Edith Evanson Movies

A pair of crooks conspire to rob the ticket booth at the Los Angeles Coliseum during a Rams game. Before they can perform the heist, the two must find precisely the right henchmen to join them. Each potential gang member must undergo a rigorous test of skill. Thanks to care and precise planning, the caper comes off smoothly and afterward the gang leader (Jim Brown) hides the money in the apartment of his ex-wife (Diahann Carroll). She only agrees to keep the money on the provision that he reform so they can get back together. Unfortunately, the wife's lust-crazed landlord (James Whitmore) busts into her house the next day and tries to rape her. During the struggle he kills her and then takes the loot. Later a crooked cop (Gene Hackman) investigates. Meanwhile, when the gang members learn that the loot is missing, they suspect a double-cross and engage in a huge battle. The cop finds the money and at first keeps it for himself. The head crook eventually figures out that the cop has it and so goes to him to make a little deal. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This three part horror story is taken from the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Vincent Price stars in all three tales starting with Dr. Heidegger's Experiment". Heidegger (Sebastian Cabot) attempts to restore the youth of four elderly friends. In a ghastly and ghoulish scene, a bride in her wedding gown returns to life after being dead for forty years. Although her spirit is alive, her body is ravaged by forty years of grave rot. "Rappaccini's Daughter" finds Price as a demented, overprotective father inoculating his daughter with poison so she may never leave her garden of poisonous plants. Part three, "The House of the Seven Gables" has Beverly Garland, Richard Denning, and Jacqueline de Wit accompanying Price, who retains his horror hero status that alternates between villain and victim. The characters portrayed by Price are a natural continuation of the Edgar Allen Poe stories produced by Roger Cormam. Sidney Sallow directed this feature in which the cinematic apple falls far from the literary tree. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Bungling courier Freddie Merkel (Tommy Noonan) dreams of creative success but always manages to botch things up at crucial moments. Shortly after destroying his motorcycle, he decides to become a songwriter. This gives con man Duke (Peter Marshall) the perfect opportunity for his latest scam, one that involves submitting Freddie's song to a contest. Unfortunately, a wind gust blows the finished piece away just before Freddie turns it in. The two scramble to catch the tune, but it ends up in the hands of a priest who is suddenly inspired to enter the contest himself. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Three explorers are hopelessly lost in the desert, their water supply all but depleted. Suddenly, a young man calling himself Eric Borgner (Jeremy Slates) appears out of nowhere, offering to guide the explorers to safety. Sadly, though the three men survive their ordeal, Eric does not. Years later, one of the explorers pays a visit to Eric's parents, to offer condolences and thank them for their son's help. But Mr. and Mrs. Borgner have quite a surprise for the nonplussed survivor. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Child star Kevin "Moochie" Cocoran shares his top billing with a chimp, Mr. Stubbs, in this story about a forlorn lad who runs away from his foster parents believing he is unloved. Little Toby and his pet chimp leave home and end up at the circus as an oily yet comic Harry Tupper (Bob Sweeney), in charge of a concessions stand, takes them under his wing. Between the circus acts and friendly performers, as well as the antics of Mr. Stubbs and Harry himself, there is plenty to amuse viewers of any age. Sure enough, Toby manages to come to the rescue of the circus when it most needs help, and because this is a Disney film, those foster parents are certain to discover his whereabouts. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Adapting a made-for-TV play that he had directed for the screen, John Frankenheimer made his feature film debut with this sensitive father-son drama. Tom Ditmar (James Daly) is a movie studio executive who has a strained relationship with his teenaged son Hal (James MacArthur). Hal is arrested after an incident in a movie theater in which he was provoked into slugging the manager, Grubbs (Whit Bissell). Hal is rude to the police officer, Sergeant Shipley (James Gregory). Tom Ditmar gets the charges dropped but doesn't believe his son's story. Hal goes back to talk to Grubbs to try to get him to tell his father what really happened. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

In this western, the town sheriff must look into a scandal involving his friend who is reportedly having an affair with a Native American girl while his wife is on a trip. The friend is enraged at the accusations and kills the town attorney. He is then lynched by the angry town folk. The sheriff is perplexed by the brouhaha and begins investigating. Soon he discovers that the whole mess of rumors were started by a saloon owner and a wicked gunman who were conspiring to steel the dead man's valuable land. The sheriff then engages in a showdown with the two villains. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Trouble brews when a widowed, small town librarian takes a stand against censorship. The trouble begins when the town fathers ask that she remove a book from the shelf because they deem it a pro-communist tract and fear it will taint susceptible young minds. She sees the idiocy of their request and defies them. They in turn fire her and replace her with her old friend and assistant. The town judge considers the whole mess a gross miscarriage of justice and demands a trial. This gives an ambitious young lawyer, the boyfriend of the new librarian the opportunity to do a little grandstanding by publicly proclaiming the highly-principled widow a communist. The poor woman suddenly finds herself the town pariah; her only remaining friend is a small boy she used to talk to in the library. He plays a key role in restoring her good name. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This 1955 period piece recreates the notorious events surrounding the murder of architect Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw. This famous homicide, later immortalized in E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime, transpired on the Winter Garden roof in full view of countless theater patrons. Joan Collins stars as Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, a single showgirl who grows enamored with the married White (Ray Milland). He takes her to his posh Manhattan loft and enjoys a dalliance with her that includes pushing her on the red velvet swing of the title. Later, Evelyn gets courted by Harry Thaw (Farley Granger, who - after whisking her off to Europe and wheedling her into marriage - suddenly turns out to be a complete nutcase, driven around the bend by violent jealousy and rage. He grows incensed at the memory of her affair with White, and decides to to take drastic action by shooting the architect; in the wake of the murder, Thaw builds a fantastic legal defense that permanently alters his fate. Few of the facts in this tawdry soaper are true to history, because, as Bosley Crowther famously pointed out in his Times review, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw was still alive at the time of this production and the filmmakers probably feared a libel suit. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Shirley Booth followed up her Oscar-winning performance in Come Back Little Sheba with the high-gloss soap opera About Mrs. Leslie. Based on a novel by Vina Delmar, the film casts Booth as a philosophical boarding house keeper who recalls her life and loves in a long, long flashback. Born on the wrong side of the tracks, Vivien (Booth) escapes her surroundings by becoming a cabaret singer. She meets and falls in love with handsome, secretive George Leslie (Robert Ryan), then becomes his mistress, assuming his last name in the interests of propriety. Upon Leslie's death, Vivien discovers that her lover was actually a fabulously wealthy industrialist. Her experiences are placed in context with the present-day travails of her boarders, notably young sweethearts Nadine (Marjie Millar) and Ian (Alex Nicol). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The simple story of a Wyoming range war is elevated to near-mythical status in producer/director George Stevens' Western classic Shane. Alan Ladd plays the title character, a mysterious drifter who rides into a tiny homesteading community and accepts the hospitality of a farming family. Patriarch Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) is impressed by the way Shane handles himself when facing down the hostile minions of land baron Emile Meyer, though he has trouble placing his complete trust in the stranger, as his Marion (Jean Arthur) is attracted to Shane in spite of herself, and his son Joey (Brandon De Wilde) flat-out idolizes Shane. When Meyer is unable to drive off the homesteaders by sheer brute strength, he engages the services of black-clad, wholly evil hired gun Jack Wilson (Jack Palance). The moment that Wilson shows he means business by shooting down hotheaded farmer Frank Torrey (Elisha Cook Jr.) is the film's most memorable scene: after years of becoming accustomed to carefully choreographed movie death scenes, the suddenness with which Torrey's life is snuffed out -- and the force with which he falls to the ground -- are startling. Shane knows that a showdown with Wilson is inevitable; he also knows that, unintentionally, he has become a disruptive element in the Starrett family. The manner in which he handles both these problems segues into the now-legendary "Come back, Shane" finale. Cinematographer Loyal Griggs imbues this no-frills tale with the outer trappings of an epic, forever framing the action in relation to the unspoiled land surrounding it. A.B. Guthrie Jr.'s screenplay, adapted from the Jack Schaefer novel, avoids the standard good guy/bad guy clichés: both homesteaders and cattlemen are shown as three-dimensional human beings, flaws and all, and even ostensible villain Emile Meyer comes off reasonable and logical when elucidating his dislike of the "newcomers" who threaten to divest him of his wide open spaces. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Excluding a brace of 1980s TV-movie appearances, It Happens Every Thursday was the final feature film appearance of Loretta Young. As radiantly beautiful at 40 as she'd been as a teen-aged ingenue, Young plays Jane McAvoy, the pregnant wife of big-city newspaper reporter Bob McAvoy (John Forsythe). Tired of the urban rat race, Bob moves to a small California town and assumes ownership of a just-getting-by weekly paper. It's a hand-to-mouth existence for the first few editions, and the situation isn't remedied by the cloistered, resentful behavior of the local citizenry. The outcome of the plot hinges on a publicity stunt engineered by Bob: an attempt to artificially create rain for the drought-ridden community. The well-chosen supporting cast of It Happens Every Thursday includes Edgar Buchanan, Jimmy Conlin, Willard Waterman, and in her last film, Gladys George. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi