Martin Balsam Movies

The inspiration for the made-for-TV movie was an actual event which occurred in June of 1973. A crew of four sinks in a minisub off the Florida coast. As half the nation (apprised of the disaster by TV and radio) holds its breath, a daring rescue mission is organized. Lee J. Cobb and Martin Balsam are among the rescuers. Paul Michael Glaser, Joshua Bryant, Cliff Potts and Roger Kern are the helpless rescuees. Trapped Beneath the Sea was telecast fifteen months after the real-life crisis was resolved. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After one of his clients commits suicide, unscrupulous private eye Ray Coughlin (Martin Balsam hopes to cash in on the man's insurance policy. Conspiring with the victim's equally crooked business manager, Coughlin arranges the evidence to make suicide look like murder. In his efforts to foil this scheme, police lieutenant Kojak (Telly Savalas) makes little effort to hide his shame and disgust over the fact that Coughlin used to be a cop himself. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Like many of Agatha Christie's mysteries, Murder on the Orient Express is predicated on an actual event, in this case the Lindbergh kidnapping. In the movie, everyone on board the Orient Express seems to have concluded that hateful financier Ratchett (Richard Widmark) was behind the abduction and murder of the infant daughter of a famed aviatrix. Thus, when Ratchett is himself found murdered, everyone is suspect. Normally, the police would handle the investigation, but the train has been stalled by a snowslide halfway between Istanbul and Paris. Thus, it's up to the insufferable but brilliant Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (an unrecognizable Albert Finney) to activate his "little grey cells" and determine who's guilty. Among the suspects are colorful characters played by Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Jacqueline Bisset, Sean Connery, Wendy Hiller, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, and Ingrid Bergman, whose performance won her a third Academy Award. (In her acceptance speech, Bergman apologized for her win, insisting that Day for Night's Valentina Cortese deserved the prize.) The first and best in a long line of contemporary Christie adaptations, the film scores on atmosphere, period detail, and richness of characterization. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The John Gardner novel A Complete State of Death became this bloody crime flick that united frequent action genre collaborators Charles Bronson and director Michael Winner. Bronson stars as Detective Lieutenant Lou Torry, a grizzled undercover New York City cop who ruins his career when he is caught going violently overboard while apprehending a ghetto punk. As punishment, Torry is banished all the way to the L.A. Police Department, where he begins investigating a mysterious chain of events involving ex-soldiers that seem to be Mob related. It turns out that Don Alberto Vescari (Martin Balsam), an aging Mafia chieftain, is planning the use of mentally disturbed Vietnam vets as assassins in a campaign of murder. With one broad, gory stroke, Vescari schemes to wipe out his underworld enemies, retaliating for a massacre that wiped out a generation of Sicilian mobsters 40 years earlier. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

The flammable money of the title is of the counterfeit variety. Enterprising prison inmate E. G. Marshall devises a scheme to churn out phony moola in his jerry-built printing machine. Conspiring with his wife Mildred Natwick, Marshall intends to smuggle the funny money out of jail, then swap it with the genuine article. The "switch" is to occur in the US Treasury itself! Never taking itself seriously, the made-for-TV Money to Burn proved a pleasant diversion when it debuted October 27, 1973. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rod Serling, a master of speculative scriptwriting, penned the screenplay of The Man. Set a few days into the future, the story contrives to kill off the President, the vice president, and virtually everyone in line of succession in a bizarre accident. This turn of events elevates African-American senator James Earl Jones directly into the Oval Office. Based on a novel by Irving Wallace, The Man was originally intended as TV movie, but released theatrically because most sponsors were afraid of its supposed controversial content. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cloris Leachman and Martin Balsam star in this TV movie as an over-forty married couple, both of whom maintain busy outside careers. Content with their peaceful, childless existence, the couple is thrown for a loop when, after 18 years of marriage, Leachman becomes pregnant. Beyond the understandable concerns over the health of her baby, she is not keen on the prospect of giving up her job--nor is she particularly responsive to the misguided advice of her friends and family. A Brand New Life premiered on February 20, 1973. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This breathlessly paced high-tech thriller stars Sean Connery as Anderson, a career criminal who's just been released from his latest prison term. Seeking a quick financial turnover, Anderson uses mob funding to finance an ambitious robbery. With a gang of expert thieves, Anderson sets about to rob every wealthy tenant of a fancy East Side apartment building. What he doesn't know is that every move he makes is being monitored and taped by several law-enforcement agencies, who hope that Anderson will lead them to the Mob kingpins. Though the film may look like a "comment" on the Watergate break-in, The Anderson Tapes actually preceded that third-rate burglary by nearly two years. The Anderson Tapes boasts an impressive supporting cast, many of whom play wildly against type, including Alan King as an aging and infirm Mafia don. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Enemy Before Us stars Tony Franciosca as Crime magazine reporter Jeff Dillon. Back in his old neighborhood in New York's "Little Italy", Dillon hopes to take a break from his hectic responsibilities and recapture "something real" from his younger days. Unfortunately, he is bombarded by pain and disillusionment from every side: his stepmother (Katina Paxinou) is gravely ill, and her son (Lazaro Perez) is deeply involved with drug dealing. Orson Welles is heard on the soundtrack, reciting appropriate passages from Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again. The Enemy Before Us first aired on October 16, 1970, as an episode of the weekly TV series Name of the Game. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Mike Nichols and writer-actor Buck Henry followed their enormous hit The Graduate (1967) with this timely adaptation of Joseph Heller's satiric antiwar novel. Haunted by the death of a young gunner, all-too-sane Capt. Yossarian (Alan Arkin) wants out of the rest of his WW II bombing missions, but publicity-obsessed commander Colonel Cathcart (Martin Balsam) and his yes man, Colonel Korn (Henry), keep raising the number of missions that Yossarian and his comrades are required to fly. After Doc Daneeka (Jack Gilford) tells Yossarian that he cannot declare him insane if Yossarian knows that it's insane to keep flying, Yossarian tries to play crazy by, among other things, showing up nude in front of despotic General Dreedle (Orson Welles). As all of Yossarian's initially even-keeled friends, such as Nately (Art Garfunkel) and Dobbs (Martin Sheen), genuinely lose their heads, and the troop's supplies are bartered away for profit by the ultra-entrepreneurial Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight), Yossarian realizes that the whole system has lost it, and he can either play along or jump ship. Though not about Vietnam, Catch-22's ludicrous military machinations directly evoked its contemporary context in the Vietnam era. Cathcart and Dreedle care more about the appearance of power than about victory, and Milo cares for money above all, as the complex narrative structure of Yossarian's flashbacks renders the escalating events appropriately surreal. Confident that the combination of a hot director and a popular, culturally relevant novel would spell blockbuster, Paramount spent a great deal of money on Catch-22, but it wound up getting trumped by another 1970 antiwar farce: Robert Altman's MASH. With audiences opting for Altman's casual Korean War iconoclasm over Nichols' more polished symbolism, the highly anticipated Catch-22 flopped, although the New York Film Critics Circle did acknowledge Arkin and Nichols. Despite this reception, Catch-22's ensemble cast and pungent sensibility effectively underline the insanity of war, Vietnam and otherwise. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Hard Frame is the syndication title for the made-for-TV film Hunters Are for Killing. Burt Reynolds plays a man who returns home after serving six years in prison for manslaughter. Reynolds knows that he was framed; so does someone else in town. The most nervous citizens are Burt's father (Melvyn Douglas), his ex-girlfriend (Suzanne Pleshette) who is now chief of police, and the man (Martin Balsam) whose testimony cinched Reynolds' conviction. The film was shot on location in the wine country of Northern California. Under its original title, this 2-hour actioner first aired on March 12, 1970. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This 25-million dollar epic collaboration accurately recreates the events that led to the Japanese attack on the American naval base during World War II. With Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the wheels are set in motion by Japan to plan the attack. After internal differences in the government, the Japanese quickly mobilize plans for the assault. Key American personnel ignored warnings of the possibility of Japanese aggression. The first part of the film divides scenes from both countries. Part two contains spectacular battle scenes of the bombing that destroyed the American naval base of operations in Hawaii. Governmental errors on both sides add to the confusion, but the Japanese ultimately carry out the deadly mission. The film did well in Japan, did not do well in the he United States, and took years to make back the production costs. It remains an insightful and well crafted World War II action drama that was the result of years of negotiations between the two countries. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Since she was a child, Natalie Miller (Patty Duke) has always thought she was an ugly ducking. When a boy called her "clown face", the six-year-old knocked out his front teeth with a shovel. Despite her mother's encouragement that she will grow up to be pretty, Natalie has never believed it will happen. When her parents bribe a young medical student to date her, Natalie discovers the ruse and moves out of her parent's house. She rents a Greenwich Village apartment from an eccentric landlady (Elsa Lanchester) and gets a job at the Topless Bottom Club. She rides a motorcycle to work, decorates her loft with a moose head, and rides up and down a dumbwaiter to get to her apartment. There Natalie meets David (James Farentino) an artist, and the two have a love affair before she discovers he is married. She considers returning home after finding him in bed with his wife. Al Pacino makes his first screen appearance in a minor role in this engaging drama. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide