Shirley Knight Movies
An accomplished actress of stage, screen, and television, Shirley Knight has specialized in playing contemporary women with psychological problems. Knight was discovered while studying drama with Jeff Corey when she and her classmates Jack Nicholson, Robert Blake, Dean Stockwell, and Sally Kellerman were appearing in a production of Look Back in Anger. Her performance netted her an agent who in turn helped her get her first film role in Five Gates to Hell (1959). Knight's first real break came with a supporting role in Delbert Mann's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960). Her portrayal of a young woman whose anguished lover commits suicide garnered Knight her first Oscar nomination. The second was for playing Paul Newman's first love in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). In the early '60s, Knight began appearing occasionally on television, making a memorable debut in the sci-fi anthology series Outer Limits, in the episode "The Man Who Was Never Born" opposite Martin Landau.By mid-decade, Knight was well on her way to becoming a major film star. But Knight was discontent with having money and fame. To her acting was an art and she an aspiring artist. To meet her goals, Knight decided that the only way to become a real actress was to gain experience on the New York stage, and so, she left the film industry to study and work back East. Her Broadway career was successful and in 1966, Knight flew to England to try her luck in British theater. During her "theatrical period," Knight did occasionally appear in feature films, including Sidney Lumet's The Group (1967) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969).
Knight returned to Broadway in the mid-'70s. But by then, Knight was in her forties, an awkward age for actresses who can be considered too old to play ingénues but too young for character roles. This did not stop Knight from working in television and films. Eventually, Knight successfully traversed the middle-aged hump and attained a new, busy career playing supporting and maternal character roles. Knight has been married to British playwright John Hopkins since 1970 and occasionally bills herself as Shirley Knight Hopkins. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1959
The celebrated author of 1975's Shogun, James Clavell, directs (and produced and wrote) this effective, if low-budget World War II drama. The story takes place in French Indochina (later Vietnam) where a group of two Red Cross doctors and seven nurses are captured by a guerrilla band and taken to the side of a grievously ill warlord. The realities of war and its effects on everyone are brought forward as the doctors are eventually killed, and the nurses use sex as a means of escaping their captors. Brutal scenes of the stabbing of a patient under surgery and the symbolic murder of a nun are qualified by the even-handed portrayal of the damage war does to the human side of human nature. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Neville Brand, Benson Fong, (more)
- 1960
Robert Preston plays the flip side of his eternally ebullient Professor Harold Hill in Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Preston portrays an early 20th-century harness salesman, fully aware that his product is rapidly becoming obsolete. He tries to compensate for his own lack of self-esteem by cheating on his patient wife Dorothy McGuire; Preston's "other woman" is played by Angela Lansbury. Meanwhile, daughter Shirley Knight falls in love with Jewish boy Lee Kinsolving, who kills himself in the face of relentless bigotry. And McGuire's sister Eve Arden is stuck in a loveless marriage with spineless Frank Overton. Robert Eyer plays the young alter-ego of William Inge, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning play on which this film is based. Eyer's fear of the "dark at the top of the stairs" is meant to be symbolic of the other characters' inner demons, a fact that Inge drives home every three minutes or so. In typical Inge fashion, an unlikely happy ending is reached just before "The End." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Preston, Dorothy McGuire, (more)
- 1960
Based on the Edna Ferber novel, this engrossing period piece covers the triumphs, tragedies, loves, and sorrows of a few generations of Alaskan settlers between the first World War and the granting of statehood in 1959. Zeb (Richard Burton) is a local despot whose tough personality dominates the region. He is openly bigoted against the Inuit, and his greedy nature has led him to reject the woman he really loves to marry another with plenty of money. Thor (Robert Ryan) starts out as Zeb's ally and friend, but due to their diametrically opposed natures, that friendship turns into an entrenched hatred. In this unpredictable, harsh wilderness Zeb discovers that he ultimately cannot control his daughter and irony of ironies, he and Thor end up connected through the marriage of a son and daughter. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Burton, Robert Ryan, (more)
- 1961
Broke again, Bart (Jack Kelly) accepts a job from rancher Cal Powers (Andrew Duggan), hauling ice from the nearby mountains. While on the job, Bart comes upon a corpse, frozen beneath the surface of an icy river. This discovery will prove to have dire consequence for our hero, thanks largely to villainous machinous of political boss Rath Lawson, played by Bruce Gordon in the same manner as the actor's interpretation of mobster Frank Nitti on The Untouchables. The heroine of the occasion is Shirley Knight, who went on to a stellar stage, film and TV career, including such memorable roles as the mother of Helen Hunt in the 1997 Jack Nicholson theatrical feature As Good as It Gets. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Paul Newman recreates his Broadway role in the 1962 film version of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. Newman plays handsome hustler Chance Wayne, who romances fading film star Alexandra Del Lago (Geraldine Page) in hopes of winning a movie contract for himself. The mercenary Wayne and the self-destructive Alexandra find themselves in Chance's home town, where corrupt politician Boss Finley (Oscar-winner Ed Begley) rules the roost. Finley's daughter Heavenly (Shirley Knight), impregnated by Chance during his last visit, dreams of a reunion with her old beau, but Finley and his brutish son Tom Jr. (Rip Torn) make certain that no such reunion occurs. Even the well-intentioned interventions of Heavenly's Aunt Nonny (Mildred Dunnock) fail to move the stubborn Finley. Warned to leave town or risk a broken skull, Chance is dumped by Alexandra, whose recent "comeback" film has proven a success and who thus no longer needs a gigolo to feed her ego. From this point on, Richard Brooks' screenplay departs so radically from the Tennessee Williams original that to elucidate the differences would require a book in itself. Suffice to say that the play's Chance Wayne is rendered "less than a man" by the vengeful Finley, whereas the film's Wayne emerges with all his working parts intact. A second version Sweet Bird of Youth (1989), purportedly based on Williams' own rewrite of his earlier material, was filmed for television in 1989, with Elizabeth Taylor and Mark Harmon in the leads, and with Rip Torn, Tom Finley Jr. in the original, stepping into the role of Boss Finley. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, (more)
- 1962
In this prison drama, a remake of Caged, House of Women (1950), a pregnant woman is wrongly convicted of armed robbery. She is sentenced to five years in prison. After her child is born, the inmate is allowed to keep it. She then has three years to earn parole. If she does not, the babe will be put up for adoption. When the prison warden finds himself attracted to the woman, he makes her his personal maid. Time passes and he falls in love with her resulting in better treatment for the other prisoners. Three years pass and the woman's parole seems assured until the sadistic warden, not wanting to lose the woman he loves, decrees that she will not be paroled and that all imprisoned mothers will lose custody of their children. This harsh action spawns a bloody revolt amongst the inmates. It is the brave woman that quells the uprising. Later media coverage of the event results in her release. The warden is fired. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shirley Knight, Andrew Duggan, (more)
- 1962
A serial killer (Grant Williams) and his therapy sessions with a psychologist are juxtaposed with his gruesome, successive murders in this standard thriller by director Owen Crump. The killer, Charles Campbell, is fixated on calling in his next murder to the Los Angeles police, confident that he will always elude capture. Dr. Janz (Onslow Stevens) might have his own views on that if Charles were to let him know how he really gets out his rage. In fact, the doctor himself is no more than a father figure to Charles -- not a good analogy considering that the killer hated his domineering dad. The question remains, will the LAPD stop the killer before the world is minus one psychologist? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Grant Williams, Shirley Knight, (more)
- 1963
Kimble (David Jansen) takes on the alias "David Benson" when he goes to work for Allan Pruitt (Richard Carlson) and Pruitt's second wife Dorina (Gloria Grahame). At the same time, Mr. Pruitt's troubled daughter Janice (Shirley Knight) returns home from a long hospital stay, having suffered a nervous breakdown after a child in her care was killed by her pet dog. Resenting Janice's presence, Dorina devises an elaborate scheme to drive the girl insane--and when Kimble tries to help Janice, Dorina adds him to her list of victims. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1963
Dr. Stuart Peters (Michael Forest) arrives in Los Angeles from upstate New York, with his ne'er-do-well younger brother Jory (Scott Marlowe) in tow, to take a job at NORCO, an energy research laboratory. After an odd encounter with a guard -- who tries to warn him away from NORCO -- he reports for work and immediately goes incommunicado for a week. When he reappears, Peters looks worn, haggard, and preoccupied -- and dies when something seems to explode in his chest. The medical examiner determines that the cause of death was a faulty heart pacemaker. The problem, for the police detective (Edward Asner) investigating the death, and for the victim's grief-sticken brother, is that the physicist was in perfect health and had never worn a pacemaker. They want to know what happened to him during the week he was unaccounted for at NORCO -- and why the staff, from the director (Kent Smith) on down, won't cooperate with the investigation. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- 1963
Engineer Alan Maxwell (Cliff Robertson) is using his commercial radio station's antenna to probe into deep space in experiments of his own, in the course of which he makes contact with a being (William O. Douglas, Jr.) from the great nebula in the constellation Andromeda. Through an accident, the alien is transported to Earth, where its radioactive emanations prove lethal to all who come in contact with it. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- 1964
Featuring an all-star cast and on-location shooting in Japan, where the story is set, three US Air Force rescue pilots must overcome their personal problems and differences to embark upon a dangerous mission to save raft-bound Japanese survivors from a murderous storm-tossed sea. As they head for their location, the film flashes back to chronicle the pasts of each pilot to make clear their mixed feelings about their upcoming assignment. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yul Brynner, Richard Widmark, (more)
- 1964
Still a few steps ahead of the law, Kimble (David Janssen) makes it to a railroad yard and hops a freight car already occupied by Neil Pinkerton (Paul Richards) and Matt Mooney (Lou Antonio). It turns out that Kimble's travelling companions are a pair of convicts who have escaped in a mass prison breakout. Forced to join Pinkerton and Mooney as they make their getaway, Kimble ends up in an isolated house occupied by Mona Ross (Shirley Knight) and her mother (Virginia Gregg). Now the fugitive faces a tricky problem: He must pretend to hold the terrified Mona captive while devising a strategy to save her life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1964
The sixth volume in a collection culled from the 1963-1965 science fiction anthology television series chronicles the time travels of a mutant from the future who goes back to prevent the birth of the mad scientist who is responsible for creating a horrifying virus. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1966
Based on the novel by Mary McCarthy, The Group was one of the slickest, and most highly publicized, cinematic soap operas of the 1960s. Filmed largely in New York, the story charts the exploits of eight young women, all of whom graduate from an exclusive Vassar-ish college in the middle of the Depression. Among the talented young actresses making their screen debuts herein are Candice Bergen as Lakey, the group's resident Lesbian; Joan Hackett as Dottie, a repressed socialite who takes up with bohemian artist Dick Brown (Richard Mulligan); Joanna Pettet as Kay, who marries philandering playwright Harald Peterson (Larry Hagman); and Kathleen Widdoes as Helena, the wealthiest of the girls who insists upon proving her value in the workplace. The other girls are Pokey (Marin-Robin Redd), who seems happiest when pregnant; Jessica Walter as Libby, the group's viper-tongued gossip and the darling of the Manhattan literary set (some have suggested that McCarthy based this character on herself); Elizabeth Hartman as Priss, the requisite heart-on-sleeve liberal; and Shirley Knight as Polly, whose bumpy love life culminates in a very colorful engagement party. Hal Holbrook, likewise making his first screen appearance, plays Gus LeRoy. Sumptuously produced, The Group is a bit empty dramatically, though the sheer volume of continuing characters manages to sustain audience interest. (Incidentally, here's a note for "blooper" spotters: wasn't the Pan Am building constructed in the 1950s? ) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, (more)
- 1966
After he is robbed and beaten by a gang of punks, Richard Kimble (David Janssen)--or as he is currently identifying himself, "Richard Taylor"--falls under the scrutiny of ambitious policewoman Jane Washburn (Shirley Knight). Her suspicions aroused by the fact that Kimble refuses to report the mugging to the authorities, Jane handcuffs herself to the fugitive, determined not to let him leave her side until she finds out his whole story. This fascinating gender-bending variation on the 1957 "chase" film The Defiant Ones) reaches a nailbiting climax when both Kimble and his lovely captor find themselves at the mercy of a gun-wielding backwoodsman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Anthony Harvey directed this adaptation of the controversial allegorical drama by African-American playwright Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones). Lula (Shirley Knight), a slatternly woman with a racist streak, encounters Clay (Al Freeman Jr.), a mild-mannered black man, on a New York subway car. Lula at first attempts to seduce Clay, who is initially resistant, but once he begins to respond in kind, she starts to taunt him viciously, goading him until he explodes into violence. This short feature was at once Harvey's last credit as an editor and first as a director. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shirley Knight, Al Freeman, Jr., (more)
- 1967
The Outsider is a refreshingly cynical TV detective drama, starring master cynic Darren McGavin. McGavin plays David Ross, a John MacDonaldesque private eye who virtually lives in his beat-up car and who spends most of his time eluding creditors. An ex-convict, Ross is prohibited from carrying a gun, which means that he gets beaten up on an average of once every ten minutes. Ross is hired by a theatre manager who suspects a female employee of embezzlement; the employee winds up dead, and Ross winds up Suspect Number One. Capped with an twist ending right out of Mickey Spillane, The Outsider was an excellent intro for the weekly TV series which followed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Petulia is Richard Lester's ode to the Swinging Sixties: a time of psychedelic instability when neither those who were square, nor those who were hip, really had it right. George C. Scott is Archie Bollen, a divorced San Francisco doctor in the midst of "discovering himself." Julie Christie is Petulia Danner, a peculiar young beauty recently married into an established family. Archie's sterile apartment and detached, bemused manner exemplify his inability to emote. Petulia's forward nature and desperate tenderness betray her fear of her sullen, abusive, pretty-boy husband (Richard Chamberlain). The physician and the newlywed embark on a schizophrenic love affair amid Pepsi references, automated motels, roller derbies, and a cameo by Big Brother and the Holding Company -- but they never achieve the daring to truly change their lives. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julie Christie, George C. Scott, (more)
- 1968
This action drama is adapted from a TV movie, The Faceless Man. The story centers around a secret service agent who goes undercover as hitman into a counterfeit ring. Most of the story takes place at a waterfront bar. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Lord, Shirley Knight, (more)
- 1968
Elveron is one of those corruption-ridden towns just ripe for reforming by idealists like doctor James Franciscus. He has tried to conduct business honestly, while all the powerful folks around him have pulled strings and paid off authorities to keep certain awkward business and personal deals under the rug. But now, a murder trial involving important people threatens to become one more farcical cover-up. Franciscus vows that the truth will be heard, despite strongarm threats from crooked law officer Leslie Nielsen. The fact that Shadow Over Elveron is a 1968 TV movie should leave no doubt as to the outcome for this strident little civics lesson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1969
- R
Despite an effort by the Warner Bros. publicity mills to turn The Rain People into an instant cult film upon its first release (the ad campaign stressed the intimacy and humanity of the story), this early Francis Ford Coppola effort would have to wait several years to find its audience. Shirley Knight stars as Natalie, a housewife who, unable to cope with being "trapped" by impending pregnancy, deserts her husband and takes to the road. Eager to start life over, Natalie attaches herself to hitchhiker Kilgannon (James Caan). She is fully aware that Kilgannon, a former football pro, has incurred so much brain damage that he's practically a child but insists upon sticking with him. Along the way, she has a variety of offbeat experiences with such eccentrics as a snake-farmer (Tom Aldredge) and a widowed traffic-cop (Robert Duvall). An unexpectedly violent turn of events, triggered by the traffic cop's troubled daughter (Marya Zimmet), leaves Natalie virtually back where she started. Director Coppola was still laboring under the influence of the French New Wave in The Rain People; there are so many flashbacks and flashforwards that soon even the actors don't know where they stand. Yes, it's an example of youthful cinematic excess, but there's a streak of genius in The Rain People that is impossible to miss. Coppola based his screenplay on his own short story "Echoes." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Caan, Shirley Knight, (more)
- 1971
- R
A sexy day in the life of a young family provides the basis of this sudsy drama. During this time the husband, the wife, and their daughter each have their own secret sexual interlude. Many enjoy this film because it contains five minutes of nudity starring the luscious Jacqueline Bisset. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Per Oscarsson
- 1973
When one of the key witnesses in a mob trial is murdered, Stone intensifies his protection of sole remaining witness Roy Chaffee (Sandy Kenyon). Stone and Keller install Chaffee in a nondescript house across the street from the apartment of shy, spinsterish English teacher Mary Rae Dortmunder (Shirley Knight). At the same time, Mary Rae is being ardently courted by a kind, soft-spoken gentleman (Steve Forrest)--actually a contract killer who hopes to use the woman's living room as a stakeout, the better to murder the hapless Chaffee! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Following his successful foray into swashbuckler comedy with The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, director Richard Lester made what has proved to be one of the few quality films from the disaster craze that dominated filmmaking in the mid-'70s. Juggernaut is the pseudonym of a madman (Freddie Jones) who plants several steel drums aboard a luxury liner and calls the company's officials once the boat has put out to sea, demanding a large sum of money in exchange for instructions on how to defuse bombs inside the drums. Anthony Hopkins plays one of the company officials whose wife and children are aboard the ship, Omar Sharif is the ship's captain, Shirley Knight is a passenger who is also his mistress, and Richard Harris and David Hemmings are two members of the bomb disposal team, which is helicoptered onto the ship to defuse the explosives. As in many of Lester's best works, humor pops up in unexpected places; particularly memorable are Harris as the weary but wisecracking top dog among the explosives experts and Lester regular Roy Kinnear as a bumbling entertainment director desperately trying to distract the apprehensive passengers. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Harris, Omar Sharif, (more)
