Valerie Allen Movies

Mrs. Marrable (Geraldine Page) is a bereaved widow who takes to hiring housekeepers then kills them for their money in this shadowy macabre drama. When Miss Tinsley (Mildred Dunnick) disappears, her former employer Alice (Ruth Gordon) investigates. Posing as a maid, she gains employment with the murderous Mrs. Marrable. Her nephew Mike (Robert Fuller) helps Alice and manages to fall in love with the girl next door (Rosemary Forsythe). When Alice exposes the murderess, she risks her life, and her disappearance leads to the title of the film. Look for Second City alumnus Peter Bonerz in a minor role. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Publicly humiliated by town tough Al Mooney (Ron Foster), young Johnny Chapman (Guy Stockwell) asks his friend Joe Cartwright to teach him how to use a gun. Joe agrees, but eventually regrets this decision when Johnny becomes a cold-blooded bounty hunter. Making matters worse, Johnny has been hired to gun down his former girlfriend Olive (Valerie Allen)-and also Joe Cartwright. Written by Dan Ullman, "Invention of a Gunfighter" originally aired September 20, 1964, as the inaugural episode of Bonanza's sixth season. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this convoluted trifle written by the world's worst movie director, Ed Wood, a family of hillbillies find their lives aboard a foundered riverboat (where they have been living for over 30 years) disrupted by a fugitive carnival worker who wants to hide out from the law. While there, she falls in love with the son, but unfortunately, she is really in love with a man who pretends to be a minister. The son, also loves another--a moonshiner's daughter. Unfortunately, the riverboat people and the 'shiners have been feuding for years. Mayhem ensues, but in the end, all the couples are with their rightful loves and happiness ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The Five Pennies is the life story of influential jazz cornetist Red Nichols, played here by a remarkably straight-faced Danny Kaye. The somewhat romanticized screenplay chronicles Nichols' rise from obscurity, annotates the many future bandleaders who would play with Nichols' "Five Pennies," and details his self-destructive streak and (seeming) inability to conform to changing musical tastes. Weaving in and out of the main story is a sentimental subplot concerning Nichols' physically impaired daughter Dorothy, played by Susan Gordon as a child and by Tuesday Weld (in her movie debut) as a young woman. Nichols's long-suffering wife is portrayed by Barbara Bel Geddes. The storyline occasionally lapses into sappiness and the ending is almost impossibly lachrymose, but the musical highlights save the day. Especially memorable is Danny Kaye's duet with Louis Armstrong. Among the real-life musicians who grace the supporting cast of The Five Pennies are Bob Crosby, Ray Anthony, Shelly Manne, and, as Jimmy Dorsey, Bobby Troup. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The fabulously successful Pillow Talk was essentially Shop Around the Corner for the 1950s. Playboy composer Rock Hudson and interior-decorator Doris Day are obliged to share a telephone party line. Naturally, their calls overlap at the least opportune times, and just as naturally, this leads to Hudson and Day despising each other without ever having met in person. In a cute but convenient coincidence, Doris' boy friend is Tony Randall, who also happens to be Hudson's best pal. Thus Hudson gets a glimpse at Day, and it's love at first sight. To avoid revealing that he's her telephone rival, Hudson poses as a wealthy Texan and turns the charm on Day. But when he starts pitching woo, Day instantly recognizes all the "make-out" lines Hudson has used on the phone with his other conquests. She gets even by decorating Hudson's apartment in a hideous manner. But Hudson loves her all the same; he "kidnaps" her, carrying her through the streets in her nightgown in full view of everyone, including a laughing cop who refuses to intervene. He praises her horrifying interior decoration job effusively, and at this point Day can't help but give in to his marriage proposal. A bit too arch and cute for modern tastes at times, Pillow Talk is still one of the best of the frothy Doris Day-Rock Hudson vehicles; it made a fortune at the box office and garnered five Oscar nominations. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Anthony Quinn and Shirley Booth play a married couple who cling and claw like cats in a bathtub in this sudsy melodrama set in steamy New Orleans. Booth does most of the clinging as a neglected wife struggling to reassemble her battered marriage to Quinn who plays a faithless husband in love with tender young Valerie Allen, something Booth tries her best to ignore. Unfortunately, despite her efforts, her children are not spared the spousal turmoil. Matters are not helped when Earl Holliman, the eldest son, decides to leave his father's employment business and start his own. The youngest son Clint Kimbrough finds it all terribly upsetting. Meanwhile his sister Shirley MacLaine becomes deeply depressed after her father threatens her boyfriend in an effort to get him to marry her. Now MacLaine is left with no one. The fur really begins to fly when Quinn, tired of the tumult, decides to chuck the whole family and move to Florida with Allen. Tragedy ensues for the wicked duo. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In the third episode of Walt Disney's ten-part miniseries Elfego Baca, former gunslinger Baca (Robert Loggia) is now studying law under Santa Fe attorney J. Henry Newman (James Dunn). During this period, Elfego butts up against a crooked judge named Hargreaves (Carl Benton Reid), who throws our hero in jail on a trumped up charge. Discovering that Hargreaves intends to cheat local rancher Don Esteban Miranda (Gilbert Roland) out of his land, Elfego plans a daring escape. "Lawman or Gunman" originally aired on the Walt Disney Presents anthology series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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

This comedy is a remake of 1941's The Lady Eve, and tells the story of the vegetarian son of a prominent meat packer who is sailing back from an African safari when he meets and falls in love with a con-artist's lovely daughter. Posing as a military officer, the card-sharp and his boys have come to fleece a few wealthy passengers at poker. The daughter finds the milque-toast son irresistible and much to her father's dismay, they fall in love. Unfortunately their happiness is nearly destroyed when someone tells him the truth about her father. Fortunately, that is not the end of their affair. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide