Leslie Parrish Movies

Mark Miller plays a paranoid ex-convict named Tom and Leslie Parrish appears as a waitress named Sharon in a sad story of a star-crossed romance. Sharon fond of Tom, but he is more preoccupied with the fear that he is being stalked and pursued . When Sharon attempts suicide, Officers Jim Reed (Kent McCord) and Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) try to find out the reason by tracing a letter she had sent to Tom--with unexpected results. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this horror move, a husband sends a demonic antique car after his wife. She uses her own black magic to fight back. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this romantic comedy, Deke Gentry (Kirk Douglas) is a lawyer who gets an unusual assignment from Chloe Brasher (Thelma Ritter), a wealthy widow, owner of a successful hotel chain, and one of his most prominent clients. Chloe has three daughters, sensible Kate (Mitzi Gaynor), bohemian Jan (Leslie Parrish), and heath food fanatic Bonnie (Julie Newmar), and she wants Deke to find them husbands. Though Deke protests that matchmaking is outside his traditional area of expertise, Chloe is insistent, and he ends up taking the job. To be sure that he's going through with it, Chloe assigns her security chief Joe (William Bendix) to keep his eye on Deke. Eventually, Deke fixes up Bonnie with Harvey Wofford (Richard Sargent), a meek IRS agent, and pairs Jan with artist Sam Travis (William Windom), but Kate turns out to be the hardest Brasher sister to marry off, until he throws his own hat into the ring. Richard Sargent would later shorten his first name to Dick and find success on the popular television comedy Bewitched. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Betty Grable's final film was a remake of the 1934 Bing Crosby-Miriam Hopkins musicomedy She Loves Me Not, which in turn was based on a play by Howard Lindsay. Betty and Sheree North star as a couple of striptease "artistes" who have the bad luck to witness a murder. Hoping to evade the killer, the girls hide out in a small college town, where they immediately win the hearts of the male frat brothers. One of these is overaged undergrad Robert Cummings, who falls for Betty, while Sheree settles for not-terribly-bright Orson Bean. A subplot concerns the unending get-rich-quick schemes of college president Charles Coburn. Before the story can be resolved, both Betty and Sheree are placed under hypnosis, with hilarious results. It could not have rested well with Betty Grable that Sheree North stole the show in How to Be Very, Very Popular--especially with her energetic rendition of "Shake, Rattle and Roll"--but Betty was on the verge of retiring anyway, so what the heck? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

1959's Li'l Abner was adapted from the hit 1956 Broadway musical--which, in turn, was inspired by the satirical comic strip by Al Capp. Peter Palmer recreates his Broadway role as Li'l Abner Yokum, the handsome, muscle-bound, muscle-brained leading hillbilly of Dogpatch, USA. The citizens of Dogpatch are in an uproar because their ramshackle community has been designated the "most useless" town in America, and therefore a prime candidate for an atomic bomb testing site. At first, the Dogpatchers consider their least-desirable status a great honor, but then they despair upon realizing that they'll have to vacate the premise before the annual girl-chases-boy Sadie Hawkins Day race. Together with his Mammy (Billie Hayes) and Pappy (Joe E. Marks), Li'l Abner is dispatched to Washington DC, to argue that Dogpatch has some vital significance: after all, only in Dogpatch can one partake of the Yokumberry Tonic, the source of Abner's super strength. Shifty billionaire General Bullmoose (Howard St. John) wants that Yokumberry tonic for his own devices, and to that end dispatches his lady friend Appasionatta von Climax (Stella Stevens) to Dogpatch to catch Li'l Abner during the Sadie Hawkins race and thus secure the mountain boy's cooperation via marriage. Li'l Abner's erstwhile girl friend Daisy Mae Scragg (Leslie Parrish) would likewise like to snare Abner in the race, but Appasionata wins, thanks to the squirrelly Evil Eye Fleegle (Al Nesor), whose "triple whammy" paralyzes Abner just inches before the finish line. If you think all this is unbelievable, wait till you see how the story resolves itself. Featured in the cast is Stubby Kaye as Marryin' Sam, who leads the hillbilly chorus in the musical's best number, "Jubilation T. Corpone". Other Johnny Mercer-Gene de Paul tunes carried over from the Broadway version of Li'l Abner are "A Typical Day," "If I Had My Druthers," "Namely You," "The Country's in the Very Best of Hands," "Past My Prime," "Put 'Em Back (The Way They Wuz)" and "The Matrimonial Stomp."The film is staged in the same broad, caricatured manner as the play, which only adds to the fun. An earlier, unrelated movie adaptation of Li'l Abner, filmed in 1940, is best forgotten, as is a series of lukewarm Abner cartoons produced by Screen Gems in the late forties. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paint manufactuer Amory Fallon (played by Wesley Lau, who later joined the Perry Mason cast as Lt. Anderson) suspects his partner Ned Thompson of embezzling funds, setting the fire which wrecked their plant, and worst of all, cheating with Fallon's wife Vivian (Leslie Parrish). Intending to confront Thompson in the man's apartment, Fallon not only brings along a threatening letter, but also gets good and drunk to bolster his courage. Passing out before Thompson returns, Fallon wakes up to find his partner's dead body on the floor beside him. In defending Fallon on a murder charge, Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) must somehow get his client to remember exactly what happened on the fatal night. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

High-fashion diva Flavia Halliday (Marie Windsor) humiliates her husband Charles (John Conte) on network television by flatly refuting Charles' announcement that he has sold their firm's name to another company. For Charles, this is the last straw: He demands a divorce, but Flavia merely laughs at him. Subsequently, Flavia is poisoned, and as she dies in the arms of her companion Leona (Dorothy Neumann) she accuses Charles and his mistress Hope (Leslie Parrish) of killing her! Can Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) neutralize the power of a deathbed statement to clear Charles and Hope of murder? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Prolific director Joseph Pevney is better known for his next venture -- the Star Trek television series -- than this conventional docudrama on mobster "Dutch" Schultz (played by Vic Morrow). Rather than take the focus of 1997's Hoodlum, in which Schultz's attempt to move into Harlem is thwarted, the events leading to the demise of the nearly illiterate, Bronx-born, "king of beer" are stressed. His affair with Iris Murphy (Leslie Parrish) also gets front-and-center treatment when Iris leaves her policeman husband to hook up with Schultz, only to degenerate into alcoholism. To the credit of the director, the repugnant Schultz (whose real name was Arthur Flegenheimer) is not romanticized, even though the legend of his "buried treasure" and the literary non-sequitur of his famous, 1935 deathbed ramblings would tend to lure anyone into digressions. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Greek mythology collides with the future in Who Mourns for Adonis?, an episode from the second season of the popular science fiction series. Traveling through distant space, the Enterprise is trapped by a mysterious force field that appears in the shape of a gigantic human hand. Seeking an explanation for this phenomenon, Kirk leads an expedition to explore a nearby planet, and they encounter a powerful creature who claims to be the ancient god Apollo. After demonstrating his immense power, Apollo orders Kirk and the others to bow down in worship. Outmatched in terms of brute force, the captain and his crew must discover a way to outwit Apollo or else remain trapped forever. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

"Everybody needs candy of one kind or another," George Sanders says in The Candy Man. Sanders, playing a character named Sidney Carter, says this soon after giving some peppermint sticks to a pair of small children. But are they just peppermint sticks? As a down-and-out drug dealer, Carter is capable of just about anything. Desperate to make some real money, he comes up with an idea that, if it works, will let him retire: kidnap the young daughter of a visiting movie star (played by Leslie Parrish). To do this, Carter hires a pot addict, promising him plenty of drugs if he will undertake the abduction. Unfortunately, before his plan can be realized, someone else kidnaps the child. Carter comes up with an alternate plan, trying to build upon this unexpected occurrence; meanwhile, Parrish's agent begins behaving in a suspicious manner, raising the possibility that perhaps he has had a hand in the kidnapping. Eventually, the child finds herself tottering dangerously from the top of a tall building and risking death before being returned to her mother's anxious arms. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

Bill Rebane's backyard wonder is a hilariously hokey throwback to the giant-monster flicks of the 50s, while taking its only pseudo-scientific conceit from the mid-70s trend of popular "black hole" theories, combining these two elements to create pure bad-movie heaven. A tiny, decrepit town in rural Wisconsin is rocked by a mysterious explosion, after which a drunken farmer (Robert Easton) discovers dozens of crystal geodes strewn across his property. Cracking each one open reveals a diamond-like encrustation (which to the farmer's dismay proves nearly worthless), as well as a hairy but decidedly un-cosmic tarantula. Being permanently soused, he fails to notice the latter (his equally boozy wife accidentally purees one in her daiquiri!) until the rocks begin opening on their own, and the entire farm is overrun with eight-legged invaders. Despite the title, only one of the spiders would qualify for giant status, but it's definitely a keeper: the Big Daddy arachnid is quite clearly a Volkswagen Beetle covered with black fake fur, with legs operated by the car's passengers and taillights doubling for glowing red eyes. Unfortunately, it is merely glimpsed through much of the film, making its triumphant appearance in the final few minutes. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Frank Tashlin directed this comedy about a man whose marriage hits the skids when his wife gets caught in the draft. Gregory Whitcomb (Tom Ewell) served with distinction in the Army during WWII, but he now makes his living as a television writer. Gregory's wife Katy (Sheree North), several years his junior, was also a member of the military as a WAC. When the armed forces find themselves strapped for qualified personnel, Gregory and Katy are ordered to return to active duty; after his physical, Gregory is reclassified 4-F for health reasons, but Katy is judged 1-A and put back in camouflage. Now poor Gregory finds himself having to look after the home by himself and waiting for his spouse at the base, while both Katy and Gregory try to figure out how to free her from her military obligations. The Lieutenant Wore Skirts also features Rita Moreno and Rick Jason. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide