Natalie Moorhead photo (1934)

I purchased this photo from eBay, it’s from the movie “Long Lost Father” which I have never seen, but I had to have this photo. I love 30’s photography, most of the photo is just a bit out of focus, the focus line is just about at the eyes, so the eyes and bottom part of the feathers are all that’s in perfect focus. That classic Natalie Moorhead stare, wow wasn’t she beautiful, just an amazing photo. The photo has the RKO studios stamp on the back, plus the caption strip on the back for the magazines and newspapers to print, it describes her clothes and the colors, which is mostly gold and brown, so use your imagination.

updates coming soon

I hope to have some updates soon, sadly I will not be able to have screen shots on the movies reviews right now. I'm not sure what is wrong, but I can't seem to get the DVD's to play on my computer, so I will use the old stand by and just take photos off the tv, it may not look as good, but better than nothing.

If you are looking to purchase any Natalie Moorhead movies, here is the best place to look
http://www.moviesunlimited.com/musite/findresults_actor.asp?search=Natalie+Moorhead

Corruption (1933)

This was a fun little movie starring Preston Foster and one of my favorites Evalyn Knapp. As for Natalie she had like always a very small part as again the other woman. The story is about a political reformer(Preston Foster) who becomes mayor and tries to run all the crooked politicians out of the city, but of course the party boss get him removed from office on a trumped up morals charge. Of course everything ends up well in the end and he becomes states attorney. Natalie plays the daughter of one of the party heads, and also fiancé of Preston Foster, but when they find out he’s not what the party wanted, she’s out of the picture, but comes back when he becomes states attorney. Like a lot of these movies, the secretary is in love with the mayor but he doesn’t know it, so of course in the end he realizes he does really love his secretary, he officially breaks off with Natalie. Natalie did fine with what she had, but she did very little but look beautiful, what a waste of talent.

The Women (1939)

I’m not a big fan of this movie, great cast but I really can’t get into it. You would think with a cast of Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, and Joan Fontaine, it would be great, but I find it boring. As for Ms Natalie Moorhead, I have no idea where she is in this movie, imdb says she plays “woman in salon”, thanks, that helps. Around this time in her career she became a brunette in hopes of getting better roles, so I thought I found her and I was very excited. It was around the fashion show scenes, she even had a few lines, but the more I watched those scenes, I said to myself, that kind of looks like Aileen Pringle, another favorite of mine. When Natalie became a brunette, she did look a little like Aileen, so I looked up the cast list on imdb and to my disappointment it was Aileen Pringle, well back to the search. I still can’t find her, there is a little scene that I think is her, early in the movie there is a wide shot of the salon, and the receptionist gets up and shows someone around. Now the woman is blonde and does look like her, but Natalie should be a brunette at this time, but maybe the brunette hair was really a wig, wigs were very popular at that time, also it does kind of sound like her, but I’m still not sure. Maybe I’m missing her, maybe she’s right there in my face but I still can’t for sure find her, if anyone knows where she is, I would love to know.

Curtain at Eight (1933)

This is a great whodunit, the gorgeous Dorothy Mackaill gets top billing, although she wasn’t really the star, she should have been maybe third of fourth on the list. It’s about a Broadway star who is shot to death at his birthday party in front of dozens of witnesses. Unfortunately the lights went off and no one saw a thing. It seems everyone hated him, he had a wife, a lover and business partners who all wanted him dead, so who did it? Natalie plays the wife who is set to get a divorce, yet she arrives at his house after the show, next scene we see him getting dressed and she is in bed, I think we know what happened, but all she really wants is some money he owes her. It’s a great little scene, again Natalie only gets one scene, but she does a great job, she is so good at playing those villain parts, the women who only want money, she so slick and sexy, no wonder men always fall for her. But sadly we find out later somebody who was also after her husbands money killed her, so she didn’t kill her husband, who did? It’s really a fun movie, great cast, Dorothy MacKaill, C. Aubrey Smith, and of course Natalie Moorhead, I love a good mystery movie.

Captain Thunder (1930)

Another very short appearance for Natalie, only one little scene, nothing really important to the story. The movie is about a bandit in Mexico(I think), who is just as good with the ladies as he is with stealing money, the women love him and the men hate him. It’s a fun movie, and any movie with Fay Wray is worth watching, it doesn’t matter if it’s a good story or not, just throw Fay in and I’ll watch it. In one scene the bandit(Captain Thunder) has his servant bring him some girls, he doesn’t like the first one, she is too young, the second is to fat, the third is, well I’m not quite sure why he didn’t like her. The next one is Natalie, he likes her and brings her into his room, I think you get where this is going, but she refuses to do what he says, Captain Thunder soon realizes he met her once before, I really not quite sure what is going on, but is a funny scene. That’s it, just a few minutes and she’s gone, a waste, and she was pretty popular at this time, I’m not sure what the point of her being in this movie is, but it is a fun movie, and we get to see Fay Wray in lingerie, so that’s a hit in my book.

Dance Fools, Dance (1931)

There must be more to this movie than what I saw, it seemed to short and just didn’t feel right. It was an ok movie, any time you put Clark Gable and Joan Crawford together you know you’ll get an ok movie. Here is the plot right off the VHS’s back cover “Bonnie Jordan (Crawford) swings from socialite to reporter to “a cheap moll in the underworld” without missing a beat. When her rich father dies penniless after the stock market crash, she and her brother Rodney must find work. Bonnie becomes a reporter, while Rodney takes to selling bootleg booze and gets involved with Chicago underworld giant Jake Luva (Gable). The story shifts into high gear as Bonnie - working undercover to solve a murder - is hired as a dancer at Jake’s nightclub”. Now as for Natalie, she plays the love interest of Clark Gable, who gets replaced with Joan Crawford, sorry Crawford fans, but Clark made a bad mistake there. Natalie gets a few scenes, but there seems to be something missing, the way Clark and her react to each other makes me wonder if some of her scenes were cut out, something just didn’t feel right. The scene with Natalie and Clark in his office when he lights his cigarette and she blows his smoke out of her face is just awesome, great work not only from Clark and Natalie, but the camera man and director, just fantastic. Her look in that scene is great, how could Clark, or any man for that matter turn her down?

Heart Of Arizona (1938) Poster

Here is the poster of a movie Natalie did with Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd). I have never seen this movie, but I want to badly, I had a chance to purchase the VHS on eBay but I decided to wait and see if I could get it on DVD, stupid decision. I still keep checking on eBay for a copy.

The Big Chance (1933)

Thankfully this movie only cost me $5, because it wasn’t worth any more than that, a lame and typical story. It’s about a boxer who is a fall guy for some corrupt promoters, the boxer soon falls in love with a local girl, who’s kid brother is his biggest fan. The kid finds out he’s not what he seems to be, and now the boxer has to prove he isn’t a bad as everyone thinks he is. To prove his innocence he needs to beat the champ in a match that he was supposed to take a fall and collect a huge amount of money, I think you know how this ends. I don’t know much about most of the cast, a young Mickey Rooney played the kid brother, and I know he is an icon in this country, but I just can’t stand Mickey Rooney, I find him very annoying. As for miss Natalie Moorhead, what a waste, like always she did the best she could with the few seconds of scene time she got, although her character wasn‘t very important. She played the role of the girl the promoter got in order to keep the boxer’s mind off the local girl. She was playful and fun, and like always looked fantastic, in my opinion the boxer choose the wrong girl, but then we would have no happy ending, we’ve got to have the happy ending, don’t we?

The King Murder (1932)

This was just a typical whodunit with all sorts of suspects, all of them had a motive, but which one is lying? This was a good movie, I’m not sure who any of the stars were, I only purchased it because of Natalie, and like always she had a small, yet important role. A woman with a habit of seducing wealthy men and then blackmailing them is found dead. The last man she was messing around with was Natalie’s husband, the detective on the case is a friend of theirs, and Natalie and him were a couple before she met her husband. The husband didn’t know about her blackmailing ways, he finds out about them while helping the detective search for clues and talking to all the suspects. Only we find out at the end it was the husband who murder Miss King, although I kind had that suspicion right from the start. It’s good to see a movie for a change in which Natalie wasn’t the villain, this time she was the wife whose husband has been cheating, finally we get to feel sorry for her. I can’t say much about her acting, she didn’t have much to do in her short appearances here, but again she looked stunning, she was really the only character who wasn’t a real suspect, although from the start I felt she had the best motive, and in the scene with her, the detective, and her husband playing billiards, I thought she was acting a bit suspicious. It would have been nice to give her a bit more screen time, since the detective was still in love with her, it would have been a good idea to throw some more scenes of them together with her as a suspect.

The Office Wife (1930)

This was a very good movie, with a fantastic cast, but like always Natalie had too little screen time, but believe me, she made the most of it. But what a cast, it stars the extremely beautiful Dorothy MacKaill, the always great Lewis Stone, Joan Blondell, and of course Natalie Moorhead. This story is about Lewis Stone who runs a business(I’m not sure what it was) who has a secretary who falls in love with him, as does he with her, but he is married, well I think you know how this goes, so no need to go into it any further. Dorothy plays the secretary, let me just say it’s hard not to keep your eyes on her and concentrate on the story, wow she was so beautiful and just a lot of fun, it’s a shame she didn’t have a longer career in the talkies, an absolute tragedy. Oh, no she didn’t die young, she passed away in 1990 at the young age of 87, if you ever get a chance to catch one of her movies do so, you won’t be disappointed. As for Natalie she played the unfaithful, yet understanding wife of Lewis Stone, she doesn’t love him anymore, neither did he love her, so they talked about it and they agree to get a divorce, no fighting, just perfect understanding, ha, only in Hollywood. Let me just state a fact, Natalie never looked better, she was stunning, just perfect, I don’t know about her acting here, I wasn’t paying attention. To be on the serious side, the scene with her and Lewis when they discuss the divorce was well done, kind of a sweet scene. I do have one complaint, what was with Natalie’s bathing suit in the one scene, what year is this, that was about the most unattractive outfit I have ever seen, it looked like something out of the 1910’s, very disappointing. Seriously though, this was a fun movie, very predictable, but fun, and that’s all I ask for.