Larry Gates Movies

Above and Beyond is the story of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as told from the perspective of the man who flew the mission. Robert Taylor stars as Col. Paul Tibbetts, commander of the Enola Gay. Once selected for this extremely dangerous mission, Tibbetts must hand-pick a crew worthy of the task. He is also forced to keep his mission a closely guarded secret, even unto withholding all information from his loving and patient wife Lucey (Eleanor Parker). The film concentrates on the strain placed upon Tibbetts, his crew and their families in the crucial days before the "big drop". The bombing itself is handled with taste and decorum, though the horror and mixed emotions of the moment are brilliantly conveyed on the faces of Tibbetts and his men. Above and Beyond represents a rare noncomedy endeavor from the writer-director team of Melvin Frank and Norman Panama. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Authentic New Orleans locations enhance the overall enjoyment of the prizefight melodrama Glory Alley. A mere few seconds before a championship bout, Socks Barbarrosa (Ralph Meeker) decides to throw in the towel so far as his boxing career is concerned. Socks' friends, family and handlers assume that he's turned yellow. A series of complex flashbacks, coupled with a subsequent tour of duty in Korea, prove otherwise. For those not interested in cinematic pugilism, Glory Alley offers such sidelines pleasures as the jazz music of Jack Teagarden and the dancing of leading lady Leslie Caron. Kurt Kazner also provides some choice moments as a blind "boxing groupie" who happens to be Caron's father. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An outdoor adventure musical comedy, Take Me to Town features Ann Sheridan as Vermilion O'Toole, a barroom singer with a shady past who has taken refuge in a small timber town in the Pacific Northwest. She's on the run from a federal agent, Ed Daggett (Larry Gates). Just out of town lives Will Hall (Sterling Hayden), a logger and preacher who is widowed and raising three children. The children meet O'Toole and try to hook her up with their father -- because they want a mother to care for them. This arouses the jealousies of Mrs. Stoffer (Phyllis Stanley), a widow who was hoping to snare Hall herself. Hall comes to prefer O'Toole, but she must overcome the resentment of the local townspeople, who think she's a floozy. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Don Siegel's classic exercise in psychological science fiction has often been interpreted as a cautionary fable about the blacklisting hysteria of the McCarthy era. It can be read as a political metaphor or enjoyed as a fine low-budget suspense movie, and it works well either way. Kevin McCarthy stars as Miles Bennel, a doctor in the small California community of Santa Mira, where several patients begin reporting that their loved ones don't seem to be themselves lately. They look the same but seem cold, emotionally distant, and somehow unfamiliar. The longer Miles looks into these reports, the more stock he places in them, and in time he makes a shocking discovery: aliens from another world are taking over Santa Mira, one citizen at a time. Emissaries from a distant planet have sent massive seed pods containing creatures that can assume the exact physical likeness of anyone they choose. When Santa Mirans go to sleep, the pod creatures take on the shape of their victims and then destroy their bodies. The aliens may look the same, but they possess no human emotions and, like plants, are concerned only with propagating themselves and eventually subsuming the earth. Needless to say, Miles and his friends are terrified, but since it's hard to tell who's a person and who's a pod, they're at a loss for what to do, especially when it seems that there are increasingly more aliens than humans. Invasion of the Body Snatchers builds tension slowly and steadily, dealing not in the shock of bug-eyed monsters common to other 1950s science-fiction movies but in the unnerving possibility that the enemy is among us -- and impossible to tell from our allies. The ultra-paranoid conclusion of Siegel's original cut was softened by Allied Artists, who added a framing device that suggested help was on the way. This coda was as effective in blunting the film's grim conclusion as giving a Band-Aid to a beheading victim; few films of the era make it more painfully clear that for these people (and maybe for ourselves), there's no turning back and no way home. Keep an eye peeled for a bit part by soon-to-be-legendary Western director Sam Peckinpah, who plays a meter reader and also (uncredited) helped write the screenplay. Based on a novel by Jack Finney, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was remade in 1978 by Philip Kaufman and in 1993 by Abel Ferrara (as Body Snatchers); and its influence can be felt from The Stepford Wives (1975) to The X-Files. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Kim Novak is clearly out of her depth as legendary Broadway actress Jeanne Eagels, but one can't fault her for trying very hard. As this filmed biography gets under way, wide-eyed Eagels finds herself stranded in a tank town by a smooth-talking traveling salesman. Carnival operator Sal Satori hires Eagels as a kootch dancer, but her ambition is to become a serious dramatic actress. When she and Sal reach New York, she signs up for acting lessons under the tutelage of a Mme. Neilson (Agnes Moorehead). Before long, Jeanne is understudying on Broadway, and in 1922 she takes audiences and critics by storm with her unforgettable portrayal of Sadie Thompson in Rain, a role she landed by ruthlessly double-crossing the actress originally slated for the part (Virginia Grey). When her rival commits suicide, the chastened Jeanne turns to booze and drugs to assuage her conscience. The real-life Jeanne Eagels died of narcotics addiction in 1929, a fact that the Hollywood version skims over. Eagels' family sued Columbia Pictures over the "distortions" offered in Jeanne Eagels. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his film debut, Ben Gazzara repeats his stage portrayal of Jocko De Paris, a manipulative psychotic who holds a Southern military school in thrall. With the help of his flunkies, cadets Harold Knoble (Pat Hingle) and Roger Gatt (James Olson), Jocko sadistically terrorizes the underclassmen, forcing them to do his bidding. Efforts made by Major Avery (Larry Gates) to expose Jocko are constantly thwarted by the students' conspiracy of silence and by Jocko's own efforts to destroy Avery. Finally, cadet Robert Marquales (George Peppard, likewise making his first film appearance) can stand no more: turning the tables on Jocko, Marquales reveals the monster for the snivveling coward he really is. This filmization of Calder Willingham's play and novel End as a Man almost didn't make it to the screen due to its pronounced homosexual subtext. The filmmakers managed to circumvent the censors by removing three minutes of allegedly offensive footage, and by making the film's most overtly gay character a slimy, repulsive creep (another implicitly homosexual character, played by Arthur Storch, is depicted as merely wimpish and withdrawn). As a box-office come-on, Calder Willingham added the superfluous character of good-time gal Rosebud (Julie Wilson). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This dynamic and commanding adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play focuses on a troubled Southern family and the discord over their dying father's millions. Wealthy plantation owner Big Daddy Pollitt (Burl Ives), celebrating his 65th birthday, is visited by his sons, Brick (Paul Newman) and Gooper (Jack Carson). He has cancer, but a doctor has deliberately and falsely declared it in remission. Seemingly perfect son Gooper and his wife, Mae (Madeleine Sherwood), have several children and are anxiously expecting to inherit Daddy's millions. By contrast, Big Daddy's "favorite," Brick, is a has-been football star who's taken to drinking his days away since the suicide of his "best friend" a year earlier. He resents his wife, Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor), because he believes that she had an affair with his deceased friend. As a result, he refuses to sleep with her, although she remains devoted to him. Since Brick and Maggie have failed to produce any grandchildren, Big Daddy is inclined to leave his estate to Gooper, but Maggie attempts to prevent that by telling him that she is pregnant. Big Daddy knows better, yet he recognizes that Maggie loves Brick so much that she would be willing to do anything for him. Although Brick is self-destructive and resentful, unable to come to terms with his losses, it takes Big Daddy's recognition of his own mortality to make Brick change his perspective. Brick's struggle with his sexual identity, and the nature of his relationship with his "friend," had to be toned down for mass consumption, although this intelligently written and acted film covers such topics as infertility, adultery, and alcoholism that were still considered taboo in the 1950s. Newman brings depth and feeling to the role as Brick, while Taylor succeeds brilliantly in portraying Maggie as a passionate and understanding woman despite her own real-life emotional turmoil over the death of her husband at the time, producer Mike Todd. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

TV producer Aaron Spelling first came up with the story for this standard western set in a small town just after the American Civil War. Mitch (Alan Ladd) has tragically lost his wife during a problem in her pregnancy because he could not come up with $1.87 for the medicine she needed. A little twisted right from the beginning, he vows revenge. In the first step toward his goal, he gets the post of deputy sheriff from the repentant townspeople. In the second step, he murders the sheriff and then recruits a gang of disreputable toughs to steal $100,000 and bankrupt the town. In the last and fatal part of his plan for vengeance, he turns on his own gang of thieves. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Guest star Larry Gates is cast as Jacob Darien, the leader of a Quaker sect which has purchased land in California. While crossing the Ponderosa in a special wagon transporting the money for the land transaction, Jacob's daughter Regina (Patricia Donahue) persuades her father to have Adam and Hoss Cartwright act as escorts for the Quaker wagon train. Accompanying the Cartwright boys is Adam's new friend Sam Bond (Dennis Patrick)-who secretly schemes to steal the Quakers' funds at the first opportunity. Rounding out the supporting cast is Charles Maxwell as Shenandoah. First broadcast on October 8, 1960, "The Hopefuls" was written by E. Jack Neumann. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A guest instructor at a South American university, American political-science professor Gavin Carroll (Larry Gates) takes an academic interest in a young insurgent who has been killed during an attempt to assasinate a local dictator. But after sniffing an unusual-looking flower, Carroll is suddenly possessed with revolutionary fervor--whereupon he sets out to finish the job that the late insurgent had started. This is the last One Step Beyond episode to be filmed in Hollywood. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Irvin Kershner, better known for his big-budget films like The Empire Strikes Back, joins with scripters and lead Don Murray to create this moving and effective docudrama. The story is based on the experiences of real-life Rev. Charles Dismas Clark (played here by Murray), a Jesuit priest devoted to working with young ex-convicts who face uphill battles in trying to re-integrate into a society that discriminates against them. At focus is the struggle of Billy Lee Jackson (Keir Dullea) with his personal demons as he gets involved in crimes which are not of his doing alone. His case illustrates the nature of the majority of cases, and like the majority, he pays in spades for his "mistakes." A powerful argument for looking at the horror of the death penalty and society's responsibility for crime, this well-wrought story is compelling and consistently effective. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

One of the few Twilight Zone episodes with virtually no sci-fi/fantasy trappings whatsoever, this is nonetheless a disturbing and unsettling half hour. In the midst of a surprise birthday party, the revellers are shocked to hear a Civil Defense announcement on the radio, declaring that America is under attack from UFOs. Only Dr. Stockton (Larry Gates) has had the foresight to build a bomb shelter, and before long, he and his family are besieged by desperate neighbors, demanding to be allowed to take refuge in Stockton's cellar. As tensions reach a fever pitch, all of the suppressed hostilities and prejudices of the neighbors come rushing to the surface -- a dangerous situation reminiscent of the finale of the first-season episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," minus the extraterrestrial punchline. Written by Rod Serling, "The Shelter" first aired on September 29, 1961. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dean Martin plays an easygoing Southern politician, long on charm but short on brains. Susan Hayward, a poor girl with rich ideas, marries Martin and endeavors to engineer him into the governor's chair. Though no saint herself, Hayward is determined to overcome the good-old-boy corruption infesting the state government. She emerges triumphant after a public showdown with crafty politico Wilfred Hyde-White. Based on a novel by Wirt Williams,Ada was produced by the same team that had guided Susan Hayward to an Oscar nomination for I'll Cry Tomorrow. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide