Marshall Thompson Movies
A proud descendant of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, Marshall Thompson moved from his home town of Peoria, Illinois to the West Coast when his dentist father's health began to flag. Intending to follow his father's example by taking pre-med at Occidental Junior college, Thompson was sidetracked by a love of performing, inherited from his concert-singer mother. His already... (read more) impressive physique pumped by several summers as a rodeo-rider and cowpuncher, Thompson was offered a $350-per-week contract by Universal studios in 1943. He accepted, expecting to use the money to pay for his college tuition. As it happened, Thompson never returned to the halls of academia; from 1944 onward he worked steadily as a film actor at Universal, 20th Century-Fox, MGM and other studios, sometimes as a lead, more often in supporting roles. For a while, he was typed as a mental case after convincingly portraying a psycho killer in MGM's Dial 119 (1950). He also acted in something like 250 TV programs, and for eight weeks in 1953 co-starred with Janet Blair in the Broadway play A Girl Can Tell. The boyish enthusiasm of his early screen roles a thing of the past, Thompson provided maturity and authority to his two-dimensional roles in such Saturday-matinee melodramas as Cult of the Cobra (1955), It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958), Fiend Without a Face (1958), and First Man Into Space (1959), assignments that indirectly led to his first TV-series starring stint as the miniaturized hero of World of Giants (1959). In 1960, Thompson briefly went the "dumb sitcom husband" route in the weekly Angel. In 1961, the staunchly patriotic Thompson starred in and directed the low-budget feature A Yank in Vietnam, which he would later insist, with some justification, was the first up-close-and-personal study of that unfortunate Asian conflict (alas, good intentions do not always make good films; abysmally bad, Yank in Vietnam lay on the shelf until 1965). During the early 1960s, Thompson worked in close association with producer Ivan Tors as an actor and director of animal-oriented short subjects. The actor's fascination with African wildlife was later manifested in his two-year starring stint on Tors' TV series Daktari (1966-68), an outgrowth of the feature film Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion, in which Thompson both starred and collaborated on the script. After playing character parts in such films as The Turning Point (1977) and The Formula (1980), Thompson spent the bulk of the 1980s in Africa, where he assembled the internationally syndicated documentary series Orphans of the Wild. While on a visit to Michigan in 1992, Marshall Thompson died of congestive heart failure. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Murder, She Wrote: The Error of Her Ways
1989
Jessica (Angela Lansbury) accuses the wife of a Palm Springs real estate developer of murdering her philandering husband. Shortly thereafter, the accused woman commits suicide,...
Dallas: The Early Years
1986
Inspired by guess what television series, this made-for-TV movie traces the follies and fortunes of the Ewings and the Barneses all the way back to the 1930s. The familiar...
Bog
PG 1984
A cheesy rubber-suit monster flick from Wisconsin -- where they should know a thing or two about cheese. When a lazy local begins fishing with dynamite in scenic Bog Lake,...
White Dog
PG 1982
A little-seen film, suppressed by Paramount studio executives and never released theatrically in the U.S., this drama is a powerful saga about racism. Julie Sawyer (Kristy...
The Formula
R 1980
With George C. Scott and Marlon Brando heading the cast, The Formula should have been far better than it is. Adapted by Steve Shagan from his own best-selling novel,...
Quincy, M.E.: Mode of Death
1979
An evangelist suspected of financial impropriety is found dead in a motel room, apparently from an overdose of drugs and alcohol. Was it an accident, a suicide, or a murder?...
Quincy, M.E.: Dark Angel
1979
Veteran police officer Tommy Bates (Neville Brand) catches Billy Harris (Richard Stanley), a young car thief whose wild behavior indicates that he is high on "angel dust."...
Cruise into Terror
1978
This delightfully bad made-for-TV movie throws together an assortment of television stalwarts and movie has-beens for what is essentially a horror version of The Love Boat....
Centennial
1978
The longest (26-1/2 hours), most expensive ($25 million) and most complicated (four directors, five producers, five cinematographers, almost 100 speaking parts, several hundred...
The Turning Point
PG 1977
One of a cycle of '70s post-Women's Liberation "women's pictures," Herbert Ross's drama uses the ballet world to examine the conflict between family and career. Former dance...
Ironside: Class of '40
1974
It is hardly a fond reunion when Ironside (Raymond Burr) is summoned to his home town by a letter from his former high school classmate Alice Schmidt (Fay Spain). Upon his...
George!
G 1973
In this comedy, the quiet life of an airplane pilot living in Switzerland is terribly disrupted when his sister gets married for the fourth time and bequeaths him her 250-pound...
The Streets of San Francisco: For the Love of God
1973
Stone (Karl Malden)and Keller (Michael Douglas) spring into action when a priest is killed in his Confessional. It turns out that the victim had attended the same seminary...
The Partridge Family: Anatomy of a Tonsil
1971
Under protest, Danny (Danny Bonaduce) agrees to undergo a tonsillectomy. His worst fears about the operation (conveyed via surrealistic dream sequences) seem to be confirmed...
Ride the Tiger
1971
George Montgomery, several years before chucking acting in favor of woodworking, directs and stars in Ride the Tiger. Montgomery plays a Miami nightclub owner whose...
To the Shores of Hell
1965
The Viet Cong have captured an American doctor to treat their wounded soldiers, but the doctor's U.S. Marine brother, with the help of a few others, plans a rescue mission. ~...
Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion
1965
Dr. Marsh Tracy (Marshall Thompson) is an animal behavioral research director who travels to East Africa with his daughter Paula (Cheryl Miller) in this engaging wildlife...
Around the World Under the Sea
1965
Ivan Tors Productions, the firm responsible for such aquatic TV delights as Sea Hunt and Flipper, was the prime mover behind MGM's Around the World Under the Sea....
The Mighty Jungle
1964
This jungle adventure provides a wonderfully corny look into the mysteries of the Amazon and the African Congo as it chronicles the journeys of two intrepid explorers. There each...
A Yank in Viet-Nam
1964
In this Vietnam war drama, a Marine survives a helicopter crash and lands in enemy territory. Fortunately, rebels help guide him through the dense jungles to safety. Along the...