Harry Morgan Movies

In his efforts to talk a man out of committing suicide, Officer Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) commits a serious breach of police protocol, whereupon Sgt. MacDonald (William Boyett) rakes the veteran patrolman over the coals. In a less traumatic moment, a woman (Katherine Squire) insists that Malloy and his partner Jim Reed (Kent McCord) drop whatever they're doing and fix her TV antenna (remember TV antennas?) This episode was originally scheduled to air on January 25, 1969. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the best-selling memoirs of Lillian Rogers Parks, the NBC miniseries Backstairs at the White House traces over five decades of American political history as witnessed from the vantage point of the servants' quarters. Played by Tania Johnson as a teenager and by Leslie Uggams as an adult, Lillian Rogers Parks served for 52 years as a maidservant at the White House. Though crippled early on with polio, Lillian diligently and loyally stuck to her duties -- and her own rock-solid set of principles and ideals -- through eight highly different Presidential administrations, often (and occasionally reluctantly) acting as friend and confidante to the First Lady of the moment. The large and stellar cast included a number of top-rank film and TV actors, obviously having the time of their lives impersonating such presidents as William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and their respective wives. Also in the cast were several African-American veterans from the landmark TV miniseries Roots. Earning 11 Emmy Award nominations, the nine-hour Backstairs at the White House was seen in five installments from January 29 to February 19, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The TV detective series Blacke's Magic starred Hal Linden as dapper professional magician Alexander Blacke, and Harry Morgan as Alexander's con-man father Leonard. Together, Blacke and Blacke solved mysteries with the help of Alexander's prestidigatory skills and Leonard's flim-flammery. In the series' two hour pilot, the Blackes attend a magician's convention, where an old friend of Alexander's is murdered. All the magic tricks performed on the episode were real, requiring Hal Linden to acquire a few conjuring skills post-haste. The Blacke's Magic pilot aired on Sunday, January 5, 1986; the series itself premiered the following Wednesday. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Finding that he hasn't much time left to live, a man makes needed changes in his life with the help of an angel in this Disney feature. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Dan Aykroyd must have practiced for months to perfect his Jack Webb inflections for Dragnet. Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz's directorial debut (also written by Mankiewicz, along with Aykroyd, and Alan Zweibel) is a gentle spoof of the legendary '50s television police drama -- pitting '50s conservatism smack up against the attitudes of the '80s. Basically, the film is another 48 Hours or Beverly Hills Cop clone. Aykroyd stars as Joe Friday, the nephew of the original Friday. But with his brown suit, fedora, and lockjaw, he could just as well be the incarnation of Jack Webb. He is involuntarily assigned a smart alecky, street-wise partner, Pep Streebeck (Tom Hanks), and they are appointed to investigate a series of religious cult murders in L.A. The two cops follow the trail to a phony televangelist, the Reverend Jonathan Whirley (Christopher Plummer). From there, they are only at step away from uncovering an Orange County-based religious cult calling itself P.A.G.A.N. (People Against Goodness and Normalcy). After sneaking into a secret ceremony, Friday falls in love with the sacrificial victim Connie Swail (Alexandra Paul). So much so that even after his superior Captain Gannon (Harry Morgan, reprising his role from the '60s revival of the Dragnet program) orders him off the case, Friday continues on, with the requisite car chases and crashes that usually climax any '80s cop movie or comedy. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In 1966, producer/director/actor Jack Webb filmed a new, TV-movie version of his classic 1950s series Dragnet for Universal Pictures and the NBC network. Both studio and network were so impressed by the results that they invited Webb to revive Dragnet on a weekly, half-hour basis -- which is just what happened on January 12, 1957, when Dragnet: 1967 took over the Thursday-night slot recently vacated by the failed NBC sitcom The Hero. At base, it was the same old Dragnet, with the same old, "the story you are about to see is true" opening, the same "Dum-de-DUM-dum" theme music, the same monotonic narration and incessant, acronymic police jargon, and the same Sgt. Joe Friday (played, of course, by Jack Webb), whose promotion to lieutenant in the final season of the original Dragnet in 1958 was never mentioned. Also, several of Webb's radio colleagues -- Virginia Gregg, Vic Perrin, Harry Bartell, Peggy Webber -- showed up over and over again in supporting roles, just like in the good old days.

The changes to the venerable property included Joe Friday's new partner, Sgt. Bill Gannon, played by the ever-reliable Harry Morgan. Also, the new series was lensed exclusively in color, eschewing the black-and-white photography that predominated in the 1950s version. In addition, Friday and Gannon tackled cases with a decidedly contemporary slant (contemporary to the late '60s, that is). Case in point is the new series' now-legendary debut episode, "The LSD Story," in which Joe and Frank come face to face with a wild-eyed druggie (played by Michael Burns) who calls himself Blue Boy. ("I see a train! I see a train!") In subsequent first-season episodes, the detectives foil a neo-Nazi's plans to blow up a school that is poised to allow black students to attend; they pursue a pair of motorcycle bums who have bludgeoned a 62-year-old man to death; they go after a con artist who uses an authentic Congressional Medal of Honor as part of a magazine subscription scam; and they bust a gang of kids calling themselves "the Mod Squad," who use petty theft as a rite of initiation. Nevertheless, for all of its up-to-date trappings, Dragnet was at its best in the season's final episode, "The Bullet" -- a remake of the classic 1954 Dragnet episode "The Big Bible." Though some observers found Dragnet: 1967 to be corny and archaic in comparison to "hipper" cop shows, the revived series scored a big hit with Middle America, and the series was renewed by NBC with the greatest of ease. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Proving remarkably durable despite its venerable reputation and occasional lapses into silent majority hysteria (especially in the episodes involving drug abuse), the new Dragnet launched its third season on NBC in the fall of 1968, under the forward-looking title Dragnet: 1969. The setting is still "The City: Los Angeles, California," and the leading characters are still two of the LAPD's finest, Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb, who, of course, also produced and directed the series), and Sgt. Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan). The season opener, "Public Affairs - DR-07," finds Joe Friday on the hot seat when he guests on a liberal TV debate show to defend the police force; among his detractors is a hippie played by "Don Sturdy" -- actually future WKRP in Cincinnati regular Howard Hesseman. "Management Services" dramatizes the actual events surrounding the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King's murder, with Joe and Bill trying to keep the public calm despite impending street violence and unchecked false rumors. "Homicide - DR-06" is, despite its title, essentially a comic episode, as Joe tries to enjoy a dinner at the home of Bill and Eileen Gannon despite a steady stream of annoying interruptions. Likewise light in tone despite its grim trappings is "Homicide - DR-22," in which the detectives solve a grisly murder with the help of an extremely alert and perceptive 91-year-old apartment manager (played by the ever-delightful Burt Mustin). Of course, the season yields quite a few anti-drug episodes, notably "Narcotics - DR-16," in which a group of distressingly clean-cut high schoolers set up the Smart Teen Club with the motto "S.O.S." (Stamp Out Stupidity); and "Narcotics - DR-21, wherein a pair of funky potheads are caught with the goods by a marijuana-sniffing police dog. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first of two efforts by Universal to launch an Ellery Queen TV series in the 1970s, Don't Look Behind You stars Peter Lawford as intellectual private eye Ellery Queen. Based on the novel Cat of Many Tales, the film finds Queen investigating a series of murders. The male victims were strangled with blue cords, the females with pink ones. In addition, the killer is working his (or her) way down the age scale, knocking off older people first. E.G. Marshall and Stefanie Powers are among the special guest suspects, while Harry Morgan is on hand as Ellery's police-inspector father. The best scene, involving a flooded apartment house, has very little to do with the mystery at hand. Originally telecast November 11, 1971 (after several months on the shelf), Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You failed to yield a weekly series; a 1975 "Ellery Queen" pilot film starring Jim Hutton was, however, more successful. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Not a remake of the 1934 Helen Morgan vehicle of the same title, Frankie and Johnny stars Elvis Presley as Johnny, a Mississippi gambler, and Beverly Hillbillies regular Donna Douglas as his girl friend Frankie. In keeping with the old ballad, the romance of Frankie and Johnny is threatened by the intervention of seductress Nellie Bly (Nancy Kovack). Nellie brings Johnny luck at the gaming tables while Frankie sees red. Frankie and Johnny was written by onetime Marx Brothers contributor Nat Perrin and directed by future Tonight Show helmsman Fred de Cordova. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A college-educated sheriff takes on an older crimefighter as his deputy in this western. (AKA Century Turns) ~ All Movie Guide

Years before Kevin Costner danced with wolves, Robert Redford headed to the mountains to escape civilization in Sydney Pollack's wilderness western. Around 1850, ex-soldier Johnson (Redford) decides that he would rather live alone as a mountain man in Colorado than deal with society's constraints. After a series of setbacks, he meets grizzled mountain veteran Bear Claws (Will Geer), who teaches him how to survive. Jeremiah strives to live as peaceably as possible in the rugged environment, trading with the native Crow tribe, adopting a boy (Josh Albee) after his family is massacred, and even marrying the daughter (Delle Bolton) of a Flathead chief in order to avoid confrontation. He settles into a mountain home with his family, but the U.S. cavalry, complete with a puritanical Reverend, interrupt the idyll to compel Jeremiah to lead them over the mountains and through a Crow burial ground to rescue white settlers. After the Crow kill his family in retaliation, Jeremiah's frenzied moment of payback precipitates a long-running vendetta, turning him into a legendary Indian killer at the expense of his original ideals, on the way to a final moment of grace. Spectacularly shot on location in Utah, the film captures both the appeal and the challenge of the landscape that Jeremiah chooses over civilization. With an unglamorous performance by Redford and a story that questioned white colonialism while mythologizing the man of nature, Jeremiah Johnson appealed to its 1972 audience and became one of the biggest hits of the year. Wavering between heroicizing Jeremiah for surviving and damning him for killing, Jeremiah Johnson took its place among the Vietnam-era cycle of critical westerns, like Arthur Penn's Little Big Man (1970) and Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), that condemned civilization for corrupting the wilderness and preventing individuals from going pacifistically native. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Right after wrapping up her role as Emily on The Bob Newhart Show, Suzanne Pleshette began her reign as "queen of the TV pilot films" with Kate Bliss and the Ticker Tape Kid. Kate Bliss (Pleshette) is a private investigator in the 19th-century West, setting up her shingle in a tough frontier town. The Ticker Tape Kid (Don Meredith) is a onetime stockbroker who has become a Robin Hood-type outlaw. Kate is hired to protect a prissy British land baron (Tony Randall) from the Kid, but soon her loyalties begin to waver. Kate Bliss and the Ticker Tape Kid didn't make it as a series, but allowed Suzanne Pleshette a refreshing change of pace from her usual urban roles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide