Norman S. Powell Movies

Created by playwright David Mamet, the 60-minute action series The Unit dramatized the exploits of the Rangers, an elite team of top-secret military special ops. Fresh from his star-making stint on 24, Dennis Haysbert headed the cast as the unit's leader, Jonas Blane. His colleagues included brash, brazen, anti-authoritarian new recruit Bob Brown (Scott Foley), his superior officer Col. Tom Ryan (Robert Patrick), and veteran Mack Gerhardt (Max Martini), who at the beginning of the series was on the verge of burning out. The various covert missions undertaken by the unit were counterbalanced by the members' domestic problems, as personified by Jonas' long-suffering spouse, Molly (Regina Taylor), and Bob Brown's pregnant, volatile wife, Kim (Audrey Marie Anderson). Also, in a plot twist unparalleled in the annals of TV combat series, Tom Ryan was carrying on an affair with Tiffy (Abby Brammell), the wife of his comrade-in-arms Gerhardt. Based on a book by retired special-ops officer Eric L. Haney, The Unit debuted March 8, 2006. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The purpose of this PBS documentary is to show that the true villains of the Hollywood Blacklist were not always "evil" politicians and fat-cat studio moguls. Filmmaker Lionel Chetwynd (ironically a lifelong staunch conservative) has chosen his mentor, screenwriter Carl Foreman, as the hero of the piece. The narrative focuses on 1952, the year that Foreman wrote the script for the classic Western High Noon. Even as his film is being lauded by the critics and the public alike as a masterpiece, the politically "dangerous" Foreman cannot find work in Hollywood, and the State Department is endeavoring to seize his passport. It is hurtful enough that old friends shun him, out of fear that they too will be "tainted"; but when even Stanley Kramer, the self-avowed liberal producer of High Noon, turns his back on Foreman, it is too much to bear. Chetwynd's teleplay is based upon an impassioned letter written by Foreman to influential film critic Bosley Crowther -- a desperate effort on the part of the screenwriter to state his case before the public, and, as it turns out, a futile gesture. At the time of its original telecast in September 2002, Darkness at High Noon: The Carl Foreman Documents incurred the wrath of Stanley Kramer's widow, Karen Sharpe Kramer, who insisted that her late husband was being unfairly maligned; thus it was that Chetwynd was forced to add a disclaimer to the document, begrudgingly stating that his thesis was merely "one version of the story." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this feature-length TV series pilot, Andy Griffith stars as maverick junk dealer Harry Broderick (evidently a pun on Harry Brock, the junk-king villain of Garson Kanin's play Born Yesterday. Figuring that NASA has left millions of dollars' worth of discarded equipment on the moon, Harry hits upon a scheme to retrieve the paraphernalia and turn over a huge profit. Together with his youthful assistants Skip (Joel Higgins) and Melanie (Trish Stewart), Harry assembles his own ramshackle space ship and blasts off to the moon. Though the takeoff, landing, and Lunar scavenger hunt prove to be successful, getting back to Earth may not exactly be a bowl of cherries--or even scrap iron. Salvage made its ABC network bow on January 20, 1979, one week before the official premiere of the weekly series (renamed Salvage 1). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this episode of The Rifleman, Lucas McCain (Chuck Connors) finds himself in the odd position of having to defend an old nemesis, Oat Jackford (Bert Freed), when a hired killer (John Dehner) come gunning for him. Paul Fix co-stars in his recurrent role of Marshal Micah Torrance in this episode directed by series creator Sam Peckinpah. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide