The best Frank Fenton’s drama movies

A holiday favourite for generations... George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George's modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business's $8,000 is lost and George's troubles begin.

Scout William F. Cody (Joel McCrea) marries a U.S. senator's daughter (Maureen O'Hara), fights the Cheyenne and leads a Wild West show.

A C-47 transport plane, named the Corsair, makes a forced landing in the frozen wastes of Labrador, and the plane's pilot, Captain Dooley, must keep his men alive in deadly conditions while waiting for rescue.

A five-year-old boy is the sole survivor of a devastating plane crash in the mountains of California. When the newspapers reveal the boy was adopted and that the crash occurred on his birthday, three women begin to ponder if it's the son each gave up for adoption. As the three await news of his rescue at a mountain cabin, they recall incidents from five years earlier and why they were forced to give up their son.

A U.S. Navy crew aboard a merchant marine ship battle Nazis.

Secret Command features Pat O'Brien as a onetime foreign correspondent in the wartime employ of the FBI. Under an assumed name, O'BRIEN goes to work at a shipyard, intending to keep both eyes open for potential saboteurs. To maintain the cover, O'BRIEN is given a "wife" (Carole Landis) and two children. When O'BRIEN's brother Chester Morris shows up, he can't comprehend the charade and nearly spills the beans to the Nazi spies O'BRIEN hopes to trap. Based on the short story The Saboteurs by John and Ward Hawkins, Secret Command offers a graying but still feisty Pat O'Brien doing what he does best.

Child bride Claudia Naughton has made life difficult for her husband David because she can't stand living so far away from her mother. She's also afraid her husband doesn't find her desirable enough. To remedy both situations, she sells their farm to an opera singer so they'll have to move back to the city near her mother, and she tries to make her husband jealous by flirting with a neighbor. Eventually, Claudia has to learn to grow when she discovers that she's about to become a mother and that her own mother is gravely ill.

Highlights in this one include a fist-fight between Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe (I won't give away the winner, but check the cast order); a cat-fight between Virginia Grey and Carol Thurston that the male cast of Sienfeld would pay to see and, just to keep things moving, Weissmuller wrestles an alligator, and there are two mid-water collisions between small-craft boats, a big ship wreck and a blazing swamp fire finale. Toss in a plot that has Weissmuller as a psycho-neurotic war veteran who, because he piled up his Navy destroyer on the rocks, now dreads returning to his pre-war occupation of a pilot guiding ships through the channels at the mouth of the Mississippi. Throw in icy Virginia Grey as a spoiled heiress out to take Johnny away from his job, his friends and the girl he loves (who knows why), and you have enough plot and action for two Pine-Thomas jewels.

A doctor (Tom Neal) answers a suicide call in a Latin nightclub.

A criminal gang plots the robbery of a ship carrying $2 million worth of surplus narcotics left over from World War II. The plan goes awry when the gang leader's girlfriend falls for an ambulance attendant who is an unsuspecting pawn in the scheme.

A bank robber reflects on his life of crime while hiding out after a bank heist.

Rogue River stars Rory Calhoun as Ownie Rodgers, the nephew of crooked Oregon police chief Joe Dandridge (Frank Fenton). A $70,000 windfall, bequeathed to Dandridge by a man he'd once framed on a bank robbery charge, unleashes innumerable family skeletons. Ownie is obliged to solve the long-ago bank job himself, and in so doing he discovers that his "faithful" girl friend Judy (Ellye Marshall) was in on the scheme.

A naval officer who had deserted several years earlier is drawn back to the Navy when World War II begins. He re-enlists under an assumed name, and is assigned to a minesweeper, where he has to perform hazardous duties while at the same time keeping his real identity a secret.

Gangsters frame Joe on a drunk charge and a murder rap so they can put their own fighter into a big event. Joe investigates in an attempt to prove his innocence.

An evil sea captain and the forces of nature threaten two divers' search for a fortune in gold in the South Pacific.

About the lives and loves of the staff of an emergency hospital as reflected in a single frenetic night of business-as-usual.

As part of a bet, a compulsive gambler agrees to marry the winner, a professional gambler. Before he can "collect," she skips town. The gambler hires a private detective to track her down so he can collect his "winnings."