Abraham Sofaer Movies

John Wayne toplines this biography of the cattle owner John Simpson Chisum, a controversial figure who was the most powerful man in New Mexico during the Wild West era. A founder and prominent citizen in the town of Lincoln, Chisum is slow to act when ruthless land baron Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker) moves in on several local businesses and takes them over. By the time Chisum and his ally, fellow rancher Henry Tunstall (Patrick Knowles), decide to go to the law, Murphy's already bought and paid for influence there, as well. The only recourse left to the cattlemen is to take Murphy on in all-out range war that embroils everyone in the county, including Tunstall's hand Billy the Kid Bonney (Geoffrey Deuel) and his comrade Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett). Screenwriter and producer Andrew J. Fenady based the script for Chisum (1970) on his own short story, a very loosely fact-based account of Chisum, Billy the Kid and their involvement in the Lincoln County wars. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

In this pseudo-biography of the legendary Cuban revolutionary -- played by Omar Sharif -- Che Guevara takes up the cause as a rebel fighter under the direction of Fidel Castro, played by Jack Palance. Guevara, a young Argentine doctor, proves his worth under the heat of guerilla warfare and, gaining the respect of his men, becomes the leader of a patrol. Castro is impressed by Guevara's tactics and strict discipline and makes him his chief advisor. When Castro defeats the Cuban dictator Batista after two years of fighting, Guevara, under Castro's nod, directs a series of massive reprisals -- but Guevara dreams of fermenting a worldwide revolution. After Castro backs down during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Guevara accuses Castro of being a Soviet dupe and leaves Cuba. Under disguise, Guevara lands in Bolivia, where he attempts to begin his dream of a worldwide peasant revolution, but the Bolivian poor will not follow his lead, and his band find themselves starving in the Bolivian jungle and pursued by the Bolivian army. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Milton Berle is both guest star and cowriter of this episode, which was clearly inspired by the rantings of provocative TV talkshow host Joe Pyne. Playing completely straight, Berle is cast as vituperative TV personality Ross Howard, who hopes to parlay both his war record and his media notoreity into a political career. Not surprisingly, Howard has made dozens of enemies throughout his career, one of whom begins sending him death threats. Despite his distate for Howard's tactics, Ironside (Raymond Burr) agrees to protect the man from his unknown would-be murderer--a difficult assignment that becomes even more so when Howard's alcoholic wife is killed by a car bomb. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Mrs. Bellows (Emmaline Henry) shows up at Tony's house, only to discover Jeannie (Barbara Eden) dressed in her harem outfit--and without her magical powers, which she has given up in hopes that Tony will marry her. When Mrs. Bellows demands an explanation, Jeannie claims to be Tony's wife. Outraged by the "ill treatment" afforded Jeannie, Mrs. B arranges for our heroine to divorce Tony (Larry Hagman) immediately--no small feat, inasmuch as no marriage has taken place! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Abraham Sofaer makes his first series appearance as Haji, master of all genies, in this episode, which is also the first one directed by series star Larry Hagman. Tired of merely wishing that Tony (Larry Hagman) would ask her to become his wife, Jeannie (Barbara Eden) casts a "forbidden" spell on her Master, whereupon he instantly drops to his knee and proposes. This enrages the all-powerful Haji, who casts his own spell...resulting in an severely accident-prone Tony and a Jeannie completely stripped of her magical skills. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

With Bill returning home from an assignment in Beirut, Mr. French decides to impress his boss by cooking him an authentic Lebanese meal--and to that end he takes lessons from female restaurant owner Nural Shpeni (Magda Harout). Unfortunately, Nural's brothers insist that, according to Lebanese tradition, Mr. French is now obligated to marry their sister! It takes the wry diplomacy of another Lebanese gentleman, Dr. Sakis (Abraham Sofaer), to rescue Mr. French from a trip down the aisle. This episode is noteworthy for the fact that virtually every supporting character is Middle Eastern, including the cop on the beat (played by future Alice costar Vic Tayback; it also marks the final TV appearance of veteran character actor Nestor Paiva (Creature from the Black Lagoon et. al.) ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The starship Enterprise has a rendezvous with the tiny survey ship Antares to pick up a special passenger, Charlie Evans (Robert Walker Jr.). The sole survivor of a spaceship crash on the remote planet Thesus when he was three years old, Charlie spent 14 years alone, learning to talk and how to survive from the crashed ship's computer tapes. The Enterprise is to transport him to his closest living relatives, and he is eager, after so many years alone, to meet more people. Science officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is doubtful of the boy's story, because of the sheer barren nature of Thesus, but Chief Medical Officer Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) is willing to take him at face value, and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) finds the boy looking up to him as a guide into this new world. Charlie is like any healthy 17-year-old in that he wants to be liked, and wants friends and more; he also develops a hopeless crush on Yoeman Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney). But Kirk (William Shatner) and company discover that Charlie is unlike any 17-year-old, in that he has somehow developed immense and terrifying mental powers, apparently from his years on Thesus, enabling him to transform matter at will, and that he has an easily roused temper and an easily pricked ego that can bring those powers to bear in an instant, destroying the Antares as her captain was trying to warn Kirk about his passenger and making people who displease him disappear, or transforming them, sometimes horribly, as when he closes up the eyes and mouths of a group of laughing crew members. Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy try to defeat him by overtaxing his powers once he takes control of the ship, but it is only when a ship carrying actual Thesians -- a race supposedly only existing in legend -- makes rendezvous with the Enterprise that Charlie's power is broken and his crew restored whole. But now Kirk must face a terrible choice about what to do with Charlie: risk the safety of others or send him away with the immaterial, wraith-like Thesians, consigned to a life of perpetual loneliness and solitude forever. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Although there had been several attempts throughout the 1950s and early 1960s to create a TV sitcom based on the legend of Aladdin's Lamp--one of these, "Al Haddon's Lamp", featured Buddy Ebsen as a bucolic genie--the premise did not result in a full series until producer Sidney Sheldon hit upon the brilliant idea of featuring a sexy female genie. Debuting September 18, 1965 on NBC, the weekly, half-hour I Dream of Jeannie starred Barbara Eden as Jeannie, a curvaceous blonde bottle imp rescued from 2500 years' imprisonment by astronaut Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman). Out of gratitude, Jeannie arranged for Tony to likewise be rescued from a desert island, then followed him to his home in Cocoa Beach, Florida, there to serve and obey her new "master." Unable to convince anyone that he'd found a genuine genie, Tony opted instead to keep Jeannie's presence, and her true identity, a secret, which proved problematic whenever our heroine used her magic to get her master in and out of various jams. The only other person who knew Jeannie's secret was Tony's astronaut buddy Roger Healy (Bill Daily), whose various efforts to profit from Jeannie's awesome powers invariably came a-cropper. Also featured was Hayden Rorke as Cocoa Beach's air force psychiatrist Dr. Alfred Bellows, who was convinced that the mysterious goings-on in Maj. Healy's household were proof that Tony was crazy and delusional, obliging Jeannie to gently discredit Bellows in the eyes of his superiors week after week after week. Although Tony tried to maintain a normal social life with several girlfriends, these relationships were forever scuttled by the jealous Jeannie, who of course had fallen in love with her master. Ultimately, Tony reciprocated Jeannie's affections, and the couple was married during the series' fifth and final season. By this time, Jeannie had begun wearing "civilian" clothes and had pretty much forsaken the midriff-baring harem costumes that had been her trademark in the first few seasons (Amusingly, network censors demanded that the series' producers disguise the fact that Barbara Eden had, like practically every other woman on earth, been born with a belly button!) Complicating the lives of the principal characters were several "visitors" from Jeannie's past life in Baghdad. Among these were Jeannie's twin sister Jeannie II (also played by Barbara Eden), a dark-haired vixen who hatched endless sinister schemes to snag Tony for herself; and Jeannie's magical pet dog Djinn Djinn, who managed to render himself invisible at the most inopportune moments. Lasting 139 episodes (109 of these in color), I Dream of Jeannie ended its NBC run on September 1, 1990. Barbara Eden went on to star in a brace of "reunion" TV movies, telecast in 1985 and 1991; and from 1973 to 1975 an animated version of the property, simply titled Jeannie, was seen on CBS' Saturday-morning lineup. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The seventh volume in a collection culled from the 1963-1965 science fiction anthology series focuses on a surveillance system, popular throughout the globe, which is actually the product of alien technology. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

Having been burned by a previous marriage to a callous fortune hunter, heiress Grace Renford (Diana Hyland) promises herself that she won't make the same mistake again. Thus, when she falls in love with handsome engineer Keith Holloway (Jeremy Slate), Grace does not tell him that she is fabulously wealthy. Nonetheless, Grace's surrogate mother, Minnie (Mildred Dunnock), is suspicious of the gregarious Holloway -- but this hardly seems to matter when an unexpected tragedy strikes, requiring the services of a spiritualist named Dr. Shankara (Abraham Sofaer). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This three part horror story is taken from the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Vincent Price stars in all three tales starting with Dr. Heidegger's Experiment". Heidegger (Sebastian Cabot) attempts to restore the youth of four elderly friends. In a ghastly and ghoulish scene, a bride in her wedding gown returns to life after being dead for forty years. Although her spirit is alive, her body is ravaged by forty years of grave rot. "Rappaccini's Daughter" finds Price as a demented, overprotective father inoculating his daughter with poison so she may never leave her garden of poisonous plants. Part three, "The House of the Seven Gables" has Beverly Garland, Richard Denning, and Jacqueline de Wit accompanying Price, who retains his horror hero status that alternates between villain and victim. The characters portrayed by Price are a natural continuation of the Edgar Allen Poe stories produced by Roger Cormam. Sidney Sallow directed this feature in which the cinematic apple falls far from the literary tree. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Two young women have been murdered in the woods surrounding the campus of a college, and in each case the victim's body was sliced up in surgical fashion. While the police investigate the possibility that one of the faculty members is the killer, medical student Daphne Grey (Vera Miles) lives in mortal fear that she might be the next victim. Even so, Daphne agrees to act as bait in a scheme concocted by her psychology-professor boyfriend, Harold (Jeffrey Hunter), to trap the murderer. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Jack Kelly plays a dual role in this episode, as frontier gambler Bart Maverick and his exact lookalike, vicious outlaw Red Claxton. Mistaken for Claxton, who has been systematically stealing army payrolls, Bart is arrested and thrown in the stockade. Sentenced to hang, our hero must somehow break out of jail to prove his innocence. Appearing as ingenue Caprice Rambeau is a young Dawn Wells, three years before her starmaking turn as Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi