James Burke
Birthday: 1886-09-23
Place of Birth: New York City, New York, USA
Biography: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia James Burke (September 24, 1886 – May 23, 1968) was an American film and television actor born in New York City. He made his stage debut in New York around 1912 and went to Hollywood in 1933. He made over 200 film appearances during his career, which ranged from 1932 to 1964; he was more often than not cast as a cop, usually a none-too-bright one, most notably as Sgt. Velie in Columbia's Ellery Queen mysteries in the early 1940s. He appeared in The Maltese Falcon, At the Circus, Lone Star, and many others. One of his best roles was as Charles Ruggles' rowdy rancher pal in Ruggles of Red Gap. In the early 1950s, Burke appeared with Tom Conway in the ABC detective drama series then called Inspector Mark Saber -- Homicide Detective, later renamed, reformatted, and switched to NBC under the title Saber of London. From 1960-1961, Burke appeared in the role of Zeke Bonner in seven episodes of the ABC western television series Stagecoach West, starring Wayne Rogers, Robert Bray, and Richard Eyer. Burke suffered from a heart condition, which took his life at the age of eighty-one.
Movies
The Maltese Falcon
A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a beautiful li...
View Movie
The Big Clock
George Stroud, a crime magazine's crusading editor, has to postpone a vacation with his wife - again...
View Movie
Public Pigeon No. 1
Swindlers con a lunchroom clerk into doing them a favor, supposedly on behalf of the FBI....
View Movie
We're Not Married!
A Justice of the Peace performed weddings a few days before his license was valid. A few years later...
View Movie
At the Circus
Jeff Wilson, the owner of a small circus, owes his partner Carter $10,000. Before Jeff can pay, Cart...
View Movie
Bombshell
A glamorous film star rebels against the studio, her pushy press agent and a family of hangers-on....
View Movie
Lucky Me
Three struggling theatrical performers meet a famous songwriter who is trying to convince a wealthy ...
View Movie
Welcome Home
A con artist attends a reunion in his hometown and discovers that his former classmates are trying t...
View Movie
Lady Killer
An ex-gang member tries to resist his old cohorts' criminal influence after he suddenly becomes a Ho...
View Movie
Dead End
Mobster "Baby Face" Martin returns home to visit the New York neighborhood where he grew up, droppin...
View Movie
Beau Geste
When three brothers join the Foreign Legion to escape a troubled past, they find themselves trapped ...
View Movie
All Through the Night
Broadway gamblers stumble across a plan by Nazi saboteurs to blow up an American battleship....
View Movie
36 Hours to Kill
Duke and Jeanie Benson, an outlaw couple hiding out under assumed names. Duke realizes that he has a...
View Movie
Toughest Man in Arizona
Marshal Landry captures outlaw Girard and bringing him in finds a woman and two children, the only s...
View Movie
Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise
On a cruise ship from Honolulu to San Francisco, the famous Chinese detective encounters four more m...
View Movie
The Horn Blows at Midnight
A trumpet player in a radio orchestra falls asleep during a commercial and dreams he's Athanael, an ...
View Movie
Great Guy
A meat inspector sets out to rid his town of payoff deals affecting the quality of meat being sold t...
View Movie
Bowery Bombshell
Slip (Leo Gorcey), Sach (Huntz Hall), Bobby (Bobby Jordan), Whitey (William Benedict) and Chuck (Dav...
View Movie
Body and Soul
Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the ...
View Movie
The Dawn Patrol
In 1915 France, Major Brand commands the 39th Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps. The young airmen g...
View Movie
Such Women Are Dangerous
An aspiring young writer becomes infatuated with a successful romance novelist, who realizes his lif...
View Movie
The Saint Strikes Back
Suave private detective Simon "The Saint" Templar arrives in San Francisco and meets Val, a woman wh...
View Movie
A Desperate Chance for Ellery Queen
A man is framed for embezzlement and runs off to San Francisco. His wife hires Ellery Queen to try a...
View Movie
A Close Call for Ellery Queen
Amateur sleuth Ellery Queen learns the truth about a businessman's two long-lost daughters....
View Movie
Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring
The benefactor of the Stack Memorial Hospital dies after an operation. Ellery Queen investigates whe...
View Movie
Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime
Several days after one of his company's dams burst, ruining the life savings of several investors, a...
View Movie
Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen
Detective Ellery Queen aids Free Dutch agents battle Nazi spies over a prize of industrial diamonds....
View Movie
Ellery Queen, Master Detective
Famed detective and crime novelist Ellery Queen solves a case involving the suspicious death of a ri...
View Movie
Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery
Ventriloquist and world traveler Gordon Cobb is murdered by a gang of jewel thieves. Baffled by the ...
View Movie
Philo Vance's Gamble
Private Detective Philo Vance gets involved with a succession of murders and a mystery concerning th...
View Movie
Love Time
Newly arrived in the nineteenth century court of Emperor Francis 1st of Austria Countess Valerie hap...
View Movie
The Saint Takes Over
The Saint Takes Over, released in 1940 by RKO Pictures, was the fifth motion picture featuring the a...
View Movie
Little Miss Marker
Big Steve Halloway, gambler and proprietor of New York's Horseshoe Cabaret, is in desperate need of ...
View Movie
Man on the Flying Trapeze
Hard-working, henpecked Ambrose Ambrose Wolfinger takes off from work to go to a wrestling match wit...
View Movie
A Night to Remember
A woman rents a gloomy basement apartment in Greenwich Village thinking it will provide the perfect ...
View Movie
Million Dollar Baby
A sudden windfall has unexpected consequences on a working class girl during the Great Depression....
View Movie
My Favorite Blonde
Larry Haines, a mediocre vaudeville entertainer, boards a train for Los Angeles. Aboard, he meets an...
View Movie
Six of a Kind
The Whinneys share expenses for their trip to Hollywood with George and Gracie and their great Dane....
View Movie
Warpath
John Vickers has spent eight years hunting for the three men who murdered the woman he loved. He fin...
View Movie
College Humor
A college professor and the school's star football player are both rivals for the same beautiful coe...
View Movie
The Cisco Kid and the Lady
An orphan whose father has been killed by bandits inherits a mine. Cisco saves the mine and the chil...
View Movie
Raton Pass
Raton Pass is a curious western based on the rules of Community Property. Dennis Morgan and Patricia...
View Movie
The Scarlet Empress
During the 18th century, German noblewoman Sophia Frederica, who would later become Catherine the Gr...
View Movie
Here Comes Cookie
A scatterbrained heiress opens her home to a succession of unemployed actors and vaudeville performe...
View Movie
Ticket to a Crime
After a jeweler hires a private detective to help him find $50,000 missing from his company, he is m...
View Movie
Dinky
A mother sends her young son to military school so he won't find out she's been sentenced to a priso...
View Movie
Easy Come, Easy Go
Comedy about an Irish father, who enjoys betting on horses, who keeps interfering with his daughter'...
View Movie
Men with Wings
Reporter Nicholas Ranson is jubilant when, on 17 Dec 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville an...
View Movie
You Can't Take It with You
Alice, the only relatively normal member of the eccentric Sycamore family, falls in love with Tony K...
View Movie
So Red the Rose
During the American Civil War, Valette Bedford waits patiently for her husband Duncan Bedford, to re...
View Movie
Texas, Brooklyn & Heaven
Eddie Tayloe's grandfather leaves him six thousand dollars and the money belt it came in, freeing Ta...
View Movie
Let's Dance
Years after the death of her husband, Kitty McNeil takes her son and flees from the home of her weal...
View Movie
Casanova Brown
Cass Brown is about to marry for the second time. His first marriage, to Isabel, was annulled. But w...
View Movie
On Borrowed Time
Young Pud is orphaned and left in the care of his aged grandparents. The boy and his grandfather are...
View Movie
The Perfect Specimen
Raised in seclusion to be the epitome of mental, physical and moral perfection, Gerald Beresford Wic...
View Movie
Anchors Aweigh
Two sailors on shore leave head out for four days of partying – only to become involved in the affai...
View Movie
Two Years Before the Mast
In 1834, Charles Stewart (Alan Ladd), the spoiled, dissolute son of a shipping magnate, is shanghaie...
View Movie
Joy of Living
Falling in love with the voice of Broadway chanteuse Margaret Garret, cocksure young tycoon Daniel B...
View Movie
To the Last Man
In Kentucky just after the Civil War, the Hayden-Colby feud leads to Jed Colby being sent to prison ...
View Movie
June Bride
A magazine's staff, including bickering ex-lovers Linda and Carey, cover an Indiana wedding, which g...
View Movie
The Mad Miss Manton
When the murdered body discovered by beautiful, vivacious socialite Melsa Manton disappears, police ...
View Movie
Call of the Wild
Jack Thornton has trouble winning enough at cards for the stake he needs to get to the Alaska gold f...
View Movie
Shamrock Hill
A young girl holds a special place in her heart for a place called Shamrock HIll, and she tries to s...
View Movie
The Affair of Susan
Two people go to Coney Island to find romance and wind up in jail....
View Movie
Treasure Island
In this early film adaptation of the classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, young Jim Hawkins is c...
View Movie
High, Wide and Handsome
The setting is a small town in 1870s Pennsylvania. Sally Waterson and her father have stopped in tow...
View Movie
The Mystery Man
Hard-boiled newspaper reporter Larry Doyle (Robert Armstrong) goes a bit too far in celebrating a wo...
View Movie
Lone Star
Rip-roaring big star, big budget semi-historical story about cattle baron Devereaux Burke, who is en...
View Movie
Lady by Choice
To improve her image, a fan dancer "adopts" an old woman to be her mother....
View Movie
Down to Earth
Upset at a new Broadway musical mocking The Nine Muses, Greek goddess Terpsichore comes down to eart...
View Movie
The Affairs of Annabel
Wonder Pictures has been striking out at the box office lately, causing the seedy PR man to involve ...
View Movie
A Very Honorable Guy
Well respected local good guy, "Feet" Samuels finds himself heavily in debt due to an uncharacterist...
View Movie
Dixie
A young songwriter leaves his Kentucky home to try to make it in New Orleans. Eventually he winds up...
View Movie
After the Dance
Though he was protecting her when he accidentally killed a man, Mabel Kane (Thelma Todd) refuses to ...
View Movie
Broadway Gondolier
A taxi driver travels to Venice and poses as a gondolier to land a radio singing job....
View Movie
The Family Next Door
Rose Pierce is discontent with her life as the wife of a small town plumber and has visions of becom...
View Movie
City Limits
The wealthy president of a big railroad, who's beginning to crumble under the combined pressure of b...
View Movie
Music Is Magic
An aging star finally recognizes the truth when she is replaced in her new movie by a girl from the ...
View Movie
Dancing Feet
Peyton Wells (Ben Lyon) rescues Judy Jones (Joan Marsh) from a very dull young man, at a sedate part...
View Movie
I Love a Bandleader
A painter suffering from amnesia convinces himself that he's a famous bandleader and finds romance w...
View Movie
Laughing at Trouble
A man convicted of murder escapes from jail and hides out in the home of a small town newspaper publ...
View Movie
Face in the Sky
Joe and Lucky travel around New England painting barns in exchange for an advertisement on one side....
View Movie
The Unholy Wife
A woman marries a man for his wealth, then concocts a plan to kill him, take his money, and run off ...
View Movie
Friends of Mr. Sweeney
Asaph (Charles Ruggles) is a meek, mild-mannered homebody who occasionally shows some backbone to hi...
View Movie
Within the Law
Shopgirl Mary Turner, sentenced to prison for someone else's theft, is released and takes revenge up...
View Movie
Dodge City
In this epic Western, Wade Hatton, a wagon master turned sheriff, tames a cow town at the end of a r...
View Movie
Fast and Furious
Joel & Garda Sloan, a husband and wife detective team, who also sell rare books in New York, take a ...
