Katherine Bard Movies
- 1976
Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U-2 Spy is a TV dramatization of the notorious Cold War incident of 1960. The story is told from the point of view of Powers (Lee Majors), an American pilot who was shot down over Russia while taking photographs on behalf of the CIA. The event occurs just before a crucial summit meeting between American President Dwight D. Eisenhower (James Flavin) and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev (Thayer David). Eisenhower tries to cover up the incident, allowing Khrushchev to make propagandistic hay of the whole affair. Robert E. Thompson's teleplay tends to depict the Americans as jerks, and the Russians as essentially good guys; even Powers' Soviet interrogator, portrayed by Nehemiah Persoff, comes off comparatively sympathetic. Also in the cast are Noah Beery as Powers' father and Lew Ayres as Allen Dulles. Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U-2 Spy was originally telecast September 29, 1976. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1968
- NR
Friends don't let friends mess around on the side in this comedy, though it quickly becomes obvious that making this happen isn't as easy as it may sound. When David Sloane (Dean Martin), a single lawyer with an eye for the ladies, learns that his best friend, Harry Hunter (Eli Wallach), has been cheating on his wife, he finds himself worried for his pal and decides to help him get his life back on the straight and narrow. David thinks that Harry is having an affair with his secretary, Carol Corman (Stella Stevens), so David begins romancing her himself, and soon he has Carol installed in a cozy love nest of their own. However, David has been using his seductive powers on the wrong woman; Harry has actually been fooling around with Muriel Laszlo (Anne Jackson), who lives nearby. When David tells Harry that he's stolen his mistress away from him, Harry isn't sure what's going on, but the message has the intended effect, and Harry patches things up with his wife Mary (Katherine Bard). But when Carol and Muriel compare notes, they decide that something is fishy, and the two draw up a series of demands -- Muriel insists that Harry leave Mary and marry her, while Carol wants David to make it legal with her. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dean Martin, Jack Albertson, (more)
- 1965
Inspector Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) finds himself on the horns of an ironic dilemma. Pornographer Bert Anslem (James Gregory), against whom the FBI has been trying to build a case for months, has been kidnapped by career criminal Nick Kirby (Robert Doyle), who demands a $100,000 ransom. This places Erskine in the position of having to rescue Anslem--while simultaneously preventing the man's inevitable flight from the FBI's jurisdiction. Jill Haworth, who created the role of Sally Bowles in the original Broadway production of "Cabaret", appears as Anslem's daughter. (Note: some sources have incorrectly identified this episode as "To Free Mine Enemy"). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1965
Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood) goes from teenage girl to movie star practically overnight when her demented mother enters her voice in a talent-search contest. From a broken-down carnival on the Santa Monica Pier, in no time at all she is attending glamorous Hollywood parties. But Daisy soon learns that misery and pain go hand-in-hand with fame and fortune. Before Daisy completes her first film, the studio execs have her mother committed to an asylum without permission. Daisy tries to find happiness in a series of unfulfilling romances, her one-day marriage to Wade Lewis (Robert Redford) leaving her alone and divorced. After her mother dies, Daisy has a nervous breakdown and refuses to work, but the cold-hearted studio moguls threaten her with starvation if she does not report back to the soundstage. Christopher Plummer, Ruth Gordon (in an Oscar-nominated performance) and Roddy McDowell co-star in this story of a Hollywood dream that turns into a nightmare. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Natalie Wood, Christopher Plummer, (more)
- 1963
In this offbeat crime drama, Mafia boss Johnny Colini (Marc Lawrence) has run afoul of the law and is being deported back to his native Sicily. Colini is not at all happy about this, and after he saves the life of a young thug, Johnny Giordano (Henry Silva), he knows the perfect way for Giordano to pay him back. Colini teaches Giordano the fine art of being a hit man, then sends him to America as Johnny Cool, with a long list of people who he believes informed on him to the police. Johnny Cool begins knocking off Colini's old enemies with a brutal violence that betrays the cool detachment of his personality; along the way, he meets Dare Guinness (Elizabeth Montgomery), a beautiful but promiscuous woman with whom Johnny falls in love. Several gangsters wanting to stop Johnny Cool's reign of terror rough up Dare as a warning to the hit man, but this only serves to make him all the more bloodthirsty. Produced in part by Peter Lawford, Johnny Cool features an interesting variety of notables as Johnny's associates and victims, including Telly Savalas, Mort Sahl, Joey Bishop, Jim Backus, and Sammy Davis, Jr., who also sings the theme song. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Silva, Elizabeth Montgomery, (more)
- 1962
When the faithless wife of architect Paul Sampson (Barry Sullivan) demands a divorce, he goes berserk and kills her. The police rule that the death was an accident, but it isn't long before Paul is tortured by the pangs of conscience. He decides to confess to the murder and take the consequences -- only to find that no one believes him. Well, almost no one: Paul does manage to convince Judge David Wilcox (Louis Hayward), who, as it turns out, has a vested interest in the case. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1962
Using a technique that involves the kind of ensemble acting seen in later long-running, large-cast television programs, director David Swift has tried to tie together the stories of five young interns in this routine drama. One of the interns is a woman who is at odds with the chief surgeon (Telly Savalas), another is involved in an ill-advised abortion simply because he has fallen in love with the patient, a glamorous model (also in real life, played by Suzy Parker). Other stories involve romances that turn out well or ill, depending on the case. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Callan, Cliff Robertson, (more)
- 1959
Theatrical "angel" (and former gangster!) Frank Brooks (Stacy Harris) is charged with the murder of playwright Ernest Royce (Jerome Cowan), who has been killed in the same manner as the main character in one of his unproduced plays. It turns out that Royce has based his play on the real-life murder of underworld figure Rick Valponi back in 1947. In order to clear Brooks in court, Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) must locate the "lost last act" of Royce's play, which may not only solve the present crime but also the one that occurred 22 years earlier. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1958
Worrywart Norman Frayne (James Best) is so wrapped up with his own problems that he is neglecting his wife, Paula (Katherine Bard). All this changes when Norman's old pal, handsome Al Revenel (Steve Brodie), comes to town. Now Norman has something new to worry about -- namely, that Al is poised to steal Paula away from him. His solution to this dilemma is to move out of his own house...and that is the first of his many fatal errors. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1958
In this sea-going suspense drama, Edwin Rumill (James Mason) is the former first mate of an ocean liner who leaps at the chance to have a vessel under his full command. However, the S.S. Berwind is no ship to write home about, a freighter from the mothball fleet whose captain has recently died. The crew is often ill-tempered, and Mahia (Dorothy Dandridge), the wife of the ship's cook, doesn't make anyone more comfortable with her flirtatious nature. Rumill learns that the bad attitude of his crew has a sinister undercurrent: two of the hands, Leroy Martin (Stuart Whitman) and Henry Scott (Broderick Crawford), have hatched a scheme to murder Rumill and the rest of the crew, bring in the ship as salvage, and sell it to the highest bidder, expecting to earn close to a million dollars. Rumill must rally support if he and the other men hope to survive. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Mason, Dorothy Dandridge, (more)
- 1957
In his second Playhouse 90 appearance of the 1956-57 season, Art Crney stars as Robert Briscoe, the colorful, controversial Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ireland. Although of Jewish parentage, Briscoe was "accepted" as a Hibernian through and through on the strength of his fearless patriotism during the 1916 Irish Rebellion against British rule. As a member in good standing of the original Irish Republican Army and the nationalist Sinn Fein movement, Briscoe worked side by side with another legendary Irish freedom fighter, Eamon de Valera, reserving his fighting for the nighttime hours while pursuing a daytime job as a wool salesman. Briscoe's tireless and death-defying efforts on behalf of his countrymen were rewarded in 1956, when he won the mayoral race in the Dublin that he helped to wrest free from British domination. This 90-minute drama proved quite an eye-opener to TV fans who knew Art Carney only for his comic characterizations on The Jackie Gleason Show. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Art Carney, Katherine Bard, (more)
