Pete Duel Movies

The alternate title for this TV pilot film is the more appropriate The Scavengers. Peter Deuel and Clintin Greyn play two soldiers of fortune who work outside the law in order to reclaim stolen goods for their rightful owners. The stolen item in this case is a jet plane, swiped by a Latin American dictator. This plotline resulted in a second alternate title, How to Steal an Airplane. Only One Day Left Before Tomorrow was scheduled to premiere over NBC on December 10, 1972, but was preempted by a Bing Crosby special and thus went straight to syndication. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a psychiatrist learns that a good friend will die very soon and finds that this knowledge makes it very difficult for him to conduct his seminar on death. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

First telecast January 5, 1971, Alias Smith and Jones was the pilot for the popular TV series of the same name. This genial rip-off of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid stars Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy as Kid Curry, two notorious Western bandits who have become folk heroes because of their refusal to kill anyone. Heyes and Curry would like to go straight; the governor offers them that opportunity, provided they can stay out of trouble for one year. Assuming the aliases of Joshua Smith and Thaddeus Jones, Heyes and Curry begin their "retribution" process as tellers in a very tempting, very unguarded bank. Perennial guest star Susan Saint James provides the feminine angle in this tongue-and-cheek effort. Alias Smith and Jones ran until January 1973, by which time Roger Davis had replaced Pete Duel, who committed suicide on the last day of 1971. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Psychiatrist: God Bless the Children was the pilot film for the brief TV series The Psychiatrist, which ran as part of Universal's Four in One drama wheel from 1970 to 1971. Roy Thinnes stars as progressive psychiatrist James Whitman, with Luther Adler as his conservative mentor, Dr. Bernard Altman. Whitman's particular specialty is the then-new group therapy method, which he utilizes on a cluster of disturbed children and teenagers. The performances are better than the dialogue, which leans towards Tract. This TV movie was released in non-network syndication as Children of the Lotus Eater. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Time for Giving is the British title for the American comedy film Generation. This exercise in late-sixties "mod"-ness is based on William Goodhart's Broadway play, which originally starred Henry Fonda. David Janssen takes over Fonda's role as the harried father of rebellious daughter Kim Darby. It was bad enough when Darby married kooky Peter Duel and moved to Greenwich Village. Now Darby is pregnant, and she and her husband insist upon partaking of that new hippie craze known as "natural childbirth," dispensing with the aid of an obstetrician. Fortunately for the Establishment status quo, Darby's husband gets cold feet, and loyal family doctor Carl Reiner is brought in when the kid is ready to come out of the chute. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Two former World War II pilots take to running an air-freight company in South Africa after the war. They get mixed up with Lee Harris (Harry Guardino), the dangerous black-market crime boss who flaunts his beautiful mistress Elana (Claudia Cardinale). Brynie (Rod Taylor) and Mike (Peter Deuel) are the former ace flyboys who get on the wrong side of Harris and his henchmen. The action starts at Al Poland's (William Marshall), a favorite watering hole where everyone has one ear on the live music as the other listens to the next sordid smuggling plan hatched by shadowy underworld types. Harris and his gun-wielding thugs mean to bring down the high-flying operation. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Gidget began life as a novel by Frederick Kohner, who used his own teenage daughter as inspiration. The novel was filmed in 1958 with Sandra Dee as California high-schooler Francie Lawrence, known to her friends as "Gidget" because of her diminutive size ("girl midget"). According to both novel and film, Gidget lived only for surfing and boys, in that order. The property proved popular enough to yield two additional theatrical features, with Deborah Walley and Cindy Carol succeeding Sandra Dee in the title role. Finally in 1965, Gidget was transformed into a weekly, half-hour ABC sitcom starring a 19-year-old newcomer named Sally Field. Fifteen-and-a-half-year-old Gidget narrated most of the episodes, in which she spent the bulk of her time swimming and surfing off the California coast and hanging out with her best friend Larue (Lynnette Winter). Don Porter co-starred as Gidget's widowed father, Professor Russ Lawrence, who would have preferred that his daughter spend more time with her schoolwork and less time on the high waves. Others in the regular cast included Betty Conner as Gidget's overprotective older sister Anne, Peter Deuel as Anne's bookish psychology-student husband John Cooper, and Mike Nader as another of Gidget's surfing chums, Peter "Siddo" Stone. The Gidge's steady boyfriend Moon Doggie, aka Jeff Matthews (played by Steven Miles), wasn't seen too often because he was away at college. Although Gidget posted respectable ratings, it ran only for one season, from September 15, 1965 through September 1, 1966. Reportedly, its cancellation came about because ABC had decided to pick up only one of its Screen Gems-produced sitcoms for renewal, and that one was the proven favorite Bewitched. However, Gidget performed extremely well in off-network syndication, its 32 episodes remaining in active circulation well into the late '70s. Later incarnations of the Gidget package starred such actresses as Karen Valentine and Monie Ellis; and in 1986, a long-overdue sequel to the original TV series, The New Gidget, debuted in syndication, starring Caryn Richman as the now-grown, now-married Francie "Gidget" Lawrence. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide