Jeffrey Hunter Movies

Ed Stander (Robert Morse), with the help of an all-star cast, teaches Paul Manning (Walter Matthau) the fine art of philandering in A Guide for the Married Man. Paul, happily married to sexy Ruth (Inger Stevens), has no burning desire to cheat, but Ed makes the prospect sound very attractive. Finally taking the "big step" with a glamorous brunette after months of careful preparation, Paul finds that he loves his wife way too much to betray her -- while the ever-careful Ed ends up in divorce court. Among the myriad of "advisors" peppered throughout Guide for the Married Man are Art Carney, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Jayne Mansfield, Terry-Thomas, and Carl Reiner. The best guest-star vignette features Joey Bishop as a man caught in bed with another woman by his wife -- whereupon he calmly puts on his clothes, straightens up the room, and quietly responds to his wife's outrage by saying "What bed? What girl?" Adapted by Frank Tarloff from his book of the same name, Guide for the Married Man was directed by Gene Kelly, who makes a cameo "appearance" of his own as a voice on a TV set. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Myrna Loy returns as Mrs. Gilbreth -- efficiency expert, industrial engineer, and mother of twelve -- in this sequel to Cheaper By The Dozen. After the death of her husband, Gilbreth is forced to take over as the family's primary breadwinner, but she soon discovers that not every company who hired her and her husband in the past is eager to work with her on her own. Facing prejudice from many of her prospective clients, Gilbreth finally makes good training engineers for Sam Harper (Edward Arnold), putting her family back on solid financial ground. In the meantime, the dozen Gilbreth children are growing up, most notably eldest daughter Ann (Jeanne Crain), who enters into a serious romance with Bob Grayson (Jeffrey Hunter), a young doctor. The supporting cast includes Hoagy Carmichael, Debra Paget, Barbara Bates and Robert Arthur. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The original Broadway musical Call Me Mister was a plotless revue. By the time the property made it to the screen, however, a storyline was grafted on and much of the revue's funnier (and dirtier) material was weeded out. Betty Grable stars as an American USO entertainer Kay Hudson, touring the bases in postwar Japan. Somewhere along the way she crosses the path of former husband Shep Dooley (Dan Dailey). Despite the presence of ardent suitor Capt. Johnny Comstock (Dale Robertson), Dooley begins a campaign to win his wife back. They are reconciled during a climactic stage show, which affords ample opportunity for both Grable and Dailey to demonstrate their terpsichorean skills (Busby Berkeley handled the choreography). Cast as a GI who hates the army, Danny Thomas (a holdover from the Broadway production) does a truncated version of his own nightclub act. Specialty numbers are provided by the Dunhill dance team, and by an unbilled Bobby Short. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Count Five and Die is a neat British-made programmer set just before the D-Day invasion. Nigel Patrick plays a British major who heads a group of special agents, dedicated to misleading the Nazis into thinking the invasion will take place in Holland. The Allied spies, which include American Jeffrey Hunter and Frenchwoman Annemarie Duringer operate under cover as the owners of a documentary filmmaking firm. The plan is nearly destroyed when one of the spies turns out to be a Nazi agent. The title Count Five and Die refers to the length of time its takes for the traditional cyanide capsules (always doled out to secret agents in films of this nature) to take effect. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Opening with a montage depicting its subject's Civil War exploits, Custer of the West carries us across four years of fighting in less than four minutes of screen time. The Civil War ended, George Armstrong Custer (Robert Shaw) longs for action and to hold onto his rank of general, so General Phil Sheridan (Lawrence Tierney) sends him West, admitting that there will be no nobility to his cause there -- the government and the people want the land, and that means getting the Indians off of it by any means necessary. He arrives in time to see a party of Cheyenne (whom the real Custer never fought) kill a pair of miners by sending them rolling down a long hill in a runaway wagon -- that motif is repeated, in ever more striking, elaborate, and violent fashions, in two subsequent action scenes. Custer organizes his command around Major Marcus Reno (Ty Hardin), depicted as an ambitious officer with a drinking problem, and Captain Benteen (Jeffrey Hunter), a humane officer with a strange, almost mystical streak, who understands the Indians better than anyone else in Custer's command. Also present are Mary Ure as Custer's loving wife and Robert Ryan in a very flamboyant performance as a larcenous sergeant who comes to no good end after being stricken with gold fever. After getting his command into the shape it needs to be -- mostly by running everyone except a lone sergeant into the ground in an extended drill -- he carries out his mission, quietly detesting the motives behind his orders but executing them out to the letter. Regarded as a hero in the East, Custer returns to Washington only to jeopardize his career by testifying about the corruption he's found around him in the West. He is left a political pariah but once more. Sheridan intercedes, again getting Custer posted with the Seventh Cavalry now engaged against the Sioux. He is, by this time, disillusioned with the army that he serves and the politicians and the business interests in whose service it functions. Though he craves the glory that comes with battle, he sees soldiering of the type he is being asked to carry out as little more than organized slaughter, even relying on machines to do the killing in ever more indiscriminate ways with none of the contest between men, of strategies, and arms and resourcefulness -- that was his real joy. The demons and goals that drive him culminate with Custer's disastrous action at Little Big Horn, which is beautifully (if not necessarily accurately) staged, in a stunning visual and aural denouement. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

This episode of the ABC anthology Disneyland is an extended promo for Walt Disney's then-upcoming theatrical feature The Great Locomotive Chase. Narrated by the film's star Fess Parker, the episode offers a thumbnail history of railroads in the United States with stopovers at trainyards in Baltimore and Los Angeles where vintage Civil War locomotives are kept on display. These engines are then shown in use as props in Great Locomotive Chase, a dramatization of the famous Andrews raid in 1862, in which several Northern spies went behind enemy lines to capture a Southern train (the same story served as the basis for the 1926 Buster Keaton vehicle The General, which curiously goes unmentioned here). Also shown are the efforts by the Disney Studio staffers to scout out appropriate locations and vintage buildings to be seen in the film. Technical adviser Wilbur Kurtz is interviewed, as are several Georgia residents who appear as extras. Once the sets are construction, the props are in place and the cameras are ready, the episode offers tantalizing glimpses of the film itself, featuring actors Fess Parker, Jeffrey Hunter, Jeff York, John Lupton and others. As a bonus, the viewer is treated to "Sons of Old Aunt Dinah", a song specially written for this episode by Stan Jones and Lawrence Edward Watkin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Nello Pazzafini, using the pseudonym "Ted Carter," leads a band of outlaws in this rousing spaghetti western from director Giuliano Carmineo (as "Anthony Ascott"). Lisa (Pascale Petit) and her brother Paul are settlers who discover an abandoned mine full of gold but are attacked and robbed by Pazzafini's gang. Wandering to the town of Eagle's Nest, Lisa enlists the aid of a vagabond gunfighter named Joe Collins (Jeffrey Hunter) in getting back the gold and avenging her brother's murder. Aldo Lastretti appears as the obligatory fake priest, Rev. Riley, and genre regulars Daniela Giordano and Piero Lulli co-star. Hugo Fregonese collaborated on the screenplay, while Ricardo Pallottini provided the striking cinematography. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

The thin plot of this film takes place during the Napoleonic invasion of Germany and is a backdrop for displaying several nude females. Susanne (Terry Torday) is the hostess of a well-known house of ill repute on the Lahn River. Susanne travels to Italy to deliver a message to Count Enrico (Jeffrey Hunter), an amorous lover under the spell of Napoleon's sister. She sets him up with a bride and manages to uncover some military secrets in the court of the amorous emperor. Folk songs were written about this actual historical hostess who dazzled young students with her legendary beauty. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This standard wartime drama is divided into three chronological segments and is based on the experiences of the real Guy Gabaldon (played as an adult by Jeffrey Hunter, and as a boy by Richard Eyer). In the first segment, Guy is a homeless waif without many prospects when he is adopted by a Japanese-American family. He grows up just in time to be drafted into battle in World War II -- the bombing of Pearl Harbor has a particularly devastating effect on his family and their friends. After a wild last fling with two buddies (David Janssen and Vic Damone) and some women, Guy heads off to war where he distinguishes himself because of his fluency in Japanese. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This drama tells of the powerful rise of emperor Julius Caesar along with his swift fall in this adaptation of William Shakespeare's play. ~ All Movie Guide

One major film star referred to director Nicholas Ray as a "loser," because of Ray's alleged willingness to let his more temperamental actors walk all over him. Evidently, Ray had a very compliant and cooperative cast in King of Kings, inasmuch as the film emerged as one of the most disciplined Biblical epics ever made. Jeffrey Hunter is cast as Jesus Christ, delivering a wholly credible performance in this most taxing of roles (never mind the wags who referred to the film as "I Was a Teenage Jesus"). Siobhan McKenna is a radiant if somewhat overaged Mary; Hurd Hatfield offers a properly preening Pontius Pilate; Rip Torn portrays Judas more for the tragedy than the treachery; Robert Ryan (a personal favorite of Ray's) is one of the best John the Baptists you're ever likely to see; and Harry Guardino convincingly interprets Barabbas as a firebrand political extremist. The only false note in the casting is the MGM-dictated selection of teenaged Brigid Bazlen as Salome. The best aspect of the film is its handling of the days after the Resurrection; the "Jesus sightings" are offered as secondhand information, so as to retain some of the mystery inherent in the Scriptures. King of Kings was previously filmed in 1927 by Cecil B. DeMille, with a middle-aged H.B. Warner as Jesus. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lure of the Wilderness is a remake of 1941's Swamp Water, with Walter Brennan repeating his role as a half-crazed fugitive from justice. Living in the deepest recesses of the Okeefenokee Swamp with his daughter Laurie (Jean Peters), Jim Harper (Brennan) is discovered by young hunter Ben Tyler (Jeffrey Hunter). Believing in Harper's innocence, Tyler tries to raise enough money to mount a decent courtroom defense for the old man. Meanwhile, the actual perpetrators of the crime attributed to Harper do their best (or worst) to see to it that he never gets out of the swamp alive. While the original Swamp Water was the better of the two films, Lure of the Wilderness has the advantage of rich Technicolor photography. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide