George Chiang Movies
Created by author/entertainer Kay Thompson in 1955, precocious six-year-old Eloise, who lived in the Plaza Hotel with her long-suffering nanny, her dog Weenie, and her turtle Skipperdee, was the heroine of several delightful children's books written by Thompson and whimsically illustrated by Hilary Knight. The charm of the "Eloise" books has proven elusive whenever the property is adapted for another media, as witness a disastrous musical version which aired live on Playhouse 90 in 1956. On this occasion, Eloise came off as a spoiled obstreperous brat, which was as much the fault of the child actress cast in the role (Evelyn Rudie) as the adapters. Disney decided to give little Eloise another chance 47 years later with the location-filmed Eloise at the Plaza, a two-hour movie presentation of ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney anthology. This time around, Sofia Vassilieva played the title role, with Julie Andrews as Eloise's nanny (something of a full-circle for Andrews, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of a rather different nanny in the 1964 Disney theatrical feature Mary Poppins). The plot finds Eloise insisting upon attending a debutante ball at the Plaza and further conniving to have a runaway foreign prince (Denis Akiyama) -- who isn't much older than she is -- as her escort. Our heroine also mends fences between a reluctant teenage deb and the girl's pushy mother. Jeffrey Tambor is typecast as the Plaza's supercilious concierge Mr. Salomone, whose dithering efforts to keep Eloise from nosing into other people's business avail him not one bit. Hilary Knight appears in a cameo role as himself. Eloise at the Plaza first aired April 27, 2003. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julie Andrews, Christine Baranski, (more)
Lucille Ball stars in this film version of the hit Jerry Herman Broadway musical, which featured an electrifying performance by Angela Lansbury. As Patrick Dennis' plucky and resilient Auntie Mame, Ball's low-pitched, growling moan of a voice (a spine-chilling reminder of the sound of Linda Blair's demon-possession in The Exorcist) and her gaudy and lumbering fashion-horse gait turns Mame into an elderly cross-dresser. In this guise, Mame rehashes the plot from Dennis's novel and the previous non-musical Rosalind Russell film. During the Depression era 1930s, she enrolls her nephew into a liberal private school, tries a turn in show business (with the help of her friend Vera [Beatrice Arthur]), and marries a well-to-do Southern planter (Robert Preston). After her husband's death, Mame concerns herself with her now grown-up nephew, his girlfriend, and the girlfriend's intolerant parents. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lucille Ball, Robert Preston, (more)
- 1974
Chief Ironside (Raymond Burr) conducts an intensive search of San Francisco's Chinatown when one of the community's elder leaders is murdered. The main suspect is a young street-gang member named Billy (Frank Michael Liu), who has been positively identified by several witnesses. But the Chief suspects that Billy has been framed, the better to stir up a bitter and violent generational battle between Chinatown's older and young residents. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
