Henry Jones Movies

In this high-gloss soap opera (not dissimilar to the then-popular Peyton Place), Guy (Richard Burton) is a doctor who returns to the New England town where he grew up to help care for his good friend Larry (Tom Drake), who is dying of Hodgkins Disease. Guy gets to know Larry's wife Margaret (Barbara Rush), and a strong attraction quickly develops between them; before long, they're having an affair. His betrayal of his friend notwithstanding, Guy is deeply upset by Larry's rapid decline into illness; when it becomes obvious that Larry cannot be saved, Guy cuts off his life support to end Larry's suffering. Guy is then arrested for murder, as the police believe that he killed Larry to marry his wife, who is now carrying Guy's baby. Fran (Angie Dickinson) is a nurse who was attracted to, and spurned by, Guy; while she harbors bitterness against him, she also knows that Guy's actions were well-intended. Fran falls into an affair with Bert (Jack Carson), a local political figure who wants to see Guy behind bars. Bert persuades Fran to pose for a set of nude photos, and he then gives them to newspaper editor Parker Welk (Henry Jones) as blackmail to keep her quiet about Guy's innocent intentions and Bert's infidelity. The film was based on a best-selling novel by Charles Mergendahl. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This 1959 episode is set in "the future" -- precisely, July 13, 1980. Worn to a frazzle by his domineering old mother-in-law, John Treadwell (Henry Jones) joins the Society of Gerontology, an organization dedicated to eliminating those people who have lived too long to suit the younger members. Unfortunately, Treadwell learns from another member named Bunce (Dick York) that his worries won't end with his mother-in-law's demise. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dismissed when first released, later heralded as one of director Alfred Hitchcock's finest films (and, according to Hitchcock, his most personal one), this adaptation of the French novel D'entre les morts weaves an intricate web of obsession and deceit. It opens as Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) realizes he has vertigo, a condition resulting in a fear of heights, when a police officer is killed trying to rescue him from falling off a building. Scottie then retires from his position as a private investigator, only to be lured into another case by his old college friend, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). Elster's wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), has been possessed by a spirit, and Elster wants Scottie to follow her. He hesitantly agrees, and thus begins the film's wordless montage as Scottie follows the beautiful yet enigmatic Madeleine through 1950s San Francisco (accompanied by Bernard Herrmann's hypnotic score). After saving her from suicide, Scottie begins to fall in love with her, and she appears to feel the same way. Here tragedy strikes, and each twist in the movie's second half changes our preconceptions about the characters and events. In 1996 a new print of Vertigo was released, restoring the original grandeur of the colors and the San Francisco backdrop, as well as digitally enhancing the soundtrack. ~ Dylan Wilcox, All Movie Guide

Desperate for money, frontier rancher Van Heflin holds outlaw Glenn Ford at gunpoint, intending to collect the $200 reward. While both men await the train to Yuma that will escort Ford to prison, the cagey outlaw offers Heflin $10,000 if he'll set Ford free. The rest of the film is a sweat-inducing cat-and-mouse game between captive and captor, interrupted with bursts of violence from both Ford's gang (commandeered by Richard Jaeckel) and the vacillating townsfolk. 3:10 to Yuma is one of the best of the character-driven "psychological" westerns of the 1950s. Its only flaw is Ford's unconvincing character turnaround towards the end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jayne Mansfield recreated her starmaking stage role in this film adaptation of George Axelrod's Broadway comedy. Mansfield plays a Monroe-like movie queen whom adman Tony Randall hopes to sign for a product endorsement. Through a fluke, the press believes that Randall is having an affair with Mansfield; she eagerly pounces on the attendant publicity, much to the dismay of her body-builder beau (Mickey Hargitay, then married to Mansfield). At the behest of his ad agency, Randall is forced to propose to Mansfield on a coast-to-coast TV show, which breaks the heart of his true love (Betsy Drake). Both Randall and Mansfield are saved from a marriage neither one wants by the last-minute arrival of Mansfield's hometown boy friend (Groucho Marx). Director Frank Tashlin uses Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter as an excuse to take satirical potshots at everything from TV commercials to the unwieldiness of CinemaScope. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Middle-aged professor Clarence Rankin (Robert Emhardt) is spending his day off filling a hole in his basement with cement. His friends Wally Long (Henry Jones) and Bud Horton (Philip Coolidge) drop by, see the hole, and assume that Clarence has murdered his cheating wife Irene (Cara Williams) and is preparing to bury her body. Out of loyalty, and feeling that Clarence is justified in his actions, Wally and Bud offer to help him cover up his "crime." Thing of it is, Clarence never even suspected that Irene was unfaithful...up until now. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Can evil be inherited? That's the question posed by Maxwell Anderson in his stage play The Bad Seed. This 1956 film adaptation stars many actors from the Broadway version, including Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones and Eileen Heckart. Young McCormack plays Rhoda, a too-good-to-be-true grade schooler who occasionally exhibits a vicious streak whenever things don't turn out her way. During a picnic, one of Rhoda's schoolmates is drowned; the victim is a boy who'd won a penmanship medal that Rhoda had coveted. Nancy Kelly, the girl's mother, slowly comes to the horrible conclusion that Rhoda was responsible for the boy's death--a suspicion fueled by the discovery that Kelly, who was adopted as an infant, is the daughter of a convicted murderess. Meanwhile, a moronic handyman (Henry Jones) accidentally tumbles to Rhoda's secret, whereupon he is "accidentally" burned to death. Realizing that Rhoda must be stopped before she can kill again, and reasoning that the authorities would never believe the truth, Kelly tries to put the girl to sleep permanently with barbituates, then shoots herself. The play's ironic ending--the mother dies, while the unsuspected Rhoda lives on--is sacrificed for a "divine retribution" finale in the film, with Rhoda being punished by a convenient bolt of lightning. This alteration is acceptable, but director Mervin LeRoy further gilds the lily with an asinine closing-credits sequence wherein Nancy Kelly throws Patty McCormack over her knee and administers a spanking! The 1985 TV movie remake of The Bad Seed retains the play's original ending, but all in all is not half as entertaining as the 1956 version (its hokey denouement notwithstanding). McCormack later starred in Max Allan Collins' unofficial 1995 sequel Mommy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Taxi stars Dan Dailey as Ed Nielson, a been-there-done-that Manhattan cabbie. Nagged by his mother (Blanche Yurka) to find himself a wife, Ed must also contend with a blood-sucking loan company, demanding huge payments for his cab. His life is further complicated when he falls in love with one of his fares: Mary, a young Irish immigrant (Constance Smith), freshly arrived in New York in search of her husband. The girl discovers that her hubby is a louse, but she's forced to stay with him lest she face deportation. Despite his own problems -- not to mention the huge cab fare that Mary's running up while searching for her husband -- Ed vows to rescue his new love from an ungovernable fate. Though running only 77 minutes, Taxi boasts no fewer than six screenwriting credits. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The splashy, star-studded This is the Army is based on the Irving Berlin Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was a reworking of Berlin's WW1 "barracks musical" Yip Yip Yaphank. In both instances, the cast was largely comprised of genuine servicemen, many of them either recently returned from fighting or on the verge of heading off to war. The Hollywood-imposed storyline concerns Jerry Jones (George Murphy), a member of the original 1918 Yip Yip Yaphank cast. His showbiz career curtailed by a leg injury, Jerry becomes a producer during the postwar era. When the US enters WW2, Jerry gathers together several other cast members from the 1918 Berlin musical to help him stage a new all-serviceman show, titled (what else?) This is the Army. The show-within-a-show framework is able to accommodate a romantic subplot, involving Jerry's son Johnny (Ronald Reagan, later a political comrade-in-arms of George Murphy) and Eileen Dibble (Joan Leslie), the daughter of Yip Yip Yaphank alumnus Eddie Dibble (Charles Butterworth). Some of the best moments in This is the Army are from the Broadway production itself, though the lengthy Alfred Lunt-Lynn Fontanne imitation and incessant "gay" jokes may have been too smart for the room in 1943. Guest stars include boxer Joe Louis, Kate Smith (singing "God Bless America", naturally) and Irving Berlin himself, who steals the show with his plaintive rendition of "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning". All profits for the stage and film version of This is the Army went to the Army Emergency Relief Fund, which also controlled the rights to the film. Long withheld from TV distribution, the film finally hit the small screen when it lapsed into Public Domain in the mid-1970s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide