Michael Brandon Movies
After a flurry of stage activity, Brooklyn-born leading man Michael Brandon settled into a leading-man career before the cameras. Brandon's first film appearance was as Mike Vecchio in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). Perhaps the most notable of his many TV-movie stints was as real-life biographer/confidant William Bast in the 1976 biopic James Dean. Six years later, he showed up as David Marquette, deranged kidnapper of Maud Evans in the never-resolved cliffhanger that closed out the weekly TV series Emerald Point NAS. He was seen to better advantage as Serpico-like Lt. Dempsey in the Anglo-British adventure weekly Dempsey and Makepeace (1985), co-starring with his second wife, Glynis Barber (wife number one was Bionic Woman star Lindsay Wagner). He also played overly sensitive yuppie patriarch Teddy Kramer in the 1992 sitcom Home Fires. Michael Brandon should not be confused with the 1940s utility player of the same name, who, as Archie Twitchell, played the alpaca-coat salesman in Sunset Boulevard (1950). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1971
Carrie Snodgress, who after several years in show business became an "overnight success" with Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), stars in the made-for-TV The Impatient Heart. In this pilot for a never-sold series titled McCormack, Ms. Snodgress plays a Manhattan social worker with a knack for straightening out everyone's problems. When it comes to her own life, she isn't quite as adept. Case in point: A handsome but testy young man (Michael Brandon), with whom she falls in love. Director John Badham once more suppresses his British upbringing to serve up a distinctly American slice of life to the TV audience. Featured in the cast of The Impatient Heart is Marian Hailey, a prolific TV commercial actress of the 1960s and 1970s who rarely received a large role in "regular" TV. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Lovers and Other Strangers became a "sleeper" hit, based on a play by Renée Taylor and Joseph Bologna. The story is essentially a series of vignettes and anecdotes, unified by an impending marriage. Father of the bride Hal (Gig Young) has problems with his long-suffering mistress, Cathy (Anne Jackson), who spends much of the film sitting on the toilet, crying her eyes out; Wilma (Anne Meara), the bride's sex-starved sister, can't wrest her husband, Johnny (Harry Guardino), away from the TV; and Frank (Richard S. Castellano), as the groom's father, slips comfortably into Bartlett's Familiar Quotations with his oft-repeated query "So what's the story?" Twelfth-billed Diane Keaton makes her film debut as a garrulous wedding guest. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bea Arthur, Bonnie Bedelia, (more)
- Add Thomas & Friends: Steamies vs. Diesels to QueueAdd Thomas & Friends: Steamies vs. Diesels to top of Queue
Two kinds of engines keep Sir Topham Hatt's railway running as according to plan -- the steam engine (steamies) and diesel engines. In this episode of Thomas & Friends, the diesels let ego get the best of them, and tease the amiable Thomas the Steam Engine. Thomas is forced to look at his own code of ethics when the diesels run into some trouble that only he can get them out of. In the end, the rival locomotives discover they have more similarities than differences. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
