Five of a Kind
Cast & Crew
Herbert I. Leeds
The Dionne Quintuplets: Yvonne, Cecile, Marie, Annette, Emelie
Jean Hersholt
Claire Trevor
Cesar Romero
Slim Summerville
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Christine Nelson, reporter for the New York Bulletin , stops on a stormy night at the home of Rev. Matthew Brand in upstate New York in pursuit of a lead concerning the disappearance of heiress Elinor Kingsley on the eve of her wedding. After the reverend lets Chris remain while he goes on an errand, Duke Lester, reporter for the rival New York Daily Chronicle , sneaks into the house. Planning to steal Duke's story, Chris impersonates the reverend's daughter, but he spies her reporter's badge and writes a phony story that the reason Elinor left was because her betrothed, Johnnie Wayne, is insane. As Duke passionately kisses Chris goodbye, she lifts the story from his pocket and calls it in to her paper. However, when she returns to the city looking forward to a raise, her editor fires her because the Wayne family is suing the paper because of her story. After Chris disrupts Duke's outdoor radio interview show, she and her friend Libby Long go to a Shirley Temple movie. During the newsreel story about the Wyatt quintuplets of Moosetown, Canada, Chris gets an idea to do a "Newsreel of the Air" to rival Duke's program. After the editor of the New York World-Dispatch goes for it, her show soon become tops in popularity. When Duke gets a tip that Chris and Libby have left on a train for Moosetown to sign the quintuplets for their first radio broadcast, he gets there first by plane and, after introducing himself to Constable Jim Ogden as an inspector from New York, warns that Chris, whom he says is a notorious confidence women, is headed for the area. Ogden, assisted by his friend Asa Wyatt, the father of the quintuplets, arrests Chris and Libby, while Duke tries to get Dr. John Luke to sign his contract. After Libby feigns a fit so that the doctor will come immediately, Duke's ruse is exposed, but he escapes through a window. Back in New York after her successful show with the quintuplets, Chris is visited by Duke who apologizes and proposes marriage. When he suggests that they work together now that she has signed a thirteen-week contract with the quintuplets, she throws him out. Just then, Dr. Scott Williams, head of a foundling home, orphanage, hospital and clinic that is badly in need of funds, arrives to ask Chris for help raising money. Thinking that the person at the door is Duke, Chris throws Libby's bath water in Dr. Williams' face. After apologizing and visiting the home, Chris gets an idea to bring the quintuplets to New York for a benefit to help the home. After he reads about the event, Duke stages a hoax involving a phony birth of sextuplets. Chris is taken in, and after she does a live broadcast and the hoax is found out, the quintuplets' trip is cancelled because it is thought that she perpetrated the hoax for publicity. After she tearfully blames Duke for the fate of future babies who will be turned away from the home, Duke goes with Dr. Williams to Moosetown to plead for Chris's plan. Although the quintuplets are denied permission to travel to New York, Duke arranges a television transmission of the quintuplets' fourth birthday celebration to an audience in New York, with proceeds going to the home. In the audience, after Chris tells Dr. Williams, who has developed an affection for her, that she would find life dull without the thrills of life as a reporter, he sends Duke to sit next to her and conveys that Duke was responsible for the transmission. Duke, at first upset that Dr. Williams told his secret, accepts Chris's arm as they watch the quintuplets sing and dance.
Director
Herbert I. Leeds
Cast
The Dionne Quintuplets: Yvonne, Cecile, Marie, Annette, Emelie
Jean Hersholt
Claire Trevor
Cesar Romero
Slim Summerville
Henry Wilcoxon
Inez Courtney
John Qualen
Jane Darwell
Pauline Moore
John Russell
Andrew Tombes
David Torrence
Marion Byron
Hamilton Macfadden
Spencer Charters
Charles D. Brown
Kay Griffith
Jack Norton
Bert Roach
Lester Dorr
Claire Du Brey
Esther Howard
Ralph Dunn
James Flavin
John Collins
Charles Tannen
Syd Saylor
Phyllis Fraser
James Aubrey
Ed Gargan
Eddie Anderson
Charles Wilson
Lillian Porter
Arthur Hoyt
Val Brockner
Sigrid Ulrichson
Louise Corriveau
Mollie O'shaughnessey
Grace Hayle
Ruth Warren
Carlie Taylor
Crew
Fred Allen
William H. Anderson
Lou Breslow
Sidney Clare
Daniel B. Clark
Skippy Delfino
William Eckhardt
W. D. Flick
Chester Gore
Herschel
Bernard Herzbrun
Samuel Kaylin
Levaughn Larson
Thomas Little
Helen A. Myron
John Patrick
Samuel Pokrass
Nora Rouselle
Sol M. Wurtzel
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
This was the third and last feature film starring the Dionne Quintuplets. For information regarding the quintuplets and their films, please see the entry above for their first film, The Country Doctor, which was a fictionalized account of their birth. The working title of this film was Everybody's Sweethearts. All of the scenes with the quintuplets, who were four-years-old at the time, were shot at Callander, Ontario. Filming took place for one hour only per day, between 10:30 and 11:30 a.m.; the crew was able to set up cameras and props within ten minutes, and the quintuplets were clothed in panties, petticoats and dresses which were sewn together so that they could be put on quickly and fastened by means of one zipper. According to Variety, the quintuplets appeared seven times in the film for a total of about eighteen minutes. According to a press release, the quintuplets were paid $100,000 for appearing in the film. The quintuplets, who spoke French at the time, were taught some English so that they could sing the song "All Mixed Up" in the film. The quintuplets are presented with six-week-old cocker spaniel puppies in a scene in the film; according to a press release, they were the first pets they ever had, and the presentation came as a complete surprise to them so that the filmmakers could catch their expressions of delight when they saw the puppies. According to news items and press releases, Joan Davis was to have played the role of "Libby Long," which went to Inez Courtney; Alfred Werker was originally set to direct, but executive producer Sol M. Wurtzel assigned twenty-seven-year-old Herbert I. Leeds after seeing his previous effort, Keep Smiling, which starred Jane Withers (see below); and some scenes were shot by hidden cameras. The quintuplets' nurses, Sigrid Ulrichson, Louise Corriveau and Mollie O'Shaughnessey, acted in a scene as nurses.
