Mike Mahoney Movies

After stealing $150,000 from a bank and shooting another officer, rogue cop Fred Hickman (Robert Lansing) offers to give himself up to Chief Ironside (Raymond Burr). Instead, he takes both the Chief and Mark (Don Galloway) hostage, forcing them to accompany him as he attempts to escape. Ironside realizes that his only hope of surviving the ordeal is to convince Hickman's loyal wife Jane (Kathie Browne) that her husband is now irredeemable. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Charlie Rogers (Elvis Presley) is a coffeehouse singer who joins a financially troubled carnival in Roustabout. He is hired by owner Maggie Morgan (Barbara Stanwyck) and soon catches the eye of his pretty female co-worker Cathy Lean (Joan Freeman). Cathy's irate father Joe (Leif Erickson) clashes with Charlie when he tries to romance his daughter, but Charlie's singing helps bring in the much-needed money for the failing carnival and keeps the wolves from the big tent show. A disagreement has Charlie joining another carnival before things are smoothed out. Watch for Raquel Welch and Terry Garr in bit parts. Presley delivers 11 songs, the highlight being the Mike Leiber/Jerry Stoller tune"Little Egypt". ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Just outside the small town of Pauley, a Native American woman is attacked by two riders on horseback, raped, and killed. Her husband, Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas), the town marshal, has only two clues to their identity, a fancy saddle with the initials "C.B." that one of the men left behind, and the fact that his wife cut one of the two men deep across the cheek with a buggy whip. Morgan traces the saddle to Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn), an old friend and now a wealthy rancher in the town of Gun Hill, but he knows Belden well enough to know that he couldn't have had anything to do with attacking his wife. Morgan's arrival with Belden's saddle sets off ugly rumblings in Gun Hill, and when he confronts the rancher, he discovers that it was his son Rick (Earl Holliman) who had his horse and the saddle, and rode out with a cowhand friend of his, Lee (Brian G. Hutton) -- but they claim their horses were stolen. Belden tries to convince Morgan, and wants to believe himself that whoever stole the horses must have killed his wife, but when Morgan mentions the cut that one of the killers will have on his face, they both know the truth. He vows to take Rick and Lee back to Pauley to stand trial, while Belden swears he'll do anything it takes to protect his son. Belden is virtually all the law there is in Gun Hill -- the sheriff (Walter Sande) won't help Morgan serve his arrest warrants on the two men, or even let him use the jail to hold them until the last train that night; there's not a working man, a shopkeeper, or even a prostitute in the whole town that will go against the rancher, and Belden's foreman Beero (Brad Dexter) and his men will strongarm anyone who might start feeling brave. Only Linda (Carolyn Jones), a woman who has been both romanced and abused by Belden, will lift a finger on Morgan's behalf. The marshal is nothing if not resourceful, however, and Rick Belden is also too stupid for his own good, and manages to fall into Morgan's hands in short order. Very quickly, a standoff ensues, with Morgan holding Rick in one of Belden's buildings against virtually the entire town, while the deadline -- the last train out of Gun Hill that night -- approaches. People die and a chunk of Belden's holdings are destroyed, but Morgan is about to get Rick onto the train and off to trial when suddenly, one sudden act of violence destroys father and son in a matter of seconds. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Luther Davis' racy wartime comedy Kiss Them for Me was expurgated a bit for the 1957 film version. Cary Grant, Ray Walston and Larry Blyden portray three navy war heroes who've been booked on a morale-building "vacation" in San Francisco. Eluding their ulcerated public relations officer (Werner Klemperer), the trio arranges a wild party with plenty of pretty girls. Cary Grant is paired with knockout Suzy Parker, an icy socialite who eventually thaws under his charms. Also on hand is Jayne Mansfield, playing a "good time girl" whose profession was a bit more explicit in the original play; the role was originated by Judy Holliday, who brought a wistfulness to the character that Ms. Mansfield couldn't quite manage. TV sitcom fans will get a kick out of the supporting cast of Kiss Them For Me: Ray Walston, later star of My Favorite Martian plays a libertine navy officer; Werner Klemperer, shorn of the accent he'd use as Colonel Klink in Hogan's Heroes, is hilarious as the flustered p.r. man; and Richard Deacon (Leave It to Beaver, The Dick Van Dyke Show) pops up unbilled as a dour businessman who can't understand the war-hero mystique. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Laid up with a broken leg, photojournalist L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is confined to his tiny, sweltering courtyard apartment. To pass the time between visits from his nurse (Thelma Ritter) and his fashion model girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), the binocular-wielding Jeffries stares through the rear window of his apartment at the goings-on in the other apartments around his courtyard. As he watches his neighbors, he assigns them such roles and character names as "Miss Torso" (Georgine Darcy), a professional dancer with a healthy social life or "Miss Lonelyhearts" (Judith Evelyn), a middle-aged woman who entertains nonexistent gentlemen callers. Of particular interest is seemingly mild-mannered travelling salesman Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), who is saddled with a nagging, invalid wife. One afternoon, Thorwald pulls down his window shade, and his wife's incessant bray comes to a sudden halt. Out of boredom, Jeffries casually concocts a scenario in which Thorwald has murdered his wife and disposed of the body in gruesome fashion. Trouble is, Jeffries' musings just might happen to be the truth. One of Alfred Hitchcock's very best efforts, Rear Window is a crackling suspense film that also ranks with Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) as one of the movies' most trenchant dissections of voyeurism. As in most Hitchcock films, the protagonist is a seemingly ordinary man who gets himself in trouble for his secret desires. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

At age 50, Bob Hope was getting a bit too long in tooth for frenzied farces like Off Limits, but his surplus of energy makes up for his chronological unsuitability. Hope plays the manager of boxing champ Stanley Clements, who has just received his draft notice. Gangster Marvin Miller strong-arms Hope into enlisting himself to keep tabs on Clements; when the latter is given a medical discharge, poor Hope is stuck in uniform. During training, Hope makes the acquaintance of draftee Mickey Rooney, an aspiring boxer who wants Hope to handle him. There's one obstacle, however: the Mick's aunt doesn't want her nephew to box. Hope promises to talk the "old lady" into his way of thinking, only to discover that Rooney's aunt is the luscious Marilyn Maxwell. Before the climactic bout between Rooney and Clements, Hope and Rooney sign up to be military policemen under the aegis of buffoonish CO Eddie Mayehoff. If Bob Hope looks slightly uncomfortable at times in Off Limits, it is probably because he isn't politely inclined to such upstarts as Mickey Rooney and Eddie Mayehoff getting most of the laughs. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Fritz Lang directed this gritty drama of gangland murder and police corruption, which was considered quite violent in its day. Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) is a scrupulously honest police detective who learns that one of his fellow officers has committed suicide. Bannion is told by the officer's wife, Bertha (Jeanette Nolan), that he was severely depressed after being told he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. But the cop's mistress, a barmaid named Lucy (Dorothy Green), has another tale to tell. She claims that he left behind a suicide note detailing a complex trail of corruption in the department, leading to mob boss Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby), and now Bertha plans to use the note to blackmail Lagana. When Lucy is found dead beside an abandoned road, with her body showing obvious signs of torture, Bannion is convinced that her story was true, and he goes after Lagana. When he threatens to expose Lagana's dealings, the gangster orders Bannion killed. But the car bomb meant to finish Bannion off instead kills his wife Katie (Jocelyn Brando). The police take Bannion off the case, but, convinced his peers are trying to cover their tracks, Bannion follows the case alone, determined to get revenge. Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame shine in key supporting roles. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Carrie is based on Sister Carrie, a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser's clumsy, unwieldy prose is streamlined into a neat and precise screenplay by Ruth and Augustus Goetz. Jennifer Jones stars as Carrie, who leaves her go-nowhere small town for the wicked metropolis of Chicago. Here she becomes the mistress of brash traveling salesman Charles Drouet (Eddie Albert), then throws him over in favor of erudite restaurant manager George Hurstwood (Laurence Olivier). Obsessed by Carrie, George steals money from his boss to support her in the manner to which he thinks she is accustomed. Left broke and disgraced by the ensuing scandal, Carrie deserts George to become an actress. Years later, the conscience-stricken Carrie tries to regenerate George, who has fallen into bum-hood. If Laurence Olivier seems a surprising casting choice in Carrie, try to imagine what the film would have been like had Cary Grant, Paramount's first choice, accepted the role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Bob Hope is up to his famous nose in danger in this espionage comedy. Second-rate burlesque comic Peanuts White (Hope) is approached by federal agents who think that he's international spy Eric Augustine, to whom Peanuts bears a striking resemblance. When they realize that Peanuts and Eric are two different people, the FBI persuades him to travel to Africa posing as Eric and fetch a batch of microfilm that could prove vital to national security. With reluctance, Peanuts flies to Tangiers and arranges a rendezvous with Lily Dalbray (Hedy Lamarr), Eric's beautiful girlfriend and an agent of shifting alliances herself. However, Lily's superior Karl Brubaker (Francis L. Sullivan) wants the microfilm, and he will stop at nothing to get it. As Peanuts tries to rescue the microfilm, make time with Lily, and avoid Karl, things become even more confused when Eric escapes from hiding and re-enters the picture. Both Bob Hope and Hedy Lamarr contribute songs to the soundtrack, though unlike Bob, Hedy's vocals were dubbed in by a studio vocalist. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play Detective Story was praised for its realistic view of an event-filled day in a single police precinct station. The film, directed by meticulous taskmaster William Wyler, manages to retain this realism, even allowing for the star-turn performance of Kirk Douglas. A stickler for the letter of the law, Detective James McLeod (Douglas) is not averse to using strong-arm methods on criminals and witnesses alike in bringing lawbreakers to justice. He is particularly rough on a first-time offender (Craig Hill), on whom the rest of the force is willing to go easy because of the anguish of his girlfriend (Cathy O'Donnell). But McLeod's strongest invective is reserved for shady abortion doctor Karl Schneider (George MacReady); McLeod all but ruins the case against Schneider by beating him up in the patrol wagon. When McLeod discovers that his own wife (Eleanor Parker) had many years earlier lost a baby in one of Schneider's operations, and that the baby's father was gangster Tami Giacoppetti (Gerald Mohr), it is too much for the detective to bear. Punctuating the grim proceedings with brief moments of humor is future Oscar winner Lee Grant, reprising her stage role as a timorous shoplifter; it would be her last Hollywood assignment until the early 1960s, thanks to the iniquities of the blacklist. Despite small concessions to Hollywood censorship, Detective Story largely upheld the power of its theatrical original, and it forms a clear precursor to such latter-day urban police dramas as NYPD Blue. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In 1949, Paramount put together a film version of the radio series My Friend Irma. It was assumed that the main attraction would be scatter-brained Irma, delightfully played by Marie Wilson. Instead, the picture was stolen by a couple of young upstarts named Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Accordingly, My Friend Irma Goes West concentrates almost exclusively on Martin and Lewis, with poor Marie Wilson virtually consigned to a supporting role in her own picture. The story begins when Irma and her friends head westward on the incorrect assumption that Steve Laird (Dean Martin) has landed a movie contract. During the train trip to California, Steve's goonish pal Seymour (Jerry Lewis) is entrusted with a pet monkey, owned by movie star Yvonne Yvonne (Corinne Calvet). There's a contretemps with gangsters and a kidnapping before a happy ending can be realized. Some critics found Jerry Lewis' moronic mugging to be tasteless; others were too busy laughing to be upset. Having proven their mettle with the two My Friend Irma flicks, Martin and Lewis were awarded with their own vehicle, At War With the Army. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Garson Kanin's Broadway hit was transferred to the screen with only a few passing nods to the stricter censorship required by films. Judy Holliday won an Oscar for her portrayal of Billie Dawn, a strident, dim-bulbed ex-chorus girl who is the mistress of millionaire junk tycoon Harry Brock (Broderick Crawford). In Washington to put a few senators and congressmen in his pocket (the better to lay the groundwork for an illegal cartel), the rude-and-crude Brock realizes that the unrefined Billie will prove an embarrassment. Thus he hires idealistic but impoverished Paul Verrell (William Holden) to pump some intelligence and "class" into Billie. Paul does his job too well; by awakening Billie's social and political consciousness, he turns the girl into Brock's most formidable foe in his efforts to buy influence in DC. Along the way Paul and Billie fall in love. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi