Elizabeth Allen Movies
Trim, ladylike American film and theatre actress Elizabeth Allen has seldom been as appropriately cast as she was in John Ford's Donovan's Reef. Elizabeth played the Boston-bred daughter of rapscallion Jack Warden; her impending visit prompts Warden and his drinking buddies John Wayne and Lee Marvin to clean up their act double-quick. In a cinematic world where the "bad girls" get all the good roles, Elizabeth has not always been well-served. It was fascinating, however, to watch her portray an enemy-agent seductress on a 1966 episode of TV's The Man From UNCLE. In 1965, Elizabeth Allen starred in Richard Rodgers' Broadway musical Do I Hear a Waltz?, which closed in about two months, but which enabled Elizabeth to demonstrate her lovely singing voice on the well-circulated Original Cast Album. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1979
The made-for-TV No Other Love stars Julie Kavner as a marginally retarded young adult. Sent to live in a hostel for the mentally challenged, Julie falls in love with similarly afflicted Richard Thomas Jr. Despite the misgivings of their families and the prejudices of outside world, Kavner and Thomas vow to marry. Cast as one of the hostel's directors is Norman Alden, who'd played a retarded man himself in the 1965 theatrical feature Andy. No Other Love was originally telecast March 24, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1974
Kojak (Telly Savalas) and his colleagues are perplexed by a mad bomber who has been striking various targets on Manhattan island. Not only are clues virtually nonexistent, but the bomber doesn't seem to be following any sort of pattern. However, the audience knows something Kojak doesn't: the perpetrator is targeting people whom he regards as personal enemies because they have done harm to his friends. A pre-stardom Dabney Coleman appears in a significant supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1972
- R
Blake Edwards directed this murder mystery set against the backdrop of a busy metropolitan hospital. Dr. Peter Carey (James Coburn) is a pathologist who has signed on to work with Dr. J.D. Randall (Dan O'Herlihy) at a prominent hospital in Boston. When Randall's daughter Karen (Melissa Torme-March) dies after a botched abortion, another member of the hospital staff, David Tao (James Hong), is charged with her murder. Carey is convinced that Tao is innocent and sets out to prove his point. He also finds time for romance with beautiful Bostonian Georgia Hightower (Jennifer O'Neill). The Carey Treatment features Pat Hingle as police detective Peterson; Michael Crichton contributed to the screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Coburn, Jennifer O'Neill, (more)
Jerry Paris's Star Spangled Girl (1971), based on Neil Simon's play (a notorious Broadway flop), never made much of an impression in theaters, which is understandable with a cheap, overlit television look to most of it and Davy Jones singing the song "Girl" over the main titles (which got a lot more visibility from its use in the Brady Bunch episode in which Marsha has to get the singer to appear at her school), it looked too much like a small-screen production blown up; it was dated from the first frame of its opening credits. Tony Roberts and Todd Susman play Andy Hobart and Norman Cornell, a pair of self-styled political radicals living in California, beating the system by stealing as much as they can from neighborhood shops and conning the rest out of anyone around, all for the greater goal of keeping their underground newspaper alive and kicking. Their lifestyle is a cross between the ideas in Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book and Max Bialystock's dalliances in The Producers. Into their midst moves a transplant from rural Florida, Amy Cooper (Sandy Duncan) (who was called Sophie Rauschmeyer in the play), a perky aspiring Olympic swimmer and old-fashioned, patriotic Southern girl, and as corn-fed a hick as you found in movies in 1971 without a cynical bone in her body. Norman, a hopelessly neurotic and sexually dysfunctional writer, falls in love with her almost instantly upon encountering her; not, mind you, based on her personality or even her looks, but her smell. Andy is, at first, oblivious to her charms and content to maintain his relationship with their libidinous landlady (Elizabeth Allen, totally wasted here), paying their rent with all-night barhopping and trysts involving skydiving. At some point, however, Amy decides she has to have Andy (based on his smell...), and he feels the same way. Andy and Norman end up -- Odd Couple-style -- in conflict over their differing approaches to life; the Odd Couple allusions are further amplified by Roberts' remarkable resemblance to Walter Matthau in his manner and delivery of dialogue. The story is resolved as unconvincingly as it's played. It's also a sign of just how unfunny the play was in that the funniest moment in the movie is new to the screenplay and comes just a minute after the opening credits with a gag referring to a certain John Schlesinger movie from 1969. It's not much of a gag, but it's funnier than anything in the main body of the movie, which otherwise plays like a terminally extended version of a Love American Style episode. The original Broadway production, incidentally, starred Richard Benjamin, Anthony Perkins, and Connie Stevens. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- 1966
Under the alias "Russell Jordan", Kimble (David Janssen) uses his medical skills to save the life of former mob boss Arthur Brame (James Daly). Eternally grateful, Brame plans to return the failure by killing Kimble's relentless pursuer Lt. Gerard (Barry Morse). The pulse-pounding climax takes place at Brame's mountain farm, where Kimble once again finds himself in the ironic position of keeping his worst enemy from meeting a horrible demise. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1966
With the help of his accomplice Hammond (Mark Richman), Captain Jennerson (Ralph Bellamy) has deliberately sunk his freighter in order to collect $40,000 in insurance. What Jennerson doesn't know is that Hammond is having an affair with his wife Gloria (Elizabeth Allen), who plans to dump the captain once the check arrives. He is also unaware that his scuttled freighter contained a sealed shipment of deadly chlorine, which will wreak havoc upon the coastline of Hawaii should the seals be shattered in an approaching tidal wave! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
John Ford's last western film, Cheyenne Autumn was allegedly produced to compensate for the hundreds of Native Americans who had bitten the dust in Ford's earlier films (that was the director's story, anyway). Set in 1887, the film recounts the defiant migration of 300 Cheyennes from their reservation in Oklahoma territory to their original home in Wyoming. They have done this at the behest of chiefs Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland), peaceful souls who have been driven to desperate measures because the US government has ignored their pleas for food and shelter. Since the Cheyennes' trek is in defiance of their treaty, Captain Thomas Archer (Richard Widmark), who agrees with the Indians in principle, reluctantly leads his troops in pursuit of the tribe. While there was never any intention to shed blood, the white press finds it politically expedient to distort the Cheyennes' action into a declaration of war. Thanks to the cruelties of such chauvinistic whites as Captain Oscar Wessels (Karl Malden), the Cheyennes are forced to defend themselves--and whenever Indians take arms against whites in the 1880s, it's usually misrepresented as a massacre. Only the intervention of US secretary of the interior Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson) prevents the hostilities from erupting into wholesale bloodshed. Based on a novel by Mari Sandoz, Cheyenne Autumn is a cinematic elegy--not only for the beleaguered Cheyennes, but for John Ford's fifty years in pictures. It is weakest when arbitrarily throwing in a wearisome romance between Richard Widmark and pacifistic schoolmarm Carroll Baker, who out of sympathy for the Indians has joined them in their 1500-mile westward journey. When the Warner Bros. people decided that the film ran too long, they chopped out the wholly unnecessary but very funny episode involving a poker-obsessed Wyatt Earp (James Stewart). Contrary to popular belief, this episode was included in the earliest non-roadshow prints of Cheyenne Autumn; the scene was excised only when the film went into its second and third runs in 1966 (it has since been restored). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, (more)
- 1964
Travelling under the name "Stu Manning", Kimble (David Janssen) takes a job at a Wyoming mountain lodge which is subsequently burglarized. Obliged to let the police take his fingerprints during the investigation of the crime, Kimble figures that he better get while the going is good, and boards the shuttle bus heading out of the mountains. When the bus is trapped by a landslide, Kimble finds himself entangled in the personal problems of the other passengers--a strange and motley crew indeed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1963
While working on a construction crew under the alias "Paul Beaumont", Kimble (David Janssen) befriends Jamie (Buck Taylor), a mentally challenged youth who has been hired for a menial job by crew boss Buck Harmon (Jack Klugman). Defending Jamie against the cruel taunts of his fellow workers, Kimble is also the only person to believe in the boy's innocence when he is accused of sexually assaulting Harmon's wife Ruth (Elizabeth Allen). Unfortunately, the beleaguered Harmon is pressured into hunting the runaway Jamie down like a dog--and possibly allowing the other workers to kill the boy when they catch up with him. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1963
This episode offers a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of American war correspondents, some of whom regarded themselves as "above" such inconveniences as following military protocol and remaining within established Allied perimeters. When reckless American photographer Eleanora Hunt (Elizabeth Allen) becomes stranded in "No Man's Land," Hanley (Rick Jason) is ordered to bring her back. His task is made even more difficult by the fact that Eleanor seems to regard WW2 merely as an opportunity for her own professional advancement, thus putting the lives of her would-be rescuers in serious jeopardy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
John Ford's last film to deal with World War II, Donovan's Reef is an alternately comical and sentimental look back on the fighting Navy men from that war, and how and where -- in Ford's eyes, and Frank Nugent and James Edward Grant's script -- they should have ended up. Michael "Guns" Donovan (John Wayne), Thomas "Boats" Gilhooley (Lee Marvin), and Dr. William Dedham (Jack Warden), a trio of navy veterans who fought on the Pacific island of Haleakalowa during the war, now live on the island. Donovan and Gilhooley, biding time and enjoying themselves, engage in rough-house hijinks among themselves, and are both part of the doctor's extended family, enjoying the good will of the islanders for whom they fought during the war. While Dedham is away on a call to a neighboring island, his grown daughter, Amelia (Elizabeth Allen), from his first marriage, whom he has never seen, announces that she is arriving from Boston to determine Dedham's fitness of character to inherit the majority shares in the family shipping business. Donovan contrives to present Dedham's three Polynesian children, whom the doctor had with the island's hereditary princess, as his own, and also squires Amelia around the island in her father's absence. In the process, the cold Bostonian woman discovers a whole world -- of passion, joy, heroism, and a life among men and women whose lives have been about something other than making money -- that she's never known. She also understands all of the good that her father has accomplished away from Boston, even though it entailed abandoning her. Sparks and even a few fists fly between Donovan and Amelia (and between Donovan and several other characters), in the usual Ford rough-house manner, before their eventual reconciliation and a romantic clinch at the end, in this sweet, sentimental comedy-drama. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Wayne, Lee Marvin, (more)
- 1963
The coroner rules that the wife of advertising executive Andrew Anderson (David Wayne) died in an accidental fall. But after receiving an anonymous letter, police detective Sgt. Cresse (William Conrad) becomes convinced that Anderson murdered his wife. Arranging an elaborate hoax, the relentless Cresse hopes to trap Anderson into breaking down and confessing -- but things don't quite work out that way. This episode was scripted by Richard Matheson, here billed pseudonymously as Logan Swanson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Wayne, William Conrad, (more)
Charlton Heston, portraying swaggering bigot land-baron Richard "King" Howland on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, does a spit take when his sister Sloan (Yvette Mimieux) announces that she plans to marry Paul Kahana, a 100% native Hawaiian (played by 100% native Philadelphian James Darren). But Howland, in the meantime, is having a torrid affair with Mei Chen (France Nuyen). During Sloan and Paul's engagement party, Mei Chen's brother comes at Howland with a knife, but Paul intercedes and is killed. Sloan, bitter at Howland for Paul's death, runs off to Honolulu, where she is taken in by Paul's brother Dean (George Chakiris) and his family. Meanwhile, Mei Chen gives birth to Howland's child but dies during childbirth. Howland, ever the rabid racist, refuses to accept the child and Sloan takes it upon herself to care for it. After an angry fight with Sloan and Dean, Howland is confronted with a personal dilemma -- whether to continue on with his closed-minded ways or to welcome his newborn son into his family. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlton Heston, Yvette Mimieux, (more)
- 1960
Bearing traces of the classic John Collier short story "Evening Primrose", Rod Serling's "The After Hours" was seen as the June 10, 1960, episode of Twilight Zone. While shopping in a big department store, Marsha White (Anne Francis) is inexorably drawn to the store's Ninth Floor, where a mysterious saleswoman (Elizabeth Allen) seems to recognize her. There's just one problem -- according to officious floorwalker Armbruster (James Milhollin), the store doesn't have a Ninth Floor! The makeup artistry of William Tuttle is utilized to the utmost in the episode's chilling (yet somehow touching) final scene. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anne Francis, Elizabeth Allen, (more)
This cinemadaptation of John O'Hara's From the Terrace stars Paul Newman as Alfred Eaton, an unhappily married financial adviser, while his real-life wife Joanne Woodward portrays Mary St. John, his promiscuous screen spouse. Mary's libertine behavior is a by-product of her husband's inability to express love and affection, a trait he has inherited from his cold-blooded father. Mark Robson directs and Myrna Loy heads up a large supporting cast as Newman's alcoholic mother. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, (more)
