Stacy Keach Movies
A fine dramatic actor who never quite made it as a movie star and so settled with a highly successful career as a television leading man, Stacy Keach is best known for playing the title character in the television detective drama Mike Hammer (1984-1987). Though born with an irreparable harelip, Keach is a sturdy and handsome fellow who is often cast as policemen or other authority figures.Keach is the son of a British actor and drama coach, Stacy Keach Sr., and was born in Georgia but raised in Los Angeles. While attending the U.C. Berkeley, Keach became interested in drama. An agent told him that his harelip would make it impossible for Keach to get leading roles. Keach disbelieved him and went on to study drama at Yale. He then received a Fulbright scholarship to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In New York, he essayed a number of Shakespearean roles and those of other classic plays. He also worked in more contemporary productions such as the off-Broadway McBird!, which won him his first Obie and a Vernon Rice Drama Desk Award. He again won these awards after he played Hamlet at the New York Shakespeare Festival. In 1969, Keach won a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut, portraying Buffalo Bill in Arthur Kopit's Indians. For his performance in The Kentucky Cycle, Keach earned a Drama League Outstanding Artist Award, the Helen Hayes Award for Best Actor, and a Drama Award nomination for Best Actor. Keach made his feature-film debut as an alcoholic wanderer in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968). Keach's movie career took off afterward and he appeared in several major movies in quick succession, including Brewster McCloud (1970) and The New Centurians (1972). In 1971, Keach made an award-winning short film, The Repeatery. Later, he also made a television version of Pirandello's complex Six Characters in Search of an Author. As a movie actor, Keach's heyday ended by the early '80s, after appearing in both American and international productions of widely varying quality; Keach then turned to television.
Mike Hammer was a very successful show, but production abruptly stopped when British customs officers at London's Heathrow Airport found Keach carrying a significant amount of cocaine. He spent several months imprisoned in England, but was released in 1986. Having kicked his drug habit, Keach repaired his damaged career and started showing up regularly in television miniseries such as The Blue and the Gray (1985).
Keach continues his stage work, often narrates documentaries, and occasionally appears in feature films such as Escape From L.A. (1995). Keach is a member of the Los Angeles Classic Theatre Work, the Yale Theater Circle, and the Players Club. In addition, he works on the Artistic Advisory Board for the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts, the Artists Committee for the Kennedy Center Honors, and the Helen Hayes Honorary Committee. In the '90s, Keach was named Honorary Chair for the Cleft Palate Foundation and in 1995 won the Celebrity Outreach Award for his charitable work. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Presented by The Broadway Theatre Archive, Particular Men is one of a variety of plays televised between the 1960s and '80s. This production takes place during one of the most notorious advances in military threats -- the dawn of nuclear technology -- and follows a select group of men at the center of nuclear development. The film features Stacy Keach, Alice Drummond, and Verna Bloom. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Glenn Bloom, Alice Drummond, (more)
- 1963
In this different type of gangster farce with a few flaws here and there, Robert Preston is Steve Blair, a superlative con artist whose sidekick Paul Ferris (Tony Randall) is a boozy writer currently working on a cartoon. Steve gets the idea of producing a movie based on Genesis in the Bible and brings Paul into the scheme as a scripter. He finds financial backing in the form of $2,000,000 from gangster Tony Dallas (Walter Matthau) who is none too happy when the final product flops with a resounding crash. Anxious to find a safe spot to hide out, Steve and Paul make their way to a Greek island where Steve is inspired by another brilliant idea for a scam that just might work, knowing full well that the gangster is sure to show up sooner or later. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Preston, Tony Randall, (more)
Based on the novel by Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter stars Alan Arkin as John Singer, who is deaf. Singer moves from a small town in order to be close to his institutionalized friend Antonapoulos (Chuck McCann), who is deaf and mentally impaired. Singer rents a room with a family whose father, Mr. Kelly (Biff McGuire), is unable to earn a living due to a serious injury. His teen-aged daughter Mick (Sondra Locke, in her film debut) is at first resentful of Singer's presence, but he ingratiates himself by introducing her to classical music (which he can "feel," if not hear). Singer likewise tries to brighten the lives of such unfortunates as alcoholic Blount (Stacy Keach Jr., also making his first film appearance), dying black doctor Copeland (Percy Rodriguez), and Copeland's poverty-stricken daughter (Cicely Tyson). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alan Arkin, Sondra Locke, (more)
- 1970
- R
A boy yearns to fly in Robert Altman's whimsical youthquake parable. With the aid of seraphic Louise (Sally Kellerman), owlish Brewster (Bud Cort) constructs a pair of human-size wings in his Houston Astrodome nest to realize his dream. Meanwhile, conservative creeps, including a witchy "Star-Spangled Banner"-belting crone (Margaret Hamilton) and Brewster's skinflint boss (Stacy Keach), keep turning up dead covered with bird droppings; the Houston Establishment calls in blue-eyed, turtleneck-wearing "San Francisco super cop" Frank Shaft (Michael Murphy) to investigate. Brewster cooks his own goose, however, when he defies Louise's edict against sex and hooks up with Astrodome usher Suzanne (Shelley Duvall) after she impresses him (and saves him) by out-driving Shaft in her Road Runner. Despite her apparent sweetness, Suzanne ultimately will not compromise her comfortable home for flight with Brewster. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bud Cort, Sally Kellerman, (more)
- 1970
- R
In this unusual black comedy, Stacy Keach plays Jonas Candide, a former carnival showman who roams the southern U.S. in 1918 with a portable electric chair. He offers his services as a freelance executioner for $100 a pop. He takes a job in a prison in Alabama, where he is supposed to execute a young woman named Gundred Herzallerliebst (Marianna Hill) and her brother. He electrocutes the brother first. On the night before she is scheduled to die, Gundred seduces Jonas and he falls for her. Jonas tries to get Doc Prittle (Graham Jarvis) to help him fake her execution, but the doctor demands a high price. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stacy Keach, Marianna Hill, (more)
- 1970
- NC17
Rated "X" upon its initial release in 1970, End of the Road would probably rate at most a hard "R" today. Stacy Keach stars as Jake Horner, a college professor beset with a wide variety of emotional problems. He seeks out help in therapy, conducted by unorthodox psychologist Dr. D (James Earl Jones). This treatment turns out to have a disastrous effect on Horner, leading him into the arms of Rennie Morgan (Dorothy Tristan), the wife of a fellow teacher. End of the Road was adapted from a story by John Barth. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stacy Keach, Harris Yulin, (more)
- 1971
- R
Most westerns wrap their stories, legends really, with a light clothing of history and period. Any history found in them is usually a mix of legend and fantasy. By way of contrast, in this film, an attempt is made to accurately portray the lives and persons of Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and the now-legendary events that took place in the town of Tombstone. Those looking for fast-paced action will be disappointed in this film, as it deals more in psychological character studies than action. Sheriff Wyatt Earp (Harris Yulin) is shown to be a fairly ordinary politician, and the romance of Doc Holliday (Stacy Keach) and Kate Elder (Faye Dunaway) is highlighted. As it must, however, the film concludes with the well-known gunfight at the O.K. Corral ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stacy Keach, Faye Dunaway, (more)
Joseph Wambaugh's best-seller about patrol-car cops in urban Los Angeles is given a competent yet antiseptic treatment by director Richard Fleischer. The film has a bad-tasting us-versus-them mentality in its depiction of patrolmen-civilian interaction, and its hopeless atmosphere carries over into the bleak suicide of one of the principle characters. But behind its rancid veneer, the story is the old "B"-movie police story concerning a rookie cop being shown the ropes by a kindly and wizened old veteran. Roy (Stacy Keach) is the young patrolman introduced into the ways of Los Angeles street life by Kilvinsky (George C. Scott), the philosophical old pro. Kilvinsky is just short of retirement and wants to educate Roy to succeed him when he leaves. Roy, however, is on the edge because of a recent divorce, and it takes many speeches by Kilvinsky and the love and affection from his new black girlfriend Lorrie (Rosalind Cash) to keep from going over the deep end. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George C. Scott, Stacy Keach, (more)
- 1972
- PG
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Paul Newman plays the title role in John Huston's surreal, revisionist western as the infamous Texas hanging judge. Upon arriving in the tiny West Texas town of Vinegaroon, Roy Bean draws a moustache on a wanted poster of himself, marches into a saloon, and declares his presence. He is immediately robbed, beaten within an inch of his life, tied to a horse and dragged out into the prairie, then left to die. Rescued by a young Mexican girl, Maria Elena (Victoria Principal), Roy Bean heads back into town and murders everyone in the local saloon, declaring that he'll kill anyone of the same sort who turns up. He also sets himself up as the sole arbiter of law and order and renames the town Langtry, in honor of the legendary actress Lily Langtry (Ava Gardner). The community prospers as Judge Bean dispenses his own brand of frontier justice upon strangers passing by, robbing or killing anyone who tries to make their way through the town. But when Maria dies, Bean's old associates begin to turn on him, one at a time (in response to his constant harping on their wives, many of whom were former prostitutes) and Bean is forced to leave. Years later, Bean rides back into town, called back to the place to save his daughter from trouble - and finds that the community has been taken over by a shady character called Frank Gass (Roddy McDowall) - a circumstance that requires Bean to dispense his own unique brand of justice once again. Stacy Keach lends a neat comic turn to the film as Bad Bob, an albino gunslinger whose dining habits consist of chowing down on raw onion, drinking hot coffee from a pot, and demanding that an entire horse be cooked for his supper. John Milius (Red Dawn) scripted.
~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Newman, Victoria Principal, (more)
Adapted by French playwright Jean Anouilh from the Sophocles original, Antigone was originally produced onstage in 1942, while France was under German occupation, and the production is set in modern times. As the film begins, we discover that after the death of Oedipus, king of Thebes, his sons Polynices and Eteocles had agreed to share the responsibility of ruling Thebes. Unfortunately, this situation did not work out, resulting in a war that left both brothers dead and the throne being grabbed by their uncle, Creon (played by Fritz Weaver). Creon has buried Eteocles but has refused a burial for Polynices, ordering that his body be left as carrion for the birds; he further issues an order that anyone burying Polynices will be put to death. Antigone (Genevieve Bujold), sister of the two dead brothers, defies this order, and is brought before Creon. The bulk of the film consist of a long confrontation between the uncle and his niece, during which Creon tries to find why Antigone willingly and knowingly disobeyed him, and revealing that her brothers has unbeknownst to her spent years trying to kill her beloved father. Although stunned by these revelations, Antigone does not renounce her actions and is led to her death, though she no longer knows what she is dying for. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
With a screenplay adapted by Leonard Gardner from his own novel, John Huston's drama examines the meager hopes and resigned dreams of small-time boxers. In limbo between retirement and his youthful prime, alcoholic farm laborer Tully (Stacy Keach) shacks up with fellow outcast Oma (Susan Tyrrell) and keeps trying to make a boxing comeback, but his personal demons repeatedly overpower his ambitions. Meanwhile, fellow Stockton, CA resident and budding fighter Ernie (Jeff Bridges) takes Tully's advice to join trainer Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto)'s gym and make something of himself. Learning the tough lesson that winning is not as easy as it sounds, Ernie is still determined to get what he can out of boxing and, unlike Tully, not let disappointments get the best of him. Shot on location in Stockton by Conrad Hall, the film maintains a realistic, slice-of-life view of Tully's and Ernie's struggles, eschewing theatrical boxing victories for psychological and social details. As Huston avowed at the Cannes Film Festival that Fat City's virtue was its "modesty," critics agreed that he had made his best film in two decades; and Tyrrell was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. However, despite the praise and the efforts of producer Ray Stark, Fat City failed at the box office. Even so, its unromanticized depiction of modest wins and personal losses revealed that old Hollywood pro Huston had adapted well to the late '60s-early '70s New Hollywood grit, and the film revived his artistic standing. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges, (more)
- 1973
- R
When government attorney Mike Mandell (Stacy Keach, Jr.) begins to suffer from a mental disorder that periodically transforms him into another mobster personality known as "Sonny," his strange behavior doesn't escape the notice of narcotics agent Gordon Pankey (Harris Yulin). As Gordon observes Mike, the man becomes more and more paranoid that he is being watched. The score for this film was created by the jazz group Weather Report. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
Incident at Vichy is a play by Arthur Miller written in response to the situation in France during WWII. In this drama, people are individually questioned by the police about their political alliances. This made-for-TV version from the Broadway Theatre Archives is directed by Stacy Keach and stars René Auberjonois. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
This made-for-TV rural horror film from director Burt Kennedy benefits from a fine cast and a tense Clyde Ware screenplay. Samantha Eggar and Stacy Keach play motorists held prisoner by a family of seven sweet-faced young orphans and their savage guard dogs. The children only want a mother and father but are willing to kill anyone who rejects them. Jon Savage co-stars with Robby Benson, who sang the theme song. All the Kind Strangers was initially telecast November 12, 1974. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1974
- R
The Gravy Train stars Stacy Keach and Frederic Forrest as a husky but none-too-bright pair of West Virginia brothers. Feeling stifled by their blue-collar jobs, the boys become tentatively involved in crime, only to discover that they enjoy working on the wrong side of the law. The moments of extreme violence in this film erupt naturally, not arbitrarily, but still come as a shock to those viewers who've grown to like the sociopathic protagonists. Terence Malick co-wrote the film's seriocomic script under the "nom de plume" of David Whitney. The Gravy Train is better known by its alternate title, The Dion Brothers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Adapted for the screen by Edward Anhalt from the play by John Osborne, Luther stars Stacy Keach as religious leader and "heretic" Martin Luther. In minimalist fashion, the film traces Luther's disillusionment with the Catholic Church, and his eventual spearheading of the Reformation movement. Over the course of the film, Keach ages from an ingenuous seminarian to a disgruntled, middle-aged firebrand. Director Guy Green does little to cinematize the material, instead favoring a theatrical approach and thus allowing the rich dialogue to be better appreciated. Luther was a production of the American Film Theatre. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1974
The 1973 automobile racing season is well-covered in this racing documentary, with shots of 13 races in as many countries, but the main emphasis is on the Grand Prix season. It does not gloss over the rough points, as one scene shows a driver attempting to rescue another driver trapped in a burning car. Among the drivers and ex-drivers featured are Peter Revson, Mike Hailwood, François Cevert and Jackie Stewart. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1975
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In this documentary, narrated by Stacy Keach, the tragic screen-icon James Dean is remembered. Footage from early television appearances, stills from his life, and clips from his three Warner Brothers films are interwoven with interviews with his co-workers. The soundtrack includes music from Elton John, David Bowie, and the Eagles. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Based on a play by Barry England, the British Conduct Unbecoming revolves around a sexual violation--which may or may not have occurred. In British India, highborn Mrs. Scarlett (Susannah York) accuses 2nd Lt. Millington, a Bengal Lancer officer (James Faulkner) of raping her. Lieutenant Arthur Drake (Michael York) is assigned to defend Lt. Millington in a trial held behind closed doors to avoid scandal. Colonel Strang (Trevor Howard.) is a martinet judge who presses for a conviction, only to have his determination shaken by the introduction of new evidence. Conduct Unbecoming has the look and feel of a decades-old stage production, but the dialogue and performances provide a strictly contemporary slant. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael York, Richard Attenborough, (more)
- 1976
- R
Stacy Keach plays Lou Ford, a deputy sheriff whose brutal childhood experiences have left him emotionally warped. Ford is prized by his community for his no-mercy treatment of criminals. But the danger that he will snap and begin killing indiscriminately is ever-present. Based on the novel by Jim Thompson, in this adaptation Ford's psychotic breaks are signalled by lightning flashes. Director Burt Kennedy handles his material in the manner of his earlier Welcome to Hard Times: nothing is quite of this earth, and everything is painted in broad, violent morality-play strokes. Despite Kennedy's predilection for "cutting in the camera" (that is, filming each scene with only one or two different camera angles, so that his directorial vision will survive the editing room), Killer Inside Me gives evidence of having been severely tampered with in the post-production process. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stacy Keach, Susan Tyrrell, (more)
James Michener's Dynasty is aptly named. This TV movie is indeed based on a novel by Michener, which does indeed cover thirty five years (1820-1855) in the lives of a land-rich family. Harris Yulin and Stacy Keach play the Blackwood brothers, a pair of enterprising Ohio pioneers. The ongoing rivalry between the older Yulin and younger Keach is intensified when Yulin's wife Sarah Miles leaves her husband in favor of Keach. As the brothers try to outdo each other in business, the Blackwood land empire grows to epic proportions. Unfortunately, this TV movie does not; at 2 hours, there just isn't enough time to do justice to Michener's sprawling novel. James Michener's Dynasty is worth noting for the supporting-cast contributions of Amy Irving and Harrison Ford. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stacy Keach, Harris Yulin, (more)
