Leonard J. Goldberg Movies

The fifth and final season of Hart to Hart is something of a retrospective: "Two Harts are Better Than One finds millionaire industrialist Jonathan Hart (Robert Wagner) and his journalist wife Jennifer (Stefanie Powers) recalling the day they first met--and also recall how they were nearly killed on the occasion! As the season rolls on, the Harts encounter danger at a polo game and a fox hunt; Jonathan unwittingly boards a fighter jet triggered to explode in midair, and later has a slightly less lethal game of doubles with tennis legend Martina Navratilova (in another episode, Tai Babilonia skates in for a cameo role); a Grecian vacation is "highlighted" by a deadly cross-country car race; a stopover in Rhodes involves the Harts with homicidal smugglers; and Ray Milland returns as Jennifer's father Stephen Edwards, this time the target of extermination by a nutcase claiming to be his long-lost illegitimate daughter. The series' 100th episode finds Jennifer hiding in a convent to avoid being offed by gangsters; the following week she barely has time to catch her breath when she is stalked by a demented stage manager during a charity stage show. The Harts' loyal chauffeur-protecter Max (Lionel Stander) is spotlighted in an episode in which he falls for a victimized pensioner, played by Dorothy Lamour. And still another movie great, June Allyson, plays a penpal of Max who is deluded into thinking the old reprobate is a millionaire. A decade after its cancellation in 1984, Hart to Hart would return in the form of eighth feature-length TV specials. The last of the original series' hour-long episodes, "Meanwhile Back at the Ranch", guest stars Patrick MacNee in the story of a 20 million dollar jewel theft--and guess which couple finds themselves smack in the middle of the situation? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The pilot film for the ABC series of the same name, Paper Dolls concentrates upon two pretty teenagers: Taryn Blake (Daryl Hannah) and Laurie Caswell (Alexandra Paul). Prodded on by their ambitious mothers (played by Joan Hackett and Jennifer Warren) and further exploited by a ruthless agent (Joan Collins), the two otherwise normal girls are transformed into 2,000-dollar-per-day fashion models. Although the glamour and excitement of the modeling world is thrilling at first, both Taryn and Laurie suffer mightily at the hands of those older than themselves. To make matters worse, both girls are thoroughly ostracized by their fellow teens. First telecast May 24, 1982, Paper Dolls became a weekly series over two years later, by which time the original stars had been replaced by Nicollette Sheridan (as Taryn), Terry Farrell (as Laurie), Brenda Vaccaro (as Taryn's mother), and Morgan Fairchild (as Racine, the agent); only Jennifer Warren was carried over from the original film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize are still on hand as the mysterious Mr. Roarke and his sensitive dwarf assistant Tattoo, still ushering guests onto Roarke's lavish tropical resort where for $50,000 per customer dreams can literally come true, as Fantasy Island enters its fifth season. Wendy Schaal, who'd appeared in several fourth-season episodes as Roarke's resourceful goddaughter Julie, is no longer part of the regular cast, though she figures prominently in the first of Season Five's two 90-minute episodes, wherein the mysterical Roarke has his final confrontation with the demonic Mephistopholes (Roddy McDowell). For the record, the second 90-minuter offers three separate plotlines, with Bob Denver as an ambitious freelance photographer who gets his mitts on a fortune-telling camera, Michelle Phillips as the granddaughter of Mata Hari, and George Chakiris as a geologist in search of his long-lost lover. Other guest stars appearing this season include Charo, Sherman Hemsley, Britt Ekland], Peter Graves, Gene Barry, Tom Smothers, Linda Blair, Vicki Lawrence, Helen Reddy, Jill St. John, and Wanda Villechaize, then the wife of guess who. The season finale features erstwhile "Charlie's Angel" Tanya Roberts as an amateur occulist who summons up a bashful ghost, and Bo Hopkins as a bounty hunter anxious to collect the reward on the only fugitive who has ever gotten away from him. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This made-for-TV suspenser stars Suzanne Pleshette as famous soap opera writer Carla Webber. Carla turns detective when the cast members of her program begin dying under mysterious circumstances. Barry Newman plays the investigating detective, while Robert Vaughn and Patrick O'Neal are special guest suspects. The film's principal attraction (and a hardly unexpected one) is the presence in the supporting cast of then-current soap opera stars: All My Children's Peter Bergman, General Hospital's Stuart Damon and Robin Mattson, Ryan's Hope's John Gabriel, and One Life to Live's Robert S. Woods. Fantasies was first networkcast January 18, 1982. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gene Hackman plays a disgruntled suburbanite who manages the Ultra-Sav, an all-night drugstore. He hates his job, hates his debts and responsibilities, and isn't overly fond of his wife (Diane Ladd) and son (Dennis Quaid). Partly as a form of protest, Hackman enters into an affair with Barbra Streisand, one of his wife's distant relatives (don't ask how she's related - it takes Hackman about thirty seconds to explain it to another character). Streisand doesn't belong in this picture at all, but she can be forgiven her acting excesses because she wasn't the first choice for the role anyway (Lisa Eichhorn dropped out just before shooting began). The best moments in All Night Long involve the steady stream of oddballs and losers who trickle into Hackman's establishment. There is also a cute Apocalypse Now parody involving a battery-operated toy helicopter. The principal attraction of All Night Long is Gene Hackman playing an endearingly recognizable modern type. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The lavish "wish-fulfillment" TV series Fantasy Island enters it fourth season with the mysterious Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban) and his mercurial aide Tattoo (Herve Villechaize) still making dreams come true for the various and sundry visitors to Roarke's lavish island resort. New to the series is Wendy Schaal), who is seen in a handful of episodes as Roarke's goddaughter Julie. If there were any doubts that Roarke was no mere entrepreneur, but instead possessed magical and even mystical powers, those doubts are dispelled in the season opener, in which Roarke enables a terrified woman (Carol Lynley) to break the bargain she has made with the Devil Himself, or, as he is known hereabouts, Mephistopholes (played by Roddy McDowell). This would not be Roarke's last dust-up with Satan, as proven later in the season in the rare half-hour episode "Possessed". The "fantasy" element of Fantasy Island is delved into even further in the Season Four episodes wherein a mermaid (Michelle Phillips) dreams of being human, Tattoo (Herve Villechaize) is endowed with the artistic talent of Toulouse-Lautrec, and Julie begs Roarke to revoke her own magic powers so that she can have a "normal" marriage. This year's guest-star lineup includes Ross Martin, Tom Wopat, Charlene Tilton, Loni Anderson, Lyle Waggoner, Bobby Sherman, Peter Marshall, Jerry Van Dyke, Ann Jillian, Joe Namath and Jimmy Dean. The longest entry this season is the 90-minute "Skater's Edge/Concerto of Death/The Last Great Death", which, per its title, features three rather two separate plotlines, and boasts a guest roster including skating star Peggy Fleming, Dick Shawn, Juliet Mills, Jack Carter and Bradford Dillman. Season Four ends with a standard hour-long effort, in which a poor Mexican family is allowed by Roarke bypass the usual $50,000 fee in order to give their son the "best birthday ever", while at the same time a timid woman "inherits" a romantic fantasy from a deceased relative. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Entering its third season as America's 22nd most popular series (not bad for an hour-long semi-anthology in a year dominated by sitcoms!), Fantasy Island indulges its fondness for the bizarre and offbeat with an opening episode wherein David Doyle plays an impoverished chap whose "fantasy" is to be murdered by a hit man so that his family can collect his insurance! While the enigmatic Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalban) and his diminutive sidekick Tattoo (Herve Villechaize) are for the most part noncommittal "stage managers" while fulfilling the innermost wishes of their clients, from time to time this season the viewer is afforded intensely personal glimpses of the two main characters. For example, after many impassioned requests, Tattoo is granted his own fantasy of being a "chick magnet"; and in a later episode, Tattoo develops a serious crush on one the Island's guests, aspiring country singer Audrey Landers. And in the rare single-plotline episode "The Wedding", it looks as though Mr. Roarke will finally tie the knot with the great love of his life, Helen Marsh (Samantha Eggar)--a story development that ,alas, ends in shattering tragedy. Other guest stars this season are a fascinating mixture indeed, including Adrienne Barbeau (who'd been seen in the second feature-length Fantasy Island pilot episode back in 1978), Dale Robertson, Doris Roberts, Barbi Benton, Donna Mills, Don Adams, David Cassidy, Robert Goulet, Annette Funicello, Joan Collins and Sugar Ray Robinson. The finale, "The Eagleman/The Children of Menta", finds single dad Bob Denver aspiring to bond with his young son by becoming a comic-book superhero, and journalism student Vernee Watson being afforded the opportunity to expose the most shocking news story of the century. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Originally telecast September 25, 1979, Hart to Hart was the pilot film for a series which officially debuted three days earlier. Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers play the fabulously wealthy, blissfully happy married couple Jonathan and Jennifer Hart. He's a conglomerate CEO, she's a mystery author; together they solve crimes whenever their schedules allow. In this first escapade, the Harts tackle the case of a friend's death at a fancy health spa. Lionel Stander is on hand as the Harts' gravel-voiced general factotum Max. The closing sequence of Hart to Hart includes a cameo appearance by Robert Wagner's real-life wife Natalie Wood, billed under her real-life name Natasha Gurdin. Coincidentally, the supporting cast features Wagner's future wife Jill St. John. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Robin Strand stars as a female narcotics cop transferred to an all-male police squad assigned to patrol the California beaches. Strand's assignment ends almost before it begins when she is targeted for assassination by the Mob. First telecast April 30, 1979, Beach Patrol was supposed to have been the first episode of a weekly series. It wasn't. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

First telecast January 14, 1977, the feature-length pilot episode of producer Aaron Spelling's Fantasy Island introduces Ricardo Montalban as the enigmatic Mr. Roarke and dwarf actor Herve Villechaize as his resourceful assistant Tattoo, along with an impressive array of guest stars playing the various vacationers who, for $50,000 a head, are permitted to fulfill their fondest wishes at the lavish and mysterious resort known as Fantasy Island. In this opening installment, an ageing WW2 correspondent (ill Bixby) gets to relive the romance he encountered during the London blitz, and confront the possibility that he once committed murder; an arrogant woman of wealth (Eleanor Parker) finds out what people really think of her by attending her own funeral; and in a twist on the old "Most Dangerous Game" formula, a big-game hunter (Hugh O'Brian) finds out what it is like to be the hunted. This two-hour extravaganza was followed on January 20, 1978 with a second pilot, Return to Fantasy Island. On this occasion, a barracudalike female executive (Adrienne Barbeau) is cut down to size by the man who has worshipped her from afar; an amnesia victim (Karen Valentine) relives a horrifying event as she searches for her true identity; and an infertile copule (Joseph Campanella, Pat Crowley) yearn for a reunion with the child they gave up for adoption a dozen years earlier. The Fantasy Island series proper began eight days later on January 28, cutting down the "fantasies" from three to two per episode in order to accommodate the weekly sixty-minute format. The series opener finds stage magician Bert Convy risking his life to pull off the most dangerous escape of his career, and drab middle-class ladies Diana Canova and Georgette Engel getting the opportunity to hobnob with high society. Subsequent episodes feature such prominent guest players as Carol Lynley (who'd appeared in the first pilot), Jane Powell, Henry Gibson, Sheree North, Christopher George, James Macarthur, Vera Miles, Don Knotts, Ray Bolger, Ken Berry and Rich Little-- also Lauren Tewes and David Doyle, respectively the costars of two other popular Aaron Spelling concoctions, The Love Boat and Charlie's Angels. One of the season's best episodes, wherein meek accountant Gary Burghoff dreams of being a baseball superstar, features sports figures Tommy Lasorda, Steve Garvey, Fred Lynn, George Brett, and Ellis Valentine in cameos as "themselves." The final brace of fantasies for Fantasy Island's first season finds gambler Richard Dawson aspiring to be "the world's luckiest man" (and suffering the consequences!), while singer Kathryn Holcomb travels back to the 1930s to find out why her mother gave up her own showbiz career. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Delta County USA was the feature-length pilot film for a proposed prime-time serial. The titular county is an old, hidebound Southern community, harboring ever so many dark secrets. The dramatic tension of the film is manifested in the lack of understanding between the older citizens and the young set. Jim Antonio heads the cast as "Jack the Bear," who's smarter than the av-er-age...you know. Delta County USA was initially telecast May 20, 1977. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A sequel to the 1977 TV movie Fantasy Island, this film was originally titled Fantasy Island II and slated to air on November, 1977, but was instead re-christened and broadcast as the initial episode of the weekly Fantasy Island series. Once again, six people spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to fulfill their dreams on a lavish island resort overseen by the enigmatic Roarke (Ricardo Montalban) and his dwarf assistant, Tattoo (Herve Villechaize). This time, "de plane" arrives on the island with a passenger roster including Charles Fleming (Horst Buchholz), who allegedly wants to restore the memory of his amnesiac wife, Janet (Karen Valentine); love-struck executive, Benson (George Maharis), and his bitchy boss, Margo Dean (Adrienne Barbeau), whom Benson hopes to woo and win Taming of the Shrew style; and long-married couple Brian and Lucy Faber (Joseph Campanella and Pat Crowley), who yearn to be reunited with the child they gave up for adoption years earlier. Return to Fantasy Island premiered January 20, 1978, on ABC. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide