Larry Gates Movies

Jason Robards stars as the ailing, 62-year-old President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in F.D.R.: The Last Year. Though visibly frail and weary, Roosevelt runs for a precedent-setting fourth term. He also oversees plans for the D-Day Invasion and engages in tempestuous summit meetings with his wartime allies Stalin (Nehemiah Persoff) and Churchill (Wensley Pithey). Eileen Heckart co-stars as Eleanor Roosevelt, while Kim Hunter plays his "great and good friend," artist Lucy Rutherfurd, who is at his side when he suffers his fatal cerebral hemorrhage in April of 1945. The 3-hour, made-for-TV F.D.R.: The Last Year was first telecast May 15, 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An upper crust's sharp tongue has a negative impact on those who surround her in this adaptation of Richard Sheridan's popular comedy of manners. Noted for her quick wit and equally speedy willingness to sink reputations without a second thought, Lady Sneerwell soon finds that all of her gossiping has more of an impact on her acquaintances than she may have previously thought. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Long before Sally Struthers began promoting mail-order college degrees, she starred in this made-for-TV melodrama. Struthers plays Sara Moore, a young woman suffering from a rare blood disease. There's a slim possibility of her survival, but anxious surgeon Dr. Lawrence Maddox (James Franciscus) can't wait; he needs Sara as an organ donor for a crucial heart transplant, and he needs her now. Sara escapes to Hawaii, enjoying the sights and rebuilding her health -- with unkindly Doctor Maddox just one step behind her. Aloha Means Goodbye was the sort of ridiculous film fare that convinced Sally Struthers to keep her day job on All in the Family. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Pueblo is a 2-hour videotaped special, originally telecast March 29, 1973 on ABC Theatre. Hal Holbrook stars as commander Lloyd M. Bucher, who in January of 1968 was forced to surrender the USS Pueblo to North Korea. The drama is staged in an impressionistic manner, with dramatized transcripts from Bucher's subsequent Naval Review Board testimony flashing back to isolated moments of terror and torment during the Pueblo crew's 11-month sojourn in a North Korean prison camp. Despite network restrictions of the era, Pueblo is refreshingly frank, right down to the first-ever TV display of a familiar obscene gesture (which the American prisoners explain away to their captors as a "salute"!) Written by Stanley R. Greenberg, Pueblo was later adapted to a stage play, starring Shepperd Strudwick as Bucher. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Broadway Theatre Archive presents this performance of Ronald Ribman's The Ceremony of Innocence. Set in the 11th century, the story involves English King Ethelred (Richard Kiley) who must choose between going to war with the invading Danes or stopping the violence and bloodshed of his people. Also starring James Broderick and Jessie Royce Landis. Performed at the NET Playhouse and broadcast on PBS in 1975. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Airport had enough plot and enough star power in its cast for three feature films, and it only encompassed about half of the complexity or characters found in Arthur Hailey's best-selling potboiler. Essentially built around 12 harrowing hours at a major Midwestern airport, the film had everything an audience of the period could have wanted -- suspense, romance, drama, and comedy -- all spread across a vast canvas. Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) is the manager of Lincoln Airport, facing a night beset by the worst blizzard in a decade, a wife (Dana Wynter) who announces she wants a divorce, a primary runway blocked by an airliner stuck in a snowdrift, and a governing board ready to fire him. Bakersfeld's cynical, smooth-talking brother-in-law, Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin), won't let up on his criticism of the management at Lincoln, but he has his own problems as well, mostly in the form of a young stewardess, Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset), who is pregnant by him and whom he finds he genuinely loves. Add to that the presence of an old lady stowaway (Helen Hayes) and a mentally disturbed passenger (Van Heflin) carrying a bomb, and there's more than enough plot to keep viewers engrossed for two hours plus. Airport became one of the top-grossing movies of its era, racking up seven-digit box-office numbers and spawning an entire film genre -- the disaster movie. With Jean Seberg, George Kennedy, Lloyd Nolan, Barry Nelson, and Maureen Stapleton filling out the rest of the leading roles, there was something for almost everyone in this film. The movie still has a lot to offer if only as a prime example of Hollywood at its most successfully glitzy, but, if possible, viewers should try and see the letterboxed version of Airport on DVD (released May 2001). ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Star-in-the-making Robert Duvall appears in this episode as Joseph Troy, one of two fugitives who are hiding from the Feds in California's wine country. Biding their time until the heat is off, Troy and his partner George Wilson (Burt Brinckerhoff) make plans to pull off a bank heist during a local harvest celebration. But things take an unexpected turn when one of the two outlaws falls in love with Lisa Cintron (Diane Baker). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The winner of the 1967 Oscar for Best Picture (as well as four other Oscars), In the Heat of the Night is set in a small Mississippi town where an unusual murder has been committed. Rod Steiger plays sheriff Bill Gillespie, a good lawman despite his racial prejudices. When Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), a well-dressed northern African-American, comes to town, Gillespie instinctively puts him under arrest as a murder suspect. Tibbs reveals himself to be a Philadelphia police detective; after he and Gillespie come to a grudging understanding of one another, Tibbs offers to help in Gillespie's investigation. As the case progresses, both Gillespie and Tibbs betray a tendency to jump to culture-dictated conclusions. Still, the case is solved thanks to the informal teamwork of the two law officers. Based on the novel by John Ball, In the Heat of the Night inspired two sequels, both starring Poiter as Virgil Tibbs. In 1987, a TV series version of In the Heat of the Night appeared, with Carroll O'Connor as Gillespie and Howard Rollins as Tibbs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) launches an investigation into the beating death of drug addict Joseph Spooner. Veteran police detective Frank Harris (Andrew Duggan) was the last to see Spooner alive, and is the chief suspect in his death. Making matters worse is influential news commentator Tom Barrett (Larry Gates), who has publicly accused Harris of police brutality--making it all but impossible for the man to receive a fair trial. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Beau Bridges guest stars as a wounded young man who stumbles into the Justice Department Building in Virginia, carrying half a million dollars in stolen cash. Awakening from a brief coma, the boy can remember nothing about what has happened to him nor how he came into possession of the loot. Though they suspect that "John Doe" is a thief and a possible killer, the Feds go through an elaborate charade of alerting the public that they are holding the money for its rightful owner. Predictably, the FBI offices are swamped with dozens of phony claimants--including two shady-looking gentleman who are determined to silence "John Doe" permanently! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Robert Taylor closed out his MGM contract with the 1963 western Cattle King. Taylor plays a Wyoming rancher at odds with cattle baron Robert Middleton, who is dead set against barbed wire being erected on "his" land. Just so we know the film isn't kidding around, leading lady Joan Caulfield is shot full of holes some thirty minutes before the fade-out. Taylor finally vanquishes the evil Middleton, but not without help from Caulfield's previously spineless brother William Windom-not to mention the legal support of President Chester A. Arthur (Larry Gates). Cattle King was released in England as Guns of Wyoming. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Great Impostor is the true story of chameleonlike Canadian Ferdinand Waldo DeMara Jr., well-played by Tony Curtis. Unable to decide what he wants to do with his life, DeMara goes about pretending to be other people, hoping to eventually "find himself." He poses as a Harvard professor, a Trappist monk, a prison warden, and a navy physician, and manages each time to get away with the artifice. The film wavers uncertainly between tense drama and frothy comedy, with comedy finally winning out. Karl Malden co-stars as Father Devlin, the young DeMara's spiritual advisor, while Joan Blackman is the nominal (and hardly visible) heroine. The real Ferdinand DeMara (if indeed there was a real Ferdinand DeMara) can be seen in a supporting role in the 1960 melodrama The Hypnotic Eye. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide