George Peppard Movies

While on vacation in Mexico, a wealthy woman dies in the back seat of the car owned by her daughter Janet (Mary Scott) and son-in-law Evan (George Peppard). Reporting the woman's demise, the couple returns to find that the car has been stolen -- and with no corpse, they will be unable to claim Janet's inheritance. In desperation, Janet and Evan hire a sleazy private eye named Tomas Salgado (a role made to order for Peter Lorre), who agrees to locate the body and ship it back to Los Angeles...but only for a hefty price. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

First published in early 1956, Mark Harris's baseball novel Bang the Drum Slowly was swiftly adapted for television; on September 24, 1956, a streamlined 60-minute version of the Harris novel was telecast live on The US Steel Hour. Paul Newman plays Henry Wiggen, a slang-happy, unabashedly self-promotional pitcher for the fictional New York Mammoths. Wiggen spends a great deal of his free time protecting his dimwitted roomate, catcher Bruce Pearson (Albert Salmi), from being dropped from the team. It's not that Henry is overly fond of Bruce; it's simply that he knows (but the rest of the team doesn't) that Bruce is dying of Hodgkin's disease. This TV adaptation remains faithful to the first-person singular style of the novel by having Henry periodically step "out" of the drama to address the audience: this device is most effective at the finale when, after tearfully recalling the "ragging" he often gave his now-deceased teammate, Henry sobs "From here on, I rag nobody." A very young George Peppard appears as Piney Woods, the country-boy ballplayer who sings the ballad from which the drama's title is derived. A kinescoped version of Bang the Drum Slowly was included in the 1981 PBS anthology The Golden Age of Television. Harris' novel was later adapted into a 1973 theatrical feature, starring Michael Moriarty as Henry and Robert De Niro as the "doom-ded" Bruce. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In an idealized New York City during the early '60s, Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is a charming socialite with a youthful zest for life who lives alone in a nearly bare apartment. She has such a flippant lifestyle that she won't even give her cat a name, because that would be too much of a commitment to a relationship. Maintaining a childlike innocence yet wearing the most perfect of designer clothes and accessories from Givenchy, she spends her time on expensive dates and at high-class parties. She escorts various wealthy men, yet fails to return their affections after they have given her gifts and money. Holly's carefree independence is changed when she meets her neighbor, aspiring writer Paul (George Peppard), who is suffering from writer's block while being kept by a wealthy woman (Patricia Neal). Just when Holly and Paul are developing their sweet romance, Doc (Buddy Ebsen) appears on the scene and complicates matters, revealing the truth about Holly's past. Breakfast at Tiffany's was nominated for several Academy awards, winning Best Score for Henry Mancini and Best Song for Johnny Mercer's classic tune "Moon River". ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Crisis in Mid-Air is essentially a "problem drama" concentrating on a single individual. George Peppard plays a veteran air traffic controller who holds himself responsible for a mid-air collision. With an FAA investigator breathing down his neck, Peppard gets a chance to prove his value when another flight, with 235 passengers on board, puts in a "Mayday" call. The TV Guide ads for this television movie were a little misleading, suggesting that Peppard was in the cockpit rather than the control tower. Crisis in Mid-Air debuted February 13, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A small but hardy band of survivors traverses a post-apocalypse American landscape in this sci-fi thriller. A horrific nuclear assault leaves only three survivors at an underground military facility, so Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent), Denton (George Peppard), and Keegan (Paul Winfield) commandeer a special all-terrain land cruiser and head for Albany, NY, the only American city to be spared in the attack. As they travel through the desolate post-nuke wastelands, the soldiers pick up a beautiful woman (Dominique Sanda) and an incorrigible teenager (Jackie Earle Haley), as they battle huge mutant insects, packs of survivors turned violent and feral, and brutal electrical storms that savage the already barren plains. Damnation Alley was based on a novel by award-winning speculative fiction author Roger Zelazny. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Doctor's Secrets is a TV "feature film" comprised of episodes from the weekly Doctors Hospital series. George Peppard heads the cast as Dr. Jake Goodwin, chief of neurological services at Los Angeles' Lowell Memorial Hospital. The two 60-minute episodes included herein were originally telecast September 10, 1975 and January 14, 1976-coincidentally the series' first and last installments. In the first episode, Dr. Goodwin introduces four interns to the neurological wing. In the second, Robert Walden and Talia Shire respectively guest-star as an overly compassionate resident doctor and a no-nonsense policewoman suffering from vision impairment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this thriller, an ex-cop, convicted for killing his wife's lover, breaks out of prison six days before he is to be freed. He does this so he can see his son who is seriously ill. Along the way, the fugitive meets many interesting characters. He is pursued by a cruel, but determined lawman. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

William Humphrey's novel Home From the Hill is compressed into 150 minutes for this MGM all-starrer. Robert Mitchum plays Capt. Wade Hunnicutt, a Texas millionaire, married to Hannah (Eleanor Parker). The Hunnicutts have two children of approximately the same age: Wade's biological son, Theron (George Hamilton in one of his earliest film roles), and his illegitimate son, Rafe (George Peppard). As the story opens, Wade conducts an extramarital affair; meanwhile, Theron (George Hamilton), disturbed by his parents' dysfunctional relationship, is not anxious to marry his true love, Libby Halstead (Luana Patten). The vicious cycle threatens to continue when Libby gives birth to Theron's out-of-wedlock son, but it is Rafe who turns Libby into an "honest woman" by acting as father to the child. Vincente Minnelli directs his material operatically, which is as it should be given the larger-than-life character and emotional entanglements he has to deal with. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Filmed in panoramic Cinerama, this star-studded, epic Western adventure is a true cinematic classic. Three legendary directors (Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall) combine their skills to tell the story of three families and their travels from the Erie Canal to California between 1839 and 1889. Spencer Tracy narrates the film, which cost an estimated 15 million dollars to complete. In the first segment, "The Rivers," pioneer Zebulon Prescott (Karl Malden) sets out to settle in the West with his wife (Agnes Moorehead) and their four children. Along with other settlers and river pirates, they run into mountain man Linus Rawlings (James Stewart), who sells animal hides. The Prescotts try to raft down the Ohio River in a raft, but only daughters Lilith (Debbie Reynolds) and Eve (Carroll Baker) survive. Eve and Linus get married, while Lilith continues on. In the second segment, "The Plains," Lilith ends up singing in a saloon in St. Louis, but she really wants to head west in a wagon train led by Roger Morgan (Robert Preston). Along the way, she's accompanied by the roguish gambler Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck), who claims he can protect her. After he saves her life during an Indian attack, they get married and move to San Francisco. In the third segment, "The Civil War," Eve and Linus' son, Zeb (George Peppard), fights for the Union. After he's forced to kill his Confederate friend, he returns home and gives the family farm to his brother. In the fourth segment, "The Railroads," Zeb fights with his railroad boss (Richard Widmark), who wants to cut straight through Indian territory. Zeb's co-worker Jethro (Henry Fonda) refuses to cut through the land, so he quits and moves to the mountains. After the railway camp is destroyed, Zeb heads for the mountains to visit him. In the fifth segment, "The Outlaws," Lilith is an old widow traveling from California to Arizona to stay with her nephew Zeb on his ranch. However, he has to fight a gang of desperadoes first. How the West Was Won garnered three Oscars, for screenplay, film editing, and sound production. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

An L.A. policeman (George Peppard) works with several partners to destroy the prostitution ring run by Chinatown's version of the Mafia. The film was originally produced for television. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Jack Higgins, this WW-II thriller chronicles the daring rescue of a captured American officer who has vital information concerning the upcoming Normandy invasion. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

One of Our Own stars George Peppard as Dr. Jake Goodwin, the chief neurosurgeon of an inordinately busy hospital. As he makes his rounds, Goodwin becomes involved in a vast array of medical cases, solving virtually every problem he's confronted with. It looks, however, as though he's going to have tough sledding with the film's Major Crisis: A seriously injured doctor, and the two colleagues who battle over how to save his life. Originally telecast in May of 1975, One of Our Own was obviously conceived as a pilot for a George Peppard weekly series. But when that series premiered in September 1975, it had sprouted the new title of Doctor's Hospital (as opposed, perhaps, to Lawyer's Hospital). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide