Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.
Lured by their dreams of fame and fortune, three ambitious young women enter the world of show business and discover how easy it is to sink into a celebrity nightmare of ego, alcohol and pills — the beloved "dolls."
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
Exceptionally talented actor and bridge-builder between black and white, a political icon and artist at the same time: that was Sidney Poitier. He made Hollywood history in 1964 when he became the first black man to win an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role − and thus became the first international black superstar. He grew up in poor circumstances in the Bahamas − with only a few years of schooling. Despite this humble start, Sidney Poitier became a film legend committed artistically and politically against all odds. What compromises did he have to make? What shaped him? This documentary gives an intimate insight into the eventful life of the actor and director, who died in January 2022 at the age of 94.
The life and career of the renowned television writer and creator of the classic science fiction series, "The Twilight Zone."
A successful Texas gynecologist finds himself amid a bevy of women and their problems – his wife’s breakdown, his daughter's fake marriage, his other daughter’s conspiracy theories, and his secretary’s crush. Craving time for himself, he finds solace in a kind outsider.
Since the sudden and suspicious deaths of his parents, young Damien has been in the charge of his wealthy aunt and uncle and enrolled in a military school. Widely feared to be the Antichrist, he relentlessly plots to seize control of his uncle's business empire — and the world.
Tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod, leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city's lowlife. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.
On Election Day, 1968, irresponsible hairdresser and ladies' man George Roundy is too busy cutting hair and dealing with his girlfriends and mistress Felicia Karpf, whose husband Lester is having an affair with his ex-girlfriend Jackie.
A teacher reconnects with an old student who is now an attorney representing a family who is suing the school for graduating their son who still cannot read or write. Amid the daily chaos of teaching in an inner city school, Alex Jurel tries to decide if he will lie at his deposition to protect the school or tell the truth and risk throwing away his career.
Flight 23 has crashed in the Bermuda Triangle after a hijacking gone wrong. Now the surviving passengers must brave panic, slow leaks, oxygen depletion, and more while attempting a daring plan, all while 200 feet underwater.
Is there love after death? After he dies suddenly, the hapless advertising executive Daniel Miller finds himself in Judgment City, a gleaming way station where the newly deceased must prove they lived a life of sufficient courage to advance in their journey through the universe. As the self-doubting Daniel struggles to make his case, a budding relationship with the uninhibited Julia offers him a chance to finally feel alive.
After the end of WWII, an Italian woman receives child support payments from three former US soldiers who all believe themselves to be the father of her daughter, Gia.
A charming but ruthless criminal is sent to a remote Arizona prison, where he enlists the help of his cellmates in an escape attempt with the promise of sharing his hidden loot.
From Mary Pickford to Barbra Streisand the successful actress turned producer/director is one of Hollywood's longest standing traditions.
After spending several months in an orbiting lab, three astronauts prepare to return to Earth only to find their de-orbit thrusters won't activate. After initially thinking they might have to abandon them in orbit, NASA decides to launch a daring rescue. Their plans are complicated by a hurricane headed towards the launch site—and a shrinking air supply in the astronauts' capsule.
A beautiful peasant girl is romanced and abandoned by a young nobleman.
Made in 1976, TVTV's close-up look at Hollywood's annual awards ritual mixes irreverent documentary with deadpan comedy. TVTV's cameras go behind the scenes to follow major Hollywood figures (including Steven Spielberg, Michael Douglas, Lee Grant, Jack Nicholson, and many others), capturing them in candid moments—inside their limousines, dressing for the ceremony, backstage at the awards.
Film version of the Neil Simon play has three separate acts set in the same hotel suite in New York's Plaza Hotel with Walter Matthau in a triple role. In the first, Karen Nash tries to get her inattentive husband Sam's attention and help save their failing marriage. In the second, brash film producer Jesse Kiplinger tries to seduce his former one-time flame Muriel. In the third, Roy Hubley and his wife Norma try and persuade their daughter, a bride to-be with cold feet, out of the bathroom before her approaching wedding ceremony.
At the age of twenty-nine, Elgar Enders "runs away" from home. This running away consists of buying a building in a black ghetto in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Initially, his intention is to evict the black tenants and convert the building into a posh flat. But Elgar is not one to be bound by yesterday's urges, and soon he has other thoughts on his mind.
Sorrowful Jones is a cheap bookie in the 1930s. When a gambler leaves his daughter as a marker for a bet, he gets stuck with her. His life will change a great deal with her arrival and his sudden love for a woman also involved in gambling operations.
Scientist Dr. Bradford Crane and army general Thalius Slater join forces to fight an almost invisible enemy threatening America; killer bees that have deadly venom and attack without reason. Disaster movie-master Irwin Allen's film contains spectacular special effects, including a train crash caused by the eponymous swarm.
A deranged, misogynistic killer assaults a journalist. When he discovers that she survived the attack, he follows her to the hospital to finish her off.
Famous detective Charlie Chan is called out of retirement to help a San Francisco detective solve a mysterious series of murders. With his bumbling grandson as his sidekick, Chan also encounters an old nemesis known as the Dragon Queen who is the prime suspect.
A distraught mother must cope with her embittered daughter who has the ability to cause "accidents" to happen.
A drug dealer's car breaks down in a small U.S. town. In turn, the town's people become victim to his unique brand of physical and mental torture.
A wounded bank robber takes over his brother's home.
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.
Offered a job as a presidential adviser, a professor is forced to dispose of those who knew him when he was a spy.
Why Me? a one-hour documentary on breast cancer narrated by actress Lee Grant. First broadcast on May 13, 1974 on CBS in Los Angeles, it was the first major television documentary to deal with breast cancer.
Jerry Kingsley is a wealthy garment manufacturer left lonely in his 50s when his wife dies. Despite the difference in their ages, he strikes up a romance with divorced 24-year-old receptionist Betty. The relationship is dismissed by his daughter, Lillian, discouraged by his sister, Evelyn, and denounced by Betty's mother. But when Jerry begins to mention marriage, even Betty is forced to confront her ambivalence.
A Vietnam veteran and ex-con is persuaded by a shady woman to rob a $50,000 payroll account on a California produce farm. But who is playing who?
The Madam of a brothel satisfies the erotic fantasies of her customers, while a revolution is sweeping the nation.
Isaac Geldhart is a Holocaust survivor who, overcome by grief at the recent death of his wife, seems determined to run his publishing firm into the ground by printing books that have no hope of financial success. His son Aaron, who also works at the company, grows frustrated with Isaac's emotional decline and attempts to take over the firm. The resulting crisis involves Isaac's other two children, his daughter Sarah and his dying son Martin.
Four sisters who disagree about everything... except what matters most. Family.
An adaptation of Thomas Wolfe's literary classic, telling of the struggles of a young writer determined to be a success in New York's literary world of the 1920s, his married lover, and the brilliant editor who sees him as a blossoming genius. The story parallels the life of Wolfe himself and his affair with stage designer Aline Bernstein.
A man and his wife stumble upon a town whose inhabitants turn into zombies and head for the edge of town every night... he seems to be the only one unaffected. What is happening to the townsfolk? Who is the mysterious young woman he keeps seeing? Why isn't he affected?
On his wedding day, in the few remaining hours of his bachelorhood, Barney Kempinski goes off to tour the city and sing his song to life, love and the city of New York.
This is the story of actress Frances Farmer, her struggles with mental illness and involuntary confinement in an insane asylum.
A married couple is determined to find a girl for their recently divorced best friend.
After a policeman is murdered in an ambush, rumors surface that he was on the take. His widow sets out to catch the killers and clear her husband's name.
After Lee Strasberg’s death in 1982, the most prestigious talents from the Actors Studio assumed the leadership of this exceptional organization. For the first time ever, filmmakers have been allowed to film their work.
During a session with his psychoanalyst, Alexander Portnoy rants about everything that is bothering him. His complaints include his childhood and his family with an emphasis on his mother, his sexual fantasies and the problems that he has with women, and his obsessive feelings about his Judaism.
A woman walks into a police station with a pistol and a vial of nitroglycerin. It turns out that she is the widow of an infamous criminal shot and killed by a detective. She notifies the police that she is waiting for the detective who shot her husband and intends to kill him in front of his fellow officers.
A presentation of Tennessee Williams' three one-act plays: "Moony's Kid Don't Cry," "The Last of My Solid Gold Watches," and "This Property Is Condemned."
A housewife and her teenage daughter, fleeing their boring lives, stop in a diner in the California desert. She runs up against the diner's owner, a gruff, beer-drinking artist whose life's work is the neon sculptures he collects and attaches to the ceiling.
Documentary about women in the film industry. Numerous notable actresses and female directors share their thoughts.
Documentary that examines whether America is failing children by not making child care an issue of national priority.
Documentary on breast cancer featuring a series of interviews with survivors and their families. Director and host Lee Grant speaks with support groups, doctors and activists whose lives are dedicated to the fight against breast cancer
A long-married couple embark on one last cross-country journey when it is discovered that the wife is dying. Together they try to reconnect with their estranged daughter before it is too late.
Two strange sisters live in a crumbling mansion, where they keep a pet ape, which belonged to their late father, locked in a cage. While one of the sisters seems to be keeping her head on straight, as it were, the other appears to be sinking further and further into barbarism and insanity.
It is 1957. J.C. Cullen is a young man from a small town, with a talent for winning at craps, who leaves for the big city to work as a professional gambler. While there, he breaks the bank at a private craps game at the Gem Club, owned by George Cole, and falls in love with two women, one of them Cole's wife.
Richard Kuklinski was a devoted husband, loving father--and ruthless killer of over 100 people. You'll meet him in this powerful documentary that features one of the most vivid and disturbing interviews ever recorded--taped behind the walls of the prison where Kuklinski is serving two consecutive life sentences for multiple homicide.
“We are the stories we tell ourselves.” Seeing is Believing: Women Direct is a documentary series about directors, leaders… who happen to be women.Audiences will hear directly from women who are on the front lines of the field: from major award winners to NYU students, festival darlings to frustrated auteurs. They will discover the pathways to successful creativity as well as how these filmmakers drive through obstacles creative, cultural, and professional. The film ultimately will act as a toolbox for any filmmaker as well as “peer to peer mentorship” for any person who is looking for creative or professional guidance as they move toward their own dreams of being a visual storyteller.
A leading acting teacher who trained some of the most famous performers of the stage and screen, Sanford Meisner was a founding member of the Group Theatre. The Group Theatre, a cooperative theater ensemble, became a leading force in the theater world of the 30s. Meisner performed in many of the group’s most memorable productions.
In this family-friendly sequel to Freaky Friday, teenaged Boris realizes that his television set is somehow receiving broadcasts from the future, so he starts betting piles of cash on horse races and making himself outrageously rich. Boris is on top of the world...until he discovers that something this good doesn't come without a price.
An aspiring young actor moonlights as a male stripper while looking for work in the theatre.
This documentary was broadcast on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable channel to kick off the presentation of films related to TCM's theme of the month for September 2001. Actors Lee Grant and Paul Mazursky, producer Roger Corman, director John Carpenter, film critic Molly Haskell, and journalist Peter Biskind discuss the issues involved in six films of the 1950s. Topics include teenage loneliness, youth rebellion, changing gender roles, and the beginning of the sexual revolution.
This fascinating making-of documentary investigates the controversy and political atmosphere surrounding the production of Salt of the Earth, movingly chronicling the filmmakers' defiance of the blacklist. (BAM) Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015.
The story of the hijacking of the Itallian liner Achille Lauro by four militants of the Palestine Liberation Front, in 1985, who demanded the release of several Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli prisoners. On their hands, lies the fate of several passengers, many Americans included and among them, Jewish American businessman Leon Klinghoffer.
A successful career woman is raped by a prominent lawyer. However, when she takes the case to court, it results in a hung jury. When the DA's office declines to retry the case, the lawyer opts to sue the woman for malicious prosecution and slander leaving her feeling raped again.
The cast of Rocky (1976) pays tribute to actor Burgess Meredith.
Nick, a gay, HIV-positive architect, begins to display severe symptoms of AIDS and makes preparations to kill himself before he is unable to function normally. He arranges a party to reconnect and say goodbye to his closest friends and his confused parents. But when his ex-partner, Brandon, a television director who left Nick when he was diagnosed with HIV, shows up, what was supposed to be a celebratory event becomes much more difficult for everyone.
Hal Ashby's obsessive genius led to an unprecedented string of Oscar®-winning classics, including Harold and Maude, Shampoo and Being There. But as contemporaries Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg rose to blockbuster stardom in the 1980s, Ashby's uncompromising nature played out as a cautionary tale of art versus commerce.
Rural runaway finds himself in Manhattan.
A clothing designer tries to save her struggling boutique store by having a tumultuous weekend sale of her shop's inventory by playing on the addictions of shopping for the women of Beverly Hills.
A brilliant attorney gets rid of her boring husband by faking his kidnapping and keeping the ransom. The FBI may be fooled, but not Columbo.
An AIDS-stricken woman becomes a leader in the struggle to educate people about the disease and its prevention.
A South American guerrilla, whose revolution is faltering, hijacks a ship carrying arms and holds all of the passengers hostage.
Risking jobs, friends, family and the opposition of church and community, eight unassuming women begin the longest bank strike in American history.
HBO filmed version of the Neil Simon play (filmed in front of a live audience) has three separate acts set in the same hotel suite in New York's Plaza Hotel with Lee Grant and Jerry Orbach playing three roles.
When Women Kill is a poignant documentary exploring the shocking violence that seven women fell victim to at the hands of men. The program profiles the battered women who speak frankly about the cruel abuse, threats, and fears, and the overassertive men who led them down a one-way path to death and destruction. The film features in-prison footage, including a segment depicting a confession by a follower of the notorious Charles Manson, Leslie Van Houten, who was convicted of two killing sprees and committed to life in prison.
A group of transgender individuals are struggling to make their way in every stratum of 1980s America. From finding employment to finding acceptance, the first question the world forces them to ask is always, "What Sex Am I?"
As lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn lies dying of AIDS in a private hospital room, ghosts from his past visit him as he reflects on his life and loves.
This documentary recounts the difficult choice actress Mary Astor had to make after learning her personal, very intimate, diaries had been stolen. The film tells the story of Astor's 1936 child custody case.
"Women On Trail" exposes the innate corruption and sexism in the family court system as children are removed from their mothers and given to fathers who often either don't want them or have been convicted of domestic violence.
A neurotic woman, her unhappy husband and three other New Yorkers share a complicated relationship.
A beautiful and disturbing film recounts America’s story from the environment’s point of view. From the arrival of Columbus to the simple wilderness living of the 16th and 17th centuries, through the agrarian lifestyle of the 18th century, the changes from the Industrial Revolution, to the 20th century when most of the planet’s resources have been depleted — this film examines the North American landscape and all the wildlife destruction, deforestation, soil depletion and pollution that have been wrought to make the American Dream come true.
A mother takes the law into her own hands after her daughter's murderer is acquitted on a technicality.
This documentary looks at the life and career of John Garfield, whose career was cut short when he died at age 39. His difficult childhood in the rough neighborhoods of New York City provided the perfect background for the tough-guy roles he would play on both stage and screen.
After 17 years of marriage in American suburbia, Richard and Barbara Harmon step into the new world of divorce.
A man is wrongly convicted for murder and sent to prison, where he is accused of murdering a brutal guard he killed in self-defense.
A retired judge who opens a private detective agency and her ex-con associate try to track down $750,000 in bank robbery loot.
Tony Curtis is the ruthless head of a cosmetics firm, Kiss of Gold, locked in fierce competition with his arch-rival, Glamour, Inc., that happens to be run by his former lover (Lee Grant), and finds his company in the grip of a power struggle among his executives (one of whom, unbeknownst to him, is the son he'd never met) when he is severely injured in a helicopter accident. This pilot to a prospective primetime soap opera failed to generate network interest.
Forced to return to his struggling hometown after an expensive college degree, Killian gathers former childhood friends to audition for a music festival coming to their once prosperous steel town.
Actor/director Sidney Poitier discusses his life and career. He tells of his upbringing in Jamaica; the difficulties he encountered in New York City at the start of his career; his involvement in the US civil-rights movement; and efforts to end apartheid in South Africa. Friends and acquaintances, as well as other performers, give their insights about what makes him so special.
