All Films

The Adventures of Jane Arden

1939 • 58 min • United States of America

Reporter Jane Arden goes undercover to try to expose a gang of jewel thieves and smugglers. Her mission becomes more dangerous when her identity is discovered early on by one of the gang leaders.

Då länkarna smiddes

1939 • 60 min • Sweden

A story about the cooperative trade in Sweden.

Screwball Football

1939 • 8 min • United States of America

A series of gags hung on a football game.

The 400 Million

1939 • 54 min • United States of America

Joris Ivens’s wartime documentary of China’s resistance to the Japanese invasion, cross-cutting civilian exodus and bombing with the Nationalist state’s mobilization—schools, industry, dispersed war production, foreign relief—and guerrilla fighting. Framing an ancient nation of “400 million,” it contrasts tradition with modernization and closes on the unresolved question of victory.

Let My People Live

1939 • 14 min • United States of America

Aimed at African Americans and shot at Tuskegee University, this film instructs viewers in the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis by focusing on a pair of sympathetic siblings, George and Mary, whose lives are altered by the disease. Starring Rex Ingram as Dr. Gordon, the film suggests that organized religion is an important defensive location in this particular community, and warns of the dangers of the previous generation’s superstitions and its fear of medicine. The Health Department prominently featured the film at the 1939 World’s Fair. Directed by Edgar Ulmer.

The Golden West

1939 • 5 min • United States of America

A western bad guy kidnaps a girl stage singer, and a Hairbreadth Harry-type hero with a small Indian companion rescue her after a shootout involving using a hoop skirt for cover and a runaway stage coach that goes over a cliff. Most of this cartoon was remade almost shot for shot with Mighty Mouse for Davis's "Bad Bill Bunion" six years later.

Customers Wanted

1939 • 7 min • United States of America

Popeye and Bluto are running competing penny arcades, trying to bring in customer Wimpy. Of course, he would gladly pay Tuesday for a penny today. And of course, their competing arcades show clips featuring each of them, with well over half of this short thus recycled.

Unborn Souls

1939 • 59 min • United States of America

The crusading Dr. Kent tries to convince the district attorney to clean up the local abortion racket and help open a birth control clinic. But when Kent is dismissed from the hospital, the troubles actually begin.

The Fighting Renegade

1939 • 58 min • United States of America

El Puma, a Mexican desert guide, escorts an archaeological expedition headed by Professor Lucius Lloyd through the Indian badlands of Mexico. Marian, the professor's niece accompanies the party as only she can translate the Aztec writings in the diary of her father, murdered on a similar expedition six years previous. The professor is murdered by a knife, and the weapon is recognized as the property of El Puma. Magpie, a Federal Investigator, knows that El Puma is really "Lightnin' Bill' Carson, a former federal agent who has been missing since Marian's father was slain. The reluctant Magpie believes that his old pal is guilty. Carson sets out to prove otherwise.

Ride, Cowboy, Ride

1939 • 22 min • United States of America

Dinny and his cowhand friends rescue Laura from a runaway stagecoach after it is robbed by outlaw Pancho Dominguez and his gang. Dinny is attracted to Laura, who isn't interested in him at all. The climax arises when Pancho's gang raids the town and robs the bank.

El viejo doctor

1939 • 55 min • Argentina

Medical father and son in conflict over two conceptions about the practice of medicine as a result of a bad and inopportune medical practice carried out by the son to a patient of the father.

The Kansas Terrors

1939 • 57 min • United States of America

In Kansas Terrors, Stoney and his saddle pal Rusty take a job delivering horses to a flyspeck Caribbean island. Here they join forces with Rico to topple the regime of a despotic commandante.

The Rape of Czechoslovakia

1939 • 18 min • United Kingdom

Weiss’s classic B&W agitprop short made after his escape to London just ahead of the Nazis. He carried with him three reels of material for his unrealized film ‘Dvacet Let Svobody’ (‘Twenty Years of Freedom’) i.e. 20 years of the existence of independent Czechoslovakia from its 1918 founding to 1938 when the Munich Agreement dissolved it. In English with poetic narration written by C. Day-Lewis (father of Daniel Day-Lewis).

Porky and Teabiscuit

1939 • 8 min • United States of America

Porky Pig is sent out by his father with $11.00 spending money for help on the farm, unfortunately, he accidentally spends it on an auction, for a sickly, broken-down race horse known as Tea Biscuit. Porky shapes him up for a race, although Tea Biscuit's attention is diverted to a trombone. However, a balloon pop assures that Porky wins with Tea Biscuit and gets the reward...

Parents on Trial

1939 • 58 min • United States of America

According to Hollywood, the parents were generally at fault when good kids went bad. This theory is elucidated in Columbia's Parents on Trial, wherein strict disciplinarian James Westley (Henry Kolker) fails to understand or appreciate the real needs and feelings of his teenaged daughter Susan (Jean Parker).

The Lone Stranger and Porky

1939 • 7 min • United States of America

The Lone Stranger is sleeping when his faithful, if overly caricatured, Indian scout sees stagecoach driver Porky being robbed by a bad guy. The scout summons the Lone Stranger, who rides to the rescue. The bad guy goes after him (and, briefly, the narrator). But just in the nick of time, the Lone Stranger recovers and conquers the bad guy. Meanwhile, Silver and the villain's horse have been having their own close encounter, and Silver returns with several little colts.

Trigger Smith

1939 • 59 min • United States of America

A cowboy goes after a gang of stagecoach robbers who murdered his brother.

Blue Montana Skies

1939 • 56 min • United States of America

Gene Autry follows a clue written on a rock by his murdered partner and discovers a fur smuggling operation near the Canadian border.

The City

1939 • 44 min • United States of America

A prescient documentary about city planning, which presents idyllic suburbs and nuclear families as a solution to the chaos, poverty and social decay of industrialized inner cities.

Yes, We Have No Bonanza

1939 • 16 min • United States of America

Set in a western town, the stooges are working as waiters in a saloon with the three girls they hope to marry. The proprietor of the saloon is a crook who, with his partner, has buried $40,000 of stolen money. The boys go prospecting in hopes of raising enough money to pay off the debts of their fiancée father, who owes money to their boss. They dig up the stolen money, which the crooks recognize as their loot and abscond with. A wild chase ensues, ending with the bad guy's car crashing into the Sheriff's office.

Frontier Pony Express

1939 • 58 min • United States of America

In the midst of the Civil War, Lassiter has a plan to get control of California. Working out of St. Joseph, he plans to send forged messages to the troops on the west coast via Pony Express. First he attempts to bribe Pony Express ride Roy Rogers. When Roy refuses he turns to the outlaw Johnson and his gang and this leads to trouble.

The Man from Texas

1939 • 56 min • United States of America

Hall is after Dennison's land and hires the Shooting Kid to finish him off. The Marshal sends Tex to help Dennison, but the Kid has been helped by Tex in the past and changes sides.

Straight to Heaven

1939 • 52 min

Singer Jimmy Williams' father Joe is a chemist who recently lost his job to George Elliott. Since then, Joe has been investigating the "Adam and Even" brand of canned goods sold in Harlem.

Money to Loan

1939 • 20 min • United States of America

The MGM crime reporter introduces Norman Kennedy, District Attorney of a large city, he who talks about the general want for money, and the extraordinary lengths some will go to to get it. The loan sharking business has that want for money on both sides. He tells the story of one such loan shark, Stephen Hanley, who tried to pass his company off as a legitimate loan business, but who charged exorbitant rates, and used extortion and fraud to get out of his customers even more than what they may have owed on paper.