O.J. Simpson Movies

It is doubtful that while acting in D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation back in 1914, Lillian Gish ever dreamed that seven decades later she'd be co-starring with a cute dog in something called Hambone and Hillie. It all begins at a busy airport, where octogenarian Hillie (Gish) is accidentally separated from her beloved bow-wow Hambone. In a twinkling, Hambone and Hillie find themselves on opposite coasts of the USA. The rest of the film charts the efforts of both mistress and mutt to find each other again. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This 1981 sequel to the 1979 made-for-TVer Goldie and the Boxer once again stars O.J. Simpson and Melissa Michaelsen as, respectively, boxer Joe Gallegher and Joe's 10-year-old manager Goldie Kellog. When Joe incurs the wrath of an evil promoter, he and Goldie high-tail it to Hollywood. They take refuge in the home of Babe (Stubby Kaye) and Cuddles (Sheila MacRae) a pair of Tinseltown "fringies" distantly related to Joe's trainer Wally (Jack Gilford, taking over for the first film's Phil Silvers). Produced by Orenthal Productions (guess who ran that company?), Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood first aired February 19, 1981. It has been rerun incessantly since June of 1994, thanks to the latter-day notoriety of star O. J. Simpson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

All but forgotten in recent years, the made-for-TV Goldie and the Boxer enjoyed a new lease on life when it was resyndicated to TV in the mid-1990s to capitalize on the notoriety of its star, O. J. Simpson. An old-fashioned tearjerker from the Champ school, the film stars Simpson as unknown boxer Joe Gallegher. Spurred by his friendship with Goldie Kellog (Melissa Michaelsen), the 10-year-old daughter of deceased boxing champ Paul Kellog (John Roselius), Joe goes the distance to the Title. Phil Silvers does an "Ed Wynn" as Joe's heart-of-gold trainer. First telecast December 20, 1979, Goldie and the Boxer performed well enough to encourage a 1981 sequel, Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This 1978 episode of Saturday Night Live is hosted by O.J. Simpson and features musical guest Ashford and Simpson. ~ Skyler Miller, All Movie Guide

Ingredients essential to this made-for-TV movie are a famous former pro football player, an interracial romance, and a brutal murder. Yes, the football player is O.J. Simpson, but the film was made a full 17 years before the death of Nicole Brown Simpson. In A Killing Affair, Simpson is cast as police detective Woody York, who is partnered with white female cop Viki Eaton (Elizabeth Montgomery) to solve a mysterious killing. In the course of the assignment, Woody and Viki fall in love. Also known as Behind the Badge, A Killing Affair premiered September 21, 1977, on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Peter Fonda stars as a diamond mine security officer who fakes a robbery in order to gain the respect of the group of mercenaries he needs to help him pull off the biggest heist in history. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

The setting is Atoka County, Alabama -- the time is somewhere after the peak of the civil rights movement, after cities such as Birmingham, Alabama were out of the headlines. The movement is coming to the sticks, including Atoka County, and a lot of the white residents don't like it and are prepared to commit felonious assault, rape, or murder to get their point across. In the middle of this powder keg are two men on either side of a very dangerous line -- County Sheriff "Big Track" Bascomb (Lee Marvin) and Mayor Hardy (David Huddleston). Each man is playing both ends against the middle in the impending race war -- Bascomb wants to keep the peace as best he can, blocking the local klavern of the Ku Klux Klan from their worst excesses and making sure that the Klan's business and the county's business remain separate; Hardy, who also owns the lumber company that employs most of the county and the bank on which most of the residents depend, wants a good environment for business, which includes keeping enough poor blacks around to do the most menial work for the miserable pay he's willing to fork over; this, in turn, requires that they be too scared to ask for too much, including better treatment, but not so scared that they leave the county altogether, which would wipe out his business. Between them is Breck Stancill (Richard Burton), an eighth-generation resident with lots of land but little money and even fewer friends; a wounded war veteran and loner, he still resents the lynching of his grandfather and no longer respects what the white south purports to stand for -- he's even allowed dispossessed blacks to live for free on his property, angering the poor whites around him even more. Bascomb would like Stancill to be a little less high profile, while Hardy would like him to sell out and disappear, and wouldn't mind it if the local Klan helped that process along by trying to kill him. Bascomb's balancing act fails because of two events -- Nancy Poteet (Linda Evans) is raped one night, apparently by a black man, which precipitates the murder of a black teenager and her being violently ostracized by the white community; and a civil rights rally is planned for the town, bringing in lots of "outside agitators" and getting the local klavern eager to act against them. The prime mover in all of this is Big Track's deputy, Butt Cut Bates (Cameron Mitchell), a hardcore klansman who won't be reined in by Hardy and who is not above raping a black woman prisoner (Lola Falana) that he's arrested illegally, or trying to kill Stancill; directly opposed to him is Garth (O.J. Simpson), a young black man who witnessed a Klan murder and, in response, gets a rifle and starts meting out justice on his own. Before it's over, a major part of the county is at war and the bodies are falling everywhere. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide