Tom Greenway Movies

A pre-Man From UNCLE, pre-NCIs David McCallum is cast as Phillipe Bertain, an incredibly naïve young Frenchman who gives a "belle femme" named Ninette (Roxane Berard) a great deal of money so that she can afford to divorce her husband Armand (Jacques Bergerac). Instead, the duplicitous Ninette hands the cash to Armand, who immediately purchases a ski resort. The outraged Phillipe heads to the slopes to confront Armand, but before this can happen the scoundrel is killed in a plane crash. When the police determine that Armand was killed before the crash, Phillipe is arrested for the crime. Sacre bleu! Ou est Monsier Perry Mason (Raymond Burr), s'il vous plait? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

While having lunch at the Plaza Hotel in New York, advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) has the bad luck to call for a messenger just as a page goes out for a "George Kaplan." From that moment, Thornhill finds that he has stepped into a nightmare -- he is quietly abducted by a pair of armed men out of the hotel's famous Oak Room and transported to a Long Island estate; there, he is interrogated by a mysterious man (James Mason) who, believing that Roger is George Kaplan, demands to know what he knows about his business and how he has come to acquire this knowledge. Roger, who knows nothing about who any of these people are, can do nothing but deny that he is Kaplan or that he knows what they're talking about. Finally, his captors force a bottle of bourbon into Roger and put him behind the wheel of a car on a dangerous downhill stretch. Through sheer luck and the intervention of a police patrol car and its driver (John Beradino), Roger survives the ride and evades his captors, and is booked for drunk driving. He's unable to persuade the court, the county detectives, or even his own mother (Jesse Royce Landis) of the truth of his story, however -- Thornhill returns with them to the mansion where he was held, only to find any incriminating evidence cleaned up and to learn that the owner of the house is a diplomat, Lester Townsend (Philip Ober), assigned to the United Nations. He backtracks to the hotel to find the room of the real George Kaplan, only to discover that no one at the hotel has ever actually seen the man. With his kidnappers once again pursuing him, Thornhill decides to confront Townsend at the United Nations, only to discover that he knows nothing of the events on Long Island, or his house being occupied -- but before he can learn more, Townsend gets a knife in his back in full view of 50 witnesses who believe that Roger did it. Now on the run from a murder charge, complete with a photograph of him holding the weapon plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country, Thornhill tries to escape via train -- there he meets the cooly beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who twice hides him from the police, once spontaneously and a second time in a more calculated rendezvous in her compartment that gets the two of them together romantically, at least for the night. By the next day, he's off following a clue to a remote rural highway, where he is attacked by an armed crop-dusting plane, one of the most famous scenes in Hitchcock's entire film output. Thornhill barely survives, but he does manage to learn that his mysterious tormentor/interrogator is named Phillip Vandamm, and that he goes under the cover of being an art dealer and importer/exporter, and that Eve is in bed with him in every sense of the phrase -- or is she? ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

A bitter feud in the New Mexico town of Santos has as its central figure a notorious Mexican gunman named Juan Carlos Morita (Christopher Dark). At first, Paladin (Richard Boone) is willing to help the townsfolk capture Morita, but he is quickly disgusted by their own acts of brutality. Ultimately, and after much unnecessary bloodshed, Morita strikes a deal with Paladin: He will hang up his guns if he is allowed to return to his home town and marry his sweetheart Maria (played by a young Suzanne Pleshette). Unfortunately, Maria has other plans--and Paladin finds himself up to his neck in another volatile situation! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A suspenseful courtroom drama, The Story on Page One was the second and last film directed by the distinguished American playwright Clifford Odets (who also wrote the screenplay). Jo (Rita Hayworth) and Larry (Gig Young) are lovers accused of murdering Jo's husband. Their trial lawyer, Victor Santini (Anthony Franciosa) has his work cut out for him on two different fronts. For one, he has to overcome his own tendency to hit the bottle, and for another, he has to somehow win this case. As revealed in the beginning, Jo's husband died accidentally. Yet the unpredictability of the courtroom proceedings indicate that a verdict of "not guilty" is going to be anything but automatic. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The Sheepman was touted as a comedy by some of MGM's publicity people. It really isn't, but this western does have its lighthearted moments. Glenn Ford stars as a hard-bitten sheep farmer, running up against the opposition of cattle ranchers. Shirley MacLaine is a no-nonsense frontier girl who becomes the bone of contention between Ford and cattle baron Leslie Nielsen. Ford is able to get a leg-up in the community by humiliating Nielsen's top gun (Mickey Shaughnessy) in public. The range war comes to an end when Ford and Nielsen go one-to-one. Because The Sheepman didn't do well in its initial engagements, MGM reissued the picture under the more aggressive title The Stranger With a Gun. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This is the one in which the "villain" is a huge, carnivorous praying mantis. After the titular insect has attacked several people in a remote Arctic region, Col. Joe Parkham (Craig Stevens) swings into action. Parkham and his associates, Dr. Ned Jackson (William Hopper) and Ned's assistant Margie Blake (Alix Talton), track the predatory mantis as it heads southward to Washington DC (how did it get past customs?) The green monstrosity meets its Waterloo in "Manhattan Tunnel", where it is bombarded with poison gas (a little Raid or Black Flag might have come in handy). Some of the Arctic scenes in The Deadly Mantis were clumsily culled from the 1933 drama SOS Iceberg and a handful of Air Force training films. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Actually, this retelling of the life of outlaw Jesse James is only as true as its predecessor, the highly fanciful 1939 Tyrone Power-Henry Fonda starrer Jesse James. Generous chunks of stock footage from the earlier film are reused here, albeit reframed to accommodate the CinemaScope process. Robert Wagner makes an interesting James, though he is upstaged throughout by Jeffrey Hunter as his brother Frank. Adhering to the Canon, the film insists that the James boys were forced into a life of crime by greedy railroad men -- hence, their ongoing vendetta against trains. Director Nicholas Ray adds a few psychological nuances not found in the more prosaic 1939 film. John Carradine, who played "dirty little coward" Bob Ford in the original Jesse James, appears in the remake as Rev. Jethro Bailey. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This drama is set inside a girl's reformatory. When one of the teens has a baby, the other girls rally together to conceal and care for the infant. The troubled young women soon become as a family until the guards discover the child and take it away. This angers the inmates who begin rioting and destroying their prison. During the scuffle, a young woman escapes and is able to join up with her lover. As they flee the police, their car crashes and both of them die. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Tight Spot is based on Leonard Kantor's novel Dead Pigeon, which in turn was obviously inspired by Virginia Hill's appearance before the Kefauver Committee. Ginger Rogers plays hard-boiled model Sherry Conley, who is serving a prison term for a crime she didn't commit. Sherry is offered her freedom -- and immunity -- by U.S. attorney Lloyd Hallett (Edward G. Robinson) if she'll agree to appear as a material witness in the trial of mobster Benjamin Costain (Lorne Greene). Unfortunately, Costain has a long reach, and is able to coerce Vince Striker (Brian Keith), the detective assigned to guard Sherry, to allow Costain's hired guns to invade the hotel room where Sherry is being hidden. The star witness is surly and uncooperative, but she finally decides to testify when her escort, policewoman Willoughby (Katherine Anderson), is murdered by Costain's goons. But Striker is still around and about, still determined to do Costain's bidding. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charles Bronson guest stars as a neurologist trying to assess a boy's brain damage with a team of specialists, while the boy's family deals with guilt and anger over the car accident that caused it. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

A remake of 1933's The Greeks Had a Word for Them, as well as a retread of 20th Century-Fox's favorite plotline, How to Marry a Millionaire was the first Hollywood comedy to be lensed in Cinemascope. Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe play three models of modest means who rent an expensive Manhattan penthouse apartment and pose as women of wealth. It's all part of a scheme hatched by Bacall to snare rich husbands for herself and her roommates. The near-sighted Monroe is wooed by an international playboy, but ends up settling for the tax-dodging fugitive (David Wayne) who owns the girls' apartment. The knuckle-headed Grable goes off on an illicit weekend in the mountains with a grouchy married executive (Fred Clark), but falls instead for a comparatively poor--but very handsome--forest ranger (Rory Calhoun). And Bacall very nearly lands an aging millionaire (William Powell), but has a sudden attack of conscience and opts instead for the supposedly poverty-stricken chap (Cameron Mitchell) who has been pursuing her since reel one. It turns out that she has actually landed one of the richest men in New York--and upon learning this, our three luscious heroines faint dead away. Before the opening credits roll in How to Marry a Millionaire, we are treated to a "live" orchestral rendition of Alfred Newman's "Street Scene" overture, conducted by Newman himself. In addition to its being the first wide-screen comedy, Millionaire was also the first-ever presentation of the weekly NBC series Saturday Night at the Movies, premiering on the small screen on September 23, 1961. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Robert Jordan is a television star. Robert Jordan likes things orderly, on time and properly executed. In his world children are to be seen, not heard. So why would Mr. Jordan want to become the master of a rambunctious band of Boy Scouts? Ratings. His staff figures that if learns how to interact with the youth, they will be more inclined to watch his show. Of course watching Jordan cope comprises most of the fun. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This last of several movie adaptations of Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flat stars Cameron Mitchell as a murderous western outlaw, Anne Baxter as his wife, Dale Robertson as a disgraced gambler and Miriam Hopkins as a faded dance hall floozie. All these characters (with a few other socially undesirable types) are trapped in a snowbound mountain cabin. As the chances for rescue fade, the true natures of the cabin's occupants rise to the surface. It is the gambler, outwardly the most cowardly of the bunch, who takes on the outlaw when he threatens the survival of the others. Outcasts of Poker Flat is less downbeat than earlier versions of the story...and, accordingly, less memorable. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide