William Schallert Movies

The fabulously successful Pillow Talk was essentially Shop Around the Corner for the 1950s. Playboy composer Rock Hudson and interior-decorator Doris Day are obliged to share a telephone party line. Naturally, their calls overlap at the least opportune times, and just as naturally, this leads to Hudson and Day despising each other without ever having met in person. In a cute but convenient coincidence, Doris' boy friend is Tony Randall, who also happens to be Hudson's best pal. Thus Hudson gets a glimpse at Day, and it's love at first sight. To avoid revealing that he's her telephone rival, Hudson poses as a wealthy Texan and turns the charm on Day. But when he starts pitching woo, Day instantly recognizes all the "make-out" lines Hudson has used on the phone with his other conquests. She gets even by decorating Hudson's apartment in a hideous manner. But Hudson loves her all the same; he "kidnaps" her, carrying her through the streets in her nightgown in full view of everyone, including a laughing cop who refuses to intervene. He praises her horrifying interior decoration job effusively, and at this point Day can't help but give in to his marriage proposal. A bit too arch and cute for modern tastes at times, Pillow Talk is still one of the best of the frothy Doris Day-Rock Hudson vehicles; it made a fortune at the box office and garnered five Oscar nominations. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After the death of his son, Wealthy San Franciscan Martin Westropova (Carl Benton Reid) wants to get in touch with his daughter-in-law, whom he has never met. Hired to located the missing girl, Paladin (Richard Boone) finds he has his hands full when two different women step forward and claim to be Isobella Westropova. One of the two girls (Betsy Von Furstenberg) seems to be the genuine article--but Paladin suspects that there's dirty work afoot. This episode was directed by the great Lewis Milestone, who'd previously helmed such classic Hollywood films as All Quiet on the Western Front and of Of Mice and Men (the 1939 version). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After the success of From Here to Eternity, pairing Frank Sinatra with another James Jones novel made perfect sense. Set in the aftermath of World War II, the film stars Sinatra as a recently discharged soldier whose promising writing career has derailed. After a drunken card game, Sinatra finds himself aboard a bus for his Indiana hometown of Parktown, with recent acquaintance Shirley MacLaine in tow. An unrefined good-time girl, MacLaine allows her affections to settle on the hard-drinking Sinatra, who wants little to do with her as he reluctantly sets about re-establishing ties he thought to have abandoned over a decade before. These include a brother (Arthur Kennedy) unable to discard his salesman's persona, his disapproving wife (Leora Dana), and their teenage daughter (Betty Lei Keim). Meanwhile, Sinatra makes a variety of new acquaintances both respectable and otherwise, including a local gambler (Dean Martin) and a creative writing instructor (Martha Hyer) smitten with his writing and possibly with him. Shaking up the complacency of his small hometown more by accident than design, Sinatra forces all those around him to reevaluate their behavior. After a variety of smaller parts, this is the role that cemented MacLaine's name, earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide

Man in the Shadow is a better-than-usual Albert Zugsmith production starring Jeff Chandler as the newly appointed lawman in a corrupt southwestern town. A Mexican laborer has been murdered, a crime which powerful land baron Orson Welles wants the sheriff to ignore. Chandler bucks Welles' wishes and investigates the killing, with the trail of evidence leading inexorably to Welles...but what's the motive? Man in the Shadow is unimportant enough on its own, but the fact that it was produced at all would have a far-reaching effect on cinematic history. It was during shooting of this western that producer Albert Zugsmith and actor Orson Welles agreed to collaborate on the Welles-directed masterpiece Touch of Evil (58). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Former silent film star Madge Kennedy makes her first series appearance as the Cleaver boys' imperious Aunt Martha. While June (Barbara Billingsley) is out of town visiting her sister Peggy, Aunt Martha agrees to look after Beaver (Jerry Mathers) and Wally (Tony Dow). Unfortunately, she also uses this opportunity to purchase an embarrassing "Little Lord Fauntleroy" outfit for Beaver -- and worse, she insists that he wear it to school! Among other things, this is the episode in which we learn why Beaver never uses his given name, Theodore. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Future "Master of Disaster" Irwin Allen produced this curious but inarguably fascinating adaptation of Henrik Willem Van Loon's best- selling historical volume. A Celestial Tribunal has been convened to decide the fate of the Earth after the invention of nuclear weapons, with The Devil (Vincent Price) and The Spirit of Man (Ronald Colman) debating if humankind should be allowed to continue or be exterminated once and for all. Both men present examples of human behavior at its best and worst, including Dennis Hopper as Napoleon, Hedy Lamarr as Joan of Arc, Virginia Mayo as Cleopatra, Peter Lorre as Nero, Edward Everett Horton as Sir Walter Raleigh, and Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, and Chico Marx as, respectively, Peter Minuit, Sir Isaac Newton, and a monk (yes, the producers had the daring and vision to cast the Marx Brothers without having them play any scenes together). The Story of Mankind proved to be the last film for both Ronald Colman and Hedy Lamarr; it was also the last time the three Marx Brothers appeared in the same film, though the individual Marxes appeared in a few films following this. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Frances Celane (Olive Sturgess) will lose her father's $1,000,000 trust fund unless she waits eighteen months after her 25th birthday to get married. Unfortunately, Frances is already secretly wed to Rod Gleason (Brian Hutton)--and there's a baby on the way. Ultimately, Frances' uncle Edward Norton (Raymond Greenleaf), executor of her father's estate, is found murdered, and Rod is charged with the crime. In his efforts to save Rod from the gas chamber, Perry (Raymond Burr) and Paul Drake (William Hopper) scrutinize the comings and goings of the late Mr. Norton, his attorney Arthur Crinston (Robert Griffin), and his secretary Donald Graves (William Schallert). This episode is based on a 1933 novel by Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jeff Chandler plays big-city lawyer James Gordon Blane, who heads to a small Nevada town to defend a playboy (Phillip Reed) accused of murder. Blane wins the case, but is then himself charged with accepting bribes. The man behind this accusation is vindictive town sheriff Nick Hoak (Jack Carson), who controls all illegal activities in the area. When Blane's legman Billy Giles ends up dead, the lawyer deduces that Hoak was also behind the killing for which the playboy was blamed. Blane struggles to defend his reputation in court while his wife (Jeanne Crain) attempts to mount evidence against Sheriff Hoak. Despite its stellar cast and slick direction (by Jack Arnold), The Tattered Dress comes across as cheap and tawdry -- befitting its seedy subject matter. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Zsa Zsa Gabor plays twin sisters in this campy Red Scare espionage thriller from the late 1950s. She plays the nurse to Joseph Stalin, who didn't die in 1953 after all. The death was all a nefarious scam in which the leader faked his death, had his face surgically rearranged and then moved to Greece with a fortune in Soviet currency. Nurse Zsa Zsa, who is also Stalin's lover. Unfortunately, she told no one where she was going. When her twin discovers her missing, she worries and hires an ex O.S.S. agent to find her. After much searching and danger, the agent finds the wicked dictator and sees that he this time his reign of terror is permanently ended. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Raw Edge is a modest Universal western from the peak of the double-feature era. Rory Calhoun plays a rancher whose "equal opportunity" hiring policies backfire. Calhoun learns that several of his ranch hands plan to kill him and take over the property. The treacherous employees further intend claim Calhoun's widow-to-be (Yvonne de Carlo) along with the ranch. Mara Corday plays the other woman in Calhoun's life: Can she, or anyone else in this picture, be trusted? While the plotline of Raw Edge has its esoteric moments, the film is brought down to earth by the perfunctory direction of John Sherwood. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on an article in the New Yorker, Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life stars James Mason (who also produced the film) as elementary school teacher Ed Avery, a thoughtful, gentle man, with a loving wife, Lou (Barbara Rush), and a young son, Richie (Christopher Olsen), who loves him. Avery is successful and well liked in his community, but he is over-extended in his pursuit of the American dream -- he secretly works a second job to earn extra money, and doesn't dare break stride, despite the increasingly painful physical spasms that he suffers. He collapses one day, and the doctors inform him that he suffers from an arterial disease that will probably give him less than a year to live. But they also offer him one hope, with treatment using cortisone, which was then a new, not-fully-tested drug. Avery makes a seemingly full recovery and returns to work, but it soon becomes clear that he's not the same -- he has a new, cavalier attitude toward money, and then Lou becomes alarmed over his expressions of rage over seemingly insignificant annoyances. He starts expressing himself in grand, exalted terms, first to Lou and then to his colleagues at school, including his closest friend, Wally Gibbs (Walter Matthau). And matters only get worse when Wally determines that it is the cortisone -- which Ed has been taking in far greater doses than prescribed -- that is making him act this way. And his obsession w ith forcing Richie to live up to his full potential soon turns into a much darker fixation. Director Ray later offered regret over having used cortisone by name, as it was still not standard treatment and its benefits and drawbacks weren't known. But this did lend the movie a verisimilitude that was essential for what appeal it did hold for audiences. (Seven years later, screenwriter William Read Woodfield would incorporate Bigger Than Life's cortisone plot device into his script for the Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea episode \"Mutiny\". Bigger Than Life's more immediate problem at the time lay in its broader plot -- with a story that brought drug addiction and fact-based psychological unhingement into a suburban American setting, it was a daring subject for its time, for which audiences were unprepared in 1956. It was also one of a group of offbeat pictures that Mason produced as well as starred in. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Set in 1952, at a point when the United States was bogged down in the "police action," Hell's Horizon focuses on one crew of a B-29, given the unenviable assignment of knocking out a bridge vital to the enemy over the Yalu River. To do this, and avoid violating Chinese airspace, they must make their run from a predetermined direction and, if forced down or unable to drop their bomb-load, must see to it that they don't do it over China. John Ireland is excellent as Merrill, the pilot of the plane and a born cynic, who must lead a crew that -- if truth were to be told to his C.O. -- is coming apart at the seams. First there's Trask (Hugh Beaumont), the sergeant and the non-com veteran of the group, who can't get his mind off of troubles at home; then there's Lewis (Larry Pennell), who's young enough to let his emotions get the better of him, especially where Sami (Marla English), a local Korean girl who does the unit's laundry and has been a regular companion for Merrill, is concerned; and Jockey (Chet Baker), who relaxes by playing a trumpet that drives half the other members of the crew to distraction. Add to that one new crewman, Morgan (William Schallert), an instructor who's never been in combat, and a plane that was state-of-the-art in the last war but barely able to deal with the MIGs that the North Koreans are flying now, and you've got a recipe for disaster, which nearly comes to fruition when two members of the crew fold up in different ways at two critical moments along the mission, jeopardizing the lives of the entire crew. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Dana Andrews plays Cavalry deserter Brett Halliday in the compact Universal western Smoke Signal. Cavalry captain Harper (William Talman) is determined to bring Halliday to justice, but first he must lead his men and a handful of Indian-massacre survivors to safety through hostile, uncharted territory. Halliday's sympathies are with the Indians, whom he believes have resorted to violence only because of the cruelty of certain white officers. Piper Laurie co-stars as Laura Evans, the romantic bone of contention between Halliday and Lt. Wayne Ford (Rex Reason). Though the plotline of Smoke Signal is pedestrian, the film's action highlights are well-worth the price of admission. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide