Robert Preston
A retrospective of Chita Rivera's film, television and stage career, including interviews with Dick Van Dyke, Ben Vereen, Carol Lawrence and others. Originally aired as Episode 2 of Season 43 of the PBS series Great Performances.
The golden age of the annual Tony Awards ceremony lasted from 1967 to 1986 -- the period during which 'Alexander H. Cohen' and his wife, Hildy Parks, were the producers of the show. This film offers a compilation of performances from Tony Award broadcasts during those years. They are presented with color-corrected footage and digitally re-mastered sound.
After a technicality results in the release of a man being tried for the rape and murder of a young woman, her father murders the man. Admitting his guilt and refusing to use temporary insanity, the father places his attorney in a virtual no-win situation. In an extreme effort, the attorney decides to call the judge who released the murderer originally and to challenge the entire legal system that would permit such a travesty.
A schoolteacher in her early 40s, involved in a dead-end love affair with a married mortician, drifts into a relationship with an aging newspaperman.
A video game expert Alex Rogan finds himself transported to another planet after conquering The Last Starfighter video game only to find out it was just a test. He was recruited to join the team of best Starfighters to defend their world from the attack.
Ben Sunday, a long-in-tooth gunfighter forms an uneasy alliance with a Catholic nun. The single-minded sister wants to erect a sanctuary for a group of Apache orphans. Ben Sunday picks an ideal spot, right in the center of town--the local saloon and "bawdy house".
A struggling female soprano finds work playing a male female impersonator, but it complicates her personal life.
A year after his fiancée's death, a playwright schedules a rehearsal for his new play, which proves to be a trap for her killer.
The Chisholms is a CBS western miniseries starring Robert Preston, which aired from March 29, 1979, to April 19, 1979; and continued as a television series from January 19, 1980, to March 15, 1980. The 1979 miniseries showed the family moving from Virginia to Wyoming. When the TV series commenced in 1980, the pioneers were shown en route along the California Trail from Wyoming to Sacramento, California.
A three-way friendship between two free-spirited professional football players and the owner's daughter becomes compromised when two of them become romantically involved.
Recovering from a heart attack, a workaholic editor recalls the simple days of his youth. Robertson adds an emotional center to this messy, flashback-filled 'heavy' dramatic piece. Plenty of co-star talent.
McQueen is Junior Bonner, an aging rodeo champ who returns to his home town to participate in the annual rodeo. He finds his family estranged, does what he can to help, and then moves on ... after some good rodeo riding and a few brawls.
At an exclusive boys' school, a new gym teacher is drawn into a feud between two older instructors, and he discovers that everything at the school is not quite as staid, tranquil and harmless as it seems.
In the early 1900's Tennessee, a loving family undergoes the shock of the father's sudden, accidental death. The widow and her young son must endure the heartache of life following the tragedy, but slowly rise up from the ashes to face the hope of renewed life.
Con artist Steve Blair persuades Tony Dallas, a Manhattan gangster, to finance a movie about Adam and Eve by offering the female lead to Tony's stripper girl friend, Cha Cha Miller. The film is such a disaster, however, that Steve and his writer, Paul Ferris, decide to escape on a freighter to Greece. En route, Steve learns that the island of Paradeisos has lost its tourist trade because it has no apparent historical or mythological heritage. Intrigued, he hits upon the scheme of turning Paradeisos into a legendary island of love and taking a cut from all commercial enterprises. After planting Greek antiquities in the waters surrounding the island, Steve induces Paul to "recover" them, thus causing the tourist trade to increase.
A con man comes to an Iowa town with a scam using a boy's marching band program, but things don't go according to plan.
The epic tale of the development of the American West from the 1830s through the Civil War to the end of the century, as seen through the eyes of one pioneer family.
Robert Preston plays the flip side of his eternally ebullient Professor Harold Hill in Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Preston portrays an early 20th-century harness salesman, fully aware that his product is rapidly becoming obsolete. He tries to compensate for his own lack of self-esteem by cheating on his patient wife Dorothy McGuire; Preston's "other woman" is played by Angela Lansbury. Meanwhile, daughter Shirley Knight falls in love with Jewish boy Lee Kinsolving, who kills himself in the face of relentless bigotry.
This short shows the important role played by members of the U.S. Air Force Reserve in the USA's defense against enemy attack.
Frankie Dane is the leader of a teenage gang, the Hornets. The gang makes trouble for people in the neighborhood, but Frankie carries a darker nature, one so filled with anger that murder is not beyond him. Ben Wagner, a social worker, tries to help the boys see the possibilities of a better life, but the task seems futile. When a neighborhood man turns one of the gang into the police, Frankie decides to kill him. Ben learns of the plot from Frankie's kid brother and hopes to stop it before Frankie ruins his life forever.
Three trappers become scouts for a cavalry captain (Guy Madison) who loses his fort to a hated colonel (Robert Preston).
Two short films released together under a collective title. The first, "Secret Sharer", directed by John Brahm and starring James Mason, is based on a short story by Joseph Conrad. The second tale, "Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", directed by Bretaigne Windust and starring Robert Preston, is adapted from Stephen Crane's short story.
Josh is a young boy who feels neglected and misunderstood at home. Preparing to run away, he chances across an old diary once kept by his grandfather. Leafing through the yellowed pages, Josh discovers that Grandpa went through many of the same childhood travails that he is enduring at that moment. Armed with a renewed understanding of and appreciation for his elders, Josh decides to stick around for a while and see how things develop.
An American World War II veteran working for the British Foreign Office scours England for the killer who murdered his wife.
Though RKO Radio Pictures was, in 1951, still faithful to the concept of "B" westerns starring Tim Holt, the studio was more than capable of turning out an "A" oater from time to time. Best of the Badmen stars Robert Ryan as a former Union officer who persuades a fictional vigilante group which closely resembles Quantrill's Raiders to lay down their arms and seek out new and honest lives. Ryan is undercut by shifty Pinkerton man Robert Preston, who wants to collect the rewards on the heads of the ex-vigilantes; to that end, he frames Ryan for murder. With the help of Preston's embittered wife Claire Trevor, Ryan escapes and turns outlaw with the men whom he'd earlier convinced to turn honest.
Danny, a greenhorn from New York comes to the Mexican border in search for his older brother whom he has always looked up to. A Texas Ranger charged with bringing in, El Tigre and his gang of bandits, takes Danny under his wing.
Brother is pitted against brother in this tale of fueding ranchers in the old west.
It's Tulsa, Oklahoma at the start of the oil boom and Cherokee Lansing's rancher father is killed in a fight with the Tanner Oil Company. Cherokee plans revenge by bringing in her own wells with the help of oil expert Brad Brady and childhood friend Jim Redbird. When the oil and the money start gushing in, both Brad and Jim want to protect the land but Cherokee has different ideas. What started out as revenge for her father's death has turned into an obsession for wealth and power.
When Joan Boothe accompanies husband-reporter David to Las Vegas, she begins gambling to pass the time while he is doing a story. Encouraged by the casino manager, she gets hooked on gambling, to the point where she "borrows" David's expense money to pursue her addiction. This finally breaks up their marriage, but David continues trying to help her.
Man Against Crime, one of the first television programs about private eyes, ran on CBS, the DuMont Television Network and NBC from October 7, 1949 to August 26, 1956. The show was created by Lawrence Klee and Paul Alter and was broadcast live until 1952. It was also directed by Paul Alter. The series was one of the few television programs ever to have been simulcast on more than one network: the program aired on both NBC and DuMont during the 1953-1954 television season.
Mitchum plays drifter cowboy Jim Garry. After receiving a job-offer letter from smooth-talking Tate Riling (Preston), Garry rides into an Indian reservation and finds himself in the middle of a feud between cattle ranchers and homesteaders. What Garry doesn't realize is that Riling, the man he now works for, is crooked.
Smith as an iron-willed railroad detective. When his friend Murray is fired from the railroad and begins helping Rebstock wreck trains, Smith must go after him. He also seems to have an interest in Murray's wife (and vice versa).
A big-game hunter takes a rich American couple on an African safari. Film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber".
Joe is the head of an itinerant combine crew, working the harvests against rival crew boss Alperson. Joe's buddy Jim joins the crew with startup money. Farmer's niece Fay falls for Joe. He puts her off. To get back she marries Jim whom she prods into high-grading the grain (skimming off some for private sale). The last payment on Joe's machinery is due just as he discover's what his buddy has been doing.
Dozens of star and character-actor cameos and a message about the Variety Club (a show-business charity) are woven into a framework about two hopeful young ladies who come to Hollywood, exchange identities, and cause comic confusion (with slapstick interludes) throughout the Paramount studio.
Without lights and in a driving rain, a bus is lumbering along the muddy Assam Road en route from Chunking to the Indian border. Passengers include Albert Pasavy (Otto Kruger), a European of unknown nationality; a missionary, the Rev. Dr. Van Der Liden (Steven Geray);a French officer Major Raoul Brissac (Ernst Deutsch as Ernest Dorian), and Countess Olga Karagin (Tamara Geva), a White Russian. There is also Madame Woo (Soo Yong), an ancient Chinese lady on an important diplomatic mission to Indian, and her traveling companion, Ann Richards (Ellen Drew), an American Red Cross nurse. The trip is halted when Japanese planes bomb the road and hit a munitions truck and kill many Chinese soldiers. The Chinese commander puts the wounded soldiers on the bus and directs it to a nearby secret airport where the officer in charge is Captain Nick Stanton (Robert Preston), an American attached to the Chinese Air Force.
Sadistic killer-for-hire Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven sits beside Gates' lovely new employee, Ellen, on a train out of town. Although Ellen is engaged to marry the police lieutenant who's hunting down Raven, she decides to try and set the misguided hit man straight as he hides from the cops and plots his revenge.
In November 1941, Major Caton takes command of the small Marine garrison on Wake Island. His tendency toward spit and polish upsets the men's tropical lassitude, but Pearl Harbor changes everything. Soon the island is attacked and the Marines pull together day by day; but how long can they hold out?
The Florida Keys in 1840, where the implacable hurricanes of the Caribbean scream, where the salvagers of Key West, like the intrepid and beautiful Loxi Claiborne and her crew, reap, aboard frail schooners, the harvest of the wild wind, facing the shark teeth of the reefs to rescue the sailors and the cargo from the shipwrecks caused by the scavengers of the sea.
Pop, a security guard at Paramount has told his son that he's the head of the studio. When his son arrives in Hollywood on shore leave with his buddies, Pop enlists the aid of the studio's dizzy switchboard operator in pulling off the charade. Things get more complicated when Pop agrees to put together a show for the Navy starring Paramount's top contract players.
Accused of killing her employer, financier Bjorn Faulkner (Nils Asther), Kit is championed by wisecracking sailor-on-leave Steve Van Ruyle (Robert Preston), who has a vested interest in the outcome of the trial.
Director Leslie Goodwins' 1941 military drama, about various men who become buddies when they join the paratroopers, stars Robert Preston, Edmond O'Brien and Buddy Ebsen.
Falsely convicted of murder, young Robert Draper (Robert Preston) escapes custody during a practice blackout drill. Under cover of darkness, Draper hopes to find the real killer, who turns out to be a member of a Nazi sabotage ring. Completed shortly before America entered WW2.
Fictionalized story of the 1869 adoption of women's suffrage in Wyoming Territory. In the new-founded railroad town of Laraville, Boss Jim Cork hopes to manipulate the sale of town lots to give him control, but Quaker schoolmarm Annie Morgan bags one of the key lots. Cork's lawyer Steve Lewis tries romancing Annie to get the lot back, finding her so overpoweringly liberated she leaves him dizzy. Still, Steve attains his nefarious object...almost...then has cause to deeply regret having aroused the sleeping giant of feminism!
Victor Ballard, a happy-go-lucky albeit impoverished sidewalk photographer, shares a New York City studio apartment with Polish immigrant painter Stefan Janowski. The big city doles out joy and misery indiscriminately: In the apartment below Victor and Steve, Gus Nelson learns that his wife has given birth to quintuplets, while the lonely tenant in the apartment below Gus has given up on life and committed suicide.
The managers of a teak lumber camp in Burma compete for the affections of a beautiful American entertainer who gets stranded in Rangoon.
Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers ("Isn't that a contradiction in terms?", another character asks him) travels to Canada in the 1880s in search of Jacques Corbeau, who is wanted for murder. He wanders into the midst of the Riel Rebellion, in which Métis (people of French and Native heritage) and Natives want a separate nation. Dusty falls for nurse April Logan, who is also loved by Mountie Jim Brett. April's brother is involved with Courbeau's daughter Louvette, which leads to trouble during the battles between the rebels and the Mounties. Through it all Dusty is determined to bring Corbeau back to Texas (and April, too, if he can manage it.)
The Bar Association disbars attorney Tyler Cradon when it appears he was implicated in the murder of a prominent vice crusader. Cradon, not wishing to be without an income,is impressed by the way Joan Carroll handled a small-town murder, poses as a real estate agent and offers to get her into a law firm of a friend of his. Placed in the office of Roberts, running a front for Cradon, Joan is taught every trick of the trade. With her cases all prepared for her, she goes from one courtroom victory to another, soon becoming the darling of the underworld and the despair of all law-enforcing authorities.
One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows' agent, gambler Sid Campeau; Campeau's partner Dick Allen is Jeff's war buddy and rival suitor for engineer's daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?
Academy Award winners Gary Cooper and Ray Milland star along with Robert Preston in the epic adventure Beau Geste. When three brothers join the Foreign Legion to escape a troubled past, they find themselves trapped under the command of a sadistic sergeant deep in the scorching Sahara. Now the brothers must fight for their lives as they plot mutiny against tyranny and defend a desert fortress against a brutal enemy. Nominated for 2 Academy Awards, Beau Geste has been universally acclaimed by generations of critics and audiences alike as a true motion picture classic.
G-Man Charles Bent Martin is sent out to break up a nationwide racket. A transport company is aiding fugitives making a getaway in exchange for the lion's share of their loot. Through an old friend, whom he once barnstormed in an air circus, Martin joins the gang as a pilot. He becomes interested in Carol Butler, a beautiful girl involved with the gang through the activities of her ne'er-do-well father.
A convict who has just escaped from Alcatraz Prison takes over a passenger ship. Two of the ship's crew hatch a plot to overpower him and rescue the ship's passengers.
