Maureen O'Sullivan Movies

In this feature-length continuation of the popular husband-and-wife television detective series, the fabulously wealthy and impossibly attractive Jonathan (Robert Wagner) and Jennifer (Stephanie Powers) Hart travel to the town of Kingman's Ferry to mourn the death of Jennifer's mentor. Suspecting foul play, the duo launch an investigation that reveals that burg's idyllic appearance masks a seething underbelly of deception. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this fact-based drama, a real estate agent is horrified to learn that a home buyer is the one who killed her policeman husband. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Good Old Boy is based on the autobiography of Southern writer Willie Francis. Ryan Francis plays young Willie, growing up in Yazoo City, Mississippi during the War years. The film follows Willie as he learns valuable lessons about life and death, and as he gradually drifts away from his circle of friends. Weather-beaten character actors Richard Farnsworth and Anne Ramsey add local color to the location-filmed proceedings. Originally telecast on cable in 1988, Good Old Boy was replayed in 1989 as a two-part entry on PBS' Wonderworks. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this comedy, two rival ad executives find themselves marooned on a South Pacific during a balloon accident. Comic mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

During her 25th high school class reunion, middle-aged Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) tries to forget her marital problems with husband Charlie (Nicolas Cage) by renewing old friendships. Wondering if she made the right decisions in her life, Peggy Sue gets a chance to try again when, zapped into a time warp, she finds herself a teenager back in 1960. Armed with foreknowledge (the scene in which she tells off her algebra teacher is a particular treat), Peggy Sue gets to retrace the steps leading up to her unhappy marriage to high-school sweetheart Charlie. Will nerdish Richard Norvik (Barry Miller), who always carried a torch for Peggy Sue and whom she knows will become a millionaire computer mogul by 1985, win out over the unreliable Charlie this time? A "small" film from the otherwise profligate Francis Ford Coppola, Peggy Sue Got Married possesses an irresistible charm that makes up for its glaring plot deficiencies. The youthful cast is matched in its appeal by such veterans as Leon Ames, Maureen O'Sullivan and John Carradine. And yes, that is Jim Carrey as Walter Getz. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A million-dollar cast was assembled for this high-gloss TV movie. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Rosalind Russell play a pair of ageing con artists, plying their trade with the members of a lonely hearts club managed by Maureen O'Sullivan. Complicating the schemes of the tricky duo is the presence of a mystery killer who preys upon wealthy widows. Advertised as "A Delightful Tale of Murder", The Crooked Hearts was based on the novel Miss Lonelyhearts 4122 by Colin Watson. The film proved to be the last screen appearance of Rosalind Russell, who fell ill shortly after its telecast and died three years later. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Will Rogers Jr. follows in the cinematic footsteps of his famous father in the evenly-paced western Wild Heritage. Rogers is cast as a frontier judge, given to his own special, down-to-earth brand of jurisprudence. In truth, however, Will Jr's role is a subordinate one; most of the film's running time concerns two families heading westward by covered wagon. When rustlers attack, it is the sons of the respective families who emerge as the heroes. One of the "good guys" is portrayed by Rod McKuen, long before he became Poet Laureate of the flower-child generation. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Like its predecessor Duffy of San Quentin, The Steel Cage is made up of episodes from a never-telecast TV series based on the career of progressive prison warden Clinton T. Duffy. Paul Kelly plays Duffy, while his wife is portrayed by Maureen O'Sullivan. Divided into three separate playlets, the film begins with the semi-comic story of an ill-tempered chef (Walter Slezak) who is railroaded into San Quentin by a gourmet prisoner. The second story concerns a tense hostage situation fomented by would-be escapees John Ireland and Lawrence Tierney. The closing story deals with an incarcerated painter (Kenneth Tobey), whose belief in God is renewed by an idealistic young priest (Arthur Franz). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Captain George Slocum (John Hodiak) and First Lieutenant Jerry Barker (Todd Karns) are longtime friends, assigned to the same US Army outfit in Korea during 1950, training South Korean army pilots in flying L5 observation planes. The L5's are slow-moving propeller aircraft, made mostly of wood and fabric and seemingly out-of-place in modern warfare -- but they're absolutely essential to military maneuvers and gunnery, even in the post-World War II era. George is sent to Japan just before Jerry's younger brother Pete (John Derek), also a pilot and a newly-minted second lieutenant, is due to arrive there. Pete is bold and brash, with his plane and his women, far beyond his early twenty-something age -- this gets him nowhere, either with hard-boiled nurse Audrey Totter or the brass, and he quickly reveals himself a to be a hot-headed screw-up who cannot follow orders or obey regulations. Slocum would like to take Pete under his wing, but the younger pilot isn't getting the message, and a day later North Korea invades its neighbor to the south and both men are ordered into combat. Their arrival at Kimpo Air Base -- where Jerry is stationed -- is a true baptism-of-fire, the field littered with bodies and wrecked aircraft and under attack by insurgents with automatic weapons. The wounded Jerry is killed before they can get him to safety, and only Slocum's cool head saves him and Pete, or their planes, which allows them to spirit two VIP passengers to safety -- and Pete nearly manages to turn that into a disaster as well. Slocum recognizes the emergency before them and wants everything done by the book, but Pete can't let go of the idea of revenge, and soon rigs his slow-moving low-altitude L5 plane with a bazooka, with which he plans to hit any targets of opportunity that come up on his observation flights. For his trouble he loses his plane and comes close to getting captured. Pete would be treading dangerously close to a court martial, but for the fact that their CO (Rex Reason) is desperately short of pilots. It takes a North Korean attack on their headquarters and its aftermath to get Pete to literally straighten up and fly right. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

The brilliant British documentary filmmaker Paul Rotha made his feature-film debut with 1950's No Resting Place. Filmed on location in Ireland, the film is a lightly fictionalized study of that country's itinerant workmen. Michael Gough plays tinker Alec Kyle, whose life is thrown into turmoil when he accidentally kills a man. Kyle spends the rest of the film evading Guard Mannigan (Noel Purcell), a civil servant who relies on instinct rather than scientific deduction to get his man. Without ever trying to elicit sympathy for his characters, director Rotha manages to compellingly detail the miserable living and working conditions of Ireland's nomad artisans. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

John Farrow's movie adaptation of Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, based on a screenplay by Jonathan Latimer (and produced by future James Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum), is a near-perfect match for the book, telling in generally superb visual style a tale set against the backdrop of upscale 1940s New York and offering an early (but accurate) depiction of the modern media industry. Told in the back-to-front fashion typical of film noir, it opens with George Stroud (Ray Milland) trapped, his life in danger, his survival measured in the minute-by-minute movements of the huge central clock of the office building where he's hiding. In flashback we learn that Stroud works for media baron Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), loosely based on Henry Luce, as the editor of Crimeways magazine. Janoth is a manipulative, self-centered megalomaniac with various obsessions, including clocks; among other manifestations of the latter fixation, the skyscraper housing his empire's headquarters has as one of its central features a huge clock that reads out the time around the world down to the second.

Twenty-four hours earlier, on the eve of a combined honeymoon/vacation with his wife, Georgia (Maureen O'Sullivan), that has been put off for seven years, Stroud was ordered by Janoth to cancel the trip in order to work on a special project, and he resigned. As the narrative picks up speed, in his depression, Stroud misses the train his wife is on and crosses paths with Pauline York (Rita Johnson), a former model for Janoth's Styleways magazine, who is also Janoth's very unhappy mistress, and the two commiserate by getting drunk together in a night on the town. While hurriedly leaving Pauline's apartment, he glimpses Janoth entering. Janoth and York quarrel, and the publisher kills her in a jealous rage, using a sundial that she and Stroud picked up the night before while wandering around in their revels. Janoth and his general manager, Steve Hagen (George Macready), contrive to pin the murder on the man that Janoth glimpsed leaving York's apartment, whom he thinks was named Jefferson Randolph -- the name Stroud was drunkenly bandying about the night before. He gets Stroud back to Crimeways to lead the magazine's investigators in hunting down "Jefferson Randolph," never realizing that this was Stroud. And Stroud has no choice but to return, desperately trying to gather evidence against Janoth and, in turn, prevent the clues gathered by the Crimeways staff from leading back to him. The two play this clever, disjointed game of cat-and-mouse, Janoth and Hagen planting evidence that will hang "Randolph" (and justify his being shot while trying to escape), while Stroud, knowing what they don't about how close the man they seek to destroy is, arranges to obscure those clues and, in a comical twist, sends the least capable reporters and investigators to follow up on the most substantial clues.

Janoth sometimes seems to be unraveling at the frustrating pace and lack of conclusion to the hunt, but Stroud can't escape the inevitable, or the moments of weakness caused by fear and his own guilt over his near-unfaithfulness to his wife or the inscrutable gaze of Janoth's mute bodyguard Bill Womack (Harry Morgan), a stone-cold killer dedicated to protecting his employer. The trail of proof and guilt winds ever tighter around both men, taking some odd twists courtesy of the eccentric artist (Elsa Lanchester) who has seen the suspect. Milland is perfect in the role of the hapless Stroud, and Laughton is brilliant as the vain, self-centered Janoth, but George Macready is equally good as Hagen, his smooth, upper-crust Waspy smarminess making one's skin crawl. Also worth noting is Harry Morgan's sinister, silent performance as Womack, and sharp-eyed viewers will also recognize such performers as Douglas Spencer, Noel Neill (especially memorable as a tart-tongued elevator operator), Margaret Field (Sally's mother), Ruth Roman, and Lane Chandler in small roles. Additionally, the Janoth Publications building where most of the action takes place is almost a cast member in itself, an art deco wonder, especially the room housing the clock mechanism and the lobby and vestibules, all loosely inspired by such structures as the Empire State Building and the real-life Daily News headquarters on East 42nd Street. This film was later remade as No Way Out. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi