Warren Oates Movies
Lanky, laconic actor Warren Oates made his first stage appearance in a student play at the University of Louisville. Moving to New York in 1954, Oates took a variety of jobs to sustain himself, including a "stunt tester" for the TV audience-participation series Beat the Clock (one of Oates' predecessors in this endeavor was James Dean). He worked in live New York-based TV dramas before moving to Hollywood in 1957, where thanks to such Western TV series as Have Gun Will Travel, he established himself as a brooding villain. One of his rare opportunities to exhibit anything other than menace was his semicomic supporting role on the 1962 Jack Lord TV weekly Stoney Burke. One of director Sam Peckinpah's favorite actors, Oates was well served with meaty roles in such Peckinpah films as Ride the High Country (1962), Major Dundee (1965), and, best of all, The Wild Bunch (1969). With his remarkable performance as an ageing hot rodder in 1971's Two-Lane Blacktop, Oates began a fruitful association with director Monte Hellman, who provided Oates with his best-ever film assignments in Cockfighter (1974) and China 9 Liberty 37 (1982). Shortly after completing work on Blue Thunder (1982), Warren Oates' long-overdue rising stardom came to a tragic halt as a result of a sudden, fatal heart attack. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1957
- Add Studio One: The Night America Trembled to QueueAdd Studio One: The Night America Trembled to top of Queue
The prestigious CBS dramatic anthology Studio One launched its tenth season on the air with this elaborate dramatization of the nationwide panic which ensued after Orson Welles' famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast of October 30, 1938. Welles had chosen to update the H.G. Wells science fiction classic and present the drama in the form of an actual newscast, replete with special bulletins, on-the-scene reports of the Martian invasion of Grover's Mills, NJ, and moments of "spontaneous" (actually carefully scripted and directed) horror. Unfortunately, the listening public, many of whom tuned into the dramatization in progress and as such were unaware that it was all make-believe, were convinced that America was indeed under siege from hordes of invading Martians -- and, as everyone now knows, chaos ensued. Like the later made-for-TV movie The Night That Panicked America, this TV recreation alternates between the War of the Worlds performance in progress at CBS's New York studios with vignettes of the reactions of the listeners -- reactions which generally ranged from plain terror to stark, raw terror. The huge cast includes several stars-to-be, among them Ed Asner, James Coburn, Vincent Gardenia, Warren Oates, and, as a youthful poker player, Warren Beatty. Narrated by legendary newscaster Edward R. Murrow and originally telecast live, "The Night America Trembled" has happily been preserved in kinescope form and is available on videotape from several sources. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edward R. Murrow, Alexander Scourby, (more)