Anton Chekhov's play "The Seagull" is brought to life in this acclaimed 1975 production directed by John Desmond. Seeking to reform the theater, Konstantin (Frank Langella) has written an experimental play with the lead to be acted by his beloved, Nina (Blythe Danner). He arranges the first performance to take place at a country estate, but the presence of his self-absorbed mother (Lee Grant) and her novelist lover disrupts the production.
Lee Grant's acclaimed 1989 investigation of domestic violence in American Homes. Battered is the powerful, if harrowing portrait of a life lived in constant fear of the people closest to you. Intimate interviews with the victims and children of the cycle are combined with the eye opening and heart breaking stories of the abusers themselves to take you deeper into every facet of these American lives.
The recession of the 1980s split the country into the haves and have-nots, from family farmers to factory workers and homeless people forced to live in decrepit welfare hotels. On the verge of losing everything, courageous Americans discover the power of community organizing to fight injustice.
Dean is 36 and recently diagnosed as HIV positive. He has come home to tell his mother and his older brother Milo.
A writer (made to resemble Russian playwright Anton Chekhov) narrates a collection of his stories, all of which are written in the style of Chekhov.
Using rare footage and exclusive interviews with filmmakers from all over the globe, "Reel Herstory" corrects the historic notion that women behind the scenes in motion pictures held peripheral careers compared with their male counterparts.
Director Elia Kazan and playwright Arthur Miller were once best friends and professional colleagues, to most that knew them then in both capacities as soul mates. Their politics were similar which was reflected in their work. Kazan was a Communist Party member for a few years in the mid-1930's, but Miller never officially joined the party ranks. Their relationship changed in the early 1950's when Kazan was subpoenaed to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee where he named names of Communist Party members past and present.
Hailed by some as a cinematic genius, a feminist voice and a true maverick of American cinema, dismissed by others as a voyeuristic fraud and the "world's worst director," Henry Jaglom obsessively confuses and abuses the line between life and art. Featuring scores of interviews (including Orson Welles, Dennis Hopper, Milos Forman and Peter Bogdanovich) and rare behind-the-scenes footage, this hilarious documentary explores the fascinating question of Who Is Henry Jaglom?
This omnibus release consists of three playlets filmed and aired during television's Golden Age, and starring some of the legends of film and television. The collection originally ran as a two-hour segment on December 14, 1959, on the anthology series The Play of the Week, broadcast locally in New York City via the independent radio station WNTA. Each "tale" in the anthology was adapted from a single tale by the inimitable Sholom Aleichem, regarded by many as the "Yiddish Mark Twain". Included are: "A Tale of Chelm" starring Zero Mostel and Nancy Walker in the story of a bookseller attempting to buy a goat; "Bontche Schweig" about a poor man (Jack Gilford) whose recent arrival in Heaven makes the angels cry; and "The High School" about a Jewish merchant (Morris Carnovsky) persuaded by his wife (Gertrude Berg) to let their son attend a particular high school despite the enforcement of quotas for Jewish students.
Beginning just before his debut as Frankenstein’s creation, this documentary compellingly explores the life and legacy of a cinema legend, presenting a perceptive history of the genre he personified. Karloff's films were long derided as hokum and attacked by censors, but his phenomenal popularity and pervasive influence endures, inspiring some of our greatest actors and directors into the 21st Century – among them Guillermo Del Toro, Ron Perlman, Roger Corman, and John Landis, all of whom and many more contribute their personal insights and anecdotes.
We look at why Valley of the Dolls is so beloved and appreciated, both for its "badness" and hidden merits. Valley Of The Dolls is considered either a national disaster or a national treasure.
The true stories that spawned the serie tale of Damien, a small boy with an angelic face, whose very name still conjures up thoughts of Satan. This documentary shares spine-tingling information about the the all-too-memorable flick that has terrorized film audiences since 1976.
ABC retells the dark, disturbing story of Manson — and his twisted cult of devoted followers he instructed to carry out a series of grisly homicides in 1969. In this two-hour documentary.