Scott Newman Movies

This alternately hard-edged and bittersweet drama looks at life on a college campus in the early '50s. Zac Sterling (Gregory Harrison) is a student eager to be accepted at one of the school's fraternities, where the pledges are put through the ritual of "hazing" by sensible Rodger Carter (Peter Fox) and loutish Chuck Cherry (Scott Newman). While Zac's intellectual girlfriend Jennifer Harris (Nancy Morgan) regards the Greek system as discriminatory and elitist, he's eager to belong; but he decides, along with several other pledges, to rebel against the tortures inflicted by the upperclassmen upon the new members of the frat. However, the more the pledges rebel against hazing, the more punishment Chuck inflicts upon them, until finally a prank goes too far and one of the new fraternity brothers winds up dead. Director Thomas J. Tobin was able to bring this polished-looking film in on a remarkably low budget by employing a cast and crew recruited from the graduate film program at the University of Southern California. Scott Newman, who played Chuck, was the son of actor Paul Newman; sadly, he died of a drug overdose within a year of this film's release. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Robert Redford plays Waldo Pepper, a former World War I pilot who exaggerates his accomplishments in order to impress the rabble. After a brief rivalry with air-show entrepreneur Axel Olsson (Bo Svenson), Pepper teams with Axel to barnstorm all over the Midwest; later, after a series of unexpected (and calamitous) events, Pepper gets a job as a movie stunt pilot. On the set, he meets the film's technical advisor: former German ace Ernst Kessler (Bo Brundin), a man whom Pepper has been claiming falsely to have fought during the war, thereby advancing his own reputation. He is as disillusioned with civilian life as Pepper is, and ignoring the entreaties of the film's director, stages a genuine dogfight (sans live ammo) with his old "opponent." The Great Waldo Pepper represented the third filmic collaboration between star Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi