Sterling Hayden Movies

Director Wolf-Eckart Bühler follows up his earlier, lengthy interview with Sterling Hayden in this three-part chronicle of the traumas in the actor's life. Based on Hayden's autobiography Wanderer, Bühler has three different actors deliver segments of the book in a detached way -- focusing on the problems created by sudden national media attention, the nature of intense pressure from high-ranking authorities, and the gradual formation of a betrayal of both ethics and friends. (Hayden was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951 and named Hollywood colleagues as fellow leftists -- much to his lifelong regret). The literary readings, even when interesting in their own right, do not lend themselves to dramatic cinema, limiting this film to viewers with an avid interest in politics. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Originally screened as a mini-series on the NBC television network, this epic-length feature combines the entirety of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II with 15 minutes of outtakes from the two films, recutting the material into chronological order (clarifying the complex structure of The Godfather Part II, which jumped back and forth between events that occurred before and after the narrative of the first film). The Godfather 1902-1959: The Complete Epic tells the tale of the Corleone Family, from the arrival of Vito Corleone in the U.S. as a boy and his rise to criminal power as a young man (played by Robert DeNiro) to the decline of his empire decades later. While some of the original material was censored for television broadcast, when The Godfather 1902-1959: The Complete Epic was later released on home video, the altered footage was restored to its original content. However, this proved not to be the final and complete document of the Corleone saga, as Francis Ford Coppola added another chapter to the story nine years later with the release of The Godfather Part III. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Fly Me - If You Can Find Me was originally an episode of the weekly, 90-minute TV mystery series Banacek. Detective Banacek (George Peppard), who is called in only when the police are totally stymied, is faced with still another puzzler. A damaged airliner has made an emergency landing at a tiny airfield in the desert. Though supposedly crippled, the airliner vanishes during the night. Sterling Hayden, Jack Kelly, and a pre-stardom Victoria Principal make guest appearances in this February 19, 1974 Banacek installment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For most of this experimental, allegorical French movie, the story is told using a reversed color (negative) developing process for the film itself. The director of the film, Martial Raysse, is a painter and sculptor; this is his first full-length feature. The non-narrative story follows the adventures of a man in a cat-mask. He is seen, variously, rescuing people or raping women, or tenderly reassuring a young girl. In short, he is an unpredictable element. He joins forces with someone (Sterling Hayden) who is taking a raft around the world, or maybe out of the world. Highlights of the film are the short scenes which appear with their color the right way 'round. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A family living on a remote island learns an escaped prisoner may be in the area. Allan (Sterling Hayden) is the professor who studies the migratory habits of birds. His wife Clea (Maureen McNalley) has a fascination for all things dead. Her sister Lis (Susan Strasberg) is visiting to break the news of her impending marriage to an older man. Clea leaves tobacco and food out for the unseen escapee. Lis meets the prisoner (Stuart Whitman) on the beach and the two make love. The quiet paradise is interrupted by the escaped prisoner who later suffers a potentially fatal wound while killing another man. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This near-legendary western stars Sterling Hayden as George Hanson, the son of a Swedish seaman-turned-farmer (Ted Stanhope). When he runs afoul of town boss Ed McNeil (Sebastian Cabot), Hanson's father is gunned down by McNeil's henchman Johnny Crale (Ned Young). Knowing full well that he can expect no help from the town's corrupt sheriff (Tyler McVey), Hanson takes matters in his own hands. Tension mounts steadily until the unforgettable climactic showdown, wherein Hanson arms himself with a harpoon! Extremely well written by Ben L. Perry, Terror in a Texas Town was one of the last directorial efforts of cult favorite Joseph H. Lewis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Kathy Ferguson (Barbara Stanwyck) is a cynical newspaper columnist in San Francisco, handling women's advice -- by chance one day, the paper's city editor assigns her to cover the woman's angle on the arrival of a pair of L.A. police detectives, Capt. Manny Alidos (Royal Dano) and Lt. Bill Doyle (Sterling Hayden), on the hunt for a murder suspect known to be hiding somewhere in the city. They're both pretty button-down types and seem like fish-out-of-water in the more easy-going Frisco, and Kathy quickly clashes with them both, especially when her column appealing to the missing suspect as a woman yields serious dual results -- not only does Kathy boost her profile and readership, but the missing suspect makes contact and is ultimately brought in; in the process, Kathy goes from journalistic back-bencher to media star. That would be the end of the issue, except that Kathy and Bill have become attracted to each other amid their clashes, parries, and thrusts, and decide to get married -- she spurns the offer of a job in New York to move to Los Angeles and settle down to the life of a wife and homemaker. But that proves impossible -- Kathy quickly chafes at what she regards as the empty vacuous chatter of her fellow detective wives' lives and social interactions, and also her place in their pecking order as determined by their husbands' ranks and assignments (and Bill just doesn't rate high enough). Her own life suddenly cut off from career and ambition, and an ability to act on either, she becomes fixated on Bill's career and advancing it and him as a substitute. She contrives to cross paths socially with Alice Pope (Fay Wray), the wife of Inspector Tony Pope (Raymond Burr), who is both the head of an elite detective unit and the top man in her husband's division, and is soon not only getting Bill invited to parties with Pope and the police commissioner, but also cutting her husband's boss Manny Alidos and his wife Sara (Virginia Grey), to whom she's taken a special dislike, out of those same events.
It's not quite enough, however, and Kathy starts socializing on her own with Tony Pope, on Bill's behalf, and the two soon have their own relationship. Bill is still too much of a nice guy, and not careerist enough or assertive enough -- until she feigns distress at receiving poison-pen letters accusing her of having an affair with Pope, and blames Manny and Sara. This drives Bill to confront and assault Alidos, leading to a hearing in Pope's office where the chief of the division -- now very much beholden to Bill for Kathy's sake -- comes down on Bill's side. When the smoke clears, Manny is bounced back into uniform and Bill is made acting captain and put in charge of the homicide unit that Alidos formerly headed. Bill is on his way, and so is Kathy and Pope's relationship. But Pope proves to be a distressingly honorable and loyal man -- when his wife's health takes a turn for the worse, he decides to put in for retirement, and Kathy wants him to recommend Bill as his replacement. He considers it but decides that regardless of what he's done outside of his marriage, the department is too important to compromise the detective division, and that Bill just doesn't have what it takes to head it. Kathy is too deep in her strategy to back off, and also feels betrayed by Pope; now pushed over the edge, she contrives to threaten him with a gun, and is prepared to make good on her threat. Ironically enough, Bill may get his shot yet at heading the division, as he's head of homicide and takes personal charge of the biggest case the department has seen in years -- bringing in Tony Pope's killer. The only question is if and how he can put together the clues and pieces of the puzzle leading back to Kathy. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Anita Ekberg amply fills the title role in the offbeat western Valerie. Clearly inspired by Rashomon, the film offers contradictory flashbacks during a lengthy trial. The defendant, Civil War hero John Garth, Sterling Hayden, is accused of seriously wounding his wife Valerie and murdering her parents. At first, the jury's sympathy is with Garth, who claims that his faithless wife was running off with preacher Blake (played by Ekberg's then-husband Anthony Steel) and that the death of his in-laws was accidental. But as testimony proceeds, it is revealed that the highly respectable, much-beloved Garth is a beast in human form. The complicated outcome of the trial has so many twists and turns that it would be criminal to reveal any one of them. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Frontier peacekeeper Sheriff Galt (Sterling Hayden) faces a crisis of conscience in The Iron Sheriff. In the aftermath of a robbery-murder, Galt follows the trail of evidence directly to his own son, Benjie (Darryl Hickman). Sworn to uphold the law at all costs, Galt is grimly determined to see that Benjie will receive a fair trial without any coercion on his part. But the townsfolk have already decided that the sheriff will try to spring the boy, and a lynch-mob mentality slows festers its way through the community. As the trial proceeds, it becomes obvious that Benjie is going to hang for his alleged crime, but there's still one or two surprises in store. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Killing was director Stanley Kubrick's first major film effort -- though, like Kubrick's earlier films, it was economically produced with an inexpensive cast. In a variation of his Asphalt Jungle role, Sterling Hayden plays veteran criminal Johnny Clay, planning one last big heist before settling down to a respectable marriage with Fay (Colleen Gray). Teaming with several cohorts, Johnny masterminds a racetrack robbery. The basic flaw is that all the crooks involved are losers and small-timers who find themselves in way over their heads despite their supposed cleverness. None of the participants is more pathetic than George Peatty (Elisha Cook Jr.), who is goaded into the robbery by his covetous and far-from-faithful wife (Marie Windsor). As in a Greek tragedy, Johnny's best-laid schemes go awry. Prominently featured in the cast of The Killing are offbeat character actors Tim Carey and Joe Turkel, who'd show up with equally showy roles in future Kubrick productions. The Killing is based on the novel Clean Break by Lionel White. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Republic's Trucolor process is shown off to good advantage in the outdoors actioner Timberjack. Sterling Hayden and David Brian star as Chipman and Brunner, a pair of rugged lumbermen who vie for the attentions of Lynn Tilton (Vera Ralston). The richer and more powerful of the two, Brunner would seem to have the advantage, but Chipman is handsomer. It also turns out that Chipman is more honest; Brunner has already killed several men in his climb to the top, and has cheated Chipman out of his rightful property. Lynn is won over to Chipman's side when she discovers that Brunner was responsible for the death of her father (Adolphe Menjou). Timberjack was based on a novel by Dan Cushman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Republic super-production The Last Command is a partial remake of the same studio's Man of Conquest (1939). But whereas the earlier film concerned itself with the exploits of Texas patriot Sam Houston, Last Command concentrates on Houston associate James Bowie, played by Sterling Hayden. When Texas is threatened by the armies of Mexican general Santa Ana (J. Carrol Naish), Bowie at first adopts a policy of peaceful coexistence. When this proves impossible, Bowie joins Davy Crockett (played as an irascible old cuss by Arthur Hunnicut) and the rest of the courageous defenders of the Alamo. The climactic confrontation between the heroes of the Alamo and Santa Ana is long in coming, but well worth the wait. Frank Lloyd's large-scale direction and the vibrant musical score of Max Steiner imbues Last Command with a "major studio" aura not often found in Republic productions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of Republic's most elaborate productions of the 1950s, The Eternal Sea is the biography of American admiral John M. Hoskins. Sterling Hayden delivers a superbly understated performance as Hoskins, who continued to serve throughout WW2 despite the loss of a leg in the early phases of the conflict. The admiral's farsighted activities as commander of the aircraft carrier Princeton led to the development of the more sophisticated jet-aircraft carriers of the Korean War. The well-chosen supporting cast includes Alexis Smith as Hoskin's wife Sue, Dean Jagger as Admiral Thomas L. Semple, Morris Ankrum as Adm. Arthur Dewey Struble, and John Maxwell as Adm. William "Bull" Halsey (whose life story would serve as the basis for the 1960 film The Gallant Hours). Elmer Bernstein's soaring musical score is the icing on the cake. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide