Louise Fletcher Movies
Louise Fletcher's acting career can be divided into two stages. She started out appearing on television shows such as Wagon Train and The Untouchables during the late '50s, but left acting in 1964, two years after marrying movie producer Jerry Bick, to raise a family. She did not return to her craft until appearing in Robert Altman's well-regarded feature film Thieves Like Us in 1974. Fletcher then appeared in the spy thriller Russian Roulette (1975) before Milos Forman cast her in what was to become her signature role, that of the iron-willed, sadistic Nurse Ratched who tormented Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Her believable portrayal won her a Best Actress Oscar and a Golden Globe. Perhaps the highest honor is that her Ratched has become a movie icon, one that has been frequently emulated and parodied in numerous subsequent films.Fletcher was born in Birmingham, AL, to a deaf Episcopalian minister and a deaf mother. She started acting in summer stock following her graduation from the University of North Carolina. Fletcher next moved to Los Angeles and found work as a receptionist before breaking into television. Standing 5'10", the strikingly beautiful Fletcher was often taller than her leading men, something that hindered her first bid at stardom.
Since her success with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Fletcher has found steady employment as a supporting and character actress on television -- where she received a 1996 Emmy nomination for a guest-star appearance on the highly acclaimed CBS series Picket Fences -- and in feature films. She also has a busy stage career. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1979
- R
Escaping from her childhood life of poverty and abuse on the farm, in the 1930s, Polly Franklin (Pamela Sue Martin) sets her sights on Hollywood as the promised land and leaves home. However, she doesn't get that far - she lands in Chicago instead. Taking the low-paying jobs which are available to her, she quickly finds herself in a situation which is as oppressive as anything she knew at home. Despite her best efforts to keep her head above water, she soon winds up in prison. The best situation in her life comes afterwards, when she becomes a prostitute in a whorehouse run by Anna Sage (Louise Fletcher). However, even this doesn't last, as the police close down the house during a "decency crusade." Back on the streets once again, she meets a wonderful man (Robert Conrad) who claims to be working for the Board of Trade. She tells Anna (who is still her friend) about this new love in her life, and Anna realizes that he must be America's Most Wanted Man, the bank robber John Dillinger. Anna, in danger of being deported, arranges for the police to corner Dillinger and kill him while in Anna and Polly's company. In the ensuing publicity, everyone makes it look as though Polly was Dillinger's betrayer, and her life becomes even more miserable than it was before. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pamela Sue Martin, Robert Conrad, (more)
- 1979
- R
The bizarre premise for this often remote and uninvolving drama is that an otherwise apparently normal man can become so alienated from his own feelings and his own wife and children that he plans their murder. Paul Steward (Hal Holbrook) and his wife (Louise Fletcher) are about as interesting as a TV test pattern. Although Paul has realized the American Dream -- that it to say, he has money and is successful in business -- he finds the dream hollow and meaningless. Instead of waking up, he decides that his family is to blame for everything and begins to make elaborate plans for killing them off, talking it over with others and disguising it as a fictional story for his magazine. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hal Holbrook, Louise Fletcher, (more)
Spoofing the entire 1940s detective genre, and his own performances as a bumbling private detective, Peter Falk plays Lou Pekinpaugh, a San Francisco private detective accused of murdering his partner at the instigation of his mistress, the partner's wife, Georgia Merkle (Marsha Mason). Police Lieutenant DiMaggio (Vic Tayback) has his eye on Lou and blunders around in a way which complicates Lou's efforts to clear his name. Lou gets a new client when Mrs. Montenegro (Madeline Kahn) and her cronies (John Housman, Paul Williams and Dom DeLuise) hire him to search out a dozen diamond eggs. Marlene DuChard (Louise Fletcher) also comes to him for help of a complicated nature. In this madcap comedy written by Neil Simon, obstacles and complications appear every few minutes, and a great many famous actors show up in hilarious cameos. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Falk, Ann-Margret, (more)
- 1978
Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery was the first in an intended series of TV-movies inspired by the Ten Commandments (the series came a premature end with 1981's Thou Shalt Not Kill). Louise Fletcher plays the wife of paralytic Robert Reed. Though she tries to remain loyal, Reed's incapacitation puts a crimp in her connubial urges. Thus, with her husband's permission, she launches an affair with Wayne Rogers. The screenplay by Calder Willingham and Del Reisman expertly sidesteps sensationalism. Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery first aired November 1, 1978. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Four years after her bout of demonic possession, Regan MacNeil seems at peace as she enjoys a privileged but lonely adolescence. Her actress mother, absent on-location, leaves her in the care of her childhood nanny, Sharon, who feels inextricably bound to her young charge despite the terror she endured during the girl's possession. Regan attends frequent counseling sessions with Dr. Gene Tuskin, an unorthodox psychologist who believes Regan remembers more of her ordeal than she admits. Meanwhile, Father Lamont, a protégé of the priest who died exorcising Regan, is called to investigate the death of his mentor. The Church is divided over the teachings of Father Merrin and wants to gather documentation of his views about demonic existence. Father Lamont himself is conflicted -- haunted by images of a possessed woman he could not save. As he and Dr. Tuskin become convinced that the demon still exhibits a hold on Regan, the priest sojourns to Africa in search of Kokuma, who as a boy was possessed by the same demon and exorcised by Father Merrin. Learning the true name and ancient origins of his supernatural foe, Lamont returns to America to stage a climactic battle for Regan's soul. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Linda Blair, Richard Burton, (more)
- 1975
- R
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With an insane asylum standing in for everyday society, Milos Forman's 1975 film adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel is a comically sharp indictment of the Establishment urge to conform. Playing crazy to avoid prison work detail, manic free spirit Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is sent to the state mental hospital for evaluation. There he encounters a motley crew of mostly voluntary inmates, including cowed mama's boy Billy (Brad Dourif) and silent Native American Chief Bromden (Will Sampson), presided over by the icy Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). Ratched and McMurphy recognize that each is the other's worst enemy: an authority figure who equates sanity with correct behavior, and a misfit who is charismatic enough to dismantle the system simply by living as he pleases. McMurphy proceeds to instigate group insurrections large and small, ranging from a restorative basketball game to an unfettered afternoon boat trip and a tragic after-hours party with hookers and booze. Nurse Ratched, however, has the machinery of power on her side to ensure that McMurphy will not defeat her. Still, McMurphy's message to live free or die is ultimately not lost on one inmate, revealing that escape is still possible even from the most oppressive conditions. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, (more)
- 1975
- PG
The picturesque streets of Vancouver, British Columbia provide the setting for this thriller that is based on Ardies' novel Kosygin Is Coming. The story centers on a Mountie who finds himself entangled in a KGB conspiracy to kill the renegade Russian Premier Alexei Kosygin during his Canadian visit in 1970. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Segal, Cristina Raines, (more)
- 1974
This 1974 TV movie was based upon recent news stories about brainwashing techniques practiced by certain religious communes. Ellen (Kathy Cannon) is a confused teenager who falls in with a group of fanatics, who promise that they'll purge the "Devil" from her soul. Her anguished parents (Leslie Nielsen, Louise Fletcher) hire John Saxon to kidnap Ellen from the commune, and to exorcise the fanatics' influence from her psyche. This film was outdated within a year, but would come back in fashion during the height of the "Moonie" activity in the late 1970s. The original title of Can Ellen Be Saved?, understandably rejected by the network, was Children of God. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Released in the same 12-month span as Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) and Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express (1974), Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us (1974) also tells a story of doomed outlaws in love. Depression-era criminals T-Dub (Bert Remsen), Chicamaw (John Schuck), and Bowie (Keith Carradine) band together to rob banks after escaping from a prison farm. Hiding out with Dee Mobley (Tom Skerritt) and Keechie (Shelley Duvall), and then with T-Dub's in-law Mattie (Louise Fletcher) between bank jobs, the three crooks are a loyal group, but increasingly sensational news accounts of their bloodless robberies force them to split up before their next crime. After a car accident, Chicamaw leaves the injured Bowie in Keechie's care. Love blossoms between the two naïfs, compelling Bowie to find a way to balance his bond to Keechie with his loyalty to his friends and the need for money to head for Mexico. With the law closing in, Bowie and Keechie learn the hard way about the finite honor among thieves, and the need to survive. Adapted from the same Edward Anderson novel as Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (1949), Altman, writers Calder Willingham and Joan Tewkesbury, and Altman's acting "regulars" reworked not just the classical crime movie but also the 1967 hit Bonnie and Clyde, presenting a resolutely unglamorous portrait of this Coke-swilling outlaw couple and the survivors' stoic drive to carry on. With the radio providing soundtrack and commentary, and the newspapers sending a veiled warning, Bowie and Keechie cannot escape the outside world, but they also cannot transcend it into the realm of myth. Rather than turning the crimes into stylish exploits, Altman's camera remains outside most of the robberies, observing the banal action on the street; he saves the slow-motion in the climactic shoot-out for the witnesses rather than the dead. His zoom shots hover between fragments of emotion and place, while they maintain their observational distance. Unfortunately for Altman (and Malick and Spielberg), audiences preferred outlaw glamour to genre-bending introspection. Still, with its deceptively laid-back tone, eye for expressive detail, and ear for ironic juxtaposition, Thieves Like Us takes its place in Altman's exceptional body of early 1970s work. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, (more)
- 1960
As Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) and the Untouchables close in on notorious gang leader Ma Barker (Claire Trevor) and her brood in their Florida hideaway, a series of flashbacks traces Ma's rise to prominence in the criminal world. Forsaking her hometown of Tulsa and her religious scruples, Ma quickly makes a name for herself with a progression of robberies and kidnappings, assisted by her equally venomous sons. Hardly an shining example of "mother love", Mrs. Barker has no qualms about discarding any gang member who has outlived his usefulness--including her own son Doc (Peter Baldwin), who has defected in the company of his girlfriend Eloise (played by a young Louise Fletcher). This episode originally ran with a closing disclaimer, allegedly added at the insistence of J. Edgar Hoover) stating that, despite the events dramatized herein, it was actually the FBI rather than Elliot Ness who ultimately rid the world of the Barker Gang. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1960
Secretary Gladys Dole (played by future Oscar winner Lucille Fletcher) encounters one perilous obstacle after another while running an errand for her employer, best-selling author Mauvis Meade (Beverly Garland). Things get really bad for Gladys when she stumbles upon a dead body in a mountain cabin, and is charged with murder. In his efforts to defend Gladys in court, Perry (Raymond Burr) must contend with the fact that his client has apparently been moonlighting as a go-between for the Mob--not to mention the fact that the murder cabin was rented in Gladys' name. This episode is based on a 1959 novel by Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1960
Mayor Henderson (Arthur Franz) is up for an appointment to the state crime commission, but he is danger of being sabotaged by his overambitious wife Mona (Patricia Huston), who has been purloining city plans and passing them along to crooked real estate agent Tom Stratton (Edward Platt). Now Stratton is blackmailing Mona, hoping to enrich himself at Henderson's expense. When Mona is murdered, however, Lt. Tragg (Ray Collins) bypasses both Henderson and Stratton and arrests Susan Connolly (played by future Oscar winner Louise Fletcher) for the crime. Thank heaven that Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) is on hand to expose the real killer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1959
Wayde Preston took a break from his starring duties on the Warner Bros. western series Colt. 45 for a guest stint in this episode of Maverick. Preston is cast as Waco Williams, a trigger-happy gent who manages to get into trouble even when he goes out of the way to avoid it. Riding into Bent City with Waco at his side, Bret (James Garner) soon finds himself in the middle of a range war between cattlemen and homesteaders. Though Bret tries to broker a peace between the two warring factions, his efforts are scuttled by the troublesome Waco, who in addition to his other shortcomings happens to be an outlaw with a price on his head. Future Academy Award winner Louise Fletcher does an ingenue turn in this episode, which earned Maverick its highest-ever ratings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1959
Tired of churning out dull commission jobs, sketch artist Anthony March (Michael Higgins) yearns for more excitement in his life. One afternoon, Anthony glances out of the window of his Greenwich Village apartment and sees a young woman apparently planning to commit suicide in her hotel room--but when he rushes over to save her, the room turns out to be empty. This disturbing hallucination occurs time and time again before coming to a startling climax when Anthony's model Jeannie (a young Louise Fletcher) finds herself playing a key role in the proceedings. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
