Candice Bergen Movies
American actress Candice Bergen was a celebrity even before she was born. As the first child of popular radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his young wife Frances, Candice was a hot news item months before her birth, and headline material upon that blessed event (her coming into the world even prompted magazine cartoons which suggested that Edgar would try to confound the nurses by "giving" his new daughter a voice). Candice made her first public appearance as an infant, featured with her parents in a magazine advertisement. Before she was ten, Candice was appearing sporadically on dad's radio program, demonstrating a precocious ability to throw her own voice (a skill she hasn't been called upon to repeat in recent years); at 11 she and Groucho Marx's daughter Melinda were guest contestants on Groucho's TV quiz show You Bet Your Life. Candice loved her parents and luxuriated in her posh lifestyle, though she was set apart from other children in that her "brothers" were the wooden dummies Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd - and Charlie had a bigger bedroom than she did! Like most 1960s teens, however, she rebelled against the conservatism of her parents and adopted a well-publicized, freewheeling lifestyle - and a movie career. In her first film, The Group (1965), Candice played a wealthy young lesbian - a character light years away from the sensibilities of her old-guard father. She next appeared with Steve McQueen in the big budget The Sand Pebbles (1966), simultaneously running smack dab into the unkind cuts of critics, who made the expected (given her parentage) comments concerning her "wooden" performance. Truth to tell, Candice did look far better than she acted, and this status quo remained throughout most of her film appearances of the late 1960s; even Candice admitted she wasn't much of an actress, though she allowed (in another moment that must have given papa Edgar pause) that she was terrific when required in a film to simulate an orgasm. Several films later, Candice decided to take her career more seriously than did her critics, and began emerging into a talented and reliable actress in such films as Carnal Knowledge (1971) and The Wind and the Lion (1975). Most observers agree that Candice's true turnaround was her touching but hilarious performance as a divorced woman pursuing a singing career - with little in the way of talent - in the Burt Reynolds comedy Starting Over (1979). Candice's roller-coaster offscreen life settled into relative normality when she married French film director Louis Malle; meanwhile, her acting career gained momentum as she sought out and received ever-improving movie and TV roles. In 1988, Candice began a run in the title role of the television sitcom Murphy Brown, in which she was brilliant as a mercurial, high-strung TV newsmagazine reporter, a role that won Ms. Bergen several Emmy Awards. While Murphy Brown capped Candice Bergen's full acceptance by audiences and critics as an actress of stature, it also restored her to "headline" status in 1992 - when, in direct response to the fictional Murphy Brown's decision to become a single mother, Vice President Dan Quayle delivered his notorious "family values" speech. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
In the early 1900s, an American businessman was kidnapped by a rebellious Arab chieftain, principally as a means to embarrass the sultan of Morocco. This abduction sparked the threat of armed intervention by President Theodore Roosevelt, which was never carried out. In The Wind and the Lion, the unattractive male captive is replaced by the gorgeous female Mrs. Pedecaris, an American widow played by Candice Bergen. The ruthless but essentially decent Arab chief Raisuli is portrayed by Sean Connery, while Teddy Roosevelt is depicted as a jingoistic blowhard by Brian Keith. The film's main theme -- that of America's emergence as a world power -- is largely secondary to the growing mutual-respect relationship between Mrs. Pedecaris and Raisuli. After releasing his hostage, Raisuli is himself captured by German forces, who at the behest of the Kaiser are seeking out methods of laying the groundwork for what would evolve into World War I. Mrs. Pedecaris must then help Raisuli escape. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, (more)
An excellent cast, featuring Gene Hackman, Ben Johnson, and James Coburn, highlights this entertaining Western that came and went at the box office, barely noticed by audiences. That doesn't stop the exciting story from capturing the viewer's attention as a disparate group of riders assembles to participate in a marathon 700-mile horse race across the American West at the turn of the century. The standard mutual feelings of distrust give way to respect and grudging admiration as each rider is put to the test. Stunning cinematography and locations, plus a gripping pace set by director Richard Brooks, set this Western apart at a time when the genre was in decline. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, (more)
- 1974
- PG
Based on the novel by Gerald A. Browne, 11 Harrowhouse is a 1974 heist spoof with an all-star cast. The story concerns millionaire Clyde Massey (Trevor Howard) pressuring diamond merchant Howard R. Chesser (Charles Grodin) into robbing a London diamond exchange owned by Meecham (John Gielgud. Howard gets help from his girlfriend Maren Shirell (Candice Bergen), discontented employee Charles D. Watts (James Mason), and a cockroach in order to execute the plan. Once he has the fortune, Massey tries to double-cross his team of forced thieves, but his wealthy partner-in-crime Lady Anne Bolding (Helen Cherry) helps them escape. Charles Grodin, who also co-wrote the screenplay adaptation, provides voice-over commentary. 11 Harrowhouse is also known as Anything for Love and Fast Fortune. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Grodin, Candice Bergen, (more)
This infamously violent British Western stars Gene Hackman as Brandt Ruger, a wealthy rancher who goes away on a hunting trip with a group of friends. While he's gone, a thug named Frank Calder (Oliver Reed) kidnaps Melissa (Candice Bergen), Brandt's wife, under the mistaken impression that she's a schoolteacher and will be able to teach him to read. Despite being taken against her will, in time Melissa begins to develop feelings for Calder, who in his way cares for her more than her husband, who treats her like a possession. Melissa has fallen in love with Calder by the time Brandt returns. However, Brandt is enraged over the abduction of his wife, and sets out on a new hunting trip, with Calder and his men as his prey. Noted character actors G.D. Spradlin and L.Q. Jones round out the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Oliver Reed, Candice Bergen, (more)
"Maybe you're not supposed to like it with someone you love." With a script by satirist and cartoonist Jules Feiffer, Mike Nichols's Carnal Knowledge (1971) ruthlessly exposed the damage wrought by pre-1960s sexual mores. From their post-World War II college years at Amherst through the Vietnam era, buddies Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel) are a catalogue of male sexual dysfunction. Sensitive Sandy falls in love with and marries college sweetheart Susan (Candice Bergen) only to wonder years later if he missed out on finding the perfect sex/love partner. Jonathan lives for aggressive sexual conquest (starting with Sandy's Susan in college), even as he rails against female "ballbusters," finally guilt-marrying his tiredly voluptuous mistress Bobbie (Ann-Margret, in an Oscar-nominated performance) after she tries to kill herself. By the late '60s, Sandy has moved on to a hippie chick girlfriend (Carol Kane) who can raise his consciousness about the sexual revolution, and Jonathan is single again, but Sandy is a little too old for the peace-and-love generation, and Jonathan bitterly faces emasculating impotence. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, (more)
- 1971
- PG
Candice Bergen plays the title character, a naïve young woman from the countryside who ventures to the bright lights of Chicago in search of an interesting career, true love, and happiness. She ends up working a meaningless job and living in a drab apartment, and she remains lonely as her romantic entanglements also misfire. She has an affair with businessman Jack Mitchell (Peter Boyle), which ends terribly. Next she takes up with Larry Moore (James Caan), but that romance also goes nowhere. Peter Hyams wrote the script and produced the film, which was released in England under the title Date with a Lonely Girl. Director Herbert Ross had much better success with romantic-comedy material in later years when he filmed Neil Simon material such as The Goodbye Girl. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Candice Bergen, Peter Boyle, (more)
Based on Harold Robbins' bestseller, The Adventurers stars Yugoslav heartthrob Bekim Fehmiu as Porfirio Rubirosa clone Dax Xenos. Having suffered mightily as a child in a fictional South American country due to the political activities of his parents, Xenos grows up to become a sleazy, sexually manipulative playboy. He romances middle-aged widow Olivia de Havilland, then dumps her after he's run through her fortune. He then takes up with heiress Candice Bergen, who bears his child. When the kid is killed and Xenos turns his back on her, Bergen finds solace in lesbianism. All the while, Xenos is fomenting revolutions aimed at toppling the Trujillo-like despot (Alan Badel) responsible for the death of his father. The Adventurers received a lot of magazine coverage due to a poolside nude scene and the "guess who this is supposed to be?" nature of the cast of characters. But it failed to establish Bekim Fehmiu as an international star. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bekim Fehmiu, Charles Aznavour, (more)
"Movies like Getting Straight are ceasing to be tolerable" complained one conservative movie magazine of 1970. Today, the once-relevant but now merely entertaining Getting Straight is not only tolerable, but downright user-friendly. Elliot Gould plays a Vietnam vet who decides to attend college after his tour of duty. Though much too old and worldly to truly fit in with the naive flower-power generation, Gould becomes swept up in the various activist movements on campus. The leading character's crisis of conscience concerns his field of study: he wants to be a teacher for idealistic reasons, while his Establishment professors try to convince him that it's just another job, and hardly the best one at that. He finally chooses which side he's on while attempting to act as a mediator between students and faculty during a campus riot. Candice Bergen plays Gould's girlfriend, while Robert F. Lyons steals every scene he's in as a draft dodger who'll go to any lengths to avoid military service. Getting Straight represents the final screen appearance of Cecil Kellaway, here cast as a hidebound tenured professor. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Elliott Gould, Candice Bergen, (more)
A cavalry unit in Colorado is conducting two important cargoes to Fort Reunion, home of the 11th Colorado Volunteers: Cresta Marybelle Lee (Candice Bergen), the fiancée of an officer in the unit until two years ago, when she was taken by the Cheyenne, and who just escaped; and Captain Battles (Dana Elcar), the paymaster, with a strongbox containing gold. The men are tired -- almost asleep in their saddles -- and frustrated, and doubly so by the presence of Cresta, whose beauty and reputation (by virtue of living two years with "savages") is driving them to distraction; all except for Honus Gant (Peter Strauss), a neophyte trooper and wide-eyed innocent. The detachment is ambushed by a Cheyenne war party and the only survivors are Cresta and Honus, who learn to tolerate each other as they struggle across the wilderness and the desert in search of help. An encounter with white trader Isaac Q. Cumber (Donald Pleasence), a profiteer who is running guns to the Indians, nearly results in their deaths, and Honus is seriously wounded.
Cresta goes off in search of help and is picked up by a cavalry scout and brought to the 11th Colorado, whose commanding officer, Col. Iverson (John Anderson), is planning a punitive strike against a peaceful Cheyenne encampment over the massacre of the paymaster's party. Cresta tries to secure help for Honus but Iverson is too busy planning bloodshed, and her fiancé, Lt. McNair (Bob Carraway), is just too eager to pick up where he left off with her to listen to her warnings. She rides out on her own and returns to the village where she'd spent the previous two years, while Honus manages to survive to reach Iverson. He ends up along for the assault on the village, which takes place despite the chieftain Spotted Wolf (Jorge Rivera) flying a flag of truce and an American flag given him at a previous negotiation with the whites. The Native Americans defend themselves when fired upon with artillery and rifles, and all hell breaks lose -- virtually all of the men in the village are killed in the first assault, and then the soldiers spot the women, children, and old men, and there begins an orgy of rape, mutilation, beheadings, dismemberment, and torture before Honus' horrified eyes by joyously shrieking soldiers. Cresta kills a soldier who tries to rape her and intends to die with her Native American family but is pulled out, only to watch the slaughter continue. In the end, Honus is left to be marched back to Fort Reunion as a prisoner for trying to stop the killing, and Iverson expresses pride and satisfaction at what he's done, while Cresta and a tiny handful of survivors -- almost all old men and women -- watch in mute horror and anger. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Cresta goes off in search of help and is picked up by a cavalry scout and brought to the 11th Colorado, whose commanding officer, Col. Iverson (John Anderson), is planning a punitive strike against a peaceful Cheyenne encampment over the massacre of the paymaster's party. Cresta tries to secure help for Honus but Iverson is too busy planning bloodshed, and her fiancé, Lt. McNair (Bob Carraway), is just too eager to pick up where he left off with her to listen to her warnings. She rides out on her own and returns to the village where she'd spent the previous two years, while Honus manages to survive to reach Iverson. He ends up along for the assault on the village, which takes place despite the chieftain Spotted Wolf (Jorge Rivera) flying a flag of truce and an American flag given him at a previous negotiation with the whites. The Native Americans defend themselves when fired upon with artillery and rifles, and all hell breaks lose -- virtually all of the men in the village are killed in the first assault, and then the soldiers spot the women, children, and old men, and there begins an orgy of rape, mutilation, beheadings, dismemberment, and torture before Honus' horrified eyes by joyously shrieking soldiers. Cresta kills a soldier who tries to rape her and intends to die with her Native American family but is pulled out, only to watch the slaughter continue. In the end, Honus is left to be marched back to Fort Reunion as a prisoner for trying to stop the killing, and Iverson expresses pride and satisfaction at what he's done, while Cresta and a tiny handful of survivors -- almost all old men and women -- watch in mute horror and anger. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Candice Bergen, Peter Strauss, (more)
In Guy Green's adaptation of John Fowles's acclaimed second novel, Michael Caine plays Nicholas Urfe, an English schoolteacher evading serious romantic commitment with stewardess Anne (Godard muse Anna Karina). As a last resort, Urfe escapes the clutches of his paramour by accepting a professorship on the Greek island of Phraxos, and, upon arrival, promptly discovers that his predecessor committed suicide. Via a clue left behind in the room of the deceased, Urfe soon encounters Conchis (Anthony Quinn), an impresario/psychic/black magician/filmmaker who may have been responsible for the former professor's death, and who twists Urfe's mind and perceptions, while subtly leading the young man down the path to higher consciousness. Urfe also discovers the radiant Lily (Candice Bergen), a Diana-like figure (and possibly a literal goddess incarnation), with whom he becomes instantly smitten - and who just happens to be Conchis's lover.
~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn, (more)
- 1967
French director Claude Lelouch followed up his hit A Man and a Woman with this tale of a love triangle set against the background of late 1960s political unrest. A French television reporter, Robert Colomb (Yves Montand), on assignment in Kenya, has an affair with a young fashion model, Candice (Candice Bergen). He returns to Paris and tries to reinvigorate his marriage to Catherine (Annie Girardot) by going on a second honeymoon. But Candice follows him to Paris and they resume their affair. Many more romantic entanglements follow. The movie was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yves Montand, Annie Girardot, (more)
- 1967
Life on a remote Greek resort island is forever changed when two atomic bombs are accidentally dropped there when a NATO plane flies overhead. This comedy chronicles those changes. When the pilots realize they've lost their load, they bail out of their plane and head for the island to get help. The government has beaten them to the punch though and has already sent out an agent disguised as a resort developer. All of them are busily looking for the missing weapons when the island is suddenly filled with clamoring, hedonistic tourists who believe the developer is going to build the best resort in the area first. When the Agean fish living just off the island begin to mysteriously die, everyone there realizes that the jig is finally up and they so give in to their wildest desires. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Courtenay, Colin Blakely, (more)
- 1966
Based on the novel by Mary McCarthy, The Group was one of the slickest, and most highly publicized, cinematic soap operas of the 1960s. Filmed largely in New York, the story charts the exploits of eight young women, all of whom graduate from an exclusive Vassar-ish college in the middle of the Depression. Among the talented young actresses making their screen debuts herein are Candice Bergen as Lakey, the group's resident Lesbian; Joan Hackett as Dottie, a repressed socialite who takes up with bohemian artist Dick Brown (Richard Mulligan); Joanna Pettet as Kay, who marries philandering playwright Harald Peterson (Larry Hagman); and Kathleen Widdoes as Helena, the wealthiest of the girls who insists upon proving her value in the workplace. The other girls are Pokey (Marin-Robin Redd), who seems happiest when pregnant; Jessica Walter as Libby, the group's viper-tongued gossip and the darling of the Manhattan literary set (some have suggested that McCarthy based this character on herself); Elizabeth Hartman as Priss, the requisite heart-on-sleeve liberal; and Shirley Knight as Polly, whose bumpy love life culminates in a very colorful engagement party. Hal Holbrook, likewise making his first screen appearance, plays Gus LeRoy. Sumptuously produced, The Group is a bit empty dramatically, though the sheer volume of continuing characters manages to sustain audience interest. (Incidentally, here's a note for "blooper" spotters: wasn't the Pan Am building constructed in the 1950s? ) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, (more)
Steve McQueen received his only Academy Award nomination for his performance in this epic-scale war drama, based on the novel by Richard McKenna. In 1926, as China teeters on the edge of political revolution in the midst of a civil war, the USS San Pablo, is ordered to patrol the Yangtze River to represent and protect American interests. While the San Pablo may be an American ship, much of the labor is actually performed by Chinese locals willing to work for American money, while stern but inexperienced commanding officer Captain Collins (Richard Crenna) frequently drills his charges, unsure what else to do. A machinist's mate with just under a decade of navy service behind him, Jake Holman (Steve McQueen) is assigned to the San Pablo and immediately makes enemies among the crew -- he prefers to do his own work rather than farm it out to others, and the one Chinese man who works by his side, Po Han (Mako), is treated as an apprentice rather than a servant. Holman also falls in love with an idealistic American missionary (Candice Bergen), while his shipmate Frenchy (Richard Attenborough) falls for a Chinese girl and - with marriage plans in mind - kidnaps her to prevent her from being auctioned off. As Holman's methods and attitudes continue to anger his comrades, they find themselves increasingly at odds with the Chinese, especially after Frenchy's girlfriend becomes pregnant and Po Han is captured by revolutionary forces and branded a traitor. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, (more)
