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Great news for fans of obscure old action films. The Daredevil Drivers (1938) is available on DVD From Warner Archives

Racecar driver Bill Foster (Dick Purcell) has the talent to collect racing trophies, but his reckless stunts on the track get him banned from the racing association altogether. Hitting the road with his loyal sidekick, mechanic “Stub” Wilson (vaudeville veteran Charley Foy), Bill crashes into a bus owned by Neeley Transport. Bill is determined to sock Neeley’s president in the nose because of the damage to his race car, only to discover that the president is the attractive Jerry Neeley (Beverly Roberts) – a woman immune to Bill’s charms. Bill goes to work for Tommy Burnell (Donald Briggs), the owner of a rival bus company that is sabotaging Neeley Transport. Once Bill learns he’s working for the wrong side, he goes out of his way to help Jerry save her company.

Ricardo Cortez in 'Ten Cents a Dance,' with Barbara Stanwyck. No matter how unthankful the role, whether hero or heel – or, not infrequently, a combination of both – Cortez left his bedroom-eyed, mellifluous-voiced imprint in his pre-Production Code talkies. Besides Barbara Stanwyck, during the 1920s and 1930s Cortez made love to and/or life difficult for, a whole array of leading ladies of that era, including Bebe Daniels, Gloria Swanson, Betty Compson, Betty Bronson, Greta Garbo, Florence Vidor, Claudette Colbert, Mary Astor, Kay Francis, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Joan Blondell, and Loretta Young*. (See previous post: “Ricardo Cortez Q&A: From Latin Lover to Multiethnic Heel.”) Not long after the coming of sound, Ricardo Cortez was mostly relegated to playing subordinate roles to his leading ladies – e.g., Kay Francis, Irene Dunne, Claudette Colbert – or leads in “bottom half of the double bill” programmers at Warner Bros. or on loan to other studios. Would...

Pat O'Brien movies on TCM: 'The Front Page,' 'Oil for the Lamps of China' Remember Pat O'Brien? In case you don't, you're not alone despite the fact that O'Brien was featured – in both large and small roles – in about 100 films, from the dawn of the sound era to 1981. That in addition to nearly 50 television appearances, from the early '50s to the early '80s. Never a top star or a critics' favorite, O'Brien was nevertheless one of the busiest Hollywood leading men – and second leads – of the 1930s. In that decade alone, mostly at Warner Bros., he was seen in nearly 60 films, from Bs (Hell's House, The Final Edition) to classics (American Madness, Angels with Dirty Faces). Turner Classic Movies is showing nine of those today, Nov. 11, '15, in honor of what would have been the Milwaukee-born O'Brien's 116th birthday. Pat O'Brien and James Cagney Spencer Tracy had Katharine Hepburn.

Silver screen star Beverly Roberts has died. She was 96.

The actress passed away of natural causes at her home in Laguna Niguel, California on Monday.

Roberts kicked off her Hollywood career in The Singing Kid with Al Jolson in 1936, before co-starring with Humphrey Bogart in Two Around the World that same year.

She left Warner Bros. studio in 1940 to pursue a career as a singer, touring the U.S. with the Dorsey Brothers band.

The star was later appointed an administrator of the Theater Authority union, a job title she kept for 25 years.

Roberts never married and had no children.

Beverly Roberts, who played rugged dames in Warner Bros. potboilers of the 1930s, died July 12 in her sleep of natural causes in Laguna Niguel, Calif. She was 95.