Roscoe Karns Trailers
Man's Favorite Sport? TrailerOnionhead TrailerTexas, Brooklyn & Heaven Trailer
Roscoe Karns (September 7, 1891 – February 6, 1970) was an American actor who appeared in nearly 150 films between 1915 and 1964. He specialized in cynical, wise-cracking (and often tipsy) characters, and his rapid-fire delivery enlivened many comedies and crime thrillers in the 1930s and 1940s. Though he appeared in numerous silent films, such as Wings and Beggars of Life, his career didn't really take off until sound arrived. Arguably his best-known film role was the annoying bus passenger Oscar Shapeley, who tries to pick up Claudette Colbert in the Oscar-winning comedy It Happened One Night (1934), quickly followed by one of his best performances as the boozy press agent Owen O'Malley in Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century. (Six years later, he co-starred as one of the reporters in another Hawks classic, His Girl Friday.) In 1937, Paramount teamed him with Lynne Overman as a pair of laconic private eyes in two B comedy-mysteries, Murder Goes to College and Partners in Crime. From 1950 to 1954, Karns played the title role in the popular DuMont Television Network series Rocky King, Inside Detective. His son, character actor Todd Karns, also appeared in that series.
From 1959 to 1962, Karns was cast as Admiral Walter Shafer in seventy-three of the ninety-five episodes of the CBS military sitcom/drama series, Hennesey, starring Jackie Cooper in the title role of a United States Navy physician, and Abby Dalton as nurse Martha Hale.
His final film was another Hawks comedy, Man's Favorite Sport?, in 1964.
Karns was born in San Bernardino, California, and died in Los Angeles.
Most Popular Roscoe Karns Trailers
Total trailers found: 138
24 February 1937
The policy-racket reaches it lean, bony fingers into the ivy-towers of a large university and the underworld trying to “beat the numbers-racket” with applied mathematics.
03 October 1935
A fast-talking boxing manager and the somewhat hapless fighter he manages happen to run into a young man who was a good prizefighter in his day but is now out of the sport and has a drinking problem.
08 March 1941
A high-society gent has a secret life - he writes murder mysteries and hangs out with the police attempting to solve crimes.
11 February 1938
Joe McKnight temporarily leaves his fiancée, Nora Langdon, for an expedition in a South American jungle.
01 March 1940
A man's ex-wife is found murdered, and he finds himself to be the prime suspect.
26 February 1944
The experiences of a disparate group of young men as they make their way through Navy boot camp.
22 February 1934
A runaway heiress makes a deal with the rogue reporter trailing her but the mismatched pair end up stuck with each other when their bus leaves them behind.
23 June 1928
A western settlement of pioneer descendants is threatened with the loss of its water supply through the encroachments of nearby townspeople.
23 July 1922
Working as a wardrobe girl in a cheap traveling stock company, Mamie Judd secretly loves Jenks, the leading man, who scarcely notices the young girl.
02 February 1935
An escaped convict redeems himself by becoming an auto racing champion.
18 November 1928
A composer and his daughter emigrate to America in the hope that he can sell his symphony. But he meets with little success and begins to give up hope.
18 January 1940
Walter Burns is an irresistibly conniving newspaper publisher desperate to woo back his paper’s star reporter, who also happens to be his estranged wife.
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.
11 April 1935
A detective who has "four hours to kill" before delivering his prisoner, an escaped killer, spends the time in the lobby of a Broadway theater where a musical is playing.
03 September 1932
A socialite finds herself involved in a murder trial that is prosecuted by her boyfriend.
10 October 1942
A demoted reporter (George Brent) and his girlfriend (Brenda Marshall) seek to expose a crime kingpin.
29 November 1940
Gran Higgins falls under the spell of a love-starved widow.
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.
30 June 1946
Two T-men track a tax evader and his money to an Idaho ski resort, where a raven tends bar.
24 August 1930
A hard-boiled nightclub owner saves a beautiful young girl from drowning. He promptly falls in love with her, but she prefers a younger, more-genteel lover.
11 March 1938
Racketeer Steve Recka, art patron and political power-maker, rules his town and Madame Lan Ying, his beautiful friend and hostess (read:mistress), with an iron hand.
24 September 1936
Jennie Mullins and her fiancé Peter Cary are happily in love but their families are miserable about their relationship.
05 February 1942
Rival reporters Sam Craig and Tess Harding fall in love and get married, only to find their relationship strained when Sam comes to resent Tess' hectic lifestyle.
31 January 1964
Roger Willoughby is a renowned fishing expert, who, unbeknownst to his friends, co-workers, or boss, has never cast a line in his life.
16 July 1948
Eddie Tayloe's grandfather leaves him six thousand dollars and the money belt it came in, freeing Tayloe to leave his dull newspaper job in Texas and move to New York to become a playwright.
12 August 1927
Two young men, one rich, one middle class, both in love with the same woman, become US Air Corps fighter pilots and, eventually, heroic flying aces during World War I.
29 May 1936
Frances Farmer's second film is a typical B-programmer from the Paramount lot of 1936--up and coming stars (John Howard, Robert Cummings, Grant Withers, Farmer) in a concerning the Coast Guard and smugglers.
20 September 1925
Just before he propelled the crime melodrama to new, macabre heights in The Unholy Three, Browning directed this partially lost morality tale pertaining to a different kind of horror: that of a middle-class family living beyond their means and falling prey to moneylenders.
05 April 1943
Learning that his long-unseen son is soon to arrive for a visit, a small-time con-man enlists the help of his cronies to help him pretend to be a wealthy and important businessman.
06 March 1936
A gangland murder is the motivating factor of this fast-moving crime drama. George Murphy stars as reporter Kent Shevlin, whose investigation of the murder leads to a tenure as a temporary FBI agent.
04 May 1940
An inventor and his bride get testy in the city as they try to make ends meet.
05 October 1939
Comedy about a little girl who's uncle makes her an ice skating star, only to take all of her money.
18 November 1932
An elderly business tycoon, believed to be dying, decides to give a million dollars each to eight strangers chosen at random from the phone directory.
26 September 1936
A chorus girl and a heavyweight boxer are paired romantically as a publicity stunt.
31 January 1941
Pa Higgins has decided to retire but winds up being forced to run for mayor. Ladd is both boyfriend to the Higgins girl and the son of Pa's opponent.
18 December 1933
In Victorian England, a bored young girl dreams that she has entered a fantasy world called Wonderland, populated by even more fantastic characters.
23 November 1923
The first part tells the story of Moses leading the Jews from Egypt to the Promised Land, his receipt of the tablets and the worship of the golden calf.
27 July 1940
A small town farmer, who happens to be very wealthy, meets and falls for an actress, but his friends warn him she's only interested in his money.
29 September 1939
After discovering his star dancer is expecting and can't perform, film producer H.W. Workman and his publicist concoct a scheme to stage a college dance contest to find a new star.
01 September 1931
A novelist and his younger brother fall in love with the same woman.
17 March 1939
A Chinese-American surgeon faces a moral dilemma after operating on the mob boss in charge of vice and protection rackets in her city's Chinatown.
01 June 1947
A poor young man is finally able to achieve his dream of running a horse at the track, but when he starts becoming successful, he begins to lose sight of what mattered to him before.
22 March 1944
An usher at a radio station studio pretends to be an executive at the station in order to help a pretty girl become a singer.
06 October 1927
A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer.
11 May 1934
A temperamental Broadway producer trains an untutored actress, but when she becomes a star, she proves a match for him.
22 December 1928
Ruth Butler, a clerk in an emporium, marries Jimmy Rutledge and thereby greatly displeases his mother, the owner of the emporium, because of Ruth's lowly origins.
24 September 1926
A diamond is stolen at a houseboat party given by the district attorney. He gives the thief a chance to return it by putting an empty box on a table and turning out the lights.
24 December 1932
Idealistic attorney Anton Adam makes headlines when he successfully prosecutes prominent New York City political party boss John Gilmurry.
28 April 1932
After he stumbles across a murder, a young reporter devises an elaborate scene to keep his newspaper stories about the crime front-page news.
19 December 1941
A struggling singer, devoted to his young son, fears the child's super-spoiled, unloving but wealthy mother will gain custody of the boy.
14 October 1930
An Irish policeman handles gangsters, a mystery woman and a wise-guy reporter.
28 December 1929
Show girl Jill Deverne is married to song writer Fred Deverne, and everyone is involved in the Broadway night life and endless parties.
03 March 1933
Two lovers are living together and are not married; they had made a promise as children to get married when they grew up, but they "didn't wait.
27 November 1943
Two writers, friends since childhood, fight over their books and lives.
03 March 1933
A couple of down-and-out British aristocrats buy an American roadhouse.
28 February 1946
Set at a major newspaper, this crime drama centers on a fellow who returns to newspaper reporting after he bombs as a playwright.
21 May 1937
Philo Vance investigates a series of murders among members of the wealthy Greene family.
05 November 1932
A young, innocent small-town church organist is thrown out of her home, told she was adopted, and that her mother was an evil woman.
10 January 1932
Gar Evans is a con artist, who pretends to be the owner of a "Golden Gate Artificial Rubber Company", and he is looking for investors.
23 March 1934
"Lucky" Davis, a ladies-man and a devil-may-care U. S. Marine Sergeant, is leading a Marine-squadron on an expedition through a Phillipine jungle where an outlaw bandit is leading a guerilla-war rebellion.
