87% (2) The Phenix City Story 100 min, APPROVED, [Crime, Drama, Film-Noir] [Phil Karlson] [14 Aug 1955]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 74%, Rotten Tomatoes: 100%, External Reviews
Awards: 1 nomination.
Actors: Edward Andrews, John McIntire, Kathryn Grant, Richard Kiley
Writer: Crane Wilbur (screenplay), Daniel Mainwaring (screenplay)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: A crime-busting lawyer and his initially reluctant attorney father take on the forces that run gambling and prostitution in their small Southern town.
Rotten Tomatoes: Based on a true story and featuring some of the actually people involved, this grim, violent crime drama is set in the title Alabama city that was in 1954 a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah of organized crime, corruption and seamy behavior. The townsfolk, fed up they the tawdriness around them, elect a new attorney general, a man who vows to eradicate the gangsters and their filth. Unfortunately, the mobsters quickly murder the troublesome crusader. Fortunately, the attorney's straight-arrow son has just returned from the war and is only too happy to fill his late fathter's shoes. Despite the constant and potentially deadly obstacles presented by the mob, the iron-willed young man stands firm and eventually defeats them. Original versions of Phenix City Story feature a 13-minute preface that featured interviews with the people involved, including the widow of the murdered attorney general. In real life, John Patterson was later elected governor of Alabama, defeating, among others, future presidential candidate George Wallace.
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80% (2) Avanti! 144 min, R, [Comedy, Romance] [Billy Wilder] [17 Dec 1972]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 72%, Rotten Tomatoes: 88%, External Reviews
Awards: Won 1 Golden Globe. Another 6 nominations.
Actors: Clive Revill, Edward Andrews, Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills
Writer: Samuel A. Taylor (play), Billy Wilder (screenplay), I.A.L. Diamond (screenplay)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English, Italian Country: USA, Italy
Plot: Baltimore industrialist Wendell Armbruster crosses paths with London shop girl Pamela Piggott when they come to Ischia to pick up the bodies of her mother and his father, who have been killed in an automobile accident after a ten-year summertime affair. Straitlaced Wendell tries to avoid a scandal while free-spirited Pamela is impressed by the romantic setting. After some confusion with the bodies and a blackmail attempt by unscrupulous locals, Wendell and Pamela extend their parent's affair into the next generation.
Rotten Tomatoes: An uptight businessman travels to Italy where he falls in love with the daughter of his late father's mistress.
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78% (2) The Thrill of It All 108 min, Approved, [Comedy, Romance] [Norman Jewison] [17 Jul 1963]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 70%, Rotten Tomatoes: 86%, External Reviews
Awards: 2 nominations.
Actors: Arlene Francis, Doris Day, Edward Andrews, James Garner
Writer: Carl Reiner (screenplay), Larry Gelbart (story), Carl Reiner (story)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English, German Country: USA
Plot: The Happy Soap Company is owned and managed by the Fraleigh family. Although he is more of a company figurehead than an active participant in the company's day-to-day business, anything that family patriarch Tom Fraleigh wants for the company he usually gets. What he wants is Beverly Boyer - the wife of his daughter-in-law's obstetrician, Dr. Gerald Boyer - to appear as the company spokesperson when Beverly, who he meets at a small dinner party, mentions a personal and true story about how Happy Soap saved her life. She is to appear in a live commercial spot during a Happy Soap sponsored television show telling her story just as she told Tom. Despite Beverly's performance going poorly in her own mind, Tom loved it and how refreshing and honest Beverly came across to the viewer. So Tom signs her to a one year, $80,000 contract to continue doing the same. This move is questioned by Happy Soap's own managers and its advertising company. But it is questioned even more by Gerald, who believes Beverly's place is in the home taking care of the house and their two adolescent children. As Beverly continues to do the commercials, her fame rises and her professional commitments increase which add another level of strain to their marriage. Only a natural act by Mrs. Fraleigh Jr. may be able to save the Boyer's marriage.
Rotten Tomatoes: This amusing romantic comedy concerns Dr. Gerald Boyer (James Garner), a successful gynecologist with a wife and two children. Wife Beverly (Doris Day) focuses on maintaining the household and watching the kids. One of Gerald's patients, Mrs. Fraleigh (Arlene Francis), overhears Beverly talking up a new product she's discovered called 'Happy Soap' - whose manufacturer just happens to be Mrs. Fraleigh's father-in-law, Old Tom Fraleigh (Reginald Owen). She introduces Beverly to him; hugely impressed, the old man offers her $80,000 a year to pitch a new product called "Happy Soap." Beverly's career takes her away from her family responsibilities and causes a series of comedic commotions for Gerald and the kids. He comes home from work one morning and accidentally drives his convertible into a freshly dug swimming pool ordered by Beverly without his knowledge. The furious physician throws a bevy of boxes of Happy Soap into the pool, causing the house to be engulfed in suds by morning (which the kids mistake for snow). The family maid Olivia (Zasu Pitts) is nearly driven crazy with the events and has many harried scenes of comedic frustration. Directed by Norman Jewison, this thouroughly engaging comedy was written by Larry Gelbart and Carl Reiner. Reiner provides the screenplay for the feature which turned out to be the last film appearance of Zasu Pitts. With her passing marked the end of a long and successful career as a comedic and well respected actress that began in 1917.
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76% (2) Tea and Sympathy 122 min, APPROVED, [Drama] [Vincente Minnelli] [05 Nov 1956]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 73%, Rotten Tomatoes: 80%, External Reviews
Awards: Won 1 Golden Globe. Another 2 nominations.
Actors: Deborah Kerr, Edward Andrews, John Kerr, Leif Erickson
Writer: Robert Anderson (screenplay), Robert Anderson (based on the play by)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Tom Lee is a sensitive boy of 17 whose lack of interest in the "manly" pursuits of sports, mountain climbing and girls labels him "sister-boy" at the college he is attending. Head master Bill Reynold's wife Laura sees Tom's suffering at the hands of his school mates (and her husband), and tries to help him find himself.
Rotten Tomatoes: 1956's Tea and Sympathy is a diluted filmization of Robert Anderson's Broadway play. The original production was considered quite daring in its attitudes towards homosexuality (both actual and alleged) and marital infidelity; the film softpedals these elements, as much by adding to the text as by subtracting from it. John Kerr plays a sensitive college student who prefers the arts to sports; as such, he is ridiculed as a "sissy" by his classmates and hounded mercilessly by his macho-obsessed father Edward Andrews. Only student Darryl Hickman treats Kerr with any decency, perceiving that being different is not the same as being effeminate. Deborah Kerr, the wife of testosterone-driven housemaster Leif Erickson, likewise does her best to understand rather than condemn John for his "strangeness." Desperate to prove his manhood, John is about to visit town trollop Norma Crane. Though nothing really happens, the girl cries "rape!" Both John's father and Deborah's husband adopt a thick-eared "Boys will be boys" attitude, which only exacerbates John's insecurities. Feeling pity for John and at the same time resenting her own husband's boorishness, Deborah offers her own body to the mixed-up boy. "When you speak of this in future years...and you will...be kind." With this classic closing line, the original stage production of Tea and Sympathy came to an end. Fearing censorship interference, MGM insisted upon a stupid epilogue, indicating that Deborah Kerr deeply regretted her "wrong" behavior. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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60% (2) The Young Savages 103 min, [Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller] [John Frankenheimer] [24 May 1961]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 70%, Rotten Tomatoes: 50%, External Reviews
Actors: Burt Lancaster, Dina Merrill, Edward Andrews, Vivian Nathan
Writer: Edward Anhalt (screenplay), J.P. Miller (screenplay), Evan Hunter (novel)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English, Italian, Spanish Country: USA
Plot: A district attorney investigates the racially charged case of three teenagers accused of the murder of a blind Puerto Rican boy. He begins to discover that the facts in the case aren't exactly as they seem to be.
Rotten Tomatoes: The Young Savages is what used to be called a "thinking man's picture" about a potentially lurid subject: urban juvenile delinquency. A blind Puerto Rican boy is knifed to death in Spanish Harlem, and three teenage gang members are accused of the crime. Politically ambitious assistant DA Burt Lancaster initially presses for the conviction of all three boys. But as he gets deeper into the case, he realizes that what appears cut-and-dried on the surface is tortuously complex: for starters, the murder victim was hardly the paragon of virtue that the prosecution claims. Despite pressure from his superiors and from members of the accused boys' gang (who at one point threaten Lancaster's wife Dina Merrill with a switchblade,) Lancaster nonetheless sees to it that justice is properly administered. The defendants are portrayed with varying degrees of Brando/Dean "method" by John Davis Chandler, Neil Nephew and Stanley Kristien; more believable, less affected performances are rendered by Shelley Winters, Pilar Seurat and Telly Savalas. Filmed on location in New York, The Young Savages was based on the Evan Hunter novel A Matter of Conviction. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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66% (1) How to Frame a Figg 103 min, G, [Comedy] [Alan Rafkin] [01 Feb 1971]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 66%, External Reviews
Actors: Don Knotts, Edward Andrews, Elaine Joyce, Joe Flynn
Writer: Don Knotts (story), Edward Montagne (story), George Tibbles
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Don Knotts is Hollis Figg, the dumbest bookkeeper in town. When the city fathers buy a second-hand computer to cover up their financial shenanigans, they promote Figg to look after things, knowing he'll never catch on. Their plan backfires when Figg becomes self-important and accidentally discovers their plot.
Rotten Tomatoes: In this comedy, a bungling bookkeeper's assistant works in the Dalton city hall and finds himself framed for embezzling by his corrupt superiors. A sweet young woman helps him clear his name. He is also assisted by Leo the computer.
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50% (1) Birds Do It 88 min, [Comedy, Family] [Andrew Marton] [01 Aug 1966]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 50%, External Reviews
Actors: Arthur O'Connell, Edward Andrews, Soupy Sales, Tab Hunter
Writer: Art Arthur, Leonard B. Kaufman (story), Arnie Kogen
External Links: Wikipedia IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Melvin Byrd, who dreams of being a scientist, is a Cape Kennedy "miniscule molecular particle surveillance monitor" - in short, a janitor. His job is to keep a major rocket project completely dust-free, and this he does with his own hilariously fantastic inventions - including a literal attack on dirt by a "knight on a white horse". In his work, he meets Judy, a chimp involved in a top-secret project, which leads Melvin into the one room strictly off-limits to him. Not until he has entered the project room does Melvin learn that any man entering it will be negatively ionized - making him fly like a bird.
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