D: Sam Wood. Ramon Novarro, Madge Evans, Una Merkel, Ralph Graves, John Arledge, Frank Albertson, Kane Richmond, Martha Sleeper, Henry Armetta. Novarro is a working-class Italian American who wins a football scholarship to Yale and comes up against snobbery and class distinction. Fatuous, overlong star vehicle bolstered by grade-A MGM production values. European version substituted soccer for football.

D: George Hill. Lee Tracy, Benita Hume, Una Merkel, James Gleason, Alan Edwards. Tracy enlivens this so-so story of a manipulative, globe-trotting journalist, who creates as much news as he covers; highlighted are his escapades while in Russia. Script by Bella and Sam Spewack, from their play.

D: Charles Brabin. Richard Dix, Madge Evans, Conway Tearle, Una Merkel, Stuart Erwin, Spanky McFarland, Isabel Jewell. Dix embezzles funds to keep his extravagant wife (Evans) happy and ends up in jail, thanks to the scheming of lecherous tycoon Tearle, who's got designs on Evans. Moderately entertaining crime meller is well suited to Dix's brand of square-jawed dramatics. Our Gang's Spanky plays one of Dix's kids.

D: George B. Seitz. Otto Kruger, Una Merkel, Ben Lyon, Isabel Jewell, Roscoe Karns, Irene Hervey, C. Henry Gordon, Samuel S. Hinds. Kruger hams it up in fine style as a brilliant, unethical criminal lawyer who drinks and womanizes because his wife ran out on him. When he takes on a murder case and learns the victim is his ex-wife, he cleans up his act and seeks justice. Fairly engrossing MGM programmer with a smashing, nick-of-time finale.

D: Edmund Goulding. Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Tully Marshall, Mary Carlisle. Vicki Baum's novel and play of plush Berlin hotel where "nothing ever happens.'' Stars prove the contrary: Garbo as lonely ballerina, John B. her jewel-thief lover, Lionel B. a dying man, Crawford an ambitious stenographer, Beery a hardened businessman, Stone the observer. Scripted by William A. Drake. Best Picture Oscar winner; a must. Plot reworked many times (in HOTEL BERLIN, WEEK-END AT THE WALDORF, etc.). Later a Broadway musical.

D: John Ford. Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin, Dorris Bowden, Russell Simpson, John Qualen, O. Z. Whitehead, Eddie Quillan, Zeffie Tilbury, Darryl Hickman, Ward Bond, Charles Middleton, Tom Tyler, Mae Marsh, Jack Pennick. One of the great American films, an uncompromising adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about impoverished Okie farmers making the trek to California during the Depression, where the good life they've hoped for is well out of reach. Fonda is great in his defining role as an ex-con whose social conscience is aroused; Darwell is unforgettable as the matriarch Ma Joad. She and Ford won well-deserved Oscars. Screenplay by Nunnally Johnson.