Ned Wever Movies
- 1964
Now that he's superintendent of the C&F.W. railroad, Homer Bedloe (Charles Lane) imposes all sorts of Draconian rules and regulations upon Charley (Smiley Burnette) and Floyd (Rufe Davis), the engineers of the Hooterville Cannonball. It is Bedloe's master scheme to force the two engineers to quit, thereby giving him an excuse to scrap the engine once and for all. Of course, Kate (Bea Benadaret) figures out what Bedloe is up to--and it is Kate who gets even by fomenting a C&F.W. stockholder's rebellion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1963
Based on the novel by Irving Wallace, The Prize takes place in Stockholm, where several laureates gather to accept their Nobel Prizes. At first, the film concentrates on iconoclastic novelist Paul Newman, but he is temporarily shunted to the background when physics expert Edward G. Robinson is kidnaped and replaced by his wicked twin brother. The real Robinson is to be spirited behind the Iron Curtain, while the "fake" Robinson is to disrupt the awards ceremony with an anti-American tirade. Newman gets wind of the plot, and with the help of Swedish foreign office functionary Elke Sommer, he endeavors to rescue the real Robinson and expose the phony-who has yet another trick up his sleeve before the film is over. We'll go along with the fantastic plot convolutions of The Prize, provided we don't have to swallow the premise of another man's voice emanating from that familiar Eddie Robinson mug. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Newman, Edward G. Robinson, (more)
- 1962
Suffering under the tyranny of his nasty boss, Sylvester Tupper (Wendell Holmes), investment broker Herbert J. Wiggam (Dick York) devises a scheme to get even -- and to make a profit in the bargain. Together with two other disgruntled employees, Wiggam steals a 565,000-dollar bond that has been delivered to the office. Alas, although the trio successfully pulls off the heist, the valuable bond is lost -- and for a while, it looks like only the office cleaning lady will profit from the amateur crooks' bumbling. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1961
In this emotional romance, the young backwoods girl Tammy lives in a houseboat on the river. She is very sad because she hasn't heard from her college-student boyfriend in ages. Determined to be near him, she cruises her boat down to his university and enrolls. To pay expenses she gets a job. Her new boss is pleased and ends up borrowing Tammy's boat for a short vacation. She then gives the girl an expensive necklace. Tammy soon finds herself pursued by a handsome professor. Later, the niece of Tammy's boss becomes worried at her wealthy aunt's mysterious disappearance and organizes a search party. When she sees Tammy wearing her aunt's necklace, she assumes the worst and has the girl arrested. Later the conniving niece has her aunt tried for mental incompetence. Fortunately, Tammy's pleas are heard by the compassionate judge, her boss is deemed sane, and peace is restored. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sandra Dee, John Gavin, (more)
This is a routine Disney comedy-fantasy about a boy who turns into a large sheep dog at the most inopportune moments. That is assuming there would be opportune moments. Young Wilby Daniels (Tommy Kirk) finds a magic ring that used to belong to the Borgia family. When he pronounces an inscription on the ring, he is suddenly able to transform himself into a shaggy dog -- though he has no control over when this is going to happen. To his dismay, the girl he likes gets involved without knowing who the dog really is. At the same time, the only way Wilby can break the spell is to perform some virtuous deed. Fortunately for him, a few Soviet spies are just hanging around, waiting to be uncovered by a canine. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fred MacMurray, Jean Hagen, (more)
Don Murray stars as a humble cowboy with aspirations for bigger things. He borrows money from his dance-hall girlfriend Lee Remick to buy a ranch, then dumps Remick in favor of banker's daughter Patricia Owens. Murray runs for political office, and in so doing is compelled to join a posse in search of his best friend Stuart Whitman, who has turned rustler. Anxious not to compromise his climb to the top, Murray stands by in silence as Whitman is lynched. In the end, however, Murray regains his essential decency when he is shot while trying to protect his ex-girlfriend Remick from bullying land baron Richard Egan. Based on a novel by A. B. Guthrie Jr., These Thousand Hills may look and sound like a western, but it has "film noir" written all over it. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Don Murray, Richard Egan, (more)
Based on the best-selling novel by Robert Traver (the pseudonym for Michigan Supreme Court justice John D. Voelker), Anatomy of a Murder stars James Stewart as seat-of-the-pants Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler. Through the intervention of his alcoholic mentor, Parnell McCarthy (Arthur O'Connell), Biegler accepts the case of one Lt. Manion (Ben Gazzara), an unlovable lout who has murdered a local bar owner. Manion admits that he committed the crime, citing as his motive the victim's rape of the alluring Mrs. Manion (Lee Remick). Faced with the formidable opposition of big-city prosecutor Claude Dancer (George C. Scott), Biegler hopes to win freedom for his client by using as his defense the argument of "irresistible impulse." Also featured in the cast is Eve Arden as Biegler's sardonic secretary, Katherine Grant as the woman who inherits the dead man's business, and Joseph N. Welch -- who in real life was the defense attorney in the Army-McCarthy hearings -- as the ever-patient judge. The progressive-jazz musical score is provided by Duke Ellington, who also appears in a brief scene. Producer/director Otto Preminger once more pushed the envelope in Anatomy of a Murder by utilizing technical terminology referring to sexual penetration, which up until 1959 was a cinematic no-no. Contrary to popular belief, Preminger was not merely being faithful to the novel; most of the banter about "panties" and "semen," not to mention the 11-hour courtroom revelation, was invented for the film. Anatomy of a Murder was filmed on location in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Stewart, Lee Remick, (more)
- 1958
Audie Murphy heads the cast of the better-than-usual oater Ride a Crooked Trail. It all begins when gunslinger Joe Maybe (Murphy) is mistaken for a famed U.S. marshal. This wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that Joe has already drawn up plans to rob the town's bank with his cohort Sam Teeler (Henry Silva). The dilemma deepens when Joe falls in love with Teeler's ex-girlfriend, Tessa Milotte (Gia Scala), and begins entertaining notions of reforming. A youthful Walter Matthau steals the show as boozy, braggadocio Judge Kyle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Audie Murphy, Gia Scala, (more)
- 1958
Feeling sorry for Albert Sanders (Fred Sherman), who has lost his entire family in a terrible accident, Perry agrees to defend the man pro-bono on a smuggling charge. The situation becomes a bit more serious when Sanders is accused of murdering cabdriver Kim Lane (Betty Utey). In order to clear his client, Mason and Paul Drake must expose a vicious smuggling ring operating from a tawdry dance hall. This episode is based on a 1958 novel by Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner. ~ 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
- Starring:
- Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, (more)
- 1957
Though Slaughter on Tenth Avenue's background music relies heavily on the Richard Rodgers composition of the same name, the film itself bears no relation to the ten-minute ballet for which Rodgers wrote the piece. Instead, this Albert Zugsmith-produced crime meller attempts to expose waterfront union racketeering. In trying to solves a murder on the docks, deputy DA Richard Egan runs up against the stevedores' code of silence. It also dawns on Egan that his own boss (Sam Levene) shows little interest in pursuing justice in this instance. The DA is finally able to mount a case, but at the crucial courtroom moment he may have to pull out due to lack of evidence--a lack engineered by crooked boss Walter Matthau, who has several local politicians in his pocket. A last-minute dockside battle enables Egan to bring the racketeers to justice. Slaughter on Tenth Avenue was based on New York district attorney William J. Keating's memoirs The Man Who Rocked the Boat. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Egan, Jan Sterling, (more)
- 1957
Halloran (Harold Stone), an obnoxious newspaper reporter known for his elaborate practical jokes, chooses an old barfly named Johnny (Russell Collins) as his next victim. To this end, Halloran prints up a dummy newspaper bearing the headline "World to End Tonight at 11:45 p.m." Thoroughly convinced of his imminent doom, the pathetic Johnny decides to spend his last moments fulfilling several long-suppressed desires -- with disastrous and ultimately fatal consequences. One of the street urchins appearing in the climactic department-store sequence is a young Harry Shearer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1957
Frank Sinatra stars as legendary nightclub comic Joe E. Lewis in this dramatic screen biography. In the 1920s, Lewis was a popular singer in Chicago who could fill any nightclub he chose to play. This doesn't go unnoticed by the mobsters who control many of the city's venues; when they ask Lewis to leave his steady gig and come work for them, he politely but firmly refuses. This does not make Al Capone and his men happy, and they respond by brutally attacking Lewis, cutting his throat and damaging his vocal cords so severely that he can never sing again. Lewis sinks into a deep depression and develops a highly caustic sense of humor, but his friend Austin Mack (Eddie Albert) suggests that he could put his sharp wit to work as a comedian. With little to lose, Lewis tries his hand at comedy, and with the encouragement of famous entertainer Sophie Tucker, Lewis once again rises to stardom as his salty material makes him the talk of late-night spots and burlesque houses everywhere. Along the way, he becomes involved with chorus girl Martha Stewart (Mitzi Gaynor) and wealthy socialite Letty Page (Jeanne Crain); while he marries Martha, he's not able to get Letty out of his thoughts for long. Lewis' romantic conflicts and the pressures of success fan the flames of his already potent taste for alcohol, and soon Lewis becomes a bitter drunk whose addiction to the bottle threatens to send his career (and his life) back into the gutter. The classic Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen number "All the Way" was introduced in The Joker Is Wild, and it won a 1957 Academy Award for Best Song; the film was later re-released as All the Way. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Frank Sinatra, Mitzi Gaynor, (more)
- 1957
After her first two husbands die under mysterious circumstances, Mrs. Marguerite Gillespie (Gladys Cooper) prepares to marry for a third time. Suspecting that Mrs. Gillespie has knocked off her previous spouses for their insurance money, detective Joe Rogers (Steve Forrest) inaugurates an undercover investigation. Despite all the evidence, Joe ultimately cannot bring himself to believe that Mrs. Gillespie is a murderer -- but, of course, this is Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and there has to be a murderer somewhere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
