Donald Meek
Birthday: 1878-07-13
Place of Birth: Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Biography: Thomas Donald Meek (14 July 1878 – 18 November 1946) was a Scottish-American actor. He first performed publicly at the age of eight and began appearing on Broadway in 1903. Meek is perhaps best known for his roles in the films You Can't Take It with You (1938) and Stagecoach (1939). He posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Meek was born in Glasgow to Matthew and Annie Meek. In the 1890s, the Meek family emigrated to Canada and then to the United States. By 1900, they were living in Philadelphia where Meek was employed as a dry goods salesman, according to the United States census of that year with Meek later working on stage. After years on the stage, Meek became a film actor, appearing memorably in several movies including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Little Miss Broadway, and State Fair. Before becoming an actor, he fought in the Spanish–American War in the United States Army and contracted yellow fever which caused him to lose his hair. He was cast as timid, worried characters in many of his films, and is perhaps best known for his roles as Mr. Poppins in Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You and as whiskey salesman Samuel Peacock in John Ford's Stagecoach. From 1931 through 1932, Meek was featured as criminologist Dr. Crabtree in a series of 12 Warner Brothers two-reel short subjects written by S.S. Van Dine. Meek and Isabella "Belle" Walken married in Boston in a Methodist church on January 3, 1909. By this marriage, the American-born Belle Meek lost her United States citizenship by taking her husband's British nationality. Donald Meek died of leukaemia on 18 November 1946 in Los Angeles, while filming the role of Mr. Twiddle in Magic Town. A prolific film actor in over 100 Hollywood movies during its Golden Age, he received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was entombed in the Fairmount Mausoleum at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.
Movies
Stagecoach
A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo...
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Blondie Takes a Vacation
Blondie and Dagwood are in charge of operations at a mountain motel. The elderly owners of the estab...
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Tom Sawyer and his pal Huckleberry Finn have great adventures on the Mississippi River, pretending t...
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Come Live with Me
Seeking US citizenship, a Viennese refugee arranges a marriage of convenience with a struggling writ...
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Keeper of the Flame
Famed reporter Stephen O'Malley travels to a small town to investigate the death of a national hero....
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You Can't Take It with You
Alice, the only relatively normal member of the eccentric Sycamore family, falls in love with Tony K...
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A Woman's Face
A female blackmailer with a disfiguring facial scar meets a plastic surgeon who offers her the possi...
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State Fair
During their annual visit to the Iowa State Fair, the Frake family enjoy many adventures. Proud patr...
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The Clyde Mystery
The wealthy Mr. Clyde is found dead, shot to death in his home. Inspector Carr suspects a conspiracy...
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The Crane Poison Case
This entry in the Vitaphone Inspector Carr series, based on the character created by S.S. Van Dyne, ...
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Mark of the Vampire
Sir Borotyn, a prominent Prague resident, is discovered murdered in his home, with all indications p...
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Six Cylinder Love
After buying a car, Richard Burton finds that his wife and daughter have become unreasonably extrava...
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My Little Chickadee
While on her way by stagecoach to visit relatives out west, Flower Belle Lee is held up by a masked ...
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The Thin Man Goes Home
On a trip to visit his parents, detective Nick Charles gets mixed up in a murder investigation....
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Du Barry Was a Lady
Hat check man Louis Blore is in love with nightclub star May Daly. May, however, is in love with a p...
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Bathing Beauty
After breaking up with her fiancé, a gym teacher returns to work at a women's college, but a legal l...
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The Return of Frank James
Farmer Frank and his ward hunt brother Jesse's killers, the back-shooting Fords....
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Jesse James
After railroad agents forcibly evict the James family from their family farm, Jesse and Frank turn t...
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Young Mr. Lincoln
In this dramatized account of his early law career in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln is born into a modes...
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Air Raid Wardens
Two bumblers, failures as businessmen and air raid wardens, stumble across a nest of Nazi saboteurs ...
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Captain Blood
Dr. Peter Blood, unjustly convicted of treason and exiled from England, becomes a notorious pirate....
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Having Wonderful Time
Teddy Shaw, a bored New York office girl, goes to a camp in the Catskill Mountains for rest and find...
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Sky Murder
This final Carter film is a lot of fun, with Nick (unwillingly, at first) taking on a ring of Fifth ...
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Phantom Raiders
In this second Carter mystery, a mysterious rash of cargo ships sinking in Panama leads insurers Lle...
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Nick Carter, Master Detective
Detective Nick Carter is brought in to foil spies at the Radex Airplane Factory, where a new fighter...
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Third Finger, Left Hand
Magazine editor Margot Merrick pretends to be married in order to avoid advances from male colleague...
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The Toast of New York
After the American Civil War, Jim Fisk, a former peddler and cotton smuggler, arrives in New York, a...
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The Whole Town's Talking
Ordinary man-in-the-street Arthur Ferguson Jones leads a very straightforward life. He's never late ...
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Two Girls and a Sailor
A sailor helps two sisters start up a service canteen. The sailor soon becomes taken with gorgeous s...
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Hollywood Cavalcade
Starting in 1913 movie director Connors discovers singer Molly Adair. As she becomes a star she marr...
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Murder at the Vanities
Shortly before the curtain goes up the first time at the latest performance of Earl Carroll's Vaniti...
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Breakfast for Two
After a night on the town, Jonathan Blair wakes to find that Texan Valentine Ransome has escorted hi...
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Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch
The Wiggs family plan to celebrate Thanksgiving in their rundown shack with leftover stew, without M...
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Peter Ibbetson
When his mother dies, young Peter Ibbetson leaves Paris and his best friend, Mary, behind to live wi...
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The Feminine Touch
A college professor who believes there's no place for jealousy in modern marriage, John Hathaway (Do...
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Tortilla Flat
Danny, a poor northern Californian Mexican-American, inherits two houses from his grandfather and is...
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Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet
True story of the doctor who considered it was not immoral to search for a drug that would cure syph...
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Maisie Gets Her Man
Struggling performers, Sothern and Skelton's lives are thrown off gear when they are caught with a b...
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The Hole in the Wall
Mrs. Ramsey sent Jean Oliver to prison on a false charge. To get even, Jean (disguised as Madame Mys...
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The Ghost Comes Home
Comic mayhem results when a small town pet store owner, mistakenly believed killed during a sea voya...
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Turnabout
Bickering husband and wife Tim and Sally Willows mutter a few angry words to a statue who grants the...
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Bedside
Bob Brown uses his bedside manner to charm his patients while his partner makes the actual diagnoses...
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The Wild Man of Borneo
A medicine show man tries to con people into believing he's a legitimate stage actor....
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The Return Of Peter Grimm
The ghost of a recently deceased family patriarch tries to help his surviving relatives, in part by ...
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Double Danger
A crime novelist devises a scheme to catch the thief who has stolen the valuable "Konjer Diamonds". ...
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College Coach
Ruthless Coach Gore creates turmoil at a college by hiring players and alienating students. Along th...
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Lost Angel
Alpha's been raised along scientific principles, and will make Mike Regan a great human interest sto...
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Biography of a Bachelor Girl
Everyweek Newsmagazine editor Richard Kurt pursues famous free-spirited portrait artist Marion Forsy...
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The Last Gentleman
In New England circa 1933, a niece is reported missing and presumed dead and Cabot Barr (George Arli...
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The Man from Dakota
A frontier scout, a Boston officer and a Russian girl escape with a map past Confederates....
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And So They Were Married
A bitter widow and a grumpy widower find themselves stuck in a hotel that is cut off from the outsid...
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Barnacle Bill
A fishing boat captain searches for romance in hopes of improving his financial picture....
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One Rainy Afternoon
Suave French actor Philippe Martin provokes a scandal when, in a darkened theater, he mistakes young...
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Blonde Inspiration
A writer of pulp Westerns cranks out more words than his editor and publisher want to pay for....
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Romance in Manhattan
Karel Novak is an incredibly naive Czech immigrant who is taken under the wing of streetwise New Yor...
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Pennies from Heaven
Larry Poole, in prison on a false charge, promises an inmate that when he gets out he will look up a...
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The Housekeeper's Daughter
A mobster's moll leads a newsman, cub reporter and photographer to a scoop....
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Janie Gets Married
Newlywed Janie's (Joan Leslie) World War II-veteran husband (Robert Hutton) goes to work at her fath...
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Happiness C.O.D.
A young man, hard-pressed to pay off his mortgage and support his family, decides that he'll get mon...
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Make a Wish
While vacationing at a boys' camp, the rambunctious Chip Winters befriends a famed composer Johnny S...
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Behind The Headlines
A radio reporter sets out to rescue his ex-girlfriend when she is kidnapped by gangsters....
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Goodbye Broadway
Pat and Molly Malloy, once famed vaudeville and Broadway performers, arrive to play the small town o...
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Three Married Men
Jennie Mullins and her fiancé Peter Cary are happily in love but their families are miserable about ...
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Hold That Co-ed
An egotistical politician believes he can win votes by turning a small college's hapless football sq...
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She Couldn't Take It
The wealthy Van Dyke family are constantly in the media for outrageous behavior, much to the frustra...
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Parnell
Irish politician Charles Stewart Parnell struggles to free his country from English rule, but his re...
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Little Miss Broadway
An orphan is provisionally adopted by the manager of a hotel populated by show business people. The ...
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Village Tale
The insidious typical talk of a small town makes a young man and the married woman he is in love ver...
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The Gilded Lily
Secretary Marilyn David falls in love with British aristocrat Charles Gray, to the dismay of her bes...
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Magic Town
Rip Smith's opinion-poll business is a failure...until he discovers that the small town of Grandview...
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The Bride Comes Home
A penniless socialite is hired by two young men as a front in their plan to start a magazine. Soon, ...
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Hi, Nellie!
Managing Editor Brad Bradshaw refuses to run a story linking the disappearance of Frank Canfield wit...
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The Defense Rests
A sleazy lawyer's female assistant sets out to end his cheating ways....
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Going Hollywood: The '30s
Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were...
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Baby Face Harrington
Thanks to a series of comic mishaps, a timid, small-town office clerk finds himself wanted by the po...
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The Studio Murder Mystery
When the leading lady of a motion picture is murdered in the middle of a scene, Inspector Carr and D...
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Love on the Run
A runaway bride and an undercover reporter get caught up in political intrigue as they lead a merry ...
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The Captain Hates the Sea
Alcoholic newspaperman Steve Bramley boards the San Capador for a restful cruise, hoping to quit dri...
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Barbary Coast
Mary Rutledge arrives from the east, finds her fiancé dead, and goes to work at the roulette wheel o...
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Barbary Coast Gent
Honest Plush Brannon is a con-man thrown out of the Barbary Coast in San Francisco in the 1880s and ...
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They Got Me Covered
Bumbling reporter Robert Kittredge has been fired after bungling his latest assignment. His career i...
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Old Hutch
Life changes in surprising ways when a lazy, unemployed husband and father finds a box containing th...
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Kind Lady
Mary, a woman with good intentions, takes pity on Henry, an artist with no home. What begins as a si...
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Society Doctor
Two surgeons in love with a nurse end their rivalry in the operating room....
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Two in a Crowd
When two halves of a thousand-dollar bill are discovered in the snow, the penniless pair that indivi...
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The Wall Street Mystery
When the apparent murder of two stockbrokers are discovered in their Wall Street office. Police Insp...
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The Trans-Atlantic Mystery
A couple of murderous crooks try to smuggle the famous Stanhope diamonds into New York but they're d...
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Star Dust
When Hollywood film studios reject her because she's too young, an Arkansas woman sets out to build ...
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Old Man Rhythm
Romantic rivalries between father and son enrolled at the same college....
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China Seas
Captain Alan Gaskell sails the perilous waters between Hong Kong and Singapore with a secret cargo: ...
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Affairs of Geraldine
When the wealthy Mrs. Cooper passes away, she divides her estate between her sons, Henry and Wayne, ...
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Three Legionnaires
Set in the post-WWI days in the Siberian tank town of Skzavoskanoff, U. S. Army Sergeant Chuck Conno...
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Artists & Models
An ad man gets his model girlfriend to pose as a debutante for a new campaign....
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Maid of Salem
When a young woman named Barbara Clarke has an affair with adventurer Roger Coverman, it causes a sc...
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Personal Maid
Nora Ryan, a poor Irish girl, living in New York decides to change her life by working as a personal...
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Oh, Johnny, How You Can Love!
In this musical comedy, a traveling salesman gets mixed up with a bratty heiress after she gets in a...
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Because of Him
A young woman who wants to break into the theater schemes to become the protege of a famous Broadway...
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Babes on Broadway
Penny Morris and Tommy Williams are both starstruck young teens but nobody seems to give them any ch...
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The Informer
Gypo Nolan is a former Irish Republican Army man who drowns his sorrows in the bottle. He's desperat...
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Wayward
Story of a mother's antagonism to her son's wife. Based on the novel "Wild Beauty" by Mateel Howe Fa...
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Hullabaloo
A radio actor faces trouble when a science-fiction story causes the audience to panic....
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You're a Sweetheart
A Broadway producer is in a quandary when he discovers that the opening of his newest big production...
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The Merry Widow
A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country....
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Colonel Effingham's Raid
The story takes place in 1940. On the eve of America's entry in World War II, a colonel retired to h...
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Maisie Goes to Reno
A Brooklyn showgirl gets mixed up in a divorce between a soldier and his wife....
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What Every Woman Knows
Aspiring young Scottish politician John Shand enters into an unusual agreement with the wealthy Wyli...
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The Skull Murder Mystery
When a skeleton is dug up in an alley, a mysterious Chinese merchant and his eccentric upstairs tena...
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The Week End Mystery
During a rainstorm at a remote manor house, Richard Crayell plays host to several guests. At nine o'...
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Rise and Shine
The college president, the head cheerleader and a gambling gangster try to keep a flunking football ...
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Double Wedding
A bohemian free spirit helps meek Waldo win back his fiancée and falls in love with her over-control...
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The Cole Case
Dr. Crabtree (Donald Meek) and Insp. Carr (John Hamilton) are visited by a man who has been receivin...
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Seven Sweethearts
Little Delft, Michigan follows the customs of old-world Holland and is known for its Tulip Festival....
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Murder in the Pullman
Noted team of detective and criminologist solve the murder of a new bride, in her compartment, on th...
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The Girl Habit
A Lothario tries to get arrested as protection from the gangster husband who has threatened him....
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The Fabulous Joe
Milo Terkel's life is never the same after he is willed a dog named Joe. Milo buys his wife a diamon...
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The Symphony Murder Mystery
A cellist is murdered during a symphony concert. Shortly afterwards, the manager of the hall is foun...
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Everybody's Old Man
An elderly businessman thinking about aging and death takes time off to help teach a dead friend's c...
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