Myron McCormick Movies

As The Hustler's "Fast" Eddie Felson, Paul Newman created a classic antihero, charismatic but fundamentally flawed, and nobody's role model. A pool player from Oakland, CA, as good as anyone who ever picked up a cue, Eddie has an Achilles' heel: arrogance. It's not enough for him to win: he must force his opponent to acknowledge his superiority. The movie follows Eddie from his match against billiards champ Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) as he falls in love with Sarah (Piper Laurie), an alcoholic would-be writer and sometime prostitute, and falls under the spell of Bert Gordon (George C. Scott), a successful gambler who offers to take Eddie under his wing and teach him how to play in the big time. However, when Sarah joins Eddie and Bert on a trip to Louisville for a high-stakes match with a dandy named Findlay (Murray Hamilton), the consequences prove tragic. Along with a classic performance by Newman, The Hustler also features turns by Scott, Laurie, and Gleason, in a rare dramatic role. Cameos from pool champ Willie Mosconi and boxer Jake LaMotta add to the atmosphere of Harry Horner's grubby production design and Eugen Schüfftan's camerawork. Director Robert Rossen, who had been working in films since 1937, was to direct only one more film, Lilith (1964), before his death in 1966. In 1986, Newman returned to the role of "Fast" Eddie in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money, for which he finally earned an Academy Award as Best Actor. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Although his bootlegging operation has been smashed up and his boss Al Capone is in Federal Prison, Frank Nitti (Bruce Gordon) still has plenty of crooked irons in the fire. One his most lucrative enterprises is a Hollywood-based extortion racket, designed to control exhibition prices for theater operators. Hoping to break Nitti once and for all, Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) uses an old warrant against Nitti flunkey Sidney Rogers (Richard Anderson) as the first step in his plan. This final episode of The Untouchables' first season feature the last appearance of Anthony George as "Untouchable" Cam Allison--but if you think that the explosive climax marks the exit of the formidable Frank Nitti, guess again. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After making Man Who Understood Women and seeing that the result was an ill-realized, uneven combination of Hollywood satire and tear-jerking melodrama, star Henry Fonda did not make another film until almost three years later. The story centers on a Hollywood producer who becomes so obsessed with turning his wife Leslie Caron into the sexiest star in Hollywood that he neglects her real needs. Feeling lonely and tired of Tinseltown, Caron returns to her native France and finds herself attracted to the handsome and very attentive pilot Cesare Danova. When Fonda hears about the budding affair, he flies into a rage and hires assassins to kill his rival. Unfortunately for him, the killers are romantics and decide that Caron and Danova are so in love that both must die so they can be together always. When Fonda finds out, he rushes over to France to try and save his wife. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Mac Hyman's hilarious barracks novel No Time for Sergeants was adapted for TV by Ira Levin in 1955, with newcomer Andy Griffith as bumptious Air Force draftee Will Stockdale. This TV version was soon afterward transformed into a Broadway play, and then a movie, again with Griffith in the lead. Brought to the Air Force base in handcuffs because his farmer father has been hiding his draft notices, good-natured Will becomes the target of ridicule for the other transcripts. Especially nasty is Private Irvin (Murray Hamilton), but Will is able to forgive him because he knows that Irvin is suffering from some mysterious disease called ROTC. Will's best pal is hot-headed private Ben (Nick Adams), who wants to be transferred to the Infantry and convinces Will to try for the same goal. Slowly becoming aware that the trusting, naïve Will may prove to be a troublemaker, career sergeant King (Myron McCormick), who wants nothing more out of life than a little peace and quiet, tries to keep Stockdale out of mischief by appointing him "PLO" -- Permanent Latrine Orderly, a dubious distinction in which Will takes enormous pride. Later on, King tries to pull strings to get Will transferred, succeeding only in losing his sergeant's stripes. The story goes off on a zany tangent when Will and Ben find themselves on a crippled plane in flight. They manage to escape with their lives, but all evidence suggests that they've been killed in the plane's crash. Imagine the dismay of newly reinstated Sergeant King when Will and Ben show up in his office -- just as the entire base is gathered for a memorial service for the two "fallen heroes." Featured in a minor role as a "coordination officer" is Griffth's future TV cohort Don Knotts, while Sammy Jackson, who played Stockdale in a 1964 sitcom version of No Time for Sergeants, shows up in an unbilled bit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ambitious but impecunious medical student Lucas Marsh (Robert Mitchum) marries the older and (in this film, at least) not especially attractive Kristina Hedvigson (Olivia de Havilland) so that she can pay his tuition fees. Kristina loves Lucas, but he loves nothing but his work. Emotionally shutting himself off from everyone -- including best friend, Alfred Boone (Frank Sinatra), and drunken dad, Job Marsh (Lon Chaney Jr.) -- Lucas survives his training and goes to work as the assistant to tough but tender small-town medico Dr. Runkleman (Charles Bickford). He enters into an affair with wealthy Harriet Lang (Gloria Grahame) (watch for the symbolism-laden tryst in the horse barn!), obliging Alfred, now a big-city doctor, to try to patch up his pal's marriage. But Lucas feels nothing and needs no one because he's come to think of himself as the perfect physician, incapable of making an error. When Lucas fails to revive his mentor Dr. Runkleman during heart surgery (a genuine heart is used in the "massage" close-ups), the young doctor suddenly realizes that he's not infallible after all. He wanders aimlessly through town, finally returning to his wife and collapsing into her arms, sobbing "Help me! Please help me!" Cameo players range from Broderick Crawford as a Jewish doctor denied entry into medicine's upper circles to Carl Switzer as a bug-eyed patient. The film was adapted from the best-selling novel by Morton Thompson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Technicolor follow-up to Columbia's 1946 blockbuster The Jolson Story again stars Larry Parks as legendary entertainer Al Jolson--and Jolson himself, as Parks' singing voice. The story concentrates on Jolson's tireless activities entertaining the troops during WW II. After VJ day, Jolson finds that his services are no longer required. Fortunately, he stages a spectacular comeback, thanks in great part to the release of The Jolson Story! The film's Pirandellian overtones come to a head when Larry Parks as Jolson meets Larry Parks as Larry Parks. Also returning from The Jolson Story are William Demarest as the title character's manager Steve Martin, Bill Goodwyn as Broadway-producer Tom Baron, and Ludwig Donath and Tamara Shayne as Jolson's old-world parents. Barbara Hale appears as Jolson's wife (his third, though this fact is not dwelled upon), renamed Ellen Clark for the moment, while Myron McCormick plays a composite character based on several Hollywood executives (including, one supposes, Columbia mogul Harry Cohn). Song highlights include "After You've Gone", "You Made Me Love You", "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy", "Sonny Boy", "About a Quarter to Nine", "April Showers", "Back in Your Own Backyard", and, of course, "Mammy". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

China Girl charts the exploits of two-fisted newsreel photographer Johnny Williams (George Montgomery), stationed in Burma and China in the early stage of WW II. Captured by the Japanese, he escapes from a concentration camp with the aid of beautiful, enigmatic "China Girl" Miss Young (Gene Tierney). The two arduously make their way back to friendly lines so that Johnny can deliver the vital military information he's managed to glean from his captors. Though it probably wasn't supposed to happen this way, Lynn Bari steals the film from official star Gene Tierney. China Girl was scripted by Ben Hecht with his usual blend of sentiment and cynicism. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Maxwell Anderson combined the Sacco-Vanzetti story with elements of the still-unsolved disappearance of Judge Crater, and the result was the blank-verse theatrical piece Winterset. Burgess Meredith, Margo and Eduardo Cianelli repeat their Broadway roles, respectively playing the grown son of an executed political radical, the woman who loves and stands by Meredith, and a menacing gangster with plenty to hide. 15 years after the execution, Meredith endeavors to clear his father's name, and to that end seeks out the judge (Edward Ellis) who presided over the trial, now a drunken, guilt-ridden derelict. Screenwriter Anthony Veiller remove most of Anderson's flowery dialogue and substituted a happy ending for the original play's cynically tragic denouement. Neither of these changes hurt the property, and in fact were heartily endorsed by Maxwell Anderson himself. But depression-era audiences, too wrapped in their own current problems to shed tears over the long-dead Sacco and Vanzetti, stayed away from Winterset in droves. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide