Joseph Krumgold

Rip Smith's opinion-poll business is a failure...until he discovers that the small town of Grandview is statistically identical to the entire country. He and his assistants go there to run polls cheaply and easily, in total secrecy (it would be fatal to let the townsfolk get self-conscious). And of course, civic crusader Mary Peterman must be kept from changing things too much. But romantic involvement with Mary complicates life for Rip; then suddenly everything changes.

The Town was a short propaganda film produced by the Office of War Information in 1945. It presents an idealized vision of American life, shown in microcosm by Madison, Indiana. It was created primarily for exhibition abroad, to provide international audiences a more well-rounded view of America, and was therefore produced in more than 20 translations. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

The story of an egotistical crime writer who gets involved with the case of a notorious art thief (who is believed to be dead) while at the same time romancing a lovely young actress who's in a play that also happens to be the cover for massive jewel job. Art connoisseur and criminologist George Melville is hired to track down art thieves, assisted by perky Claire Peyton and goaded by Phil Bane, the roaring newspaper editor who has employed him. The mastermind poses as a theatrical impresario and stages a war drama, replete with loud explosions, to divert attention from his band of thieves, who are cracking safes in a bank adjacent to the theater.

Dinner party guests become murder suspects when an extortionist they all hated turns up dead.

Jim Hanvey is a genial but top-notch detective who has retired to his country home. An insurance company hires him to find a missing emerald so they won't have to pay out the $100,000 for which the jewel is insured. It doesn't take him long to find the emerald, but he discovers that finding it was the easy part; the difficult part is getting it back to its rightful owner, and he winds up involved in a murder in which an innocent man is framed.

After Pearl Harbor, convicts at Alcatraz prison live in fear of bomb attacks, driving Champ Larkin and his pal Jimbo to a desperate escape attempt which lands them on a tiny lighthouse island, where they take over. The five inhabitants are stymied in their efforts to summon aid. But the island also figures in the schemes of a big Nazi spy ring; which will win out, the gangsters' greed or their patriotism?

On the night before he sails in search of the steamship Arcadia's sunken gold, Paul Sinclair (Bruce Bennett)meets Madeliene Nielson (Anita Louise) in a San Francisco nightclub. On the second day at sea, Madeliene turns up as a stowaway. While diving and searching for the sunken gold, off the Phillipines, Paul discovers that a foreign-country submarine has been laying mines in order to completely cut off the Phillipines from American protection.

Once a jewel thief always a jewel thief? Yes and no. Yes if you consider the fact that Michael Lanyard also known as the Lone Wolf once retired from the "trade" but relapses back into his old habits when he is tempted by the emerald pendant of beautiful socialite Marcia Stewart. The trouble (?) is that he falls for the belle and he soon gets more interested in getting the girl than the jewels that adorn her. What he wants now is to return the pendant but a rival gang interfere and force him to take part in a big-time caper.

New York City cop Phil Donlon leaves the force to join the U.S. Olympic team. When he falls for a Marine colonel's daughter he gets kicked off the team. Joining the Marines to win the Colonel's approval many adventures follow.

It's bad enough that Clarice Kendall Andrews, Paula's irresponsible sister, comes home from celebrating Mardi Gras and drunkenly mentions that she got married during the festivities. What's worse is the fact that Paula knows that Clarice is still married to an equally irresponsible gigolo. Paula learns that the man Clarice married, Stephen Cormack, is on his yacht and his lawyer, thinking that Paula is Clarice, offers the older woman $5000 to annul the marriage.

Yosef, a math student at the Hebrew University, shares his parents’ story with friends on Mount Scopus. In the 1920s, Yaakov and Chava immigrated to establish the Beit Gilboa kibbutz. They worked hard, danced the hora, and sang “Telem” after plowing. Their love disrupted the communal life, facing opposition from friends like Shmuel. Kibbutz secretary Yitzhak and shepherd Avraham supported them, allowing them to live together in a tent. They married and had a son. A puppet theatre performed “The Story of Balaam,” leading them to feel cursed and return to Germany, where they perished. Their son Joseph reached Europe with Avraham’s help and was welcomed back to the kibbutz, which funded his studies. As the country developed, Zionism turned the curse into a blessing.

A prosecutor's career and his adopted daughter's happiness hang in the balance when he is blackmailed by a gangster.

This slim documentary commissioned by the US Information Service concerns Hispanic shepherds in New Mexico. The makeshift narrative centers on Miguel, a boy on the cusp of puberty who wants nothing more than to go to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and help tend to the sheep like his father and older siblings. It's evocatively shot with a striking sense of place and a good feel for farm life. The film was obviously shot on the cheap (voiceover narration is used in lieu of dialogue, and the film seems to have been fully post-dubbed, sometimes badly), but it's an engaging peek into a rural lifestyle few of us would otherwise experience.

A manicurist witnesses a gangland murder. Realizing there was a witness to their crime, the killer tries to track her down and silence her.

Six-year-old Sweeney takes his toy elephant and runs away from home to live a life of adventure in the Bronx Zoo.

A blackmail threat from an old prison buddy compels a man who has gone straight to consider yet another crime.

The invention and use of a jeep are described, from the viewpoint of one of the vehicles.