Joanna Barnes Movies

John McMartin appears as Dr. Lawrence Crandall, an esteemed expert in personal relationships and the author of a best-selling book on marital fidelity. With all this going for Crandall, is it any wonder that no one believes Rebecca (Kirstie Alley) when she claims that the good doctor made a pass at her? This was the final episode of Cheers' seventh season. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a mother and daughter become rivals for a single man's affections. The mother is a widowed movie star and the daughter is recently divorced. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Kill My Wife...Please! was the rather desperate reissue title of the 1976 comedy I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now? Sneaky Bob Dishy marries bitchy Joanna Barnes, then plots to kill her for the insurance money. He goes so far as to hire a hit man for that purpose-a man who deals in irrevocable contracts. The laughs are supposed to start rolling in when Dishy discovers that Barnes isn't insured after all. Bill Dana and Vito Scotti are among the potent comic talents wasted in this hectic dark farce. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this suspenseful crime drama, a lawyer begins investigating the theft of some priceless Macedonian national treasures from a religious shrine. The film is made up of two episodes from the TV show Trials of O'Brien. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

John Wayne and Kirk Douglas spend half of The War Wagon trying to knock one another off and the other half working shoulder to shoulder. Settling an old score with avaricious mine owner Bruce Cabot, Wayne plans to steal a $500,000 gold shipment from his enemy. Douglas, at first hired by Cabot to kill Wayne, goes along with the robbery scheme. Also in on the plan is Howard Keel, superbly cast as a world-weary, wisecracking Native American (it's the sort of part that nowadays would go to Graham Greene). The titular war wagon is the armor-plated, Gatling-gun fortified stagecoach wherein Cabot's gold is transported. Thus the stage is set for a slam-bang finale, and director Burt Kennedy isn't about to disappoint the viewers. Best bit: after Kirk and The Duke gun down Cabot's henchmen Bruce Dern and Chuck Roberson, Douglas quips "Mine hit the ground first"--whereupon Wayne replies "Mine was taller." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this sequel to "Elly Starts to School," wealthy Cynthia Fenwick (Joanna Barnes) and her mother (Doris Packer) have adopted the Clampett look, following the example of Cynthia's classmate, Elly May. Dressed in checkered shirts and old blue jeans, the Fenwicks are convinced that the Clampetts are the arbiter of a new avant-garde social movement. But when they meet Cynthia and her mother, the Clampetts believe that the ill-garbed ladies have fallen upon hard times. "The Clampett Look" first aired on October 23, 1963. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After a year of searching for gold in Mexico, alcoholic ex-colonel Oliver Lacey (Lawrence Dobkin) has come home to his wife Penelope (Joanna Barnes). Hired to prepare the woman for her husband's imminent arrival, Paladin (Richard Boone) learns to his chagrin that Penelope has not exactly been lonely during the Colonel's absence. As indicated by the episode's title, this is a essentially a westernization of "The Odyssey"--with Paladin cast (more or less) in the role of the poet Homer! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this complex western, set in Arizona during the 1870s, a cowboy kills a wanted man, goes to collect the $8,000 reward and instead meets the late outlaw's partner who is trying to get the reward for himself. The cowboy encounters more trouble when the dead man's little brother shows up looking for revenge. The town sheriff decides to settle the whole mess by exhuming the body and examining it. En route to the cemetery, the hero meets the little brother's guardian who falls in love with the stranger, but cannot understand why the money is so important to him. At the gravesite, they are appalled to discover that the Apaches, who adored the outlaw, have stolen his corpse. The outlaw's partner then shoots the sheriff and they all ride off. Suddenly the Indians attack, and to save the rest, the wounded partner sacrifices himself. After he dies, the hero suddenly realizes that love is better than money. Simultaneously, the vengeful little brother understands that his older sibling really was a bad man and probably deserved to die. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

While escorting four prisoners through the desert, Capt. Jim Pattisall (Alan Hale Jr.) is wounded in an Apache attack. Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) takes over from Pattisall, making certain that the foursome is safely delivered to prison--a task that proves problematic when the prettiest of the prisoners, Daphne Tolliver (Joanna Barnes) tries to charm her way to freedom. Adding to Bart's burden are a pair of pursuing bank robbers, to say nothing of scalp-happy Apache brave Red Feather (Gary Murray). Featured as the Indian chief is silent-film veteran Charles Stevens, the grandson of legendary Apache warrior Geronimo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) is a rebellious slave purchased by Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov), owner of a school for gladiators. For the entertainment of corrupt Roman senator Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier), Batiatus' gladiators are to stage a fight to the death. On the night before the event, the enslaved trainees are "rewarded" with female companionship. Spartacus' companion for the evening is Varinia (Jean Simmons), a slave from Brittania. When Spartacus later learns that Varinia has been sold to Crassus, he leads 78 fellow gladiators in revolt. Word of the rebellion spreads like wildfire, and soon Spartacus' army numbers in the hundreds. Escaping to join his cause is Varinia, who has fallen in love with Spartacus, and another of Crassus' house slaves, the sensitive Antoninus (Tony Curtis). The revolt becomes the principal cog in the wheel of a political struggle between Crassus and a more temperate senator named Gracchus (Charles Laughton). Anthony Mann was the original director of Spartacus, eventually replaced by Stanley Kubrick, who'd previously guided Douglas through Paths of Glory. The film received 4 Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Ustinov. A crucial scene between Olivier and Curtis, removed from the 1967 reissue because of its subtle homosexual implications, was restored in 1991, with a newly recorded soundtrack featuring Curtis as his younger self and Anthony Hopkins standing in for the deceased Olivier. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Auntie Mame began as a novel by Patrick Dennis (aka Ed Fitzgerald), then was adapted into a long-running Broadway play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. This 1958 film version permits Rosalind Russell to recreate her stage role as Mame Dennis, the flamboyant, devil-may-care aunt of young, impressionable Patrick Dennis. Left in Mame's care when his millionaire father drops dead, young Patrick (Jan Handzlik) is quickly indoctrinated into his aunt's philosophy that "Life is a banquet--and some poor suckers are starving to death." Social-climbing executor Dwight Babcock (Fred Clark) does his best to raise Patrick as a stuffy American aristocrat, but Mame battles Babcock to allow the boy to be as free-spirited as she is. In 1974, Auntie Mame was remade as the filmmusical Mame with Lucille Ball. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Wearing a curiously (and perhaps deliberately) unattractive blonde wig, Jean Simmons stars in the tense psychological drama Home Before Dark. Having just recovered from a nervous breakdown, Charlotte Bronn (Simmons) returns from a mental institution to the home she shares with her academician husband Arnold (Dan O'Herlihy). Though he tries his best to help Charlotte re-adapt, his efforts are undermined by the insensitive meddling of her stepmother Inez (Mabel Albertson) and stepsister Joan (Rhonda Fleming) who may or may not have been carrying on a romance with Arnold in Charlotte's absence. The untenable situation at home leads Charlotte into a romance with college professor Jake Diamond (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), who as an ongoing target of anti-semitism has plenty of his own emotional baggage to deal with. What is remarkable about Home Before Dark is that it is a film without a villain: even the most unpleasant characters are drawn as three-dimensional human beings, who behave badly because they really don't know any better. The film was adapted by Robert and Eileen Bassing from Eileen's same-named novel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide