Lola Falana Movies

For a shy mouse, dancing can be a bit out of character, but when Sophie sees dancers in a window, she is determined to learn. After consulting some how-to books, she gets the confidence to try the steps. While dancing, she meets Lou and they become a team. This featured book in the Reading Rainbow series is Sophie and Lou, written by Petra Mather and read by Lola Falana. Host LeVar Burton also decides to learn the mambo and hip-hop, with help from professional dancers. Dances from other countries are shown, including Irish step dancing, aboriginal dances, and Bali's ritual dancing. Other books in the program include Dancing With the Indians, Cordelia, Dance!, and Lion Dancer. ~ Alice Day, All Movie Guide

His piano and singing repertoire mixed classical standbys and sentimental hits of the day, but Liberace was a Vegas superstar for more complex reasons. One of three television specials released on video by Rhino Video, Liberace's Valentine's Day Special features the showman who embodied Las Vegas glitter and flamboyant excess. Called a "kitsch virtuoso," pianist Liberace was born Wladziu Valentino Liberace, and he was the darling of Vegas-vacationing mothers for decades, with a stage presence that was the prototype of what would become the glam rock star. In this program he arrives at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas via a hot-air balloon. He jumps on-stage in one of his patented over-the-top glitzy suits and plays several songs on the piano. He then takes the audience on a tour of the Liberace Museum, where he explains, "I collect pianos, cars, dogs, and talented people that I use in my shows." He also gives a tour of his private home, finally arriving at a small yacht christened the Queen Mary, where Sandy Duncan and Lola Falana join him. ~ Steve Blackburn, All Movie Guide

The setting is Atoka County, Alabama -- the time is somewhere after the peak of the civil rights movement, after cities such as Birmingham, Alabama were out of the headlines. The movement is coming to the sticks, including Atoka County, and a lot of the white residents don't like it and are prepared to commit felonious assault, rape, or murder to get their point across. In the middle of this powder keg are two men on either side of a very dangerous line -- County Sheriff "Big Track" Bascomb (Lee Marvin) and Mayor Hardy (David Huddleston). Each man is playing both ends against the middle in the impending race war -- Bascomb wants to keep the peace as best he can, blocking the local klavern of the Ku Klux Klan from their worst excesses and making sure that the Klan's business and the county's business remain separate; Hardy, who also owns the lumber company that employs most of the county and the bank on which most of the residents depend, wants a good environment for business, which includes keeping enough poor blacks around to do the most menial work for the miserable pay he's willing to fork over; this, in turn, requires that they be too scared to ask for too much, including better treatment, but not so scared that they leave the county altogether, which would wipe out his business. Between them is Breck Stancill (Richard Burton), an eighth-generation resident with lots of land but little money and even fewer friends; a wounded war veteran and loner, he still resents the lynching of his grandfather and no longer respects what the white south purports to stand for -- he's even allowed dispossessed blacks to live for free on his property, angering the poor whites around him even more. Bascomb would like Stancill to be a little less high profile, while Hardy would like him to sell out and disappear, and wouldn't mind it if the local Klan helped that process along by trying to kill him. Bascomb's balancing act fails because of two events -- Nancy Poteet (Linda Evans) is raped one night, apparently by a black man, which precipitates the murder of a black teenager and her being violently ostracized by the white community; and a civil rights rally is planned for the town, bringing in lots of "outside agitators" and getting the local klavern eager to act against them. The prime mover in all of this is Big Track's deputy, Butt Cut Bates (Cameron Mitchell), a hardcore klansman who won't be reined in by Hardy and who is not above raping a black woman prisoner (Lola Falana) that he's arrested illegally, or trying to kill Stancill; directly opposed to him is Garth (O.J. Simpson), a young black man who witnessed a Klan murder and, in response, gets a rifle and starts meting out justice on his own. Before it's over, a major part of the county is at war and the bodies are falling everywhere. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Justice runs red in the deep South in this powerful drama. Steve Mundine (Lee Majors) is a young lawyer who, shortly after marrying his sweetheart Nella (Barbara Hershey), takes a position with a law firm in a small Southern town, run by his uncle Oman Hedgepath (Lee J. Cobb). L.B. Jones (Roscoe Lee Browne) is a well-to-do African-American funeral director who comes to Hedgepath's firm in search of legal representation. Jones wishes to divorce his wife Emma (Lola Falana), but his grounds make the case a hot potato -- Jones has learned Emma has been having an affair with Willie Joe Worth (Anthony Zerbe), a white police officer who is the father of Emma's unborn child. Worth does not want his affair dragged into a court of law, so he and his fellow officer Stanley Bumpas (Arch Johnson) violently take matters into their own hands. The last feature film from legendary Hollywood director William Wyler, The Liberation of L.B. Jones was based on a novel by Jesse Hill Ford. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A star-studded cast invigorates this film of a jazz trumpeter (Sammy Davis Jr.) who experiences both the prejudices of the music industry and terrible guilt following the traffic accident that killed his family, a tragedy he feels personally responsible for. Co-stars include several giants of jazz and popular music: Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Ossie Davis, and Mel Tormé, as well as Peter Lawford and Cicely Tyson. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide