Mickey Simpson Movies

Filmmaker George Stevens chose Monument Valley, Utah for his exterior sequences in The Greatest Story Ever Told, this ($20 million) adaptation of Fulton Oursler's best-selling book. The "Greatest Story" is, of course, the life of Jesus Christ, played herein by Max Von Sydow. The large supporting cast includes Dorothy McGuire as Mary, Claude Rains as Herod the Great, Jose Ferrer as Herod Antipas, Charlton Heston as John the Baptist, Donald Pleasence as Satan (identified only as "The Dark Hermit"), David McCallum as Judas Iscariot, Sidney Poitier as Simon of Cyrene, Telly Savalas as Pontius Pilate and Martin Landau as Caiaphas. Even Robert Blake as Simon the Zealot, Jamie Farr as Thaddaeus, and motorcyle-flick veteran Richard Bakalyan as Dismas, the repentant thief, are well-suited to their roles. Originally roadshown at 260 minutes, Greatest Story Ever Told was later available in a 195-minute version. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The final episode of Maverick finds Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) crossing the path of his brother Bret's old nemesis Modesty Blaine (played in earlier episodes by Mona Freeman, and here enacted by Kathleen Crowley). Hoping that Bart will marry her, Modesty goes ballistic (even though that word didn't exist in the 1870s) when he turns her down--and to get even, she tells the authorities that Bart tried to "have his way" with her. Somehow or other, all this nonsense is prelude to the climactic sequence, in which both Bart and Modesty are key players in a spectacular train robbery, which also involves real-life luminaries Diamond Jim Brady (Barry Kelley) and Doc Holliday (Peter Breck). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

During Ben Cartwright's absence, a woman named Jennifer (Suzanne Lloyd) shows up at the Ponderosa, claiming to be Ben's new wife-and she has a marriage license to back up her claims. The Cartwright boys soon determine that Jennifer has been fleeced by a con artist who has been posing as their father. Determined to reclaim the woman's money and reputation, the brothers head to Crater Plains to confront the imposter-little realizing that they're riding into a neat little ambush. Future Batman star Adam West is seen as Frank Milton, while others in the cast include John McIntire (Sheriff Mike Latimer), William Mims (Ed Bailey), Hank Worden (Old Miner), Mickey Simpson (Miner), Herb Vigran (Bartender) and Clarence Straight (Driver). Written by Richard Newman, "The Bride" was originally telecast on January 21, 1961. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the final episode of Walt Disney's ten-part miniseries Elfego Baca, frontier lawyer Baca (Robert Loggia) embarks upon a mission to bring fugitive gunslinger Gus Tomlin to justice. Upon hearing that Tomlin is dead, Baca is all for giving up the search -- until a citizen of the small town of Granite claims that Tomlin and his family are living on a farm under an assumed name. The father of a man allegedly killed by Tomlin begins forming a lynch mob, but Baca offers to personally bring Tomlin back for a fair trial -- if he lives long enough to do so. "Gus Tomlin Is Dead" was originally telecast as part of the Walt Disney Presents anthology. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Warlock offers us a mean-spirited, mercenary Henry Fonda and an honest, peaceloving Richard Widmark. A Wyatt Earp-like frontier marshal, Fonda agrees to protect the small town of Warlock from an outlaw gang, but only if he's permitted to plunder the town's cash reserve. Widmark, the town deputy, is a reformed outlaw whose willingness to fend off the invading criminals is motivated by his fondness for his new neighbors. Looming large in the proceedings is Anthony Quinn as the glory-grabbing Fonda's sidekick. Adapted by Robert Alan Aurthur from a novel by Oakley Hall, Warlock is a good example of the "thinking man's westerns" prevalent in the late 1950s-early 1960s. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The fourth season of Maverick gets under way minus the series' popular star James Garner, who'd vacated the role of frontier gambler Bret Maverick after a contract dispute with Warner Bros.. Garner's costar Jack Kelly is still on hand as Bret's brother Bart Maverick, along with a newcomer to these parts: future "James Bond" Roger Moore in the role of Bart's British cousin Beau Maverick, the "white sheep" of the Maverick clan. No sooner has Beau arrived in the American West than he agrees--for a price, of course--to pose as Freddie Bogner (Robert Casper, scion of a wealthy and aristocratic European family. But the $4000 that Beau is to collect for this assignment may not be worth the danger involved when he is kidnapped by an ill-tempered gent with a long-standing grudge against the real Freddie. Featured in the cast is Max Baer Jr., still two years away from TV immortality as Jethro Bodine on The Beverly Hillbillies. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the midst of his campaign to bring statehood to his territory, Judge Somervell (John Litel) loses a suitcase which contains some rather volatile documents. The Judge is convinced that Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) stole the suitcase--and so, apparently, is everyone else in the territory, including an enigmatic young woman named Janet (Bethel Leslie) and a quartet of homicidal thugs. After being kidnapped, beaten and accused of murder, Bart begins to realize that he'd better locate the missing papers in a real hurry...and also find out why they're so valuable. Veteran serial villain Roy Barcroft appears as a mercurial US Marshal. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Jack Kelly makes his first appearance as Bart Maverick in this episode, in which Bart and brother Bret find themselves broke and stranded in New Orleans. Hoping to stake themselves to a big poker game being held on a steamboat called the River Princess, the Maverick boys are denied admission by the boat's owner, Andre Devereaux (Stephen Bekassy), a Creole gentleman with a long-standing hatred for Americans. When Devereaux' daughter Yvette (Laurie Carroll) is kidnapped, the Mavericks offer to go to her rescue--not out of any sense of gallantry, but because they still want to get in on that card game. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

When an entire family is slaughtered in an open field, it appears to be the work of Pawnee renegades. But as Matt (James Arness) and Chester (Dennis Weaver) prepare to set themselves up as decoys to flush out the killers, some new bits of evidence suggest that the real culprits are a vicious gang of white outlaws. A grim "souvenir" is the key to solving the mystery in this stark, uncompromising episode, adapted from the Gunsmoke radio broadcast of August 2, 1954. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

George Stevens' sprawling adaptation of Edna Ferber's best-selling novel successfully walks a fine line between potboiler and serious drama for its 210-minute running time, making it one of the few epics of its era that continues to hold up as engrossing entertainment across the decades. Giant opens circa 1922 in Maryland, where Texas rancher Jordan "Bick" Benedict (Rock Hudson) has arrived to buy a stallion called War Winds from its owner, Dr. Horace Lynnton (Paul Fix). But much as Bick loves and knows horses, he finds himself even more transfixed by the doctor's daughter, Leslie Lynnton (Elizabeth Taylor), and after some awkward moments, she has to admit that she's equally drawn to the shy, laconic Texan. They get married and Leslie spends her honeymoon traveling with Jordan to his ranch, Reata, which covers nearly a million acres of Texas. Once there, however, she finds that she has to push her way into her rightful role as mistress of the house, past Bick's sister, Luz (Mercedes McCambridge), who can't accept her brother's marriage or the changes it means in the home they share. Also working around Reata is the laconic ranch hand Jett Rink (James Dean) -- from a family as rooted in Texas as the Benedicts but not nearly as lucky (or "foxy"), Jett is dirt-poor and barely educated at all, and he fairly oozes resentment at Bick for his arrogance, although Luz likes him and for that reason alone Bick is obliged to keep him on. One thing Jett does have in common with his employer is that he is in awe of Leslie's beauty; another is his nearly total contempt for the Mexican-Americans who work for them -- Jett and Bick may have contempt for each other, but either one is just as likely to dismiss the Mexican-Americans around them as a bunch of shiftless "wetbacks." Luz feels so threatened with a loss of power and control that she decides to assert herself with War Winds, yet another "prize" that Bick brought back from Maryland that resists her authority -- then decides to ride the stallion despite being warned that no one but Leslie is wholly safe on him, and spurs him brutally in an effort to break him, which ends up destroying them both in the battle of wills she starts.

After Luz's death, Jett learns that she left him a tiny piece of land for his own, on Reata, which he refuses to sell back to Bick, preferring to keep it for his own and maybe prospect for oil on it. Meanwhile, Leslie and Bick have their own problems -- Leslie can't abide the wretched conditions in which the Mexican families who work on Reata are allowed to live, taking a special interest in Mr. and Mrs. Obregon and their baby, Angel; but Bick doesn't want his wife, or any member of his family, concerning themselves with "those people." Leslie's humanity and her independence push their marriage to the limit, but Bick comes to accept this in his wife, and in four years of marriage they have three handsome children, a boy and two girls, and a loving if occasionally awkward home life. Meanwhile, Jett strikes oil on his land -- which he's named Little Reata -- and in a couple of years he's on his way to becoming the richest man in Texas, getting drilling contracts on all of the land in the area (except Reata) and making more money than the Benedicts ever saw from raising cattle. Bick is almost oblivious to the way Jett grows in power and influence across the years and the state, mostly because he's got his own family to worry about, including a son, Jordan III (Dennis Hopper), who doesn't want to take over the ranch from him, but wants instead to be a doctor; an older daughter, Judy (Fran Bennett), who wants to study animal husbandry and marry a local rancher (Earl Holliman) and start a tiny spread of her own; and a younger daughter, Luz (Carroll Baker), who's just a bit man-crazy and star-struck by the movies.

The American entry into the Second World War and the resulting need for oil forces Bick to go into business with Jett and allow him to drill on Reata, and suddenly the Benedicts are wealthy enough to be part of Jett Rink's circle, which includes the governor of the state and at least one United States senator at his beck and call -- and Luz develops a serious crush on Jett, who likes his women young and is especially attracted to her, as Bick's and Leslie's daughter. Young Jordan marries Juana, a Mexican-American nursing student (Elsa Cardenas), and his father accepts it begrudgingly, with help from Leslie. The war kills Angel Obregon (Sal Mineo), a death that even affects Bick, but the Benedict family gets through it wealthier than ever and grows some more with the birth of Jordan IV to Jordie and Juana. When the family attends a gala opening of Jett Rink Airport, which concludes with a dinner honoring Jett's success, however, young Jordan's wife is humiliated by Jett's racist edicts, and he is beaten up by Jett's men after punching the oil baron. Seeing this, Bick challenges his old rival to the fight that's been brewing for a quarter of a century and wins by default, Jett being too drunk to defend himself or to hit; he's also too drunk to make the grand speech that was to climax the celebration, and he ends up alone in the ballroom. The Benedicts have it out with each other, young Jordan accusing his father of being as much a racist as Jett, and Leslie caught in the middle between her husband and her son. It looks like the Benedicts may lose each other, until an encounter with a racist diner owner forces Bick to stand up and get knocked down (more than once) defending his daughter-in-law and his grandson.

Seen today, Giant seems the least dated of any of James Dean's three starring films, in part because it addresses issues that remain relevant more than 50 years later, and also because it has the best all-around acting and the best script of any of the three. Taken in broader terms, it's even better, with two of the best performances that Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson ever gave, and perhaps the second best of Hudson's whole career (after Seconds) -- the only unfortunate element at modern theatrical screenings is the tendency of younger viewers, who only know him in terms of the revelations late in his life of his being gay, to laugh and snicker at elements of Hudson's characterization; but his work is so good that the titters usually fade after the first 30 minutes or so. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

The first spaceship to Mars rounds the Red Planet and heads back toward Earth but runs into an unexplained phenomenon in space that accelerates the craft to such a high speed that all four men aboard black out. When they awake, they've crash-landed on a planet that they only gradually realize is Earth -- of the distant future: they have crashed through the time barrier. After they are chased by ugly "Mutates," they are taken in by the declining remnants of human civilization who live underground. It's now 2508 A.D, almost 400 years after an atomic war almost wiped out the human race. John Borden (Hugh Marlowe) falls in love with Garnet (Nancy Gates), daughter of Timmek (Everett Glass), leader of the underground people -- a fact that enrages Mories (Booth Colman), who's always assumed she would someday be his. The scheming Mories tries to turn his people against the space/time travelers, but falls victim to his own nefarious plans. Learning from Deena (Lisa Montell), a servant girl from the surface of Earth, that most people up there are normal though cruelly ruled by the deformed ones, Borden and his friends take on the mutates with modern weaponry and reclaim the Earth for normal humanity.

Although this is (surprisingly) the first American feature film to deal with scientific time travel, World Without End is really just another lost-civilization plot, complete with princess, evil grand vizier, and lots of skulking in corridors. There are few imaginative touches -- the giant spiders in particular are pathetic -- and some of the cast isn't very good. But for the period, this is slightly above-average science fiction; the exteriors, shot at the famous Iverson Ranch, have an open, fresh feeling, but the interior sets are unimaginative and routine. The plotline owes more than a little to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (a lawsuit was filed), which makes the presence of Rod Taylor in the cast (as the hunk from our time) a little ironic, as just a few years later, he starred in George Pal's much-loved movie version of the Wells novel. ~ Bill Warren, Rovi

New York Confidential is based on the Jack Lait-Lee Mortimer bestseller of the same name. Richard Conte plays Nick Magellan, a "torpedo" for Manhattan crime boss Charlie Lupo (Broderick Crawford). Pleased with Magellan's work, Charlie promotes him to the topmost rungs of the Syndicate. He regrets this act of largesse when the powers-that-be demand that Lupo be rubbed out. . .by good old Magellan. The most fascinating aspect of New York Confidential is that there isn't a sympathetic character in the bunch; even Anne Bancroft as Lupo's maladjusted daughter is a bit on the obnoxious side. The original Lait-Mortimer book was later adapted into a 1958 TV series, starring Lee Tracy. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi