Judith Lowry Movies
- 1975
Travelling from New York to the small Nevada town of Cory, Kojak (Telly Savalas) and Crocker (Kevin Dobson) set about the task of extraditing mob witness Arnold B. Saxler (Vincent Baggetta). Unfortunately, several hired thugs are already in the vicinity, with loaded guns at the ready. The remainder of the episode is devoted to a grueling gantlet, with Kojak never entirely sure who the good guys and bad guys really are. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
John Cassavetes wrote and directed this look at three middle-aged men thrown into a midlife crisis when one of their mutual friends dies. Harry (Ben Gazzara), Archie (Peter Falk) and Gus (John Cassavetes) attend the funeral of their buddy David Rowlands (Stuart Jackson); all three are starting to feel the pressures of their advancing years, while Harry is having serious problems with his marriage. After the funeral, the three men decide that they need to get away from it all for a while, and they spend the next two days getting drunk, shooting hoops, playing cards, sleeping on the subway, and pretending that they're teenagers again. After 48 hours of irresponsibility, Archie and Gus decide that fun is fun but it's time to go home. But when Harry goes back to his wife, they have a huge argument; Harry storms out and decides to fly to England, persuading Archie and Gus to tag along. They get dressed up, visit a casino, and pick up beautiful women, but while Archie and Gus, as before, look at this as a brief vacation from their lives as loyal husbands and fathers, Harry doesn't want to go home, even though he seems more troubled by his infidelity than do his two friends. Cassavetes' first directorial project after his critical breakthrough with Faces, featuring intense, largely improvised performances by two of his most consistent collaborators, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk, Husbands was originally released in a cut running 154 minutes, but was trimmed to 138 minutes for general release. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, (more)
Striving for a better life for his two sons, a Puerto Rican immigrant named Popi (Alan Arkin) goes about his mission in a singularly eccentric fashion in this comedy from director Arthur Hiller. So intent is Harlem resident Abraham "Popi" Rodriguez (Arkin) upon providing his boys with the American dream, that he puts off marrying his beautiful girlfriend Lupe (Rita Moreno) in order to carry out the mother of all harebrained schemes. After instructing his boys how to row with lessons in Central Park, Popi takes them to Florida and sets them adrift on the ocean, knowing that two cute "refugees from Cuba" seeking asylum in the U.S. will become celebrity cases and probably be adopted by rich WASP's. Popi's plan works like a charm, with his sons even earning an audience with the president, but a visit to the hospital where they're recovering from their ordeal at sea sinks his big plans. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alan Arkin, Rita Moreno, (more)
- 1963
This thought-provoking and only slightly heavy handed anti-war tract is based on a real incident that occurred during the atomic terror of the Cuban missile crisis. The tragedy begins when a civil defense siren is accidentally tripped while a school is in session. The panic-stricken children are immediately sent home. One young girl has an air-raid shelter in her backyard and invites many children inside. A less popular girl begs to be let in, but the first girl makes excuses and shuts her out leaving the terribly frightened child to hide out in an abandoned refrigerator where she dies. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jane Connell, William Daniels, (more)
Based on William Gibson's Broadway play and retaining its acclaimed cast, Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker tells the true story of Helen Keller (Patty Duke), an Alabama girl struck blind and deaf as a baby after an elevated fever. Enter Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft), a partially-blind woman assigned the task of teaching Helen sign language. After first separating Helen from her over-protective parents (Victor Jory and Inga Swenson), Annie begins the arduous process of teaching the girl. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke, (more)
This film is not only a revealing glimpse into the workings of the O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services) during WW II, but it is also a full-fledged spy thriller. An excellent cast includes James Cagney, Karl Malden, E.G. Marshall, and Red Buttons. Cagney stars as an O.S.S. training officer, bent upon discovering a German traitor within his ranks while at the same time completing highly dangerous espionage assignments. The risks increase when one of his men is murdered from within, and Cagney, convinced he knows who the murdering infiltrator is, vows revenge. Authentic O.S.S. film footage make this film historically significant as well as entertaining. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Cagney, Annabella, (more)
"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon 'em." Firmly in the latter category is Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), a feckless wartime 4-F who must stand by helplessly as his sweetheart Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) entertains every visiting GI in town. One morning after a particularly wild night, Trudy labors under the apprehension that last eve, she'd married a soldier named Ratzkywatzky or something. Evidently something had happened that night, for soon Trudy discovers that she's pregnant. Hiding this information from her bombastic policeman father (William Demarest), Trudy begs Norval to tell the world that he's the father. He agrees, but only after secretly wedding Trudy under an assumed name. Complications and disasters pile up thick and fast, and before long Norval is facing arrest on a variety of charges. Providentially, Trudy gives birth to sextuplets-and suddenly Norval is a national hero! This vintage Preston Sturges farce plays so fast and loose with the censorial restrictions of mid-1940s Hollywood that critic James Agee was moved to comment that, "the Hays office must have been raped in its sleep." As usual, Sturges populates his cast with steadfast members of his stock company-- including, in guest roles, Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff, the stars of his previous film, The Great McGinty. Originally filmed in 1942, Miracle was held from release from two years, not because of censor problems but because its parent studio, Paramount, was overloaded with product. Miracle of Morgan's Creek was remade (and considerably laundered) as the 1958 Jerry Lewis vehicle Rock-a-bye Baby. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, (more)
- 1968
- PG13
- Add The Night They Raided Minsky's to QueueAdd The Night They Raided Minsky's to top of Queue
Narrator Rudy Vallee announces that he knows we are a "real high class audience," thus he has "some swell story to tell." Thus begins The Night They Raided Minsky's, set in the rarefied world of burlesque in the 1920s. Amish girl Rachel Schpitendavel (Britt Ekland) comes to New York in hopes of securing work as a dancing interpreter of religious stories. She gets a job at Minsky's burlesque house, where the dance numbers are "Biblical" only when some gum-chewing stripper performs Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils. The many subplots leading up to Rachel's accidental invention of the striptease during a midnight Minsky's show involve many: top banana Chick Williams (Norman Wisdom) and womanizing straight-man Raymond Paine (Jason Robards Jr.); Billy Minsky (Elliot Gould), whose efforts to stage girlie shows at the National Winter Garden are looked down upon by Minsky Sr. (Joseph Wiseman), who holds the lease on the theater; gangster Trim Houlihan (Forrest Tucker), who intends to shut down Minsky's if he can't get a piece of the action; Ekland's preacher father Harry Andrews, who shows up in New York just in time to see his daughter bare all in front of a cheering audience; and Vance Fowler (Denhom Elliot), self-appointed protector of public morals, whom Paine hopes to embarrass by having Rachel perform her religious dance. A straightforward adaptation of Rowland Barber's novel The Night They Raided Minsky's would seem to be called for here, but novice director William Friedkin and film editor Ralph Rosenblum seem determined to turn the film into a kaleidoscope Hard Day's Night clone. Happily, producer Norman Lear is able to accommodate several nostalgic re-creations of such burlesque chestnuts as "Crazy House" and "Meet Me Round the Corner," as well as six delightful in-period songs penned by Bye Bye Birdie's Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, the best of which is the ribald "Perfect Gentleman." Bert Lahr makes his last appearance on screen in the role of washed-up funnyman Professor Spats; he died during production, and had to be extensively doubled throughout. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jason Robards, Jr., Britt Ekland, (more)
A cinematic take on a 1960s best-seller, Valley of the Dolls traces the ups and downs of three young women as fame, booze, pills, and men consume their lives. Well-bred, small-town Anne Welles (Peyton Place star Barbara Parkins) arrives in New York eager for fame but settles for a job assisting theatrical attorney Henry Bellamy (Robert H. Harris). The job leads her to cross paths with Helen Lawson (Hollywood veteran Susan Hayward), the grand dame of Broadway musicals, and Neely O'Hara (sitcom star Patty Duke), an up-and-coming performer whom Lawson unceremoniously boots from her latest show. Neely lands on her feet thanks to a series of nightclub gigs, and soon she and Anne befriend Jennifer North (Sharon Tate), a buxom starlet. As Neely becomes a huge star of stage and screen and Jennifer appears topless in a string of European "art" films, Anne becomes a wealthy cosmetics spokeswoman and suffers though a passionate but failed affair with aspiring writer Lyon Burke (Paul Burke). As the pressures of fame and failed romance take their toll on all three women, they take refuge in food, sex, liquor, and pills -- especially Neely, who becomes downright monstrous (the titular "dolls" are the uppers and downers to which she becomes hopelessly addicted). Although the film's characters are fictitious composites, Neely most closely resembles Judy Garland; Garland herself was originally cast as Lawson, but she was replaced after only a few days by Hayward. Although the film's trailer played up the story's titillating subject matter, the script for Valley of the Dolls actually toned down Jacqueline Susann's novel. And despite the fact that Dionne Warwick can be heard singing "(Theme From) The Valley of the Dolls" twice during the film, contractual snags kept her from releasing the soundtrack version; a different arrangement later became a number two pop hit in 1968. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, (more)
- 1972
- PG
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Paul Zindel, this is a joint effort of husband and wife team Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman. Produced and directed by Newman, Woodward portrays the eccentric young widow who is raising her two disparate daughters in an atmosphere of bitterness, hatred and over-protection that threatens their very growth and development. Embittered and misandristic, she raises her daughters in an atmosphere of hate that leaves them as depressed and neurotic as she is. The title of the movie comes from her anger at her daughter's science teacher for encouraging her to expose marigolds to gamma rays as a science project. Her experiment shows how radiation sometimes kills growing marigolds, but sometimes it causes them to grow even more beautiful. This experiment becomes a metaphor for her own life, as she struggles to bloom in a household deadened by her mother's alcoholism and her sister's lethargy. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joanne Woodward, Nell Potts, (more)
- 1971
- PG
This comedy is notable as the final onscreen appearance (non-speaking) of Edward Everett Horton, a staple comic supporting actor from the early '30s onward. Dick Van Dyke plays an ambitious small-town minister who rallies the whole town to meet a challenge bet by a tobacco corporation. Cooked up by the tobacco company's public relations head (Bob Newhart), the bet is an offer to pay twenty five million dollars ($25,000,000.00) to any town that can quit smoking for the required period of time. Barnard Hughes is Dr. Proctor, a heart surgeon who has to be physically restrained to prevent him from smoking. Jean Stapleton is the mayor's wife, who swells visibly as her eating replaces cigarettes. Edward Everett Horton is eloquent as the mysterious tobacco tycoon who comes to observe the chaos first-hand. There is lots of frantic action as the townsfolk try to win the prize, and the tobacco company (which has no intention of paying off the bet) works to sabotage their efforts. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pippa Scott, Bob Newhart, (more)
This breathlessly paced high-tech thriller stars Sean Connery as Anderson, a career criminal who's just been released from his latest prison term. Seeking a quick financial turnover, Anderson uses mob funding to finance an ambitious robbery. With a gang of expert thieves, Anderson sets about to rob every wealthy tenant of a fancy East Side apartment building. What he doesn't know is that every move he makes is being monitored and taped by several law-enforcement agencies, who hope that Anderson will lead them to the Mob kingpins. Though the film may look like a "comment" on the Watergate break-in, The Anderson Tapes actually preceded that third-rate burglary by nearly two years. The Anderson Tapes boasts an impressive supporting cast, many of whom play wildly against type, including Alan King as an aging and infirm Mafia don. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, (more)
The Trouble With Angels opens on the first day of school for a new batch of students at St. Francis Academy, run by a very strong-willed Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell). She is used to having things her way, but she may have met her match in the headstrong and independent Mary Clancy (Hayley Mills) and her newfound friend, Rachel Devery (June Harding). Mary, easily bored and ready to rebel at the drop of a hat, comes up with an endless series of "scathingly brilliant" schemes designed either to amuse her and Rachel, torture insufferable schoolmate Marvel-Ann, or in some way help them get ahead. Rachel, who would never come up with such ideas on her own, is delighted to go along with them. The duo starts right away by convincing several of the girls to join them in giving fake names to the sisters that register them. Future escapades include guided tours of the nuns' living quarters, illicit cigarette smoking that brings about the fire brigade, replacing sugar with soap bubbles, and many others. Several times the Mother Superior is on the brink of expelling the girls, but she relents, knowing something of their home lives and that they will benefit from the more nurturing environment of the school. By the end of the film, the girls have indeed grown, and Mary, in particular, has developed a special love for the Academy. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rosalind Russell, Hayley Mills, (more)
- 1973
- G
A concerned father decides to become closer to his daughter the hard way in this live-action comedy from Walt Disney Pictures. Charlie McCready (Bob Crane) is the father of Wendy (Kathleen Cody), a pretty teenager soon to enter college. Like most parents, Charlie only wants the best for his daughter, but he has little use for her circle of friends, most of whom he regards as half-witted and lazy. Determined to set a better example for his daughter (especially since most of her friends will be joining her at college), Charlie decides to become Wendy's new best friend, imposing himself upon her as often as possible and shoe-horning his way into her social circle, even if it means taking up surfing and water skiing to do it. Charlie's not-always-welcome presence doesn't change Wendy's feelings about her boyfriend Bart (Kurt Russell), but when Charlie decides to break up their romance, he gets even more trouble than he anticipated. Superdad also stars Barbara Rush as Charlie's wife Sue, and Joe Flynn as the memorably named Cyrus Hershberger. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bob Crane, Kurt Russell, (more)
