Barry Sullivan Movies

The made-for-TV Savage is worth seeing today as an example of early Steven Spielberg. Martin Landau stars as Paul Savage, a TV investigative reporter. In possession of a photograph that might destroy the career of a Supreme Court nominee, Savage finds himself the target of scrutiny from all sorts of shady types. Barbara Bain, then Mrs. Landau, costars as Savage's producer. Originally titled Watch Dog, Savage was the pilot for a potential TV series. Despite high network enthusiasm, the project never went any farther than its March 31, 1973 telecast. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A former friend betrays a legendary outlaw in Sam Peckinpah's final Western. Holed up in Fort Sumner with his gang between cattle rustlings, Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) ignores the advice of comrade-turned-lawman Pat Garrett (James Coburn) to escape to Mexico, and he winds up in jail in Lincoln, New Mexico. After Billy theatrically escapes, inspiring enigmatic Lincoln resident Alias (Bob Dylan) to join him, the governor (Jason Robards Jr.) and cattle baron Chisum (Barry Sullivan) requisition Garrett to form a posse and hunt him down. Rather than flee to Mexico when he can, Billy heads back to Fort Sumner, meeting his final destiny at the hands of his friend Pat, who, two decades later, is forced to face the consequences of his own Faustian pact with progress. With a script by Rudolph Wurlitzer, Peckinpah uses the historical basis of Billy's death to eulogize the West dreamily yet violently as it is desecrated by corrupt capitalists. Both Pat and Billy know that their time is passing, as surely as Garrett's posse knows that they are participating in a legend. Using familiar Western players like Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado, Peckinpah underscores the West's existence as a media myth, and he even appears himself as a coffin maker. Just as the bloodletting of Peckinpah's earlier The Wild Bunch (1969) invoked the Vietnam War, the casting of Kristofferson and Dylan alluded to the chaotic late '60s/early '70s present; the counterculture has little place in a corporate future. Also like The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett was truncated by its studio; the cuts did nothing to help its box office. Key scenes, particularly the framing story of Garrett's fate, have since been restored to the home-video version. In this director's cut, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid stands as one of Peckinpah's most beautiful and complex films, killing the Western myth even as he salutes it. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

The title role in The Abduction of Bayard Barnes is played by Barry Sullivan. A reclusive billionaire with a germ phobia (based on you-know-who), Bayard Barnes is kidnapped. High-priced private detective Jefferson Keyes (James Farentino) accepts his standard million-dollar advance payment to retrieve Barnes. His problem is to safely transport the victim through two miles of bacteria-laden swampland. The Abduction of Bayard Barnes was first telecast as the December 6, 1972 episode of the TV series Cool Million. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"What do we do now?" Director Michael Ritchie and executive producer/star Robert Redford satirically explore the machinations and manipulations of media-age political campaigns in this cynical political drama. Rumpled left-wing California lawyer Bill McKay (Redford), the son of a former governor (Melvyn Douglas), is enlisted by campaign maestro Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) to challenge Republican incumbent Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter) for his Senate seat. McKay agrees, but only if he can say exactly what he thinks. That approach is all well and good when McKay does not seem to have a chance, but things change when his honesty unexpectedly captivates the electorate. As McKay inches up in the polls, Lucas and company start to do what it takes to win, leaving McKay to ponder the consequences of his political seduction. Working without studio interference from a script by Jeremy Larner, a speechwriter for 1968 Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, Ritchie enhanced the behind-the-scenes realism of Larner's insights with a realistic, cinéma vérité approach. He orchestrated a campaign parade for "candidate" Redford that drew such a considerable unstaged audience that local politicians wanted to draft Redford for a real election. Redford's resemblance to the telegenic Kennedys, and his character's resonance with the future career of California governor Jerry Brown, only emphasized how close to the bone The Candidate was (and is). Released the fateful year of Richard Nixon's reelection, the film garnered accolades, if not substantial box office; Larner won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and thanked the "politicians of our time" for inspiration. Creating a documentary fiction about the semi-truths manufactured to market a candidate, The Candidate shrewdly exposed the effects of the media on the increasingly cynical political process, posing unanswerable questions that have become all the more pressing with every soundbite-ruled election. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Novelist Philip Wylie, well known for his pro-conservation stance, wrote the teleplay for the made-for-TV L.A. 2017. Publisher Glenn Howard (Gene Barry) is suddenly whisked away from his plush office in 1971. He finds himself in a world beneath the Earth's surface, circa 2017. The powers-that-be in this subterranean world refuse to answer Howard's many questions as to what has happened on the surface, but audiences familiar with Twilight Zone and Outer Limits should catch on fairly quickly. The only science-fiction installment of the otherwise straightforward TV series Name of the Game, LA 2017 originally aired January 15, 1971. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

House on Greenapple Road was an off-length TV movie (135 minutes instead of the usual 100), first telecast on The ABC Sunday Night Movie on January 11, 1970. Christopher George heads a stellar cast as Lt. Dan August, probing a homicide case in suburbia. The accused, a meek clerk (Tim O'Connor), had plenty of motive to kill his faithless wife (Janet Leigh). Only there's no weapon...and no corpse. After a series of revelatory flashbacks, August deduces that there may be a lot more people and issues involved than a missing housewife. Audience response to House on Greenapple Road was positive enough to spin off into a Dan August TV series. But Christopher George was too busy to be involved, so the role of August went to a fellow who wasn't working all that often; a guy named Burt Reynolds, or something like that. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After being blacklisted from Hollywood for 21 years, writer/director Abraham Polonsky made a healthy comeback with Tell Them Willie Boy is Here. The title character, played by Robert Blake, is a Paiute Indian living in 1909 California. After several years in the White Man's world, Willie Boy returns to his reservation, hoping to renew his romance with tribeswoman Lola (Katherine Ross). Old Mike (Mike Angel), Lola's father, strongly disapproves of her relationship with Willie Boy and attacks the youth. Acting in self defense, Willie Boy kills Old Mike. Under tribal rules, Willie Boy is now permitted to claim Lola as his woman. But white lawman Christopher Cooper (Robert Redford) is forced to charge Willie Boy with murder. The Indian and his girl escape the reservation, pursued by the essentially decent Cooper and a less-than-decent crowd of white vigilantes. What begins as comparative minor incident, snowballs into a huge political crisis, with the bewildered but defiant Willie Boy as the catalyst. Tell Them Willie Boy is Here is distinguished by the fine performances of leading players Redford, Blake, Ross and Susan Clark, and by the haunting cinematography of Conrad Hall. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Kirk Douglas has an extreme case of mid-life crisis in Elia Kazan's turgid melodrama (adapted from his best-selling novel). Douglas plays successful advertising executive Eddie Anderson, who cracks under the strain of the morning rush hour in Los Angeles and plows his sports car into a truck. Landing in a convalescent home, Eddie remains mute to everyone except his boss Finnegan (Charles Drake). In his recovery room, Eddie dreams about co-worker Gwen (Faye Dunaway), a sexy research assistant at his agency. Meanwhile, the psychiatrist Dr. Liebman (Harold Gould) talks to Eddie's wife, Florence (Deborah Kerr), who reveals that at one time Eddie and Gwen had an affair, but they broke it off. Unfortunately, after that escapade, Eddie's interest in sex vanished completely.

Then after the interview with Dr. Liebman, following a terrible nightmare, Eddie breaks out of his self-imposed silence and declares to Florence that he is tired of his unfulfilling life of "arrangements." Eddie returns to work, but the return is marked by Eddie insulting a major client, alienating his co-workers, and then taking off in a private plane in which he flies madly over the skies of L.A. His lawyer Arthur (Hume Cronyn) keeps Eddie from being thrown in jail and also talks Eddie into giving Florence the power of attorney. Eddie proceeds to travel to New York, where he runs into Gwen, who now has a child. Eddie is in New York to visit his senile father, Sam (Richard Boone), but when his family attempts to put Sam in a nursing home, Eddie takes him away with him to their old family estate on Long Island. Eddie calls up Gwen, and she travels to Long Island to resume their affair. Meanwhile, Eddie's loved ones search for Sam, and they are closing in on Eddie's Long Island sanctuary. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

This Savage Land is the story of the Prides, a pioneer family homesteading in 19th century Kansas. Barry Sullivan and Kathryn Hays play the mother and father of the Pride brood, with Andrew Prine and Brenda Scott as the oldest children (Prine and Scott had been married and divorced before the cameras began turning). The plot covers the westward trek from Ohio to Kansas, early tussles in a hostile town, and the courtship and marriage between widower Sullivan and fellow homesteader Hays, whose father is murdered by vigilantes. Made for television, This Savage Land was originally telecast September 12 and 19, 1966, as the two-part inaugural episode of the weekly TV series The Road West. Both parts were packaged into a theatrical feature to take box-office advantage of George C. Scott, here guest-starring as the vigilante leader. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Released theatrically overseas, How to Steal the World was comprised of two episodes from the American TV series Man from U.N.C.L.E. U.N.C.L.E. agents Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) and Ilya Kuriakin (David McCallum) investigate when fellow agent Barry Sullivan and European general Leslie Nielsen disappear. Shortly afterward, five of the world's top scientists are mysteriously abducted. The trail leads to the Himalayas, where Sullivan has set himself up as potential world dictator, hoping to use the combined talents of the scientists to build a device that will spread mind-controlling gas throughout the planet. How to Steal the World was originally telecast in two weekly installments as the "The Seven Wonders of the World Affair"--the final two episodes of Man From U.N.C.L.E., which had been cancelled by NBC to make way for Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this actioner, a gun runner gets a job as a marine biologist while stranded in the Middle East. He quickly finds out that his new employer and his wife are really treasure seekers looking for bullion. Unfortunately, the gold lies in deep, shark-filled water. Tragically, while the movie was being shot, a stuntman really was killed by a shark. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide