synching to the original broadcast.
Keywords: mae-westActors: Beach Dickerson (actor), Joe Gray (actor), Sam Harris (actor), Richard Karlan (actor), Jerry Lewis (actor), Dean Martin (actor), Jack McElroy (actor), Torben Meyer (actor), Del Moore (actor), Wendell Niles (actor), Ralph Peters (actor), Max 'Slapsie Maxie' Rosenbloom (actor), Michael Ross (actor), Jeffrey Sayre (actor), Drew Cahill (actor),
Plot: The last movie with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin together, is a satire of the life in Hollywood. Steve Wiley is a deceiver who cheats Malcolm Smith when he wins a car, claiming that he won it too. Trying to steal the car, Steve tells Malcolm that he lives in Hollywood, next to Anita Ekberg's. When Malcom hears that, they both set out for Hollywood and the adventure begins...
Keywords: actress, bookie, boulder-dam, bullfight, casino, chicago-illinois, chorus-girl, chorus-line, convertible, crapsActors: Rodney Bell (actor), Orlando Beltran (actor), Wade Crosby (actor), Jean Del Val (actor), Joe Dominguez (actor), Henry A. Escalante (actor), Al Ferrara (actor), Taylor Flaniken (actor), Nacho Galindo (actor), Martin Garralaga (actor), Sam Hayes (actor), Ed Hinton (actor), Clark Howat (actor), Larry Hudson (actor), Gordon Barnes (actor),
Plot: Two friends on a fishing trip pick up a stranded motorist who turns out to be a psychotic escaped convict. This sociopath has already murdered other good Samaritans in his efforts to evade authorities. He sadistically taunts and threatens the two men and perversely delights in telling them that he has them both marked for death sometime before the end of the trip. His destination is a ferryboat in Baja, California, which he hopes will help him get to the mainland. The hostages hope to stay alive long enough to escape or be rescued by Mexican authorities.
Keywords: all-male-cast, anger, ankle-injury, barking-dog, based-on-true-events, beating, bell-47-helicopter, camera-shot-of-feet, can-shot-from-hand, cantinaActors: Sam Ash (actor), Don Brodie (actor), Joseph Crehan (actor), Johnny Duncan (actor), Eddie Gribbon (actor), Stuart Holmes (actor), Wendell Niles (actor), Milton Ross (actor), John Treul (actor), Dale Van Sickel (actor), Jean Andren (actress), Luella Bickmore (actress), Gretl Dupont (actress), Billie Jean Eberhart (actress), Jean Fenwick (actress),
Genres: Drama,Actors: Bob Alden (actor), Sam Ash (actor), Irving Bacon (actor), George Boyce (actor), Roy Brent (actor), Stanley Brown (actor), Horace B. Carpenter (actor), Wheaton Chambers (actor), Jerome Cowan (actor), Tom Dillon (actor), Kenne Duncan (actor), Al Eben (actor), William Frawley (actor), Jack Gargan (actor), William Alcorn (actor),
Plot: A famous radio singer takes time off from her career and returns to New York City to visit with old friends, who don't know she's a famous singer (she uses a stage name). She falls in love with a struggling songwriter (who also doesn't know she's a famous singer), and sets out to get his songs into a play that some producers want her to be in.
Keywords: new-york-city, singer, songwriterActors: Johnson Brothers (actor), Cab Calloway (actor), Hubert Castle (actor), Eddy Chandler (actor), Jack Chefe (actor), The Christianis (actor), James Conaty (actor), Ray Copeland (actor), The Copelands (actor), Joe Devlin (actor), Robert Dudley (actor), W.C. Fields (actor), Richard Hageman (actor), Mel Hall (actor), Stanley Andrews (actor),
Genres: Musical,Actors: Sam Balter (actor), Lloyd Bridges (actor), Stanley Brown (actor), Jack Carr (actor), Ken Christy (actor), Chester Conklin (actor), Hal Cooke (actor), David Durand (actor), Forest Evashevski (actor), William Hall (actor), Tom Hanlon (actor), Tom Harmon (actor), Bill Henry (actor), Dick Hogan (actor), Warren Ashe (actor),
Plot: Tom Harmon (ol' # 98 for the Michigan Wolverines, husband of actress Elyse Knox and father of Mark Harmon and Kelly Harmon)took a back seat to no one on the football field (except the Minnesota Gophers) or, later, in the broadcast booth, but, on film, he managed to find himself in two of the all-time bad sports movies..."The Spirit of West Point" and "Harmon of Michigan." The latter, if it had been a true-life biography of Tom Harmon, might have made a passable film but after a short prologue, narrated by sports writer Bill Henry who is not the same as actor William Henry, that semi-recaps Harmon's football-playing days at the University of Michigan, it quickly develops into a mess that indicates the director and writers used the technical adviser, Coach Jeff Cravath, only to put plays on the blackboard. Once Harmon,(supposedly playing himself but the character he plays here has more character flaws than the law allows), graduates from Michigan, he marries his college sweetheart Peggy Adams (Anita Louise), turns up his nose at the prospect of playing professional football---a poor-paying and not-that-well respected job in 1941---and starts a vagabond tour of coaching tank-water colleges. Authenicity went out the window when the narration ended, as did any kind of time tracking, as everything that follows seems to happen in a single football season. Tom takes an assistant coach job at a cow-pasture college under Jimmy Wayburn (William Hall) and lasts one day before Wayburn fires him. Then he signs to play for a College All-Star team doing exhibition games against pro teams, but his team-mates, hacked because Tom gets star billing, lay down on him and he gets smacked down hard on every play. One of the leaders willing to let Harmon get slaughtered is old Michigan teammate Forrest Evashevski (playing himself), a life-long friend in real life and Godfather to Mark Harmon and a long-time respected coach at the University of Iowa. Harmon wins the game by himself, but decides this isn't his cup of tea. He hangs around the house a few weeks, then gets a job as an assistant under old-time coach Pop Branch at a college that has three buidings on campus and a football stadium seating 100,000 fans. He helps Pop win a few games (still ticking along in what appears to be the same fall football season), but the alumni at Webster College are tired of losing, fire their coach and hire Harmon away from Pop. Harmon takes over the Webster team in mid-season and becomes the all-time example of a hard-ass coach willing to win at any cost, including installing a screen-pass play that depends on an illegal blcoking scheme---the Flying Wedge---to make it work. His Webster team begins to thump their opponents by large scores, usually leaving the other team battered and bloodied by the use of the illegal blocking scheme. They win four or five games which, based on the writers time scheme, would have them playing 20 games a season in what was then a nine-and-ten game season. Plus, the press and other coaches around and about, are up in arms about Harmon's tatics, but the jerks refereeing the games evidently haven't read the rule book nor the newspapers and throw no penalty flags against his team. Well, one referee does once, but he never officiated nor had lunch in that town again. It, by any reasonable calendar must now be July of the next year in a season that should have ended in December, and hard-case Harmon's team is going up against Pop's team (where Harmon coached earlier in this never-ending season) and Pop drops by and tells Tom he ain't all that fond of Tom's coaching methods, but Tom poo-pahs him off, and then sends his team out and they gleefully dismantle Pop's fair-playing team by 109-0. But Webster's quarterback Freddie Davis (Stanley Brown) suffers a concussion running a play Harmon calls just to run up the score even higher---Harmon evidently didn't read the script because nobody using their own name would want this character perceived as Himself---and it's nip-and-tuck whether Freddie will get out of the hospital alive. It gets even stickier when Freddie parents drop their hospital vigil long enough to tell Tom they are right proud that he is Freddie's coach. Say what? Tom sees the light and reverts back to the good old boy he started out as.
Keywords: 1930s, actor-shares-first-and-last-name-with-character, actor-shares-first-name-with-character, actor-shares-last-name-with-character, american-football, archive-footage, b-movie, betrayal, blackboard, buckeye-bashActors: Lee Bennett (actor), William Forrest (actor), Don King (actor), Wendell Niles (actor), Kay Towne (actor), Louise Abeita (actress), Virginia Dale (actress), Esther Fernández (actress), Margaret Hayes (actress), Vera Logsden (actress), Dee Lowrance (actress), June Malm (actress), Mary Martin (actress), Dorice Miller (actress), Martha O'Driscoll (actress),
Genres: Documentary, Short,