Don Mitchell Movies

The eighth and final season of Ironside finds wheelchair-bound detective Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr) continuing to purge San Francisco of criminals and murderers with the help of his assistants Sgt. Ed Brown (Don Galloway), policewoman Fran Belding (Elizabeth Baur) and aspiring lawyer Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell) who this season not only passes his California bar exam, but also takes a wife named Diana (Joan Pringle). However, Ironside and company don't have much time to pursue justice: the season ends after a mere thirteen episodes. The show gets on the road with the two-part season opener "Raise the Devil" which features what, for Ironside, constitutes an all-star guest cast: Dane Clark, Bill Bixby and Caroline Jones. Other guest performers worth noting this year include Mike Farrell, just before M*A*S*H, in "Cross Doublecross"; former Batman stalwarts Cesar Romero and Alan Napier in The Lost Cotillion; Jim Hutton, on the eve of his stint as TV's Ellery Queen, in "The Far Side of the Fence"; and radio personality Casey Kasem as a lab tech in "Fall of an Angel". Though the final episode telecast on NBC was "The Faded Image", there were still three additional episodes in the Ironside manifest. "A Matter of Life of Death", "The Organizer" and "The Rolling Y" would not be broadcast until the series went into off-network syndication. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Wheelchair-bound detective Robert T. Ironside shows no signs of slowing down his battle against crime, corruption and persecution in Season Seven of Ironside. Likewise not slacking in their duties are the members of Ironside's team: police sergeant Ed Brown (Don Galloway), aspiring lawyer Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell), and feisty policewoman Fran Belding (Elizabeth Baur). The episode that received the most attention this season was the two-parter "Downhill All the Way", an acting tour de force for star Burr as Ironside pretends to quit the force and become a down-and-out drunkare in order to weed out a killer. As for the guest stars, the viewer is treated to the thespic expertise of such performers as Ross Martin, Kim Darby, Judy Carne, and young, pre-Cagney and Lacey Sharon Gless. With the ratings for Ironside diminishing with each successive season, the producers tried to pump new life and viewer interest in the property at the very end of Season Seven by offering a brace of episodes designed as pilots for possible spinoff series. The first of these is "Riddle at 24,000", starring no less than Desi Arnaz as unconventional doctor Juan Domingo, an intriguing project that unfortunately didn't sell. Much more successful was the second proposed spinoff featuring a no-nonsense female police chief named Amy Prentiss, which resulted in a brief but memorable series stint for guest star Jessica Walter. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Season Six of Ironside opens with the two-part "Five Days in the Death of Sgt. Brown, in which the title character (played by Don Galloway) is felled by a sniper's bullet and faces the same fate--permanent confinement in a wheelchair--as his boss, private detective Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr). The second half of this episode was originally shown as part of another NBC-Universal series The Bold Ones: The New Doctors, with that show's stars E.G. Marshall, David Hartman and Stephen Young comprising the surgical team which operates on the unfortunate Brown. In other developments, Ironside's bodyguard-aide Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell), who has come a long way from his street-punk origins, graduates from law school; and the Ironside team's newest member, rookie cop Fran Belding (Elizabeth Baur), has overcome a lot of the awkwardness which impeded her effectiveness in the previous season. Guest stars of note this season include Hollywood legend Myrna Loy in a rare TV appearance; onetime Star Trek regular Nichelle Nichols; The Addams Family's former "Lurch", Ted Cassidy; Geraldine Brooks, who ironically had appeared in the Ironside pilot as the culprit who crippled Ironside with a well-aimed bullet; and up-and-comers Loretta Swit, William Devane, Dabney Coleman, and Cheryl Ladd, here billed under her maiden name of Cheryl Jean Stoppelmoor. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Season Four of Ironside finds the titular wheelchair-bound detective (Raymond Burr) continuing to hunt down criminals and help those who can't help themselves, assisted by his bodyguard (and now law student) Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell) and police sergeant Ed Brown (Don Galloway). Likewise very much in evidence is debutante-turned-policewoman Eve Whitfield, though this season would be her last on the show, due to a contract dispute involving actress Barbara Anderson and the series' producers (Even so, Ms. Anderson would return for the Ironside "reunion" movie in 1993). As usual, San Francisco is the main beat for the principal characters, with occasional side trips to Canada and Mexico. Guest stars include Martin Sheen, Tyne Daly, Forrest Tucker, Vincent Van Patten and Scott Glenn. Of particular interest is the presence of a pre-All in the Family Sally Struthers in "Love, Peace, Brotherhood and Murder", and of future movie-studio executive Sherry Lansing in "Killing at the Track". Ironside enjoyed its best-ever ratings during its fourth year on the air, posting an impressive Number Four in the top ten shows. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The chief of detectives who is requested to locate the kidnapped daughter of a friend encounters the friend's jealous husband. ~ Rovi

Drug pushers, thrill killers, civil-rights militants, college activists, illegal abortionists, phony psychics, and good cops gone bad--these are but a few of the story elements in the second season of Ironside. Though confined to a wheelchair, former San Francisco police chief turned private detective Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr) continues to fight the good fight with the help of his loyal aides Ed Brown (Don Galloway), Eve Whitfield (Barbara Anderson) and Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell). Episode highlights include the two-part "Split Second to an Epitaph", in which Ironside undergoes surgery that may restore the use of his legs--unless a murderer gets to him first; and "Why the Tuesday Afternoon Bridge Club Met on Thursday", wherein the magnificent Jessie Royce Landis appears as Ironside's iron-willed Aunt Victoria. Other guest stars this season are Troy Donahue as a priest, Milton Berle as a vitriolic talk-show host, Paul Winfield as an urban activist, and Ricardo Montalban, Anne Baxter, Burgess Meredith, Broderick Crawford and the ubiquitous Vera Miles. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

It was a decided advantage for Ironside that the two-hour TV movie which launched the series in March of 1967 was so popular. This enabled the series to begin its first season without resorting to long-winded explanations as to how Robert Ironside (Raymond Burr), chief of detectives for the San Francisco Police Department, had been crippled by a sniper's bullet and forced to retire as a regular member of the force. There was also no need to inform the viewers that Ironside had set up shop as combination special consultant and private eye in his combination office-apartment, assisted by police sergeant Ed Brown (Don Galloway), former delinquent (and now Ironside's bodyguard) Mark Sanger (Don Mitchell), and debutante-turned-policewoman Eve Whitfield (Barbara Anderson). Given the era in which the series debuted, it's no wonder that many of the first-season episodes deal with the hippie movement, black activism, drug addiction, the sexual revolution and the national trauma of Vietnam, along with the usual quota of master criminals and serial killers. And though there is a "good old boy" atmosphere in the proceeding, with most of the stories focusing on the male members of Ironside's team, Eve Whitfield is allowed to take center stage in a story wherein the ex-socialite is forced to kill in the line of duty for the first time. Guest stars in the series' inaugural season include a pre-Hawaii 5-0 Jack Lord in the episode "Dead Man's Tale", Quincy Jones (who of course composed the series' theme music) in "Eat Drink and Be Buried", future Brady Bunch paterfamilias Robert Reed in "End of the Journey", ubiquitous action figure David Carradine in "Due Process of Law", and a pair of promising youngsters named Harrison Ford and Susan St. James. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this comedy, an aspiring singer finds herself single and pregnant. The story begins when she is rushed to the hospital to give birth. She is joined by three men; all of them want to marry her. The story of her pregnancy and her rise to stardom are told in flashback. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In the first episode of I Dream of Jeannie's second season--and the first to be filmed in color--Jeannie (Barbara Eden) arranges a sentimental journey for herself and her master Tony (Larry Hagman) on the desert island where they first met one year ago. This time, however, the ancient bottle that Tony stumbles upon contains the evil Blue Djinn (played by Barbara Eden's then husband Michael Ansara), who'd imprisoned Jeannie in her bottle 2000 years ago--and who is forsworn to kill the girl's new master! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Meanest Men in the West is basically a pair of episodes of The Virginian, chopped up by Universal Pictures' editing department and mashed together (with help from some voice doubles) into what could almost pass for a coherent plot. Judge Henry Garth (Lee J. Cobb), owner of Shiloh ranch, becomes the object of a revenge plot by Kalig (Lee Marvin), a criminal whom the judge sent away to prison for ten years. In the recut version of the two shows (of which the first was directed and written by Samuel Fuller), Kalig sends his half-brother (played by Charles Bronson, in footage from a completely unrelated episode of the show) to kidnap Garth's ranch foreman, the Virginian (James Drury). Not all of it makes sense, but since the two stories were never supposed to be related, that's understandable. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

To explain away the fact that Dr. Bellows (Hayden Rorke) has caught him floating in mid-air (courtesy of Jeannie [Barbara Eden], of course--Tony (Larry Hagman) alibis that he is an amateur magician. Calling Tony's bluff, Dr. Bellows orders the long-suffering astronaut to perform his magic act at a show for the NASA personnel. Perhaps Jeannie can extricate Tony from this dilemma--or perhaps Dr. Bellows will finally be able to prove that all the weird goings-on in Tony's house are not figments of his imagination. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Tony Curtis stars as Johnny Dark, a moody automobile designer. Rejected by a major auto firm because of his "radical" notions, Johnny sets out to prove the efficiency of his cars on the racetrack. He is aided and abetted by pretty Piper Laurie and less pretty Paul Kelly, while motor mogul Sidney Blackmer fumes and fusses until he realizes that Johnny's designs will save his company. Most of the film is devoted to a marathon race, pitting Johnny against his friendly enemy Don Taylor. Johnny Dark is a must for racing buffs, as well as a prime example of Tony Curtis in his beefcake period. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi