Barry Newman Movies

Poorly acted, unintentionally funny in parts, and with transparent literary pretensions, this horror film is about a well-established screenwriter who loses the ability to distinguish between his fantasy world and the real world -- with disastrous consequences. As he ruminates on his place in any world and loses his grip, he also loses his wife (not misplaced, she leaves him) and his children's respect, and critics tear him apart. The final undoing of this screenwriter is a deadline that must be met at all costs -- and the costs turn out to be too great. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

City on Fire, a disaster thriller filmed in Canada with dialogue in both French and English, tells the story of an oil-refinery explosion in a small town. Dr. Frank Whitman (Barry Newman) and his co-workers, including Nurse Harper (Shelley Winters) and Dr. Matwick (Donald Pilon), fight bravely to save the victims even when they, themselves are endangered by the fire. The film also features cameos by Ava Gardner and Henry Fonda. The film moves at a fast pace and creates a great deal of suspense as the fire closes in on the survivors. Director Alvin Rakoff uses creativity instead of a big budget and, aided by the splendid cinematography of Rene Verzier, succeeds in creating an exciting disaster film. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

This suspense film is about a lawyer who defends a high-society woman charged with killing her husband. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide

This espionage thriller is based on a spy novel by Helen MacInnes and tells the tale of a Yankee lawyer who goes to the lovely little Austrian city on vacation and ends up hopelessly entangled in an international web of rival spies and neo-Nazis searching for a chest that holds the names of Nazi collaborators and war criminals. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Barry Newman stars as Tony Petrocelli, a maverick Midwestern attorney. Petrocelli is hired to defend a wealthy doctor (Robert Colbert), accused of murdering his wife. In the tradition of Sam Sheppard, the truculent doctor insists that the killing was committed by a mystery intruder who knocked him unconscious. Thanks to the doctor's healthy extramarital life, the case receives a surfeit of negative press coverage. Since he's already been tried by the public, it comes as little surprise to the doctor that he's found guilty. But during the appeal process, Petrocelli manages to locate a witness who opens the possibility that the murderer was the husband of the doctor's mistress. Five years after the theatrical release of The Lawyer, Barry Newman would star in a TV-series spin-off, Petrocelli. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The short but bloody career of one of the most infamous outlaws of the 1930s is chronicled in this drama. Charles Arthur Floyd (John Ericson) finds work on an oil rig after serving time for armed robbery, but when he becomes involved with a married woman, her husband swears revenge. Floyd's boss doesn't know that his new employee was a jailbird, and when the cuckolded husband breaks the news, Floyd is out of a job. With nowhere to go, Floyd heads back to his father's home in Oklahoma, but when he learns that a neighboring farmer killed his father, Floyd goes berserk and murders the farmer. Floyd recruits three fellow criminals, Al (Barry Newman), Baker (Philip Kenneally), and Curly (Carl York), and together they cut a swath through the nation, robbing banks and leaving bodies in their wake. A young Peter Falk appears in a minor role, as does Al Lewis, who later gained fame as Grandpa on the TV series The Munsters. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide