James P. Burtis

In the 1840s, Ramsey MacKay, the driver for the struggling Wells Fargo mail and freight company, will secure an important contract if he delivers fresh oysters to Buffalo from New York City. When he rescues Justine Pryor and her mother, who are stranded in a broken wagon on his route, he doesn't let them slow him down and gives the ladies an exhilirating ride into Buffalo. He arrives in time to obtain the contract and is then sent by company president Henry Wells to St. Louis to establish a branch office.

An elderly business tycoon, believed to be dying, decides to give a million dollars each to eight strangers chosen at random from the phone directory.

A popular jockey is disbarred from racing after he's accused of throwing a race.

An ex-con uses his street smarts to become a successful photojournalist.

When a confused eyewitness identifies New York City cabbie Brick Tennant as a killer, he is sentenced to death for a murder that he wasn't involved in. Though no one is willing to listen to the innocent prisoner's pleas for freedom, Brick's faithful fiancée, Mary, knows that her lover is innocent because she was with him when the crime was committed. As the scheduled execution draws ever nearer, Mary begins to investigate the murder herself.

A Professor has an invention that will bring down planes causing them to crash and Dawson is forcing him to use it on those carrying money. When Tim arrives to investigate he is mistaken for a noted outlaw. So he assumes that identity to force Dawson to make him a partner. But just as a plane bringing Tim help is arriving, his true identity is revealed and while he is a prisoner, Dawson forces the Professor to start his machine.

Down-on-his-luck John Ellman is framed for a judge's murder. After he's convicted and sentenced to death, witnesses come forth and prove his innocence. But it was too late for a stay to be granted and Ellman is executed. A doctor uses an experimental procedure to restore him to life, though the full outcome is other than expected.

Lee is a fresh young kid from the South when he gets a job with The Press. His first assignment on gangsters gets his name in the paper, the police on a raid and Lee in the hospital.

Despite her mother's objections, the naive young daughter of a show boat captain is thrust into the limelight as the company's new leading lady.

A decoding expert tangles with enemy spies.

Harriet, Walter Craig's wife, is an upper-class woman obsessed with control, material possessions and social status whose behavior makes difficult her relationship with domestic service and family members.

The wealthy Van Dyke family are constantly in the media for outrageous behavior, much to the frustration of the patriarch, Dan Van Dyke. His self-centered wife has a fondness for foreign imports, including "pet projects" like dancers and such and his spoiled children Tony and Carol have constant run-ins with the law. When Dan himself ends up in the clink for five years for tax evasion, he becomes bunk-mates with ex-bootlegger Joe "Spots" Ricardi. Ricardi lectures him on being such a push-over for an out-of-control family, so a dying Dan makes Ricardi his estate trustee once he is released from prison. Ricardi is then thrust into high society and must do everything he once nagged Dan to do.

A temperamental Broadway producer trains an untutored actress, but when she becomes a star, she proves a match for him.

Searching for headlines at any cost, an unscrupulous newspaper owner forces his editor to print a serial based on a past murder, tormenting a woman involved.

In the second screen version of The Maltese Falcon, a detective is caught between a lying seductress and a lady jewel thief.

Just after a jury finds Ann Grey guilty of murder, the car carrying her to prison crashes into another car. Ann escapes and ends up in lawyer Tony Baxter's car. Tony realizes Ann is innocent, so he vows to help her prove it, risking his neck in the process. Tony and Ann are pursued by the police and by Smiley Gordon, a mob boss who engineered Ann's escape thinking that she can lead him to a $250,000 stash.

A well-cloistered and protected-against-reality group of college students get their diplomas in the heart of the Great Depression, and quickly learn that the piece of paper the diploma is written on is worth about eighteen-dollars-a-week in the job-market...for the lucky ones. Some of them fare even worse.

A proud, pro-capital punishment district attorney with a 90% execution rate, finds himself wrongly convicted of murdering his estranged wife and sentenced to die. The woman he loves and his investigator rival for her affections rally to find the real killer, while he is confronted by the misery of life on death row.

Sam Preston is a small-town newspaper publisher who suffers from wanderlust. Leaving his family, he thinks well-provided for, he packs a suitcase and hits the road. Ten years later he comes back to find the newspaper shuttered and his family gone.

Action-filled drama about a ship captain, ashamed of his background in the slave trade, forced against his will to again transport human cargo.

A traitor is lurking somewhere aboard the USS Carolina, and Lt. Tom Randolph is determined to find the offender. First a revolutionary new piece of technology -- an electric firing device -- is sabotaged. Then one of the cruiser's crew is murdered. In order to catch the killer, the captain locks down the ship. With foreign dignitaries, corporate goons and even Tom's girlfriend, Betty, trapped on the vessel, there is no shortage of suspects.

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.

The operators of a bankrupt carnival sideshow hope to restore their fallen fortunes by staging a fake 'public wedding' in the mouth of their unprofitable giant whale. But the intended 'bridegroom' absconds with the proceeds, arranging a substitute. The bride, Flip Lane (Jane Wyman), much to her surprise, finds herself really married to a handsome stranger, whose career as an artist she decides to manage, much to his dismay.

A race-car driver whose career is on the skids because of his drinking falls for a rich society girl. That motivates him to clean up his act and resume his career, but it may be too late for that.