Vivian Nathan Movies

The first part of his "paranoia trilogy," Alan J. Pakula's 1971 thriller details the troubled life of a Manhattan prostitute stalked by one of her tricks. Investigating the disappearance of his friend Tom Gruneman (Robert Milli), rural Pennsylvania private eye John Klute (Donald Sutherland) follows a lead provided by Gruneman's associate Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi) to seek out a call girl who Gruneman knew in New York City. The call girl is Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda), an aspiring actress who turns tricks for the cash and to be free of emotional bondage. Klute follows Bree's every move, observing the city's decadence and her isolation, eventually contacting her about Gruneman. Bree claims not to know Gruneman, but she does reveal that she has received threats from a john. As Bree becomes involved in Klute's search and realizes that she is in danger, she reluctantly falls in love with Klute, despite her wish to remain unattached to any man. When she finally comes face to face with the killer, however, she is forced to reconsider her detached urban life. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

The Young Savages is what used to be called a "thinking man's picture" about a potentially lurid subject: urban juvenile delinquency. A blind Puerto Rican boy is knifed to death in Spanish Harlem, and three teenage gang members are accused of the crime. Politically ambitious assistant DA Burt Lancaster initially presses for the conviction of all three boys. But as he gets deeper into the case, he realizes that what appears cut-and-dried on the surface is tortuously complex: for starters, the murder victim was hardly the paragon of virtue that the prosecution claims. Despite pressure from his superiors and from members of the accused boys' gang (who at one point threaten Lancaster's wife Dina Merrill with a switchblade,) Lancaster nonetheless sees to it that justice is properly administered. The defendants are portrayed with varying degrees of Brando/Dean "method" by John Davis Chandler, Neil Nephew and Stanley Kristien; more believable, less affected performances are rendered by Shelley Winters, Pilar Seurat and Telly Savalas. Filmed on location in New York, The Young Savages was based on the Evan Hunter novel A Matter of Conviction. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Hard-boiled, self-educated newspaper editor Clark Gable turns down an opportunity to lecture before a night-school journalism class, publicly ridiculing the notion that the art of news writing can be taught. After receiving an honorary university degree, Gable's publisher orders the recalcitrant editor to appear at the lecture. Upon entering the classroom, Gable overhears journalism teacher Doris Day, the daughter of a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, condemn Gable's attitude towards higher education. Intrigued by the lovely Day, Gable enrolls in her class under an assumed name. He quickly goes to the head of the class (after all, he's had more experience than all the other students combined), then begins a campaign to romance Day. But there's a fly in the ointment: Day's fiance Gig Young, who gives an Oscar-calibre performance as a smug know-all. Likewise stealing every scene she's in is Mamie Van Doren, playing an exotic dancer who's set her sights on Gable. Fay and Michael Kanin's sprightly screenplay for Teacher's Pet manages to steer clear of any and all potential cliches. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One of the better entries in the short-lived CBS Sunday-afternoon anthology The Seven Lively Arts, "The World of Nick Adams" was adapted by A.E. Hotchner from five different Ernest Hemingway short stories: "The End of Something," " "Three Day Blow," "The Light of the World," "The Battler," "Now I Lay Me." A young Steven Hill (Mission: Impossible, Law & Order) stars as Hemingway's youthful alter ego Nick Adams, who while recuperating from wounds received in WWI recalls the past events of his life: Running away from home, making valuable friends and dangerous enemies, learning how to discern phoniness in the self-righteous and nobility in the downtrodden, etc. In his first assignment for TV, composer Aaron Copland provides the special's incidental music. Newspaper columnist John Crosby serves as host. Much of The World of Nick Adams was later incorporated in the 1962 theatrical feature Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi