Joseph Santley Trailers
The Hour of St. Francis TrailerWhen You're Smiling TrailerMake Believe Ballroom Trailer
Joseph Mansfield Santley (born Joseph Ishmael Mansfield, January 10, 1890 – August 8, 1971) was an American actor, singer, dancer, writer, director, and producer of musical theatrical plays motion pictures and television shows. He adopted the stage name of his stepfather, actor Eugene Santley.
Joseph Santley was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a boy, he and older brother Fred began performing in live theatre appearing in summer stock and touring with their parents. In 1906, at age seventeen, Joseph Santley co-wrote and starred on Broadway in the play, Billy the Kid. In 1907, he acted in film for the first time for Sidney Olcott at the Kalem Company in a silent Western film short called Pony Express.
In 1928, Santley directed his first motion picture, a short talkie for Paramount Pictures that featured singer Ruth Etting. The next year, Paramount had Santley direct three more films that were short singing productions, one with Etting, another with crooner Rudy Vallee, plus a third titled High Hat with Broadway singing star Alice Boulden. Also, he directed A Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic, a musical film featuring Eddie Cantor along with Eddie Elkins and his orchestra. In 1929, Joseph Santley co-directed, with Robert Florey, the first Marx Brothers feature film The Cocoanuts, a musical comedy for which he is most famous. Based on the George S. Kaufman play, and with music by Irving Berlin, the film was billed as "Paramount's All Talking-Singing Musical Comedy Hit." His other notable directorial efforts include 1935's Harmony Lane, a biographical musical on the life of composer Stephen Foster. In 1940, he directed Melody Ranch starring "singing cowboy" Gene Autry. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
During World War II, Joseph Santley worked for the war effort and in 1942 made the film Remember Pearl Harbor. In 1950, he made his last feature film but came back at age sixty-five to produce the 1954-55 television comedy The Mickey Rooney Show. In 1956, he put together two segments of Jazz Ball, a made-for-TV musical revue created from various filmed performances by jazz greats from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Joseph Santley died in 1971 in Los Angeles.
Most Popular Joseph Santley Trailers
Total trailers found: 68
18 May 1930
To avoid hostilities, Maryan, the ward of Doc May, a medicine show owner, induces Pop Garner, a circus owner, to join forces with her guardian.
20 January 1936
Peyton Wells (Ben Lyon) rescues Judy Jones (Joan Marsh) from a very dull young man, at a sedate party given for her by her multi-millionaire grandfather Silas P.
05 September 1943
Young radio personality Judy Joyner becomes mayor of the moribund town, Sleepy Lagoon, after running on an all women ticket and promptly sets out to turn the town around.
22 October 1935
The life and loves of composer Stephen Foster, from his early success through his decline, degradation, and death from alcoholism.
16 September 1934
Bob Preston, publicity man for Superba Pictures, uses his publicity skills in an attempt to make this fiancée June Dale the most famous movie star in the world.
05 May 1944
A trio of competing bands vie for a spot on a rural radio program.
13 November 1936
A temperamental film star's vacation turns deadly when he uncovers a murder.
30 August 1950
When You're Smiling is distinguished by the presence of several top recording artists of 1950. The wafer-thin plotline concerns the misadventures of Texan Gerald Durham (Jerome Courtland), who arrives in the Big City to learn the ropes of the music business.
02 February 1942
The host of a whodunit radio show finds himself involved in his own mystery when he awakens to find a woman with a knife in her back in his bedroom.
20 December 1940
As suggested by its title, Behind the News was a "stop the presses!" yarn set in a big-city newsroom.
01 June 1934
A young man from a small town hits New York City, bound and determined to become a radio star. Amazingly, he achieves his ambition, but in the process alienates everyone around him with his arrogance and egomania.
04 October 1935
When a young man is befriended by a gambling ship operator and made a partner in the business, he becomes involved in a police manhunt after he covers up a murder committed by his new partner.
13 March 1942
A film company hires a gangster to mock himself holding up a bank, but he succeeds too well and makes off with the money.
15 November 1943
This musical comedy stars radio star Al Pearce has a double role playing himself and Elmer Blurt, the leader of a small-town band that struggles toward stardom in the big city.
01 November 1940
Director Ted Brooks and comedians Jack Norcross, Dandy Joslyn and Phil Miller are part of a troupe of promising young players rehearsing for a WPA show at the Garrick Theater in New York and are stunned when the government withdraws their funding on the day of the show's dress rehearsal.
12 April 1941
An unsophisticated farm girl enrolls in college and stars in the campus musical.
17 January 1936
Besieged by his adoring female fans, radio celebrity Ned "The Fireside Troubadour" Farrar hides out at the home of his wife Queena's imperious Aunt Min.
15 July 1942
An uninhibited Arkansas farmgirl discovers a group of Nazis operating in the United States. Director Joseph Santley's broad WWII comedy stars Judy Canova, Joe E.
05 April 1945
Broadway producer Earl Carroll was a Ziegfeld-like entrepreneur who staged lavish revues featuring attractive young ladies.
16 July 1945
An aspiring playwright gets a job in a New York City restaurant favored by celebrities in hopes of getting a break.
25 October 1930
Two female song-pluggers decide to become ruthless gold-diggers, with comic results.
29 October 1937
After striking it rich in Alaskan gold, a young man returns to marry his fiancé only to be snubbed. Her sister, however, is worth considering, until he learns about her gold-digging family.
08 April 1944
In this romantic wartime comedy, four female defense plant workers share a house with four male workers.
11 September 1936
A strong-willed young woman hires a student to impersonate a boorish French count and brings him home to meet her parents.
01 April 1949
Liza Lee, fast-talking press agent for Al Jarvis, persuades Jarvis to stage a Musical Mystery Contest, with a $5000 prize to the person who can first name the most musical numbers and their performers.
10 October 1940
Jane Frazee made her starring film debut in the Republic B-plus musical Melody and Moonlight. The plot is motivated by the show-biz aspirations of bellboy Danny O'Brien (Johnny Downs).
19 June 1936
Middle-aged couples try to reclaim their youth at a college homecoming.
30 November 1944
Brazil is perhaps the best of the handful of US films made by singing sensation Tito Guizar. In typical screwball-comedy fashion, the plot is set in motion by authoress Nicky Henderson, who has hit the best-seller charts with her latest tome, Why Marry a Latin? While researching her next book in Rio De Janeiro, she finds out "why" when she meets handsome songwriter Miguel Soares.
10 March 1939
Tom Allen, an orphan accustomed to waiting in bread lines is awarded a scholarship to the Culver Military Academy.
28 October 1938
Jane's dad (Tombes) is an oil field worker who comes into a fortune and is then pushed into society by his wife.
29 December 1934
A husband-and-wife vaudeville team disguise their young son as a girl so he can enter a contest run by a movie studio that's looking for "a new Shirley Temple".
23 December 1933
A beautiful chorine marries a handsome rich socialite, but her idyllic life ends when she visits a dying old beau and is charged when he commits suicide.
04 May 1929
A simple filmed performance featuring Cantor, done up in his stage minstrel makeup, allegedly at the Ziegfeld Theatre Roof Garden, but actually filmed on a soundstage at the Paramount Astoria studio.
27 April 1943
While shooting a western on location, a Hollywood "cowboy" star--whose offscreen image is exactly the opposite of his onscreen one--is saved from disaster by a gregarious local girl.
15 October 1941
Like 1940's Melody Ranch, the 1941 Gene Autry vehicle Down Mexico Way was designed as a "special", to be promoted separately from Autry's regular B-western series as an A-picture attraction.
01 April 1934
A telephone operator gives up her job to try to be a nightclub singer.
05 July 1943
In this wartime musical, a feisty singer working in a London dive swears that she will become a star.
02 January 1942
A man tries to redeem himself after ducking out on his comrades before the fatal attack.
21 September 1939
A young man inherits a valuable piece of Texas land that an oil man plots to steal away.
16 April 1941
The story details the misadventures of two itinerant songwriters named Duke (Crosby) and Cliff (Foy) as they try to survive Army boot camp.
04 March 1936
An Irish crooner flirts with prize-fighting.
31 December 1937
The day after Carol returns from a European trip, she wakes up to find her dead father's creditors hauling everything away.
19 August 1941
Bob Clemens is a cameraman for newsreels. Assigned to shoot the Swiss ice skater Karen Vadja, he arrives too late, so decides to film a woman skating on a different New York rink and pass her off as Karen.
20 April 1943
Liz lives with her mother and stepfather in a boarding house on the "wrong side of the tracks"
23 May 1929
During the Florida land boom, the Marx Brothers run a hotel, auction off some land and thwart a jewel robbery.
16 March 1929
Eddie Peabody and His College Chums play us a few songs.
30 March 1939
Rose Pierce is discontent with her life as the wife of a small town plumber and has visions of becoming a wealthy socialite.
18 April 1936
In a small town in Indiana in the 1890s, the domineering and ambitious Mrs. Biddle arranges a marriage between her spoiled daughter Thelma and the town's prize catch, harvester David Langston, who is wedded to the soil.
16 December 1938
In this musical comedy, two star-struck small town kids head for the Big Apple and become famous for their jitterbug act.
04 January 1940
A young woman engaged to a millionaire falls for the understudy in a Broadway musical.
15 September 1940
His Arizona hometown of Torpedo invites Gene back to be the honorary sheriff of the Frontier Days Celebration.
17 June 1944
A journalist attacks the campaign of a mayoral candidate who has gained the endorsement of a rival newspaper.
31 July 1944
The three Scott sisters, Susie, Hallie and Lily, live in the small town of Riverdale with their father Tom, a handyman whose laziness is legendary.
17 June 1938
Socially prominent Michael Ashburn, chief assistant for a London loan broker makes a large loan during a closing time to a man for a pair of earrings.
04 June 1937
A small town Ohio barber accompanies his ditzy wife to Atlantic City, where she competes in the Happy Noodle Company's Mrs.
15 March 1929
Singer Ruth Etting sings two popular tunes of 1929. The whole short is filmed in one take.
14 September 1946
Brooke's brief marital life with Eric takes a downturn when she starts suspecting that he is starving his son from a prior marriage to death in order to claim his inheritance.
17 August 1942
A radio saleswoman helps a singing cattleman trap a shady meat buyer with a bogus broadcast.
17 August 1931
A mad scientist creates a time travel pill, which two goofballs volunteer to test, transporting them to ancient Egypt as Marc Antony and Julius Caesar vying for the beautiful Cleopatra's love in a chariot race.