View Movie
It Happened One Night
A runaway heiress makes a deal with the rogue reporter trailing her but the mismatched pair end up s...
View Movie
Song and Dance Man
Julia and Hap are a dance team. He drinks and gambles, she succeeds for a while with the help of pro...
View Movie
Make a Million
A college economics professor's "radical" ideas about capitalism get him fired. When he decides to p...
View Movie
Klondike Annie
A San Francisco singer flees Chinatown on murder charges and poses as a missionary in Alaska....
View Movie
The Timber Trail
Monte Hale is a stagecoach driver for Jed Baker's stage-line. Jed believes his brother, Ralph, is be...
View Movie
The Virginian
Arriving at Medicine Bow, eastern schoolteacher Molly Woods meets two cowboys, irresponsible Steve a...
View Movie
3 Men in White
Gillespie has to finally choose his official assistant, or Red and Lee are going to kill themselves ...
View Movie
Beyond Glory
Thinking he may have caused the death of his commanding officer Captain Daniels in Tunisia, Rocky vi...
View Movie
Denver and Rio Grande
Jim Vesser and his team of railroading men try to build a rail line through a mountain pass, while a...
View Movie
It Happened in Flatbush
A washed up baseball player returns to Brooklyn to manage his old team but an old sports reporter is...
View Movie
The Leathernecks Have Landed
Dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Marines after starting a barroom brawl that gets his leatherne...
View Movie
Buck Benny Rides Again
Radio star Jack Benny, intending to stay in New York for the summer, is forced by the needling of ri...
View Movie
Shady Lady
A crook becomes the victim of a crafty card player who works for the District Attorney....
View Movie
The Gas House Kids in Hollywood
The Gas House Kids, the very poor man's Bowery Boys, head for Hollywood....
View Movie
Queen Christina
Popular monarch Queen Christina of Sweden must choose between love and loyalty to her nation when sh...
View Movie
A Lady's Profession
A couple of down-and-out British aristocrats buy an American roadhouse....
View Movie
Coronado
Southern California's Hotel Coronado caters to and is frequented by members of the social upper-crus...
View Movie
Flight Into Nowhere
When headstrong pilot Bill Kellogg disobeys orders and takes a plane to photograph potential landing...
View Movie
Little Nellie Kelly
Nellie Kelly, the daughter of Irish immigrants, patches up differences between her father and matern...
View Movie
No Time for Comedy
An aspiring playwright finds himself an overnight Broadway success....
View Movie
Red, Hot and Blue
In her attempts to make a splash on Broadway, a lively would-be-actress lands herself in hot water w...
View Movie
The Way of All Flesh
Paul Kriza is a cashier of a bank in a small town, and the happy husband of Anna and the father of f...
View Movie
Champagne Waltz
In Vienna, a new jazz club featuring American trumpeter Buzzy Bellew threatens the existence of its ...
View Movie
California
"Wicked" Lily Bishop joins a wagon train to California, led by Michael Fabian and Johnny Trumbo, but...
View Movie
Thank Your Lucky Stars
An Eddie Cantor look-alike organizes an all-star show to help the war effort....
View Movie
Gambling Lady
A businesslike syndicate runs all the gambling joints in town; least profitable is honest Mike Lee's...
View Movie
Rhythm on the Range
Cowboy Jeff Larabee returns from the east and meets Doris Halloway, a young girl, that he regards as...
View Movie
The Girl in 419
A hospital surgeon (James Dunn) protects a mystery woman (Gloria Stuart) who knows too much about a ...
View Movie
All of Me
A professor tires of the direction his life is going and wants to move west, but his girlfriend does...
View Movie
Copper Canyon
A group of copper miners, Southern veterans, are terrorized by local rebel-haters, led by deputy Lan...
View Movie
How DOooo You Do
Murder occurs when several of the most popular radio personalities of the '40s converge on a desert ...
View Movie
Ruggles of Red Gap
In this comedy of an Englishman stranded in a sea of barbaric Americans, Marmaduke Ruggles - a gentl...
View Movie
Little Orphan Annie
Annie (Ann Gillis), an orphan, (based on Harold Gray's comic strip but who is at no point in the fil...
View Movie
Double Alibi
A man's ex-wife is found murdered, and he finds himself to be the prime suspect....
View Movie
Frisco Waterfront
As California gubernatorial candidate Burton is about to cast his vote a truck crashes into the poll...
View Movie
Sudden Money
Promises of happier times dawn for the financially distressed Patterson family when father Sweeney a...
View Movie
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American ent...
View Movie
Life Begins with Love
A spoiled playboy is forced to leave town to avoid the press, which latches on to his statement, whi...
View Movie
Song of the Thin Man
Society sleuths Nick and Nora Charles investigate a murder in a jazz club....
View Movie
Night Wind
A boy tries to protect his dog, a German shepherd that served with U.S. Army forces after it begins ...
View Movie
Alias Nick Beal
After straight-arrow district attorney Joseph Foster says in frustration that he would sell his soul...
View Movie
Twentieth Century
A temperamental Broadway producer trains an untutored actress, but when she becomes a star, she prov...
View Movie
No Place for a Lady
A private detective and a blonde acquaintance whom he has rescued from a misdirected murder charge, ...
View Movie
Reaching for the Sun
Comedy of a North Woods clam-digger who journeys to Detroit to earn money for outboard motor by work...
View Movie
Torch Singer
When she can't support her illegitimate child, an abandoned young woman puts her up for adoption and...
View Movie
Wharf Angel
On the wharfs of San Francisco, saloon girl Toy, also known as Mary, lives over Mother Bright's bar....
View Movie
The Kennel Murder Case
Philo Vance, accompanied by his prize-losing Scottish terrier, investigates the locked-room murder o...
View Movie
Alias Jesse James
Insurance salesman Milford Farnsworth sells a man a life policy only to discover that the man in que...
View Movie
The Merry Frinks
An heiress abandons an out-of-work husband, two sons and a lovesick daughter....
View Movie
Riding High
No relation to the 1950 Frank Capra film of the same name, the 1943 Technicolor musical Riding High ...
View Movie
Pot o' Gold
Jimmy, the owner of a failed music shop, goes to work with his uncle, the owner of a food factory. B...
View Movie
Opened by Mistake
A wise-guy reporter and a tippling sportswriter acquire an unclaimed trunk with a corpse inside....
View Movie
Young Widow
A young bride tries to rebuild her life after she learns her husband has been killed in the war....
View Movie
Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone
Harriet O'Malley tries to solve a murder aboard a train en route to New York....
View Movie
Case of the Missing Man
After an argument with his newspaper's city editor, press-photographer Jimmy Hudson quits his job an...
View Movie
Nightmare Alley
A roustabout joins a traveling carny and schemes to figure out the mind-reading act of Mademoiselle ...
View Movie
Can This Be Dixie?
A young girl and her uncle who run a traveling medicine show lend their efforts to salvage an old pl...
View Movie
Sadie McKee
A maid has romances with a two-timer, a boozing millionaire and the master of the house....
View Movie
Forgotten Faces
Harry Ashton is a superstitious gambling house owner, who relies on sprigs of heliotrope as his good...
View Movie
Mississippi
A young pacifist after refusing on principle to defend her sweetheart's honor and being banished in ...
View Movie
The Farmer Takes a Wife
A farmer tries to convince a girl to leave her life on a canal boat to live with him on his farm....
View Movie
His Kind of Woman
Career gambler Dan Milner agrees to a $50,000 deal to leave the USA for Mexico, only to find himself...
View Movie
Here Comes the Groom
Foreign correspondent Pete Garvey has 5 days to win back his former fiancée, or he'll lose the orpha...
View Movie
I'm from Missouri
Sweeney Bliss, champion mule raiser in Missouri, takes his prize mule Samson to London, where the Br...
View Movie
The Bowery
"In the Gay Nineties New York had grown up into bustles and balloon Sleeves ... but The Bowery had g...
View Movie
Sisters Under the Skin
Directed by David Burton. With Elissa Landi, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Doris Lloyd....
View Movie