Lawrence Turman Movies
Before becoming a successful independent producer, Lawrence Turman was in the textile industry and then worked with a talent agency. He and producer David Foster teamed up to make several film adaptations of Broadway shows. Turman also directed a few films, beginning with The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker in 1971. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide- 1961
- NR
This slick hospital soap opera features Ben Gazzara as Dr. David Coleman, a young physician hired into the pathology department at a big hospital. The aging head of the department, Dr. Joseph Pearson (Fredric March), is insulted and treats the new hire as a rival. They battle over many medical issues. Coleman falls in love with a nurse, Cathy Hunt (Ina Balin), but she develops a tumor on her knee. Pearson says that it is malignant and orders her leg amputated. Coleman disagrees but must go along with the decision. Coleman then orders three blood tests on an expectant mother, Mrs. Alexander (Phyllis Love), because she has a rare blood condition. Pearson thinks that the tests are excessive and cancels the third test. When the baby is born seriously ill, Pearson is berated by Dr. Charles Dornberger (Eddie Albert), Alexander's personal physician, who then conducts a blood transfusion to save the baby's life. Pearson's future at the hospital becomes uncertain, at best. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fredric March, Ben Gazzara, (more)
This is a standard yet uneven drama featuring Judy Garland as Jenny Bowman, a powerful singer who obviously has a passion for the stage and performing. At the same time, she once had a passion for a certain British doctor, David Donne (Dirk Bogarde), that resulted in the birth of a baby boy. Unwilling to be a mom at this point in her career, Jenny gives the boy over to David, and he raises him as though he were an adopted son. David marries, and he and Jenny go their separate ways until many years have passed and, finding herself in London again, Jenny decides to visit her son. David is now a widower, and romantic sparks fly once he and Jenny get together -- raising the question of whether her passion for the stage is still stronger than her passion for David. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Judy Garland, Dirk Bogarde, (more)
- 1964
Gore Vidal adapted his biting and bitter political satire from his hit Broadway play. Franklin J. Schaffner directed and Haskell Wexler provided the sharp-edged cinematography. The story concerns the political back-biting and smear politics involved in a presidential election year scramble by potential presidential party nominees. Lee Tracy (in an Oscar-nominated performance and his final screen role) is Art Hockstader, a dying president who refuses to throw his support behind any of his party's presidential hopefuls. Hoping to get the nod as the party's presidential candidate is liberal do-gooder William Russell (Henry Fonda). His wife Alice (Margaret Leighton) wants to get a divorce from Russell but is delaying the divorce proceedings until after the party convention. Opposing Russell for the nomination is Joe Cantwell (Cliff Robertson), a slick and unscrupulous political monster who will use any bit of dirt to get ahead in the party. When he discovers that Russell once suffered from mental problems, he threatens to use it against him. Russell then finds out that Cantwell once had a homosexual relationship. Russell, who abhors smear politics, now has to decide whether to use the information against Cantwell or bury the secret and risk losing the nomination. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson, (more)
"Just one word: plastic." "Are you here for an affair?" These lines and others became cultural touchstones, as 1960s youth rebellion seeped into the California upper middle-class in Mike Nichols' landmark hit. Mentally adrift the summer after graduating from college, suburbanite Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) would rather float in his parents' pool than follow adult advice about his future. But the exhortation of family friend Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) to seize every possible opportunity inspires Ben to accept an offer of sex from icily feline Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). The affair and the pool are all well and good until Ben is pushed to go out with the Robinsons' daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross) and he falls in love with her. Mrs. Robinson sabotages the relationship and an understandably disgusted Elaine runs back to college. Determined not to let Elaine get away, Ben follows her to school and then disrupts her family-sanctioned wedding. None too happy about her pre-determined destiny, Elaine flees with Ben -- but to what? Directing his second feature film after Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Nichols matched the story's satire of suffocating middle-class shallowness with an anti-Hollywood style influenced by the then-voguish French New Wave. Using odd angles, jittery editing, and evocative widescreen photography, Nichols welded a hip New Wave style and a generation-gap theme to a fairly traditional screwball comedy script by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham from Charles Webb's novel. Adding to the European art film sensibility, the movie offers an unsettling and ambiguous ending with no firm closure. And rather than Robert Redford, Nichols opted for a less glamorous unknown for the pivotal role of Ben, turning Hoffman into a star and opening the door for unconventional leading men throughout the 1970s. With a pop-song score written by Paul Simon and performed by Simon & Garfunkel bolstering its contemporary appeal, The Graduate opened to rave reviews in December 1967 and surpassed all commercial expectations. It became the top-grossing film of 1968 and was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Actor, and Actress, with Nichols winning Best Director. Together with Bonnie and Clyde, it stands as one of the most influential films of the late '60s, as its mordant dissection of the generation gap helped lead the way to the youth-oriented Hollywood artistic "renaissance" of the early '70s. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, (more)
- 1967
Michael Sarrazin plays Curley, a young man gone AWOL from the Army who soon makes the acquaintance of Mordechai (George C. Scott), a veteran confidence man. Mordecai takes a liking to Curley, and offers to show him the tricks of the trade as they drift through the American South, pulling one scam after another. But when Curley meets Bonnie Lee Packard (Sue Lyon), romance rears its head and Curley decides to go straight. Mordecai is not so easily convinced to leave his trade behind, however, and when a car theft goes spectacularly wrong and Mordecai ends up in jail, Curley has to pull a fast one to got his pal out of stir. The Flim Flam Man also features a host of notable character actors, including Slim Pickens, Alice Ghostley, and Strother Martin. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George C. Scott, Sue Lyon, (more)
Easygoing but psychotic Dennis (Anthony Perkins) is released from jail, where he has served a sentence for his complicity in a suspicious death. Wandering through a small, working-class New England town, Dennis befriends apparently normal high school A-student Sue Ann (Tuesday Weld). He fills her head with lies about his imaginary career as a secret agent. She is thrilled, and makes up her mind to join him in his further adventures. This jet-black "who's manipulating who?" seriocomedy was adapted by Lorenzo Semple Jr. from Stephen Geller's novel She Let Him Continue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld, (more)
Although the characters' names were changed, The Great White Hope was a thinly veiled account of the trials and tribulations of boxer Jack Johnson, based on the play by Howard Sackler and directed by Martin Ritt. James Earl Jones stars as boxing great Jack Jefferson, who defeats Frank Bardy Larry Pennell in a Reno, Nevada bout to become the world's first black heavyweight champion. After crossing a state line with his white girlfriend Eleanor (Jane Alexander in her feature debut), however, Jack is arrested and tried under the miscegenation-barring Mann Act. Found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison, Jack escapes and leaves the U.S., but he's dogged by his now bad reputation and can't get honest work as a fighter. Offered his freedom from criminal charges if he'll agree to a fixed fight in Cuba that will restore the title to a white contender, Jack refuses and Eleanor commits suicide, their life on the run overwhelming her. Jack finally accepts the bout in Havana, but he fights his opponent with everything he's got. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Earl Jones, Jane Alexander, (more)
- 1971
- R
A man who can't stop looking at other women finds that it might cost him his marriage in this farcical comedy. William and Lisa Alren (Richard Benjamin and Joanna Shimkus) are a young married couple whose relationship has begun to go stale. Bored and looking for diversion, William begins spying playfully on the sexual habits of their neighbors and watching attractive women passing by; while his voyeurism falls short of criminal activity, it doesn't sit at all well with Lisa. Eventually, she becomes so troubled by William's roving eye that she leaves their home and moves in with her sister Nan (Elizabeth Ashley), a harridan who has verbally browbeaten her attorney husband Chester (Adam West) into submission. At Nan's insistence and with Chester's help, Lisa begins divorce proceedings against William, but he tries to convince her to give him another chance. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Benjamin, Joanna Shimkus, (more)
- 1973
Not to be confused with the made-for-TV horror film She Waits, the equally TV-bound She Lives is (to some) a horror of a different sort. Desi Arnaz Jr. is Andy Reed, a college student who falls in love with coed Pam Rainey (Season Hubley). She learns that she has a fatal illness. They stay together in spite of the doom clouds hanging overhead. The one saving grace: Season Hubley's character fights tooth and nail against dying a quiet death, as opposed to Ali MacGraw's graceful succumbing to the inevitable. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The Dorothy Uhnak novel The Ledger was the basis of Get Christie Love! The title character, played by former Laugh-In regular Teresa Graves, is the first black woman to be hired by a big-city police force. Christie Love proves her value to her fellow officers by going undercover to smash a drug ring. First telecast January 22, 1974, Get Christie Love! served as the pilot film for the weekly TV series of the same name. That series ran from September 11, 1974 until July 18, 1975. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1974
- PG
The events leading up to the death of a small-time Los Angeles hood provides the basis of this gripping crime drama. The doomed gangster is known as the "key man" because he manages several warehouses containing oodles of pilfered loot. They mobsters have stolen so much that they are running out of space and so desperately need more storage units. They send the fellow out to negotiate for more space, but this takes time. His boss gets nervous and believing the big-hearted "key man" to be more of a risk than an asset orders him carefully watched and ultimately destroyed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jason Miller, Linda Haynes, (more)
- 1974
Dick Van Dyke put his image and his career on the line with this searing TV movie about a "social drinker" who becomes a full-fledged alcoholic. Van Dyke plays a loving husband and father with a solid job and an excellent reputation, who blows it all with his excessive drinking. His wife (Lynn Carlin) tries to be supportive, but even she throws in the towel as Van Dyke's illness worsens. The film refuses to cop out with a happy ending, leaving Van Dyke as low as he can get short of sleeping in the gutter. Morning After was something of a public "A.A." testimonial for Dick Van Dyke, who had recently come to grips with his own real-life alcoholism. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1975
- PG
Paul Newman returns as private detective Lew Harper is this tale of blackmail and murder based on a novel by Ross MacDonald. Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward), the wife of a wealthy oilman from Louisiana, hires Harper after she receives a threatening letter. A blackmailer is threatening to tell Iris' husband James (Richard Derr) about a recent extramarital affair; she claims this indiscretion never happened, though she has been unfaithful in the past, and years ago had a brief fling with Harper. Matters become more complicated when Iris' mother-in-law Olivia (Coral Browne) is found murdered. Eventually, Harper traces the blackmail letter to Kilborne (Murray Hamilton), another bayou oil baron, and along the way encounters Schuyler (Melanie Griffith), Iris' young but ripe daughter; Pat Reavis (Andy Robinson), Olivia's former chauffeur and a key suspect in her murder; and Detective Broussard (Tony Franciosa), a police investigator who, like Harper, was once involved with Iris. This was Coral Browne's first film after her marriage to actor Vincent Price in 1974. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, (more)
Heroes is an old-fashioned social problem movie concerning a troubled Vietnam veteran and the loving woman who helps him to work out his problems. Henry Winkler plays Jack Dunne, a veteran who has a history of mental problems. Jack fools the hospital doctor Elias (Hector Elias) and escapes from the hospital with the intention of starting a worm farm with money collected from his fellow inmates. Jack hops aboard a bus, where he meets up with Carol Bell (Sally Field), who, invites Jack to join up with her on a trip to California. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Winkler, Sally Field, (more)
- 1977
- R
It's hardly likely that anyone will confuse 1977's First Love with the 1939 Deanna Durbin musical of the same name. In the earlier film, Durbin received her first screen kiss from Robert Stack. In the 1977 film, no one stops at kissing. College boy Elgin (William Katt) falls for coed Caroline (Susan Dey, light-years removed from The Partridge Family), despite Caroline's deep involvement with an older man. 1950s leading lady Virginia Leith makes a comeback appearance in a minor role. Critics applauded the sensitive direction by Joan Darling, even while carping that the title First Love seemed to be a misnomer: neither Katt nor Dey appear to be inexperienced in sexual matters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Katt, Susan Dey, (more)
- 1979
In this drama, a Chicano gang member falls in love with a beautiful, wealthy Anglo girl. She tries to get him to leave the gang, but the young man is too deeply involved in being macho to listen. Then his grandmother dies and he travels to Mexico for the funeral. There his mother decides to introduce him to his estranged father, a boozy Anglo-American neer-do-well. Seeing his father causes the boy to take a good look at himself. He decides he wants a better life. He tries to leave the gang and they end up beating him senseless. Still he persists, and soon he is reunited with the girl he loves. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robby Benson, Sarah Holcomb, (more)
- 1980
- PG
Jack Lemmon stars in an Academy Award-nominated performance as Scottie Templeton, a Broadway press agent dying of cancer, in Bernard Slade's film adaptation of his Broadway play (in which Lemmon originated the role). Divorced from his wife Maggie (Lee Remick), Scottie leads a happy-go-lucky life until he is informed by his doctor (Colleen Dewhurst) that he has contracted leukemia. She tells him that, without treatment, he will die. Scottie is unsure whether he wants to bother with the treatment, but he has some unfinished business with his son Jud (Robby Benson), a serious-minded person who scorns Scottie's job. As their relationship begins to improve, Scottie begins to reconsider his decision against the cancer treatments. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Lemmon, Robby Benson, (more)
Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr plays a prehistoric, social outcast who, along with other misfits, forms his own tribe and finds various comic adventures. This spoof is mostly without dialogue besides the expected neanthropic grunt. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ringo Starr, Dennis Quaid, (more)
John Carpenter's The Thing is both a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film of the same name and a re-adaptation of the John W. Campbell Jr. story "Who Goes There?" on which it was based. Carpenter's film is more faithful to Campbell's story than Hawks' version and also substantially more reliant on special effects, provided in abundance by a team of over 40 technicians, including veteran creature-effects artists Rob Bottin and Stan Winston. The film opens enigmatically with a Siberian Husky running through the Antarctic tundra, chased by two men in a helicopter firing at it from above. Even after the dog finds shelter at an American research outpost, the men in the helicopter (Norwegians from an outpost nearby) land and keep shooting. One of the Norwegians drops a grenade and blows himself and the helicopter to pieces; the other is shot dead in the snow by Garry (Donald Moffat), the American outpost captain. American helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell, fresh from Carpenter's Escape From New York) and camp doctor Copper (Richard Dysart) fly off to find the Norwegian base and discover some pretty strange goings-on. The base is in ruins, and the only occupants are a man frozen to a chair (having cut his own throat) and the burned remains of what could be one man or several men. In a side room, Copper and MacReady find a coffin-like block of ice from which something has been recently cut. That night at the American base, the Husky changes into the Thing, and the Americans learn first-hand that the creature has the ability to mutate into anything it kills. For the rest of the film the men fight a losing (and very gory) battle against it, never knowing if one of their own dwindling number is the Thing in disguise. Though resurrected as a cult favorite, The Thing failed at the box office during its initial run, possibly because of its release just two weeks after Steven Spielberg's warmly received E.T.The Extra-Terrestrial. Along with Ridley Scott's futuristic Alien, The Thing helped stimulate a new wave of sci-fi horror films in which action and special effects wizardry were often seen as ends in themselves. ~ Anthony Reed, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, (more)
- 1982
In this family drama, a famed lawyer is forced to come to grips with the lousy way he has treated his emotionally disturbed brother. Most of the story centers on the attorney's attempts to atone for his actions. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Brandon, Pat Harrington, Jr., (more)
- 1982
The Gift of Life is a non-sensational study of surrogate pregnancy. Susan Dey stars as Joleen Sutton, a woman with a husband and two kids who agrees to be artificially inseminated on behalf of another woman. Since the surrogate mother concept is somewhat cloudy on a legal basis, Joleen faces conflict from her own family and friends, as well as the state attorney general. Her husband (Paul Le Mat) is particularly troubled by the situation, even though the money Joleen will earn for her pregnancy will help him keep his struggling gas station. But as the baby's birth date approaches, Joleen isn't so certain she wants to give up the child. Admirable in its refusal to take sides in the surrogate-mother controversy, The Gift of Life was telecast around the same time as another TV movie with a similar plotline, Tomorrow's Child. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1983
- PG
In this skewed, unreal view of a woman's choice in men, almost nothing is believable. Amy (Lucie Arnaz) is a savvy, well-educated lawyer in Santa Fe who divorces her husband, an exec in the banking business, to become involved with Will (Craig Wasson) a street musician with the same iron-clad brain as her ex when it comes to women. The musician is regularly picked up by the police for his loitering, though he seems never to fully realize why they are doing this to him. Amy drops him at last, and when she finds out she is pregnant, she goes to the hospital to have an abortion -- and is introduced to a Boris Karloff-type doctor. Before anything further happens, Will comes along and forcibly carries her off to a remote, run-down building in a ghost town where he ties her to a bed intending to keep her there until she has the baby. Hard to believe, but things only get worse from here. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lucie Arnaz, Craig Wasson, (more)
- 1984
- PG
Jack Lemmon stars in Mass Appeal as a popular Los Angeles parish priest, who has retained the good will of his parishioners by cracking jokes and never taking a stand on crucial matters. Enter young seminarian Zeljko Ivanek, whose rebellious reputation threatens to earn him an expulsion. Lemmon is expected to bring Ivanek around to the Church's "party line," but the younger man resists the older man's advice--quite loudly at times. The audience is fully aware that, by film's end, Ivanek will have converted Lemmon instead of the other way around, but the sheer joy of watching two superb actors at work transcends the story's predictability. Mass Appeal was based on a play by Bill C. Davis, and produced by none other than the widow of McDonalds mogul Ray Kroc. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Lemmon, Zeljko Ivanek, (more)
Canadian actor/director Philip Borsos made a couple of interesting films before an untimely death in his early forties, including The Grey Fox (1982) and this crime thriller starring Kurt Russell as police beat reporter Malcolm Anderson. Happily abandoning the Miami Daily for which he's labored for years, he takes a job on a small town paper hoping to take life in the slow lane for a time. Of course, he's soon caught up in a career-making story, after a serial killer (Richard Jordan) likes his account of a murder he's committed and decides to use the journalist as his mouthpiece. As the killings continue, Anderson begins to receive national attention, and the Numbers Killer, motivated primarily by a desire for the limelight, becomes jealous, and decides to kidnap Anderson's girlfriend (Mariel Hemingway) to teach him a lesson. As he has with Anderson, the killer soon develops a relationship of sorts with the woman, and slowly reveals the workings of his bizarre personality while the police search desperately for the pair. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kurt Russell, Mariel Hemingway, (more)
News at Eleven is a stacked-card study of journalistic ethics -- or rather, the lack of same. Martin Sheen stars as the well-respected senior anchorperson at a fictional San Diego TV station. Honcho news-director Peter Riegert insists that the news is becoming a tune-out, and demands more sensationalism in the coverage. When a junior high school teacher is accused of statutory rape, Riegert orders Sheen to exploit the story to the hilt. This results in a near-tragedy involving the high school girl who's accused the teacher. The conscience-stricken Sheen exacts a clever "hoist on his own petard" revenge for the unrepentant Riegert. Made for television, News at Eleven was actually telecast at 9 PM (EST) on April 2, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Martin Sheen, Peter Riegert, (more)
