The best Donald O'Connor’s drama movies

A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.

Academy Award winners Gary Cooper and Ray Milland star along with Robert Preston in the epic adventure Beau Geste. When three brothers join the Foreign Legion to escape a troubled past, they find themselves trapped under the command of a sadistic sergeant deep in the scorching Sahara. Now the brothers must fight for their lives as they plot mutiny against tyranny and defend a desert fortress against a brutal enemy. Nominated for 2 Academy Awards, Beau Geste has been universally acclaimed by generations of critics and audiences alike as a true motion picture classic.

Molly and Terry Donahue, plus their three children, are The Five Donahues. Son Tim meets hat-check girl Vicky and the family act begins to fall apart.

Washington hostess Sally Adams becomes a Truman-era US ambassador to a European grand duchy.

During World War II, all the studios put out "all-star" vehicles which featured virtually every star on the lot--often playing themselves--in musical numbers and comedy skits, and were meant as morale-boosters to both the troops overseas and the civilians at home. This was Universal Pictures' effort. It features everyone from Donald O'Connor to the Andrews Sisters to Orson Welles to W.C. Fields to George Raft to Marlene Dietrich, and dozens of other Universal players.

Reporter Nicholas Ranson is jubilant when, on 17 Dec 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright take their first airplane flight. Back home in Underwood, Maryland, however, his uncle Hiram F. Jenkins, owner and editor of the local newspaper, refuses to print the story. Nicholas quits and continues to work on his own airplane, with the devoted help of his little daughter Peggy. Peggy is actually the first in her family to fly when her friends, Patrick Falconer and Scott Barnes, induce her to get inside a large kite they have made, and run with it in a field until she is airborne. The kite is caught in a tree, however, and Peggy gets a black eye. Later, Nicholas dies when his experimental airplane crashes, leaving his wife and children alone. By Peggy's adulthood, planes are capable of flying at an altitude of 11,000 feet, and speeds of nearly 100 m.p.h. Peggy continues her father's obsession with flight by helping Scott and Pat to build a plane.

Orphan prodigy singer runs away from her oppressive aunt and tricks a rural couple into adopting her.

Helen Twelvetrees stars in this romantic drama.

Sons of The Legion is a film about a group of young men looking to start a squadron in their Legion Post. However, because the boy's father wrongfully received a dishonorable discharge after World War I, his father cannot join the Legion and in turn his son cannot join the squadron [wikipedia]

A fussy shopkeeper's life drastically changes when his wife takes in two homeless boys.

The Merry Monahans is one of the higher-budgeted Universal musicals of the 1940s, even though the storyline is strictly grade-B material. During the first two decades of the 20th century the film concerns a family vaudeville troupe headed by patriarch Pete Monahan (Jack Oakie). Because of his love affair with the bottle, Pete manages to get himself and his family blacklisted from every major vaude house in the country. Though Pete's kids Jimmy (Donald O'Connor) and Patsy (Peggy Ryan) love their dad, they're forced to break away from the act and go off on their own to survive. Eventually, the whole gang is reunited in a shamelessly lachrymose musical finale. Producer-scripters Michael Fessier and Ernest Pagano, whose other works include such offbeat comedies as San Diego I Love You, Frontier Gal and That's the Spirit, manage to keep the proceedings relatively cliché-free, though it's an uphill climb.

18-year-old Angela, reared in a New England town by her Aunt Betsy, receives an inheritance which she uses to go to New York, ostensibly for voice training, but she is pursuing Major Hilary Jarret, an Army surgeon with whom she has become infatuated. Her departure depresses her childhood friend Jimmy Plum. Dr. Plum devises an errand on which to send his love-sick son to New York, where Jimmy discovers Angela thinks she is Jarret's fiancée. Jimmy also renews acquaintances with a group of show people, including Sally McGuire, who attempts to console him. Jimmy meets Jarret's divorced wife, Harriet, famed photographer. Jimmy engineers a meeting of Jarret and Harriet with Angela present, which forms the beginning of an understanding that Jarret is not for her. Jimmy is inducted into the Army.

Of the singing Beebe brothers, young Mike just wants to be a kid; responsible Dave wants to work in his garage and marry Martha; but feckless Joe thinks his only road to success is through swapping and gambling. It seems the only thing all three can join in is their singing act, which Mike and Dave hate. Finally, all Joe's hopes are pinned on a race horse he's acquired swapping, but it's a bigger gamble than his family knows.

It is small town America in the 1950's. Twelve year-old Angelo Villano has one dream: to someday sing like his idol, Mario Lanza. His grandmother, Mama Theresa encourages him; and his beautiful voice catches the attention of the formidable but kind Father Walsh who arranges for him to receive formal training. This infuriates Angelo's widowed father, Frank, who wants his son to be a steelworker like him. Determined to "make a man out of him", Frank forbids Angelo from singing. When Angelo is chased by bullies into the path of an oncoming car, he recovers all but his voice, retreating into a silent world that no one can touch. One night, locked in the church basement, the frightened Angelo experiences a spectacular vision, a true Christmas miracle, that changes his life. And when his vision and his voice return during Christmas Eve Mass, no one can deny the beauty and blessing of his amazing gift.