Susan Dey Movies

This two-hour TV movie served as a reunion for the cast of L.A. Law, a popular NBC legal series which originally aired from 1987 to 1994. Virtually all of the series' regulars were back on the job, with the noteworthy exception of Jimmy Smits. Most of the story takes place within the walls of the high-powered McKenzie-Brackman legal firm, which since the retirement of Leland McKenzie (Richard A. Dysart) had been controlled by the rule-bound Douglas Brackman (Alan Rachins). The main plot strand zeroes in on lawyer Michael Kuzak (Harry Hamlin), who in his efforts to save a former client from execution is pitted against his former partner -- and lover -- Judge Grace Van Owen (Susan Dey). Meanwhile, legal eagle Arnie Becker (Corbin Bernsen) is in the throes of a divorce action brought about by his wife (and ex-colleague) Abby Perkins (Michelle Greene); attorneys Stuart Markowitz (Michael Tucker) and Ann Kelsey (Jill Eikenberry) are being defrauded out of their life savings; and Roxanne Melman (Susan Ruttan) copes with the imminent death of her ailing ex-husband. Known variously as L.A. Law: The Movie and L.A. Law: Return to Justice, the film was telecast by NBC on May 12, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this fact-based made-for-television movie, a little girl finds herself a pawn in a bitter custody battle between her adoptive parents and her biological parents. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Christina (Susan Dey) is a cocaine addict in a tumultuous relationship with an equally drug-addicted boyfriend. When she becomes pregnant, the baby is born not only prematurely but with the chemical dependency of its mother. Now Christina is in a fight to make her life clean and stable so that social services will allow her to have custody of her daughter. But first, she'll have to convince not only her jaded case worker, but herself, that she can. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide

When a poor waitress shoots her abusive husband, she is forced to battle the courts for custody of her children while waiting for a verdict on her trial for murder of her husband. Based on a true story, it does a credible job in the depiction of the abusive relationship but some of the impact is diminished when the film moralizes that the husband's latent homosexuality was the cause or as culpable as the physical abuse he inflicted upon his wife. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

In Angel in Green, an unlikely alliance between a Jesuit missionary and a trained-for-combat Green Beret trooper is formed to help protect the island natives from insurgent-spawned violence. ~ All Movie Guide

This made-for-Disney drama is the fact-based account of Morris Frank (Timothy Bottoms), who, during the 1930s, trained America's first seeing-eye dog. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Malibu is a two-part, four-hour adaptation of William Murray's best-selling novel. William Atherton and Susan Dey play a green-as-grass married couple from Milwaukee who take a vacation in Malibu. Amidst the elite and their million-dollar beach houses, Atherton starts up an affair with divorcee Valerie Perrine, while Dey fends off the attentions of TV star Steve Forrest before succumbing to the charms of tennis pro Chad Everett. Other Southern California satyrs and nymphs wandering in and out of Malibu include James Coburn, Eva Marie Saint, Ann Jillian, Kim Novak, Richard Mulligan, and (who else?) George Hamilton. The multiple story lines all come to a head during a climactic tennis match. Malibu is trash, true, but it's trash cultivated from the highest-quality refuse heaps. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made for television, a former professional baseball player (John Ritter) coaches a team of misfits to the little-league crown. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night stars Susan Dey as a young mother with a history of mistreating her 3 year old daughter. Ms. Dey's erratic behavior is rooted in her own unhappy childhood and her failed marriage. Tricia O'Neil plays the doctor who endeavors to help both Dey and her daughter, despite the interference of well-meaning bureaucrats. Joanna Lee's script for this TV movie would have been twice as effective had it not relied so heavily on character stereotypes. The title character of Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night was played by little Natasha Ryan, who portrayed several battered children during her short career. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the conclusion of Streets of San Francisco's two-part Season Five opener, a band of urban revolutionaries continue to hold an entire jury hostage on a ship, threatening to kill them one by one unless the group's leaders are released from prison. The tension mounts as the first hostage is murdered and homicide inspector Steve Keller (Michael Douglas, in his final series appearance) is gunned down on the eve of his retirement from the force. Keller's partner Mike Stone (Karl Malden) must rely upon the daring and resourcefulness of SFPD newcomer Dan Robbins (Richard Hatch) to rescue the terrified prisoners. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Susan Dey inaugurated her long and successful campaign to shuck her Partridge Family image in the made-for-TV Cage Without a Key. Dey plays a teenager mistakenly convicted for murder (some mistake!) She is sentenced to a grim woman's penal institution straight out of a Linda Blair movie. As she struggles against the iniquities of prison life, her friends and relatives on the outside fight for justice. A shockingly substandard effort from accomplished TV director Buzz Kulik, Cage Without a Key is credible only in its exterior scenes, filmed at Las Palmas School for Girls in City of Commerce, California. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The fourth and final season of The Partridge Family finds the familiar players still in their familiar roles: Shirley Jones as Shirley Partridge, widowed mom and lead singer of the musical Partridge aggregation; David Cassidy (by now a full-fledged teen idol) as oldest son Keith Partridge; Susan Dey as oldest daughter Laurie Partridge; Danny Bonaduce as middle son Danny; Brian Foster as youngest son Chris; Suzanne Crough as youngest daughter Tracy; and Dave Madden as the Partridges' long-suffering agent, Reuben Kinkaid, who with each passing year has more and more trouble sustaining his self-proclaimed "I hate kids" policy. Season four heralds the arrival of three new semi-regulars. In the opening episode, Ricky Segall is introduced as four-year-old Ricky Stevens, a neighbor kid who occasionally performs with the Partridges. Later in the season, Reuben's neurotic nephew Alan Kinkaid (Alan Bursky) moves in with his uncle, almost immediately losing his shyness and self-loathing when, at the Partridges' urging, he launches a career as a standup comic. And finally, Jackie Coogan takes over from Ray Bolger in the role of Shirley Partridge's fun-loving dad. The season's best episodes include the one in which Reuben becomes convinced that he doesn't have long to live, the one where Laurie enjoys a shipboard romance with a self-proclaimed aristocrat during a working cruise to Acapulco, the episode in which Danny drops out of school, and the one where he contemplates converting to Judaism. Among the guest stars appearing during The Partridge Family's final season are Cheryl Ladd (then billed as Cheryl Jean Stopelmoor) as one of Keith's several objects of affection, Richard Mulligan (Soap) as an international diplomat and notorious ladies' man who develops a yen for Shirley, and, in the series' very last episode, Academy Award winner George Chakiris as Shirley's old flame "Cuddles" (aka Captain Charles Corwin). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide