Dyan Cannon Movies
With her luxurious, sun-streaked, long mane of curly blond hair, voluptuous and beautiful Dyan Cannon is an actress who is hard to miss. She has been in films and occasionally on television since making her debut opposite Art Carney in The Ding-a-Ling Girl, a presentation on the television series Playhouse 90. Born Samille Diane Friesen in Tacoma, WA, Cannon got her start as a showroom model in L.A. following two years of study in anthropology at the University of Washington. Thanks to the help of writer/producer Jerry Wald, who came up with her stage name (which was originally Diane Cannon), she landed a contract at MGM and made her feature film debut playing Wiggles, a troubled high school student in This Rebel Breed (1960). She then appeared in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960). After a couple appearances on Broadway and some work on television, Cannon met and fell in love with Cary Grant, who was 38 years her senior. While involved with him, she placed her acting career on hold. The two married in 1965 and she bore him a daughter. Three years later, Grant and Cannon went through a bitter public divorce. In 1969, Cannon returned to films in the then-controversial sex comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and won the Best Supporting Actress award from the New York Film Critics. Her role also won her an Oscar nomination. The 1970s were her most active period as an actress and Cannon appeared frequently in films. In 1978, she earned another Best Supporting Actress nomination for playing a conniving, adulterous wife in Heaven Can Wait. By the early '80s, Cannon sharply curtailed her feature-film career, but did appear in a few television movies and miniseries. In 1976, Cannon wrote, produced, directed, and even helped edit a 42-minute film sponsored by the American Film Institute. Titled Number One, Cannon designed it to teach children about sexuality and their bodies. It earned an Oscar nomination for best live-action short. Cannon has since directed two more films, including The End of Innocence, which is based on her autobiography. Cannon returned to acting on a limited basis in the 1990s and continued to appear on television in such outings as Arnold Schwarzenegger's Christmas in Connecticut (1992) and features such as Out to Sea (1997). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide- 1976
This 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live is hosted by Dyan Cannon and features musical guest Leon Russell. ~ Skyler Miller, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dyan Cannon, Leon Russell, (more)
Long before the Warren Beatty/Annette Bening vehicle Bugsy (92), Harvey Keitel portrayed gangster Bugsy Siegel and Dyan Cannon costarred as Siegel's mistress Virginia Hill in the made-for-TV The Virginia Hill Story. Told in flashback, the film traces Virginia's life from the time she takes up with Bugsy; we see Siegel's takeover of the Las Vegas gaming tables and his eventual death at the hands of his mob rivals. The flashback is bookended by Virginia's 1951 testimony before the Kefauver Committee. The film's attention to period detail does not extend to its "revisionist" dialogue, but it's gratifying to see the often ill-used Dyan Cannon in a worthwhile role. Harvey Keitel is alternately sinister and sensual as Siegel, while Herbert Anderson (the immortal Henry Mitchell from the old Dennis the Menace series) is the living image of Estes Kefauver. A note worth noting: The Virginia Hill Story premiered the same November week in 1974 as the network debut of The Godfather (1972). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1975
- R
In this melodrama a married woman cannot decide between her lover and her husband. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
This detective-themed action-adventure film spoofs The Big Sleep, which was based on the novel by Raymond Chandler. Burt Reynolds plays McCoy, a hard-nosed private detective. The story has more tangles than a bowl of spaghetti, but it begins when McCoy is called to the house of Hume (Ron Weyand), an eccentric diamond dealer, and is given the task of recovering some stolen gems. McCoy is beaten by a gang of thugs to warn him off the job, and this lets him know that he's onto something really big. By the end of the film, McCoy will have hooked up with a gorgeous blonde (Dyan Cannon), driven a tank through a warehouse wall, and delivered numerous crooks to the police. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burt Reynolds, Dyan Cannon, (more)
This suspense drama features an all-star cast, including Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, James Mason, Ian McShane, and Raquel Welch. An interesting production fact about the film: its screenplay was written by actor Anthony Perkins and lyricist/songwriter Stephen Sondheim. Their careers depend on keeping in the good graces of Clinton (James Coburn), a powerful movie producer. That is why a group of actors, director, agents and other movie professionals (who hate each other) accept an invitation to spend a week on the producer's yacht on the anniversary of his wife's untimely death in a hit-and-run car accident. Once on board, Clinton requires them to play a vicious game which involves each person's revealing a damaging secret about themselves or someone else in the party. When one of the secrets to be revealed involves the hit-and-run murder of his wife, the game turns fatal. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, (more)
This breathlessly paced high-tech thriller stars Sean Connery as Anderson, a career criminal who's just been released from his latest prison term. Seeking a quick financial turnover, Anderson uses mob funding to finance an ambitious robbery. With a gang of expert thieves, Anderson sets about to rob every wealthy tenant of a fancy East Side apartment building. What he doesn't know is that every move he makes is being monitored and taped by several law-enforcement agencies, who hope that Anderson will lead them to the Mob kingpins. Though the film may look like a "comment" on the Watergate break-in, The Anderson Tapes actually preceded that third-rate burglary by nearly two years. The Anderson Tapes boasts an impressive supporting cast, many of whom play wildly against type, including Alan King as an aging and infirm Mafia don. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, (more)
- 1971
- R
Based on the novel The Love Machine, by Jacqueline Susann, this movie concerns the machinations, in the boardroom and in the bedroom, of a group of people--from the chairman of the board down--who are involved in network television. Through his own guile and the sponsorship of his mistress (Dyan Cannon), the wife of the chairman of the board, a lowly television newsman (John Phillip Law) becomes the head of the network in a very short time. He leaves behind very few friends on his climb to the top, however, and he will need some. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Phillip Law, Dyan Cannon, (more)
- 1971
- R
Based upon the novel by Lois Gould and adapted (under the pseudonym Esther Dale) by Elaine May, Such Good Friends focuses on Julie Messinger (played by Dyan Cannon), a woman with intense, often wild emotions that are held in check beneath a rather conventional façade. After her chauvinistic and self-centered husband Richard checks into the hospital for a simple mole removal that goes seriously wrong, Julie discovers that he has been titanically unfaithful to her. This is the straw that breaks the camel's back, and Julie decides it is time for her to break out of her shell, no matter what the consequences. She begins to exhibit a sexual interest in other men (sometimes indiscriminately, as when she seduces her family doctor, played by James Coco), and speaks her mind to others, including her egocentric mother (Nina Foch) and her hypocritical best friend (ennifer O'Neill). At the end, Julie wanders into Central Park and, presumably, a new life. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
- 1971
- PG
This French-made feature was based on a 1957 Hollywood "B" effort The Burglar. Both films were inspired by the same David Goodis novel. Gallic crime-flick icon Jean Paul Belmondo play a slick jewel thief who steals a valuable emerald. He is stalked by cop Omar Sharif, who when he catches up to Belmondo reveals himself to be a fellow crook, interested only in a piece of the action. Diane Cannon plays the "gun moll" role created by Jayne Mansfield in the 1957 film. Burglars ends with a set-to in a Greek grain elevator, where Sharif is smothered in a cascade of wheat--a climax later borrowed for the American crime thriller Witness (82). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Paul Belmondo, Omar Sharif, (more)
- 1970
- R
Among a cliquish set of country club doctors and surgeons, it seems that sleeping around is the norm. Early in the film, however, one husband murders his promiscuous wife (Dyan Cannon) while she is in bed with a rather unlikely adulterer. The various alliances and rivalries in this close-knit community are further stressed as the murderous husband uses his knowledge of the community for a wide-ranging blackmail scheme. While the police investigate, the doctors who do open-heart surgery on their patients experience heart-rending situations themselves. The film has a large and distinguished cast of actors, including Richard Crenna, Dyan Cannon, Caroll O'Conner, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Hackman, John Colicos, Diana Sands and Janice Rule. The story is based on Doctors' Wives by Frank G. Slaughter. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dyan Cannon, Richard Crenna, (more)
"Consider the possibilities," read the ads for Paul Mazursky's 1969 satirical comedy about what happens when the sexual revolution hits affluent bourgeois life. After a weekend of "beautiful" emotional honesty at an Esalen-type retreat, married wannabe hipsters Bob (Robert Culp) and Carol (Natalie Wood) return to their well-heeled Los Angeles life determined to apply the principles of free love and complete openness to their marriage. To the respective curiosity and repulsion of their married best friends, Ted (Elliott Gould) and Alice (Dyan Cannon), Bob and Carol have affairs that they happily reveal to everyone. Inspired by all that openness during the quartet's trip to Vegas, Ted admits an affair of his own, provoking the outraged Alice to demand that this new ethos be taken to its obvious conclusion: a mate-sharing foursome. Once they're bedded down and ready to go, however, they start to have second thoughts. Without sacrificing authenticity for comedy, first-time director Mazursky and co-writer/producer Larry Tucker delve into the confusion of the Eisenhower generation when faced with the temptations of the counterculture. Too old to be hippies and too young to be fogies, the would-be California swingers sincerely attempt to try on the lifestyle, but it never looks quite right. A then-controversial example of the New Permissiveness both onscreen and off, Bob & Carol debuted at the New York Film Festival to great praise, particularly for Gould and Cannon. Whether they wanted to laugh at their elders' faux looseness or see what their peers might be doing, audiences turned Bob & Carol into a substantial hit, and its observations about marriage and sex remain humorously sharp even if the encounter group jargon is past its vogue. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, (more)
- 1962
This episode is a showcase for stalwart Untouchables supporting player Paul Picerni, here seen in his tradtional role as Federal agent Lee Hobson. After Hobson kills crooked attorney Wallace Lawton (Allyn Joslyn) in self-defense, Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) surprises him by taking credit for the killing. No, Stack isn't a glory-grabber: He merely wants to protect Hobson from retaliation at the hands of the "nameless, faceless" Syndicate boss who'd been in cahoots with the late Mr. Lawton. Unfortunately, the anonymous "silent partner" manages to have Hobson kidnapped, and for a while it looks like the intrepid agent is slated for that dreaded Last Ride. Key players in this melodrama include stars-to-be Burt Convy as an ill-fated nightclub comedian and Dyan Cannon as the comic's songstress girlfriend. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1960
This effective gangster film on the notorious New York mobster Jack "Legs" Diamond is interspersed with moments of comic relief and was released just a few months after The Purple Gang shot their way across the silver screens in the U.S. Ironically, that gang and Diamond met their ends in the same year, 1931, and their rise was largely due to Prohibition. "Legsie" (Ray Danton) gets his name because he was a dancer, but he gets his reputation because he double-crosses anyone. He is a psychopath who works his way up the body count to the top of his own network of rackets. Along the way he meets and marries his wife Alice Schiffer (Karen Steele) and survives three attempts on his life that send him to the hospital each time. His reputation for "invulnerability," the inability of the police to touch him, gangsters who kill each other off, the racketeering with union bosses, and the hijacking of liquor shipments are all elements found in this film and The Purple Gang as well. Watch for a young Dyan Cannon in a bit part as Dixie, back when her first name was spelled like everyone else spells Diane. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ray Danton, Karen Steele, (more)
- 1960
Race hatred and drug trafficking threaten to tear apart a California high school in this teen drama. Frank White (Mark Damon) and Don Walters (Doug Hume) are a pair of undercover police officers who are sent to a high school dominated by three gangs. Don, who is white, tries to infiltrate the Anglo gang the Royals, led by Buck (Richard Rust), while Frank, who is of Hispanic and African-American heritage, is to make his way into the school's black gang, the Ebonys, while also keeping his eye on a Mexican-American club, the Caballeros. Frank soon finds he's not welcomed by the Black or Mexican gangs, and when he strikes up a friendship with Lola (Rita Moreno), a pretty Mexican-American girl, he gains a fierce enemy in her brother Manuel (Richard Laurier), one of the leaders of the Caballeros. Meanwhile, Buck and the Royals have started dealing dope as a way to make money, and he's pressuring Manuel and his gang to do the same, something Manuel fiercely opposes. Manuel is also not happy about rumors that Lola is secretly dating one of the Royals, while the Ebonys have it in for Buck when they find out the secret hidden by his sexy girlfriend, Wiggles (Dyan Cannon, then still spelling her first name "Diane"). This Rebel Breed was first released in 1960; five years later, producer William Rowland added some incongruous inserts filled with nudity and re-released the film to grindhouses and drive-ins under the titles Black Rebels, Lola's Mistake, and Three Shades of Love. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rita Moreno, Mark Damon, (more)
- 1958
Superstar-to-be Charles Bronson is atypically cast as Chris Sorenson, a rough-hewn by shy rancher who is hopelessly in love with aristocratic Spanish ranch owner Maria deCastro (Grace Raynor). For a nominal fee, Paladin (Richard Boone) attempts to help Chris win Maria's love by teaching him how to talk and behave like a proper gentleman. The fly in the ointment is Maria's crooked foreman Brewer (Edmund Johnson), who frames Chris on a cattle-rustling charge. Watch for a young Dyan Cannon in a bit role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
