The best Josephine Whittell’s movies

A young woman uses her body and her sexuality to help her climb the social ladder, but soon begins to wonder if her new status will ever bring her happiness.

An ambitious young man wins an heiress's heart but has to cope with his former girlfriend's pregnancy.

A happily married woman lets her catty friends talk her into divorce when her husband strays.

An uncompromising, visionary architect struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards.

A wealthy man hires a poor girl to play his mistress in order to get more attention from his neglectful family.

Discovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautiful women find out when they join the spectacle on Broadway: Susan, the singer who must leave behind her ageing vaudevillian father; vulnerable Sheila, the working girl pursued both by a millionaire and by her loyal boyfriend from Flatbush; and the mysterious European beauty Sandra, whose concert violinist husband cannot endure the thought of their escaping from poverty by promenading her glamor in skimpy costumes.

After he inherits some money, Harold Bissonette ("pronounced bis-on-ay") decides to give up the grocery business, move to California and run an orange grove. Despite his family's objections and the news that the land he bought is worthless, Bissonette packs up and drives out to California with his nagging wife Amelia and children.

Businesswoman Claire King is the daughter of a powerful advertising executive. When Claire marries humble copywriter Bill Landin, she wants to use her influence to help her husband get ahead, but he will have none of it.

Eric Wainwright (Van Johnson), a busy impresario, is besieged by hordes of wannabe concert stars, eager for their big break. One of them is Cynthia Potter (June Allyson), a talented pianist... but she can't get in to see him. When she learns that Wainwright is auditioning young musicians for a children's concert tour, Cynthia dons braces and bobby sox and passes herself off as a child prodigy.

A prim psychology professor fights to hide a murder she committed in self-defense.

Sassy and ambitious waitress Mary Evans amuses and befriends amiable seldom-sober Hollywood film director Max Carey when he stumbles into her restaurant. Max invites Mary to his film premiere and, after a night of drinking and carousing, Mary is granted a screen test. A studio contract follows. Just as Mary finds her dreams coming true, Carey’s life and career begins its descent.

Steve Morgan kills a man in a holdup and hitches a ride to Los Angeles with Fergie. At a gas station, they pick up two women. Encountering a roadblock, Morgan takes over and persuades the party to spend the night at an unoccupied beach house. The police close in as one by one, the others learn that Morgan is a killer.

A small town politician, kept from marrying the love of his life, eventually marries another woman and his career ascends, but he secretly continues the relationship with his true love.

A New York socialite (Loretta Young) travels to Shanghai to visit her ailing aunt (Alison Skipworth) and falls in love with a Russian banker (Charles Boyer), who harbors a family secret. Director James Flood's 1935 melodrama also stars Warner Oland, Libby Taylor, Keye Luke, Charley Grapewin, Walter Kingsford and Fred Keating.

Henry Aldrich wants to win a trip to Alaska.

After being shown what hypnotism can do, a doctor starts to study it in depth. When he experiments on a friend's wife, she regresses into an early life, that of Bridey Murphy.

In "Shakedown," Howard Duff plays a photographer who will stop at nothing to climb his way to the very top of the success ladder. On the strength of his sheer tenacity, he gets a job with a major newspaper, and it's not long before he's made a name for himself by charming a notorious crime boss (Brian Donlevy) into allowing himself to be photographed. Donlevy takes him under his wing, but Duff decides to bite the hand that feeds him and sets Donlevy and another crime boss, Lawrence Tierney, against one another. He uses photos to blackmail Tierney into providing him with a steady income while he sidles up to Donlevy's wife on the sly, all the while romancing the photo editor of the paper at which he works.

Blondie and Dagwood are about to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary but this happy occasion is marred when the bumbling Dagwood gets himself involved in a scheme that is promising financial ruin for the Bumstead family.

When a newspaper accuses a wealthy socialite of being a home-wrecker, she files a multi-million-dollar libel lawsuit. The publication's frazzled head editor now must find a way to discredit her.

Former child star Jackie Cooper headlines this sentimental behind-the-scenes comedy drama. He plays an ex-child star who now jerks sodas for a living in Hollywood. He gets back into the movie business when he overhears a conversation between producers discussing their newest prodigy. Cooper butts in and suggests the producers remake Skippy (a real-life 1931 film that made young Cooper a star). The bigwigs like the idea and then hire Cooper to become the boy's acting coach. Once back on the backlot, Cooper finds both trouble and romance while helping the young boy adjust to life as a movie star.