Lillian Culver Movies

The tougher postwar screen image of James Stewart is given a good workout in the fact-based Carbine Williams. In 1952, the world at large knew Marsh Williams as the developer of the US Army's M-1 carbine rifle. The film builds up to this event by detailing Williams' previous existence as a bootlegger and embittered prison inmate, sentenced to 30 years at hard labor for killing a revenue agent. After enduring the rigors of chain-gang life and solitary confinement, Williams (Stewart) gets his mind off his troubles by dreaming up a new type of automatic-gun piston. He is encouraged in this endeavor by prison warden H. T. Peoples (Wendell Corey), previously Williams' bitterest enemy. As Williams continues to develop his innovative weaponry notions, his wife Maggie (Jean Hagen) and Warden Peoples try to overcome penal bureaucracy to win a pardon for Williams. Some TV prints of Carbine Williams have been colorized by computer; despite this artistically offensive practice, the strong dramatic and human values of the story still shine. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Clemson Reade (Cary Grant) is the kind of man who wants to marry an old-fashioned girl, one who will stay home and take care of her husband. However, he's fallen in love with Priscilla "Effie" Effington (Deborah Kerr), who has an exciting career with the State Department that she has no intention of giving up. Clemson has the poor timing of proposing marriage to Effie just as she's in the middle of trying to resolve a major political crisis with the Middle Eastern nation of Bukistan; the United States wants to stay on Bukistan's good side, thanks to their plentiful reserves of oil. Tired of waiting for Effie, Clemson decides that he needs to find a potential bride who will follow his lead instead of her own, and he soon meets Princess Tarji (Betta Saint John), daughter of the King of Bukistan, who has spent her life learning to faithfully serve her man. Clemson half-seriously sends a telegram proposing marriage to Tarji, which touches off a political tempest in a teapot when Tarji responds by visiting the United States. The State Department decides that someone should look after Tarji while she's in America, and who should be given the assignment but Effie; to Clemson's chagrin, Effie uses her time with Tarji to enlighten her about the more liberated status of women in the West. By the way, don't bother looking for Bukistan in your atlas, the country doesn't really exist. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Kim Novak is clearly out of her depth as legendary Broadway actress Jeanne Eagels, but one can't fault her for trying very hard. As this filmed biography gets under way, wide-eyed Eagels finds herself stranded in a tank town by a smooth-talking traveling salesman. Carnival operator Sal Satori hires Eagels as a kootch dancer, but her ambition is to become a serious dramatic actress. When she and Sal reach New York, she signs up for acting lessons under the tutelage of a Mme. Neilson (Agnes Moorehead). Before long, Jeanne is understudying on Broadway, and in 1922 she takes audiences and critics by storm with her unforgettable portrayal of Sadie Thompson in Rain, a role she landed by ruthlessly double-crossing the actress originally slated for the part (Virginia Grey). When her rival commits suicide, the chastened Jeanne turns to booze and drugs to assuage her conscience. The real-life Jeanne Eagels died of narcotics addiction in 1929, a fact that the Hollywood version skims over. Eagels' family sued Columbia Pictures over the "distortions" offered in Jeanne Eagels. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Upon learning that the Astro-Dynamics Corporation plans to launch an instrument-bearing rocket into space, Martin (Ray Walston) hopes to hitch a ride home to Mars. His next step is to convince Astro-Dynamic's CEO J.M. Buckley (Herbert Rudley) to aim for Mars rather than Venus. Unfortunately, Buckley is a superstitious man, whose final decision hinges upon a lucky rabbit's foot--which at the moment, is nowhere to be found. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Commercial artist James Vanning (Aldo Ray) and his friend, Dr. Edward Gurston (Frank Albertson), are on a hunting and fishing trip in Wyoming when they stop to help two men whose car has crashed. The pair, John (Brian Keith) and Red (Rudy Bond), turn out to be escaped bank robbers, on the run with 350,000 dollars in stolen cash after a clean getaway, and they don't plan on leaving any witnesses -- Gurston is shot dead by Red, using Vanning's hunting rifle, but Vanning survives by accident, knocked cold but alive. He awakens to discover the stolen money, accidentally left behind, and runs with it from the returning killers -- he gets away but loses the bag in the blizzard that hits. He manages to make it to the nearest town, but not before the doctor's body is found, with a bullet in it from Vanning's rifle. Now the prime suspect in the murder, Vanning takes it on the lam, hiding out for months -- unbeknowst to him, however, he's been under observation for most of that time by Ben Fraser (James Gregory), an investigator from the insurance company whose policy covered the bank that was robbed; and has been found by John and Red -- and all of them think that Vanning can lead them to the missing money. But John and Red are perfectly prepared to torture and even maim Vanning to get the money, and they get their chance when he lets his guard down one night to talk to Marie Gardner (Anne Bancroft), a young model he meets in a bar. He manages to get away from his captors after a fierce struggle and makes his way to her place; after convincing her that it's not the police he's running from (which is not entirely true), they take off together, with Fraser and the two hoods only a half-step behind, headed to Wyoming and the spring thaw so he can hunt for the bag and the missing money and prove his innocence. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Debbie Reynolds stars as Tammy in this romantic comedy of a country girl living in the South who cares for pilot Peter Brent (Leslie Neilsen) after his plane crashes near her home. At the beckoning of mutual admiration, Peter soon invites her to his plantation where she charms the fancy-shmancy attitude out of his family and transforms the whole place into virtual sweetness and sunshine. Tammy and the Bachelor presented the original song Tammy by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, which gained the two an Oscar nomination for Best Song and became a hit song for Reynolds. Tammy Tell Me True (1961), Tammy and the Doctor (1963) and Tammy and the Millionaire (1967), as well as a television series, all were spun from this film. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Vincent Sherman replaced an uncredited Robert Aldrich as director of this noirish and atypically pro-union film from the 1950's. Tulio Renata (Robert Loggia), an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, campaigns to unionize the employees of dress factory owner Walter Mitchell (Lee J. Cobb). Viscerally opposed to the union, Mitchell has hired Artie Ravidge (Richard Boone) to thwart Renata's efforts. In a complex oedipal sub-plot, Walter's son Alan (Kerwin Matthews) returns home and joins the firm following the suspicious death of his father's partner. Alan is more sympathetic to the union and attempts to persuade his father to sign a contract. Only after Ravidge kills Renata, and the elder Mitchell finally admits to himself that Ravidge is a thug who also killed his partner, does he agree to negotiate with the union. Before he can do so, however, he, too, is murdered by Ravidge's goons. It is then left to Alan, increasingly involved with Renata's widow Theresa (Gia Scala), to run the business, bring Ravidge to justice, and settle with the union. Similar to Herbert Biberman's Salt of the Earth (1954) in its overt support of the labor movement, The Garment Jungle is clearly a liberal, not a radical, film. Rather than advocate class warfare, it asserts that honest unions and decent capitalists can work together honorably. The film's real fire is found in the personal conflicts between Tulio and Theresa and Walter and Alan. Cobb, Loggia, and Scala perform with intense and multi-dimensional passion. Particularly noteworthy is Theresa's fury at her husband for taking excessive, and ultimately fatal, risks. ~ Steve Press, All Movie Guide