Brian Donlevy
Brian Donlevy (February 9, 1901 – April 5, 1972) was an Ulster-born American film actor, noted for playing tough guys from the 1930s to the 1960s. He usually appeared in supporting roles. Among his best known films are Beau Geste (1939) and The Great McGinty (1940). For his... Read full bio →
Featured Characters
Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Juliet Forrest is convinced that the reported death of her father in a mountain car crash was no accident. Her father was a prominent cheese scientist working on a secret recipe. To prove it was murder, she enlists the services of private eye Rigby Reardon.
Pit Stop
Grant Willard sponsors drivers in a "new" form of race car driving called The Figure Eight. The rise and fall of one such driver is the whole story behind PIT STOP.
Five Golden Dragons
While travelling through Hong Kong, Bob Mitchell accidentally stumbles into the middle of criminal negotiations between a mean gang, the Five Golden Dragons and the local mobsters.
Gammera the Invincible
An atomic explosion awakens Gammera--a giant, fire-breathing turtle monster--from his millions of years of hibernation. Enraged at being roused from such a sound sleep, he takes it out on Tokyo.
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini
When he's stationed in Tahiti, a sailor hires a witch doctor to keep an eye on his girlfriend.
Curse of the Fly
The son of the inventor of a matter-transporter, which turned him into a monster when he tried to transport himself along with a tiny housefly, continues to pursue his father's experiment, while his own two sons attempt to extricate him, themselves and the family name from further disaster and scandal.
The Pigeon That Took Rome
An American Infantry officer assigned to a cloak-and-dagger role in Rome uses homing pigeons for outside contact, with humorous results.
The Errand Boy
Paramutual Pictures wants to know where all the money is going so they hire Morty to be their spy. Morty works for Mr. Sneak and gets a job in the mail room so that he can have access to the lot. But all that Morty ever finds is that he can cause havoc no matter what he does.
Never So Few
A U.S. military troop takes command of a band of Burmese guerillas during World War II.
Cowboy
Chicago hotel clerk Frank Harris dreams of life as a cowboy, and he gets his chance when, jilted by the father of the woman he loves, he joins Tom Reece and his cattle-driving outfit. Soon, though, the tenderfoot finds out life on the range is neither what he expected nor what he's been looking for...
Quatermass 2
In England, a group of space scientists led by Bernard Quatermass, who have developed plans for the first Moon colony, learn that a secret, ostensibly government-run, complex of identical design has been built in a remote part of England and is the focus of periodic falls of small, hollow "meteorites" originating in outer space.
A Cry in the Night
A police captain's emotions get in the way when his daughter is kidnapped.
The Quatermass Xperiment
The first manned spacecraft, fired from an English launchpad, is lost from radar before roaring back to Earth and crashing in a farmer's field. The rocket is found to contain only one of the three men who took off in it; and he is unable to talk but appears to be undergoing a torturous physical and mental metamorphosis.
The Big Combo
Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangsters' girlfriend.
Woman They Almost Lynched
Civil War period film about refined young woman Leslie who comes to Western town and learns to tote gun; title tells the rest.
Hoodlum Empire
It's a deadly play for power when a Mafia chieftain's top gun goes straight and threatens to testify against the big boss and his cruel, nationwide network of crime. The picture, which was shot in a semi-documentary style, was inspired by the Kefauver investigations of 1950-51.
Shakedown
Jack Early is a photographer who will stop at nothing to climb his way to the very top of the success ladder. On the strength of his sheer tenacity, he gets a job with a major newspaper, and it's not long before he's made a name for himself by charming a notorious crime boss, Nick Palmer, into allowing himself to be photographed.
Impact
An unfaithful wife plots with her lover to kill her husband, but when her lover is accidentally killed instead, her husband, who was wounded but is also believed to be dead, hides out in a small town where he builds a new life for himself.
Kiss of Death
Ex hood Nick Bianco rats on vicious killer Tommy Udo. But when at trial Udo is acquitted, Bianco is sure that Udo will be out for revenge.
Killer McCoy
Following a mishap in the ring, hard-nosed lightweight Tommy "Killer" McCoy gets mixed up with a big time gambler and falls for his educated daughter Sheila, against her father's better wishes.
Canyon Passage
Businessman Logan Stuart is torn between his love of two very different women in 1850's Oregon and his loyalty to a compulsive gambler friend who goes over the line.
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
A small-town girl with a soft spot for American soldiers wakes up the morning after a wild farewell party for the troops to find that she married someone she can't remember.
An American Romance
A European immigrant becomes a master of industry but almost loses his family.
Hangmen Also Die!
During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.
Wake Island
In late 1941, with no hope of relief or re-supply, a small band of United States Marines tries to keep the Japanese Navy from capturing their island base.
The Glass Key
When a corrupt politician Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy) is accused of murder, his friend and right hand man Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd) is determined to track down the real killer. Fending off amorous advances from his boss’ fiancée Janet Henry (Veronica Lake) and attacks from gangsters with nothing to lose, Beaumont’s loyalty is severely tested.
Hold Back the Dawn
A Romanian gigolo tries to enter the US from Mexico by marrying an American.
Birth of the Blues
Jeff grows up near Basin Street in New Orleans, playing his clarinet with the dock workers. He puts together a band, the Basin Street Hot-Shots, which includes a cornet player, Memphis. They struggle to get their jazz music accepted by the cafe society of the city.
When the Daltons Rode
Fictionalized story of how the Dalton brothers were wronged by a crooked development company and became outlaws when the corrupt local courts offered them no justice.
The Great McGinty
Told in flashback, Depression-era bum Dan McGinty is recruited by the city's political machine to help with vote fraud. His great aptitude for this brings rapid promotion from "the boss," who finally decides he'd be ideal as a new, nominally "reform" mayor; but this candidacy requires marriage.
Brigham Young
In 1844, after the assassination of Mormon leader Joseph Smith by an angry mob in Illinois, the Mormons choose Brigham Young as their new leader and follow him to a new promised land in Utah.
Union Pacific
In 1862, Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads compete westward across the wilderness toward California. A crooked politician tries to stop construction of the transcontinental railroad.
Jesse James
After railroad agents forcibly evict the James family from their family farm, Jesse and Frank turn to banditry for revenge.
Destry Rides Again
Tom Destry, son of a legendary frontier peacekeeper, doesn’t believe in gunplay. Thus he becomes the object of widespread ridicule when he rides into the wide-open town of Bottleneck, the personal fiefdom of the crooked Kent.
Beau Geste
Brothers Beau, John and Digby Geste join the Foreign Legion, where they fall under the rule of tyrannical Sergeant Markoff. Beau and John are assigned to Fort Zinderneuf, where Markoff tries to break their spirit, aware of a dark family secret concerning a fabulous jewel one of them carries.
In Old Chicago
The O'Leary brothers--honest Jack and roguish Dion--become powerful figures, and eventually rivals, in Chicago on the eve of its Great Fire.
Barbary Coast
Mary Rutledge arrives from the east, finds her fiance dead, and goes to work at the roulette wheel of Louis Charnalis' Bella Donna, a rowdy gambling house in San Francisco in the 1850s. She falls in love with miner Carmichael and takes his gold dust at the wheel. She goes after him, Louis goes after her with intent to harm Carmichael.