Barbara Rush Movies

Yes, Paul Newman is a blue-eyed Indian in Hombre, but this apparent ethnic error is carefully justified in the body of the story. Newman plays a white man who was raised by the Apaches, and ever since has straddled two worlds, feeling truly comfortable in neither. While riding a stagecoach, Newman is subject to the racial bias of banker Fredric March and his snooty wife Barbara Rush. In truth, March is an embezzler, and has no reason to feel superior to anyone. This fact comes out when the coach is held up by murderous bandit-chief Richard Boone. When the passengers fight back, Boone takes Rush as a hostage. Newman, who by rights should be supremely satisfied that his tormentors are themselves tormented, proves himself the bravest of the passengers, sacrificing his own life to save Rush and put an end to Boone's reign of terror. Hombre is based on a novel by suspense specialist Elmore Leonard. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the conclusion of a two-part story, Kimble (David Janssen) risks getting caught in an ever-rising flood to rush Marie Gerard (Vera Miles), the temporarily blinded wife of his perennial nemesis Lt. Gerard (Barry Morse), to a hospital. En route, he tries to help a young girl named Joanie (Judee Morton), only to run afoul of two teenage punks. Meanwhile, Marie finally figures out Kimble's true identity and plots to arrange his arrest in a desperate effort to save her marriage--assuming that she isn't swept up by the surging flood waters first. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In Volume 32 of a collection culled from the 1963-1965 science fiction anthology television series, a pair of murderous women enlist the aid of a blind man and his eccentric young charge to help them manipulate the space-time continuum in order to raise the dead. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

This filmization of Neil Simon's first Broadway hit was adapted for the screen by Norman Lear. Once we get past the illogical casting of middle-aged Frank Sinatra and twentysomething Tony Bill as brothers, we're home free. Sinatra, a swinger supreme, uses his New York apartment as a harem of sorts for his legion of lady friends. Bill, wishing to break loose from his protective parents (Lee J. Cobb and Molly Picon), moves in with older brother Sinatra, hoping to emulate his sibling in the sex department. Sinatra teaches Bill the tricks of the trade--to his everlasting regret, since Bill soon wins such prizes as Jill St. John and Barbara Rush away from Sinatra. The third act finds Sinatra behaving more like a parent than his parents, steering Bill on the straight and narrow and finally settling down with Rush. Also appearing in Come Blow Your Horn is singer Phyllis McGuire (an offscreen Sinatra vis-a-vis), Dan Blocker, and, in the uncredited role of a wino, Dean Martin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sexual misconduct in white-collar suburbia is the topic of this routine melodrama involving two neighboring couples. Architect Larry Coe (Kirk Douglas), unhappy with his wife Eve's (Barbara Rush) fixation on their bank balance, starts taking an interest in Maggie Gault (Kim Novak), whose husband has been losing interest in her. The two steal several illicit moments together, but this activity has not gone unnoticed. Good ol' neighbor Felix (Walter Matthau) figures that Eve might be feeling a little neglected, so he decides to move into the picture. Richard Quine's direction is an asset to an otherwise clichéd tale. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The mysterious Indian jungle provides the setting for this adventure where a one-legged hunter pursues a terrifying tiger, a man-eater. On the hunt, the man encounters the cowardly fellow who caused him to lose his leg in a POW camp. Together they face the snarling, cornered jungle cat. Again, the fellow chickens out, resulting in the near-fatal mauling of the hunter. Later, the coward's wife helps the battered hunter recuperate. As she ministers to him, the hunter can't help but fall in love with her. He begins to drink heavily. He stops when he learns that the coward's son has wandered off into the dangerous jungle. Not wanting the lad to be tiger chow, the hunter sets off to kill the beast. He succeeds. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A handful of suburban couples discover that emotional turmoil lurks behind the placid exterior of the planned community of Sunrise Hills in this drama based on the novel by John McPartland. David and Jean Martin (Jeffrey Hunter and Patricia Owens) find their relationship starting to crumble after Jean is raped by Troy Boone (Cameron Mitchell), an alcoholic war veteran who has been unable to readjust to civilian life. Meanwhile, Troy's wife, Leola (Joanne Woodward), wants to start a family, but Troy isn't interested in having children. Jerry Flagg (Tony Randall) is a used car salesman who turns to drink to deal with the disappointments of his career and his life, which is more than his wife, Isabelle (Sheree North), bargained for in their relationship. And Herman Kreitzer (Pat Hingle) is the good-hearted proprietor of a hardware store who wants to help his Japanese-American assistant Iko (Aki Aleong) find a new home. Though Herman's wife, Betty (Barbara Rush), discourages him because of the reaction that she foresees from the rest of the community, she eventually sides with him and joins him in the effort to help Iko assimilate. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Tony Dumont (Rory Calhoun) is none too trustworthy at the beginning of Flight to Hong Kong. A dealer in contraband goods, Dumont is the bane of his girlfriend Jean Blake's (Dolores Donlon) existence. She wants him to go straight, but the other woman in his life, novelist Pamela Vincent (Barbara Rush), wants him to remain a crook--the better to provide material for a book she's writing. Dumont has a belated change of heart when he steps on the toes of the Mob once too often. Flight to Hong Kong also includes brief stopovers in San Francisco, Honolulu, Tangiers and Macao. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on an article in the New Yorker, Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life stars James Mason (who also produced the film) as elementary school teacher Ed Avery, a thoughtful, gentle man, with a loving wife, Lou (Barbara Rush), and a young son, Richie (Christopher Olsen), who loves him. Avery is successful and well liked in his community, but he is over-extended in his pursuit of the American dream -- he secretly works a second job to earn extra money, and doesn't dare break stride, despite the increasingly painful physical spasms that he suffers. He collapses one day, and the doctors inform him that he suffers from an arterial disease that will probably give him less than a year to live. But they also offer him one hope, with treatment using cortisone, which was then a new, not-fully-tested drug. Avery makes a seemingly full recovery and returns to work, but it soon becomes clear that he's not the same -- he has a new, cavalier attitude toward money, and then Lou becomes alarmed over his expressions of rage over seemingly insignificant annoyances. He starts expressing himself in grand, exalted terms, first to Lou and then to his colleagues at school, including his closest friend, Wally Gibbs (Walter Matthau). And matters only get worse when Wally determines that it is the cortisone -- which Ed has been taking in far greater doses than prescribed -- that is making him act this way. And his obsession w ith forcing Richie to live up to his full potential soon turns into a much darker fixation. Director Ray later offered regret over having used cortisone by name, as it was still not standard treatment and its benefits and drawbacks weren't known. But this did lend the movie a verisimilitude that was essential for what appeal it did hold for audiences. (Seven years later, screenwriter William Read Woodfield would incorporate Bigger Than Life's cortisone plot device into his script for the Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea episode \"Mutiny\". Bigger Than Life's more immediate problem at the time lay in its broader plot -- with a story that brought drug addiction and fact-based psychological unhingement into a suburban American setting, it was a daring subject for its time, for which audiences were unprepared in 1956. It was also one of a group of offbeat pictures that Mason produced as well as starred in. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Barbara Rush is at her most exotically beautiful in the lush costumer Kiss of Fire. Based on Jonreed Lauritzen's novel The Rose and the Flame, the film stars Ms. Rush as Lucia, princess of Spain, who while residing in New Mexico discovers that the king is dying and that she must return home immediately to save her throne from pretenders. Escorting Lucia westward to the Pacific Ocean is former Spanish nobleman El Tigre (Jack Palance). In spite of themselves, the Princess and El Tigre fall in love. But before they can act upon their impulses, hero and heroine must face various and sundry dangers in the wild Southwest. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This second film version of Lloyd C. Douglas' spiritual novel Magnificent Obsession is in its own way as successful as the first (filmed in 1935) in glossing over the plot holes and logic gaps in the original novel. Rock Hudson plays Bob Merrick, a reckless playboy who is indirectly responsible for the death of a kindly and much-beloved doctor. The dead man's wife, Helen Phillips (Jane Wyman), refuses to accept Bob's apologies. When Helen is accidentally blinded, Bob decides to "do right" by her anonymously, illustrating author Douglas' curious edict that the best sort of good deed is the one for which you're not rewarded. In record time, Bob becomes a brilliant physician, and it is he who performs the sight-restoring surgery on Helen. Rather than fade into the woodwork unheralded, Bob is at last forgiven by Helen, who has fallen in love with him during her sightless months without even knowing it. Luxuriously produced by Ross Hunter and directed con brio by Douglas Sirk, Magnificent Obsession was one of the most successful of Universal's big-budget "weepers" of the 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It Came From Outer Space is one of a handful of science fiction films from the 1950s that plays as well today as it did on its original release, this despite the fact that its original 3-D elements seem to be lost. It was also the first science fiction effort of director Jack Arnold, and one of three excellent 3-D features that he made (the others were Creature From the Black Lagoon and Revenge of the Creature) during that format's short-lived history. It was also, along with The Incredible Shrinking Man, one of the two most sophisticated films he ever made in that genre. Additionally, it was Arnold's first opportunity to use the desert setting that seemed to inspire him in some of his best subsequent movies. Based on a story by Ray Bradbury, the movie starts off in a gentle, lyrical mode, almost reminiscent of Our Town, as the narrator introduces the tiny Arizona town where the action will take place. Writer John Putnam (Richard Carlson), a new arrival to the town and an amateur astronomer, is looking at the skies with his fiancée, schoolteacher Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush), when they see what looks like a huge meteor crash into the desert. Putnam and Ellen go to the site of the crash and find a huge crater. When he goes down inside, Putnam sees what is very obviously some kind of vehicle or device embedded in the ground, but before he can show it to anyone, a rock slide buries what he saw. He reports that a spacecraft of some kind is buried there and is duly ridiculed by the local press and some of his own colleagues in the astronomical community, and even Ellen has her doubts. The local sheriff, Matt Warren (Charles Drake), is downright hostile because he believes that Putnam is not only an interloper, but has also taken Ellen away from him. Putnam is at a loss as to what to do, and doing something -- or, perhaps, not doing anything -- becomes a critical matter when various townspeople start to disappear, including Ellen, to be replaced by alien "duplicates." A small but significant part of this action is told from the standpoint of the aliens, who are only glimpsed in brief flashes as they move through the desert and the underground caves where they are hiding. Putnam ultimately comes to understand that the aliens are actually benign and only need time to repair their ship and leave; but by then, the sheriff and the rest of the town have started taking his original warning seriously and their intervention threatens the lives of everyone. Reason and a peaceful approach prevail, but only just barely, and the space travelers are allowed to go on their way -- in return, they restore the real townspeople. The movie ends on a hopeful note as Putnam predicts that someday, when we're ready here on Earth, the visitors will be back to make formal, peaceful introductions. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In keeping with the postwar trend of on-location shooting, Quebec was actually lensed in Canada, rather than on some Hollywood back lot or other. Set in 1837, the film recounts a skirmish between French and English factions over whether or not Quebec would remain a province, or split off into its own country. Heading the separatist movement is Lafleur (Corinne Calvet). John Barrymore Jr. co-stars as Mark Douglas, a loyal Canadian who discovers that Lafleur is his long-lost mother. Quebec winds up with a well-staged military assault on Lafleur's fortress. Billed eighth in the cast is former silent-screen star Patsy Ruth Miller, making her first screen appearance since 1931. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide