Joel Fabiani Movies
Born in California in 1936, Joel Fabiani went through a multitude of schools and jobs, in addition to a stint in the army, before returning to college, where he first started acting. Based in San Francisco, he trained at the Actors' Workshop and later moved to New York, where he began working in commercials. His first major acting credit was in the feature-length pilot episode for the television series Ironside. He later appeared on such prime time network shows as N.Y.P.D. and Marcus Welby, M.D., in addition to daytime dramas, including Dark Shadows and The Doctors. Fabiani's major bid for TV stardom came when he was spotted by producers of the British series Department S, who were putting together the cast and needed a muscular American to play Stewart Sullivan, the team's man of action. The series was sold around the world and ran in the U.S. (among other countries) for its 28-show 1969-1970 season. Fabiani returned to America after the series was over and did extensive television work -- including appearances on Columbo, The Cosby Show, and Murder, She Wrote -- and occasional film work, with roles in Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Reuben, Reuben. He also had a long run on the soap opera All My Children beginning in 1999. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Brian DePalma directed this taut thriller, set in Atlantic City, where a corrupt cop investigates a political assassination. Outside an Atlantic City arena-hotel-casino, a TV news reporter stands in a pre-hurricane storm to report on the heavyweight boxing match about to begin inside. A transition to the stadium interior focuses on Atlantic City homicide Detective Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage), a father with a wife and son, yet also a dishonest cop who maintains a mistress and cheerfully accepts bribes. DePalma's Steadicam follows Santoro on a fast-paced tour of the stadium as the laughing, yelling detective travels stairs and hallways, talks to a gal with a between-rounds placard, visits the dressing room of champ Lincoln Tyler (Stan Shaw), rides down an escalator to squeeze money from a small-time hood, enters the arena of 14,000 fight fans, talks on his phone with his girlfriend and wife, and sits ringside next to his lifelong buddy, Navy Cmdr. Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise). Behind Dunne, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Charles Kirkland (Joel Fabiani) is seated alongside billionaire casino owner Gilbert Powell (John Heard). As the fight gets underway, Dunne abandons his position protecting the defense chief to pursue a suspicious redhead. From his ringside vantage point, Santoro has a close view of the champ, curiously conscious despite taking a kayo punch. At that moment, an assassin fires at Kirkland. Santoro immediately concocts a good cover story for his pal (to explain why Dunne left his post protecting Kirkland). Just after the shooting, Dunne kills a Palestinian extremist, the apparent killer, and Santoro orders the stadium doors locked, hoping he can locate other suspects among the fleeing crowd. One such is Julia Costello (Carla Gugino), an injured woman in a blond wig who spoke with Kirkland seconds before the gunfire. After a video replay reveals the champ took a fall, going down to the floor from a punch that never touched him, Santoro becomes more curious and suspicious, comparing witness accounts, and he attempts to locate Julia, convinced she's the key to truth behind the assassination. As it all comes to a head, Santoro peels through successive layers of corruption, ultimately confronting himself in a self-examination of his own values. Filmed at Montreal's old Forum. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise, (more)
- 1994
The purchase of Manhattan's venerable Larkin's Department Store by a nasty corporate raider (Harley Venton) gets off to a bad start when the accountant who brokered the deal is murdered. Jessica (Angela Lansbury) enters the picture when she finds out that the store's former owner Floyd Larkin (Peter Donat) has been forced to renege on his agreement to donate the original Larkin's building to a new cultural museum. Things get worse when another of Jessica's acquaintances, Bill Maguire (Martin Milner) is accused of knocking off the accountant--but that's only the beginning of this sordid tale of doublecrossing, book-juggling and masked murderers! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1992
The final episode of Murder, She Wrote's eighth season finds Jessica (Angela Lansbury) at the headquarters of a profitable toy company, there to supervise the design of a new board game based on her own mystery novels. Within what seems like minutes, the company's ruthless vice-president Meredith Delaney (Barbara Babcock) is murdered. Now Jessica finds herself in a real-life variation of her board game as she sifts through the suspects, which include the dead woman's husband, her much-younger lover, and an embittered designer. This episode is something of a family affair for star Angela Lansbury: it was written by her brother Bruce Lansbury, and features her nephew David Lansbury in a supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Tune in Tomorrow is based on Mario Vargas Llosa's novel, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. In New Orleans, circa 1951, a news writer for a local radio station, Martin Loader (Keanu Reeves), meets and falls in love with his aunt Julia (Barbara Hershey), a divorced woman who is looking for a new husband. Meanwhile, new-in-town eccentric radio-soap-opera writer, Pedro Carmichael (Peter Falk) has been hired to help boost the station's bad ratings. Pedro begins manipulating Martin and Julia's affair and using it as the basis for his radio show. Director Jon Amiel uses the same story-within-a-story construction from The Singing Detective, the miniseries that he directed for British television. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Falk, Keanu Reeves, (more)
- 1988
After Cliff (Bill Cosby) spends 22 straight hours working at the hospital, Clair (Phylicia Rashad) goes to great lengths to afford him complete peace and quiet at home--and even lets him stray from his diet. Clair's efforts to keep her husband happy are compromised when she is pressed into service as mediator between her celebrity-reporter friend Diane (Meg Foster) and Diane's jealous husband Richard (Joel Fabiani). Also cutting into Cliff's R-and-R is the riddle contest being conducted by Theo (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), Vanessa (Tempestt Bledsoe) and Rudy (Keshia Knight Pulliam). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1983
Tom Conti stars as a drunken Scottish poet who preys upon the lasses of a New England college town by swooning over them with poetry and bedding them with a passion. He'd probably have continued in such fashion for who knows how long, were in not for his encounter with a lovely homespun gal (Kelly McGillis), who sets his head spinning in a lovesick swirl and forces him to get his life on track. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Conti, Kelly McGillis, (more)
- 1980
Attica is a probing, no-nonsense TV-movie re-creation of the tragic events which followed the Attica (New York) Correctional Facility rebellion of September 9, 1971. Inmates demanding better food and living conditions used jerry-built weapons to take 38 guards as hostage. Negotiations begin immediately, only to continually break down thanks to uncompromising stubbornness on both sides. Four days into the crisis, the rebellion ends in a bloodbath, with state troopers firing on the prisoners-- killing several of the guards in the process. Based on the eyewitness reporting of the New York Times' Tom Wicker (here played by George Grizzard), who was one of the civilian negotiators during the stalemate, Attica was first telecast on March 3, 1980. (Perhaps significantly, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, whom many hold responsible for the climactic carnage at the prison, is never seen in either factual or fictional form during the film). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1978
At first glance, How to Dial a Murder would seem to be a TV remake of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. But no, it's a 90-minute installment in the Columbo series, as we soon discover. Nicol Williamson guest stars as a wealthy psychologist and movie buff. He has already murdered his wife, and now he intends to do in her lover. To deflect suspicion from himself, he sets up the killing by phone. The victim-to-be answers, is prodded into repeating the word "Rosebud"-and is then torn asunder by Williamson's dobermans, who've been conditioned to attack upon hearing this verbal clue. Williamson manages to be miles away when the murder is pulled off. Still, the diligent Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) manages to beard the culprit in his memorabilia-laden den. How to Dial a Murder originally aired April 15, 1978. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1978
Made for television, this little gem was based on a novel by Patrick Anderson. The title character, the sister of a government courier, barely has time to acquaint herself with the audience before she is murdered - leading us to wonder who did it, and if it is, in fact, true that the dead woman was a Soviet spy. Beau Bridges, Karen Grassle, Susan Blanchard, Larry Hagman, Don Porter and Gail Strickland are among those present. The President's Mistress was "World Premiered" on February 10, 1978. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1977
- R
Adapted from Judith Rossner's best-selling novelization of a true story, Richard Brooks's melodrama turns one woman's search for a liberated life into a cautionary tale about promiscuity. After an affair with her college professor, no-longer-good Catholic girl Theresa Dunn (Diane Keaton) follows the lead of her hedonistic sister (Tuesday Weld) and moves out of her oppressive family home to forge a life of her own. A compassionate teacher of deaf children by day, Theresa metamorphoses into a sexually free cruiser of singles bars by night. She prefers the satisfying attentions of unpredictable, danger-tinged stud Tony Lopanto (Richard Gere) to the more noble intentions of social worker James (William Atherton), but she ditches anyone who prevents her from being her "own girl." As Theresa's life threatens to spin out of control, she makes a vow to clean up her existence once and for all. But before she makes the break, she goes to one more bar and brings home one more man (Tom Berenger). ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Diane Keaton, Tuesday Weld, (more)
- 1976
Vacationing in a small town (actually Lake Arrowhead, California), a frantic James Franciscus shows up at the local police station, declaring that his wife has disappeared. Franciscus imperiously demands that easygoing police inspector Jack Klugman drop everything and find his missing spouse. Within a few days, a woman claiming to be the wife shows up-but Franciscus insists that he's never met the woman before. What's going on here, and why does Klugman seem so calm and collected. First telecast March 5, 1976, One of My Wives is Missing was based on the Robert Thomas novel Trap for a Single Man. The book had previously been filmed for TV in 1970 as Honeymoon with a Stranger, and would be remade in 1984 as Vanishing Act. One would think that, with three versions of the Thomas story floating about, virtually everyone in the audience would be privy to that clever twist ending. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1976
Dale Messick's inexplicably popular Brenda Starr has to be one of the lamest comic strips ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public; thus, any filmed version of the strip had nowhere to go but up. Jill St. John stars in this feature-length TV pilot film as plucky girl reporter Brenda Starr. While searching for a Howard Hughesish recluse, Brenda ends up in the wilds of Brazil at the mercy of voodoo-practicing natives. Happily, both St. John and special guest villain Victor Buono recognize the material for what it is, and make no effort to take things seriously. Brenda Starr debuted on May 8, 1976; no series of any kind followed. Other cinemadaptations of Brenda Starr include a 1945 Columbia serial starring Joan Woodbury, and a much-delayed (though not long-awaited) theatrical feature of the 1990s starring Brooke Shields. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1976
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The third and final TV-movie in the "Joshua Cabe" saga, this ABC effort stars John McIntire as rascally rancher-turned-sheriff Joshua Cabe, a role played by Buddy Ebsen in the original The Daughters of Joshua Cabe) and by Dan Dailey in The Daughters of Joshua Cabe Return. This time out, Cabe is accused of a murder he didn't commit and carted off to jail, there to await hanging. Coming to his rescue are Joshua's "daughters"--actually three unrelated shady ladies named Charity (Liberty Williams), Ada (Renne Jarrett) and Mae (Lezlie Dalton)--who devise a brilliant and thoroughly unbelievable escape plan. The New Daughters of Joshua Cabe aired on May 29, 1976. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1975
Working on behalf of Deputy DA Kimble, whom he has never met, Jim (James Garner) poses as a newspaper publisher to find out if the weekly poker game at an exclusive men's club is "fixed." What the detective doesn't know until after the game is that Kimble couldn't have been the one who hired him since Kimble has was murdered nearly three months ago. Assistant DA Kate Doyle (Blair Brown) asks Jim to stay on the case to expose both the crooked game and the killer...and, incidentally, to prove that the late Mr. Kimble was connected with the Mob. This is the only Rockford Files episode directed by series star James Garner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1975
The SFPD homicide squad goes on the search for an elusive sniper who perversely uses the tenants in a new high-rise apartment for "target practice." As if this wasn't enough of a headache for Stone (Karl Malden), he must also deal with an obstreperous new police captain (Patrick O'Neal). This episode marks the first of several recurring (and often unbilled) appearances by Art Pasarella as a police officer named Sekulavich--which happens to be the real name of series star Karl Malden. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1974
The Other Woman is Liz Cunningham (Katherine Helmond), a thirtyish librarian entangled in an affair with a married man (Joel Sabiani). When she becomes pregnant, Liz desperately wants to keep the baby. She insists upon this course of action despite the potential embarrassment for herself and her lover's family, and the likelihood of medical complications. Pat O'Brien plays the no-nonsense doctor who wrestles with Liz's mood swings. The Other Woman was originally telecast December 4, 1973 as an ABC's Matinee Today special. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1973
Stone (Karl Malden) and Keller (Michael Douglas) are obliged to track down a perpetrator who under normal circumstances might have been the heroine of the story. Refusing to believe that her baby was stillborn, young mother Barbara Talmadge (Kity Winn) goes on a desperate search for her child, who has been spirited away by a crooked adoption agency. By the time the hapless Barbara catches up with the unwitting couple who have adopted her baby, she has already committed murder--and is willing to kill again if necessary! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1973
Rule of thumb: if David Lowell Rich directed it, it's probably a TV movie. Beg, Borrow or Steal stars Mike Connors, Michael Cole and Kent McCord as three ex-cops, disabled while on duty. Having trouble finding regular work, the three men team up to steal a valuable statue from a museum. Connors has no legs, Cole no hands, and McCord is blind: but when they're working together, they're a lean mean stealing machine. Beg, Borrow or Steal is as tasteless as it sounds, but at least it has the novelty of three popular TV detective-show stars pooling their resources on the opposite side of the law. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mike Connors, Kent McCord, (more)
- 1973
This episode stars David Wayne as a reclusive, ill-tempered tycoon. While he doesn't suffer fools (or anyone else) very well, Wayne is devoted to his collection of valuable books. When one of his rarest volumes disappears from a supposedly impervious glass-enclosed case, troubleshooting detective Banacek (George Peppard) is called onto the case. George Lindsey, best known as Goober on The Andy Griffith Show, co-stars as the local constabulary. The Greatest Collection of Them All was the January 10, 1973, installment of the TV series Banacek. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1973
A Mob trial in Boston ends abruptly in a mistrial thanks to a couple of bribed jurors. Does this mean that the Mob wants defendant Mario Dracus (Frank De Kova) to go free? Not quite: still worried that he intends to turn on them, Dracus' former associates plan to murder him before he ever gets the chance. Already on the case because of the jury-tampering angle, Inspector Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) is now faced with the daunting task of keeping Dracus alive--and expediting a retrial that will send him to prison. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1972
The Longest Night is a harrowing made-for-TV movie based on a real-life kidnapping. Sallie Shockley is abducted from the home of her parents and held for ransom. Her captors entomb her in a box buried several feet underground, with an air hose as her only conduit to the outside world. As the police close in on the kidnappers and search for the girl, she desperately tries to stave off hysteria and to prevent the cutting off of her air supply. She is rescued comparatively early in the storyline, which then switches to the trackdown of the culprits. The Longest Night effectively conveys the claustrophobic atmosphere of the story, even though it runs out of gas before the end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1969
Monty Berman's 'cult' detective series Department S ran from March 1969 until April 1970. The show was a great departure, and very much an 'update', to the rather staid looking ITC mystery-adventure programmes The Saint and Man In A Suitcase that had gone before. The department in question was that of Interpol, a specialist group managed by the first of many black TV cops (here African, Dennis Alaba Peters. Indeed, it is no short call to claim that Department 'S' was the precursor to the popular X-Files series, as more often than not the characters would come up against variations of 'paradox' mysteries that the X-Files phenomenon has so often specialised in. However, alien abduction and UFOs are one such problem that the folks at Interpol never encountered. The cases they were up against were usually caused by a natural occurrence, a calamity, disaster or a spontaneous crime that were far beyond the deduction skills of the police. The agents: Jason King (Peter Wyngarde) was a best-selling crime novelist, who possessed wonderful reasoning akin to Sherlock Holmes; Joel Fabiani played the young American action-hero Stuart Sullivan and Anabelle King's (Rosemary Nicols) computer skills kept the research abreast with James Bond-ian gadgetry. King proved that a man could still be a man and care as much about clothes as the ladies, and his peacock attitude -- along with the decent scripts -- made the show essential viewing for 1969's tuned-in audiences. Fashion and action in one package! ~ Jon Mills, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Wyngarde, Rosemary Nicols, (more)
- 1967
Elizabeth (Joan Bennett) confesses to killing her husband, Paul Stoddard, 18 years ago, naming Jason McGuire (Dennis Patrick) as her accomplice. In a series of flashbacks, she reveals her motive and the whereabouts of Paul's body. This episode first aired on July 10, 1967. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1967
In this 2-hour "NBC World Premiere" pilot film for the TV series Ironside, we learn how San Francisco chief-of-detectives Robert Ironside (Raymond Burr) came to be confined to a wheelchair. Felled by a sniper's bullet, Ironside is retained by the force as a special officer for the Frisco police force. With the help of Sgt. Ed Brown (Don Galloway) and officer Eve Whitfield (Barbara Anderson), the irascible Ironside is assigned to find out who his assailant was. Appearing in cameo roles are Wally Cox, Lilla Skala, and an unbilled, pre-Laugh In Tiny Tim.The Ironside pilot premiered on March 28, 1967; the series itself ran from 1967 through 1975. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
