Janet Leigh Movies

The 60-minute TV comedy Dear Deductible stars Peter Falk as a popular but improvident songwriter. After spending all of his royalties, Falk agrees to marry heiress Janet Leigh-not because of her money, but because of her lack of money. Y'see, both Peter and Janet plan to file a joint income tax return, thereby enjoying the bounty of the IRS' "deductible" system. This will keep them both solvent until they can recoup their fortunes...oh, yeah? Written by Raphael David Blau, Dear Deductible was first telecast November 9, 1966, on the weekly Bob Hope Chrysler Theatre anthology. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this episode from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series, the two good guy spies must stop a criminal mastermind from altering the course of the Gulf Stream. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Screenwriter William Goldman has claimed that Paul Newman agreed to do Harper, the film that established the grateful writer's career, only because he was working unhappily on Lady L. (1965) in Europe, and was looking for something as unlike that film as possible. He stars as Lew Harper, a hip L.A. private dick whose business has gotten so bad that he's re-using his coffee grounds. At the suggestion of his friend, attorney Albert Graves (Arthur Hill), the detective takes on the investigation of the disappearance of the wealthy husband of waspish cripple Elaine Sampson (Lauren Bacall). After finding a photograph of former actress Fay Estabrook (Shelley Winters), Harper locates the alcoholic actress in a bar, plies her with booze, and takes her home to search her apartment while she's unconscious. There he takes a call which leads him to another bar to meet Betty Fraley (Julie Harris), a singer with a heroin problem. To curtail his inquisitive behavior, some large and unpleasant gentleman beat him up outside the saloon. Hoping for sympathy from his soon to be ex-wife (Janet Leigh), who has just filed divorce papers, the weary detective is much more successful than he has any right to expect. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide

In this romantic comedy, Bill Austin (Van Johnson) is an unsuccessful writer who lives in a forlorn New York tenement while his wife Bertie (Janet Leigh) earns an income for both of them. Their lives change dramatically when Bill's first novel becomes a best-seller. Bill persuades Bertie to quit her job and move to a grand house in an upscale suburb. Leaving his wife alone most of the time, Bill begins working long hours on Broadway adapting his novel for the theater, and he spends increasing amounts of time with his attractive agent, Lucinda Ford (Martha Hyer). Bertie suspects the worst and begins courting an actor, Gar Aldrich (Jeremy Slate). ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

An unusually tense and intelligent political thriller, The Manchurian Candidate was a film far ahead of its time. Its themes of thought control, political assassination, and multinational conspiracy were hardly common currency in 1962, and while its outlook is sometimes informed by Cold War paranoia, the film seemed nearly as timely when it was reissued in 1987 as it did on its original release. It opens with a group of soldiers whooping it up in a bar in Korea as their commander, Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), arrives to inform them that they're back on duty. These men obviously have no fondness for Shaw, and he feels no empathy for them. While on patrol, Shaw and his platoon are ambushed by Korean troops. Months later, Shaw is receiving a hero's welcome as he returns to the United States to accept the Congressional Medal of Honor, and several of the soldiers who served under Shaw repeatedly refer to him as "the bravest, finest, most lovable man I ever met." It soon becomes evident that after their capture by the Koreans, Shaw and his men were subjected to an intense program of brainwashing prior to their release. While several are troubled by bad dreams and inexplicable behavior, it's Capt. Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) who seems the most haunted by the experience. In time, Marco is able to piece together what happened; it seems Raymond Shaw was programmed by a shadowy cadre of Russian and Chinese agents into a killing machine who will assassinate anyone, even a close friend, when given the proper commands. On the other side of the coin, Shaw is also used for political gain by his harridan mother (Angela Lansbury), who guides the career of her second husband, John Iselin (James Gregory), a bone-headed congressman hoping to win the vice-presidential nomination through a campaign of anti-Communist hysteria.

The Manchurian Candidate features a host of remarkable performances, several from actors cast cleverly against type. Frank Sinatra's edgy, aggressive turn as Marco may be the finest dramatic work of his career; Laurence Harvey's chilly onscreen demeanor was rarely used to s better advantage than as Raymond Shaw; James Gregory is great as the oft-befuddled Senator Iselin; and Angela Lansbury's ultimate bad mom will be a shock to those who know her as the lovable mystery writer from Murder, She Wrote. George Axelrod's screenplay (based on Richard Condon's novel) is by turns compelling, witty, and horrifying in its implications, and John Frankenheimer's direction milks it for all the tension it can muster. While Frankenheimer's career has had its ups and downs, The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds (1966) suggest that he deserves to be recognized as one of the most brilliantly paranoid American filmmakers of the '60s. Entertaining yet unsettling, both films indicate that things in the '60s were not what they seemed, with a resonance that still echoes uncomfortably in the present. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A screwball comedy that turns into political farce, this film was something of a throwback even in 1960. Real-life husband and wife Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh star as David and Ann Wilson. David is a university professor who is kissing one of his students when Ann walks in on them. She demands a divorce. David turns to his old friend, a television writer, Michael Haney (Dean Martin), who cooks up a cover story. They convince Ann that David is working undercover for the FBI, and that the kiss was part of a sting. The gullible Ann believes the story. Later, when she sees David and Michael in a restaurant with two women, she suspects that the women are spies, and passes David his empty gun. This touches off a disturbance that is filmed by TV news crews. Some real Russian spies think that David really is an FBI agent, and the spies grab the Wilsons and Haney, take them to a secret chamber beneath the Empire State Building, and give them truth serum. From there, the film continues to twist and turn in wildly wacky ways. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

This baroque nightmare of a south-of-the-border mystery is considered to be one of the great movies of Orson Welles, who both directed and starred in it. On honeymoon with his new bride, Susan (Janet Leigh), Mexican-born policeman Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston) agrees to investigate a bomb explosion. In so doing, he incurs the wrath of local police chief Hank Quinlan (Welles), a corrupt, bullying behemoth with a perfect arrest record. Vargas suspects that Quinlan has planted evidence to win his past convictions, and he isn't about to let the suspect in the current case be railroaded. Quinlan, whose obsession with his own brand of justice is motivated by the long-ago murder of his wife, is equally determined to get Vargas out of his hair, and he makes a deal with local crime boss Uncle Joe Grandi (Akim Tamiroff) to frame Susan on a drug rap, leading to one of the movie's many truly harrowing sequences. Touch of Evil dissects the nature of good and evil in a hallucinatory, nightmarish ambience, helped by the shadow-laden cinematography of Russell Metty and by the cast, which, along with Tamiroff and Welles includes Charlton Heston as a Mexican; Marlene Dietrich, in a brunette wig, as a brittle madam who delivers the movie's unforgettable closing words; Mercedes McCambridge as a junkie; and Dennis Weaver as a tremulous motel clerk. Touch of Evil has been released with four different running times -- 95 minutes for the 1958 original, which was taken away from Welles and brutally cut by the studio; 108 minutes and 114 minutes in later versions; and 111 minutes in the 1998 restoration. Based on a 58-page memo written by Welles after he was barred from the editing room during the film's original post-production, this restoration, among numerous other changes, removed the opening titles and Henry Mancini's music from the opening crane shot, which in either version ranks as one of the most remarkably extended long takes in movie history. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this frothy romantic comedy, a hard-working female Army shrink (Janet Leigh) devises the "perfect furlough" for battle weary men and convinces the brass to let her try it on selected men stationed at her base. According to her plan, selected men would be given three weeks, tailor made to fit their deepest desires. Her first test-case is a handsome ladies' man (Tony Curtis) who chooses to go to Paris with his favorite movie star. Naturally the psychologist chaperones. Romantic mayhem ensues and eventually the furloughed soldier and the shrink fall in love. The story is also titled Strictly for Pleasure. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This tense, uncompromising African actioner affords Victor Mature one of his best screen roles. When his family is wiped out by Mau Mau insurrectionists, white hunter Mature assembles an expedition to track down the tribal leader responsible for the massacre. The British authorities don't want Mature to foment further difficulty by seeking revenge, so they revoke his hunting license. Still, he manages to embark upon his justice-seeking safari by hiring himself out as a guide for millionaire lion hunter Roland Culver and Culver's fiancee Janet Leigh. The grimness of the proceedings is occasionally leavened by an incongruously upbeat musical score. Safari was photographed on location by Ted Moore and directed by Terence Young, who'd later collaborate on the James Bond epic Thunderball (1965). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Pete Kelly's Blues is arguably the most stylish of director/star Jack Webb's theatrical features. Beginning with a brilliantly evocative pre-credits prologue, wherein we see how WWI vet Pete Kelly (Webb) came into possession of his precious trumpet, the film traces Kelly to his 1927 gig at a Kansas City speakeasy. Most of the film concerns Kelly's efforts to keep his "Big Seven" aggregation together, his off-and-on romance with socialite Ivy Conrad (Janet Leigh), and his frequent confrontations with mob boss Fran McCarg (Edmond O'Brien). The Richard L. Breen screenplay is full of the deliciously hyperbolic allusions, similes, and metaphors that characterized Webb's radio version of Pete Kelly's Blues, while the musical score is graced by the jazz artistry of such greats as Ella Fitzgerald and Teddy Buckner. Peggy Lee, cast as a mob mistress who is rendered an imbecile after falling down a flight of stars, deservedly earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance. Likewise superb is Andy Devine, cast against type as a corrupt, brutal Kansas City detective, and Lee Marvin as Kelly's best pal. Disney art director Harper Goff, who'd been performing miracles on Webb's TV series Dragnet, brilliantly sustains the smoky zeitgeist of the Prohibition era. Pete Kelly's Blues was later spun off into a TV series starring William Reynolds as Kelly. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tony Curtis always seemed a little uncomfortable in costume epics, but this trait serves him well in Black Shield of Falworth. Based on the robust novel Men of Iron by Howard Pyle, the film casts Curtis as Miles, the son of a disgraced knight. Through the sponsorship of the Earl of Mackworth Herbert Marshall, Miles is trained for knighthood, an arduous process that earns him the ridicule of his fellow trainees, who regard him as little better than a peasant. Eventually, Miles proves his mettle by squelching a plan to oust King Henry IV Ian Keith from the throne of England. On a more personal level, Miles carries on a romance with Mackworth's daughter Lady Anne Janet Leigh, while Miles' sister Meg Barbara Rush finds happiness in the arms of knight-in-training Francis Gascoyne Craig Hill. The heavy of the piece is the Earl of Alban David Farrar, whom Miles must ultimately face down in a well-directed climactic set-to. Torin Thatcher, who'd previously costarred with Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh in Houdini, delivers another topnotch characterization as the no-nonsense trainer of Miles and his fellow aspirant knights. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

MGM romantic Robert Taylor turns nasty in this low-budget crime melodrama. Taylor plays a cop who subsidizes his income with bribes and payoffs from various criminals and politicians. Taylor's brother (Steve Forrest), a rookie on the police force, is as honest as his brother is crooked. The younger brother witnesses a gangland murder; the killer goes to Taylor, demanding that he buy his brother off. When he realizes that his brother can't be corrupted, Taylor tells the Mob to lay off. An out-of-town torpedo is brought in to rub out both brothers, but he succeeds only in killing the honest sibling. His conscience aroused, Taylor goes after the mob leaders himself; though seriously wounded, he clears his family name. Rogue Cop set something of a schedule record at MGM, with only four months elapsing from the time the story was optioned to the time the film was released. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide