Barbara Logan Movies
- 1970
Upon completing Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, a tearful Liza Minnelli declared publicly that she would never, ever work with tyrannical director Otto Preminger again. Worse luck for her: Junie Moon contains what may well be Minnelli's best non-musical performance. Based on the novel by Marjorie Kellogg, the film surprisingly manages to evoke humor and pathos from some of the least promising material in movie history. Minnelli plays an emotionally imbalanced young girl whose face is horribly disfigured by her psycho boy friend Ben Piazza. Ken Howard is cast as an epileptic who has wrongly been diagnosed as mentally retarded. And Robert Moore (future director of such films as The Cheap Detective and Murder by Death) portrays a homosexual, confined to a wheelchair after a hunting accident. After meeting one another in a hospital, these three social outcasts decide to move in together, forming a united front against a cold, judgmental world. The devastating events that follow might have lapsed into the grotesque and exploitational, but director Preminger is extremely careful to depict his protagonists as three-dimensional human beings rather than "freaks." Unfortunately, some filmgoers, assuming that any film with a title like Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon just had to be a campy laff riot, were turned off by the repellant aspects of the early scenes and refused to give the rest of this fascinating film a chance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liza Minnelli, Ken Howard, (more)
- 1956
In 1956, it was still possible for Americans to take a working vacation in Cuba, and the Ricardos and the Mertzes are no exception. Upon setting foot on his native soil, Ricky (Desi Arnaz) makes a beeline to the home of his mother (Mary Emery), hoping to introduce Lucy (Lucille Ball) and Little Ricky (Richard Keith) to his Cuban relatives -- especially the highly regarded head of the Ricardo clan, Uncle Alberto (George Trevino). Naturally, Lucy makes a shambles of the reunion, but all ends happily in a lavish nightclub performance at Havana's Casino Parisien, where Desi Arnaz sings "I'm a Lucky Guy" and duets with Richard Keith in a con brio presentation of his signature number "Baba Lu." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mary Emery, George Trevino, (more)
Dependable supporting actor John Litel is top-billed in the independently produced Two Dollar Bettor. Litel plays John Hewitt, a respectable widower who takes the first step on the road to depravation when he makes his first-ever bet at the race track. Consumed by gambling fever, Hewitt is reduced to committing embezzlement to satisfy his urge. Things don't end too well for Our Hero, but redemption of sorts is provided from an unexpected corner. Marie Windsor steals the show in the atypical role of a con artist who is willing to take the hapless Hewitt for everything he's got. Two Dollar Bettor was directed by Edward L. Cahn with his usual ten-day-schedule efficiency. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Litel, Marie Windsor, (more)
