This third film version of the lachrymose Fannie Hurst novel Back Street stars Susan Hayward as Rae Smith the role previously essayed by Irene Dunne (in 1932) and Margaret Sullavan (in 1941). In both earlier films, Rae Smith sacrifices 28 years of her life to her married lover, who can never get a divorce and who compels Rae to squirrel herself ...
Like Pontius Pilate, director John Ford asks "What is truth?" in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--but unlike Pilate, Ford waits for an answer. The film opens in 1910, with distinguished and influential U.S. senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) returning to the dusty little frontier town where they met and ...
Director Alfred Hitchcock lets us know from the outset that The Wrong Man is a painfully true story and not one of his customary fabricated suspense yarns, through the simple expedient of walking before the camera and telling us as much (this introductory appearance replaced his planned cameo role as a nightclub patron). The real-life protagonist, ...
If Warner Bros.' pageantlike The FBI Story resembles an episode of Jack Webb's Dragnet at times, it's probably because the screenplay was by veteran Dragnet scrivener Richard L. Breen. The film meticulously details the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from its formation in 1924 to the present day (1959, that is). The story is told ...
After a dangerous tiger turns on its trainer and escapes from the circus, a small town in Texas finds itself in an uproar over its capture. As it is hunted by numerous parties, a young girl begins protesting and starts a nationwide movement to plead for the tiger's safety. As the situation gains more attention, the local attitude is torn by ...
If John Ford is the greatest Western director, The Searchers is arguably his greatest film, at once a grand outdoor spectacle like such Ford classics as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) and a film about one man's troubling moral codes, a big-screen adventure of the 1950s that anticipated the complex themes and characters that ...
In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense (and perhaps the best-known film director in the world) when he released Psycho and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. From its first scene, in which an unmarried couple balances pleasure and guilt in a lunchtime liaison in a cheap hotel (hardly ...
James Garner stars as a genial cowboy in this wholesome slice of Disney family fare. Garner is Lincoln Costain, a cowboy in the 1850s who finds himself shanghaied and shipwrecked on a Hawaiian island. He runs into luckless widow Henrietta MacAvoy (Vera Miles) and helps her turn her struggling potato farm into a prosperous cattle ranch. But evil ...
Chance Buckman (John Wayne) heads a team of international trouble shooters who travel around the world to put out oil fires. The dangerous profession has taken a toll on the marriage between Chance and Madelyn (Vera Miles), who leaves when she can no longer endure the stress of saying goodbye and fearing she will never see him again. With his ...
In this comical Disney western, a cavalry rider goes AWOL in the midst of a raid to save the lives of a band of Indian women and children. He then takes off across the New Mexican desert astride a camel. En route, he meets a young white boy who was raised by an Indian. The Indian is trying to find his tribe and so enlists the aid of the wayward ...
A sequel to one of the most popular horror films of all time, this psychological thriller received a pleasantly surprised, positive critical reception. Anthony Perkins returns as Norman Bates, who has just been released from an insane asylum after 22 years, having been judged clinically sane by the State of California over the objections of Lila ...
Follow Me, Boys!, Disney's paean to the Boys Scouts of America, leaves no cliché unturned: we're even offered the old reliable "kid hanging over cliff by rope" bit. Corny, sentimental and obvious though it may be, the film is a delight to watch, especially whenever Fred MacMurray dominates the screen. MacMurray plays Lem Siddons, a 1930s musician ...
The made-for-TV Fire! is graced with a made-for-TV cast, including Ernest Borgnine, Patty Duke Astin, Vera Miles, Alex Cord and Donna Mills. It all begins when a convict (Neville Brand) escapes from an Oregon road gang. To cover his trail, the fugitive starts a forest fire. Need you be told at this point that Fire! is an Irwin Allen production? ...
After an outlaw (Sam Elliott) is brought to justice, he begins to work on the sheriff's wife (Vera Miles) and eventually gets her to help him escape from prison. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
Few actresses other than Joan Crawford could have successfully pulled off the melodramatic excesses of Autumn Leaves. Though a very attractive fortysomething, Crawford remains aloof from romance until she meets Cliff Robertson, a young man half her age. An ardent and persistent suitor, Robertson finally breaks down her resistence to marriage. ...
The title character is a benign 7-foot-tall grizzly bear (perhaps all grizzlies are benign, but we're not about to get close enough to find out). Little Clint Howard befriends the bear, naming the beast Ben. Clint's wildlife-officer dad Dennis Weaver and mom Vera Miles have some trouble adjusting to the boy's new pet, but all ends happily after a ...
The appealing Daphne Zuniga makes her inauspicious debut in this dreary slasher film as a pampered freshman sorority pledge haunted by memory lapses and bizarre, violent dreams involving her parents (Clu Gulager and Vera Miles). Despite some progress in dream-research, her condition becomes dangerously unstable during a Hell Week initiation stunt ...
An America Air Force pilot (Dennis Weaver) tries to fight the Japanese as they invade the Philippines. Despite his efforts and the help of a jungle nurse (Vera Miles), the country is overrun by the enemy forces as the stronghold of Corregidor falls. Producer-director Keith Larsen plays the role of Colonel Turner in this routine and uneventful war ...
The producers of In Search of America never declared outright that the made-for-TV film was intended as a series pilot, but there sure are plenty of loose plot ends. Carl Betz and Vera Miles play the parents of shaggy-haired college dropout Jeff Bridges. At the boy's suggestion, Betz and Miles pack their family--including grandma Ruth McDevitt- ...
Originally trade-previewed as Those Crazy Calloways, Disney's Those Calloways is a lengthy, anecdotal film about a highly individualistic New England family. Patriarch Cam Calloway (Brian Keith) is regarded as a crank by the local villagers because of his dream to build a bird sanctuary that will protect migratory geese from hunters. Cam uses all ...
When his wife Suzanna Love is seriously injured in a car accident, Keir Dullea agrees to a radical and revolutionary surgical procedure to save the life of the comatose woman. Love undergoes a brain transplant-and, miracle of miracles, survives. Unfortunately, the brain donor was a murdered woman, and now Love is besieged by horrific memories of ...
This psychological thriller was cowritten by Steven Pressfield, who went on to become a successful novelist with The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) and historical fiction such as Gates of Fire and Tides of War. Linda Hamilton stars as Lauren Porter, a well-regarded professor of psychology who fears that she may be suffering from multiple ...
Fires and tornados add to the difficulties of the Tanners, a Pittsburgh family of three which has pulled up stakes and moved to what they thought would be a fully functional ranch in Wyoming. Instead they find a broken down ruin. In addition to having to rebuild and battle the elements, they have a fight on their hands. Their cattleman neighbor ...
By 1955, the original Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller, had long since retired, and RKO Pictures tried several replacements. Tarzan's Hidden Jungle was the first of six films starring Gordon Scott as the ape man. It also was the last of 12 Tarzan pictures released by RKO Studios, and other studios subsequently stepped in to try to carry on the long ...
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
Portions of content provided by All Music Guide or All Movie Guide. © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide and All Movie Guide are registered Trademarks of All Media Guide, LLC.