Arthur Penn Filmography

Edge of Outside

Synopsis: A documentary produced for the Turner Classic Movies cable station, Edge of Outside surveys the careers of various filmmakers who have attempted to bring their uncompromised visions to the screen. Interspersing clips of classic films, the filmmakers take a look at the careers of such famous Read More

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Actors: Dede Allen, Peter Bart, Andrew Cohen, Tony Bill, Karen Black

Synopsis: Based upon Peter Biskind's book of the same name, this BBC-produced documentary traces the rise of a generation of Hollywood filmmakers who briefly changed the face of movies with a more personal approach that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable onscreen. Influenced by such European Read More

Law & Order: Season 11

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Angie Harmon, Jesse L. Martin, S. Epatha Merkerson, Jerry Orbach, Sam Waterston, Dianne Wiest

Synopsis: Season ten of Law & Order had ended on a cliffhanger of sorts, with an international trial involving the son of a prominent diplomat casting serious doubt upon the reelection of DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill). In the first episode of the series' 11th season, it was learned that Schiff had, indeed Read More

The Secret World of... Magicians & Mentalists

Synopsis: Each episode of The Secret World of... takes viewers behind the scenes to discover a tiny world within a world. Often, these are things and places taken for granted. In these videos, viewers take a look at the work that is necessary to keep the world running smoothly. In this episode, viewers Read More

Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud

Synopsis: Architect, engineer, philosopher, author and poet Buckminster Fuller was one of the great iconoclasts of the 20th century, alternately revered and misunderstood, his ideas were far ahead of their time and even today have yet to be fully realized. Best known for creating the geodesic dome (examples Read More

Inside

Crew: Director

Actors: Eric Stoltz, Nigel Hawthorne, Louis Gossett, Jr., Ian Roberts, Ross Prelier

Synopsis: A solemn look at South African apartheid, Arthur Penn's claustrophobic drama centers on a pair of political interrogations, separated by a decade. The film's first part, set in 1988, centers on the imprisonment of Marty Strydom (Eric Stoltz), an Afrikaaner university professor held as a political Read More

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies

Synopsis: In 1994, the British Film Institute commissioned a set of films to mark the centenary of the movies. They would trace the history of several national cinemas, and the BFI's choice for interpreting the history of American film fell to director Martin Scorsese, a longtime champion of film history Read More

The Portrait

Crew: Director

Actors: Lauren Bacall, Gregory Peck

Synopsis: The Portrait, based upon the off-Broadway play by Tina Howe, is a made-for-cable film in which Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall play Gardner and Fanny Church, aging parents of artist Mags (Cecelia Peck). As the film opens, Mags unexpectedly drops in on her parents, hoping that she can complete a Read More

Penn & Teller Get Killed

Crew: Co-producer, Director

Actors: Penn Jillette, Teller, Caitlin Clarke, David Patrick Kelly, Leo Cimino

Synopsis: Penn & Teller are magicians who are known for putting on a jet-black, fake blood-soaked comedy magic show. This inky comedy is imbued with their off-beat humor as it chronicles Penn's newest scheme to have a fan try to kill him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Dead of Winter

Crew: Director

Actors: Mary Steenburgen, Roddy McDowall, Jan Rubes, William Russ, Mark Malone

Synopsis: Despite its relative failure at the box office, this is a worthwhile thriller from the director of Bonnie and Clyde. Mary Steenburgen stars as an actress, Katie McGovern, lured to the upstate New York cabin of crazy Dr. Joseph Lewis (Jan Rubes), a diabolical crippled shrink playing a blackmail Read More

Target

Crew: Director

Actors: Gene Hackman, Matt Dillon, Gayle Hunnicutt, Victoria Fyodorova, Josef Sommer

Synopsis: Arthur Penn takes a crack at subverting the espionage film genre in Target. Walter Lloyd (Gene Hackman) is a quiet and unassuming lumberyard owner in Dallas, Texas. Chris (Matt Dillon) has dropped out of college to pursue a career as a race car driver. But all mundane tasks come to an end when Read More

Four Friends

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Craig Wasson, Jodi Thelen, Jim Metzler, Michael Huddleston, Reed Birney

Synopsis: Also known as Moritorium and Georgia's Friends, Four Friends follows the titular quartet from high school to young adulthood. The film is set during the tumultuous 1960s, an era when everyone's values were turned inside out, shaken around, and reassembled. The central character is Read More

The Missouri Breaks

Crew: Director

Actors: Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Lloyd, Randy Quaid, Frederic Forrest

Synopsis: A rancher, a rustler, and a regulator face off in Arthur Penn's eccentric western. As a cover for their horse thievery, a gang of Montana rustlers, led by the laid-back Tom Logan (Jack Nicholson), buys a small farm adjacent to the ranch of their latest target/nemesis, Braxton (John McLiam). When Read More

Night Moves

Crew: Director

Actors: Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, Edward Binns, Harris Yulin, Susan Clark

Synopsis: Private eye Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is dedicated to his job, but his dedication does not make him happy or powerful in his personal life, and his wife (Susan Clark) is cheating on him. Aging actress Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) hires Harry to find her trust-funded daughter Delly (Melanie Griffith Read More

Visions of Eight: The Olympics of Motion Picture Achievement

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This documentary of the 1972 Summer Olympics, held in Munich, is remarkable for bringing eight of the world's most notable film directors to work on it. They are: Milos Forman, Yuri Ozerov, Mai Zetterling, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouch and John Schlesinger. Each Read More

Little Big Man

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam, Richard Mulligan, Chief Dan George

Synopsis: Recounting how the West was won through the eyes of a white man raised as a Native American, Arthur Penn's 1970 adaptation of Thomas Berger's satirical novel was a comic yet stinging allegory about the bloody results of American imperialism. As a misguided 20th-century historian listens Read More

Alice's Restaurant

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Arlo Guthrie, Pat Quinn, James Broderick, Michael McClanathan, Geoff Outlaw

Synopsis: Intrigued by the counterculture tale of Arlo Guthrie's epic 1968 talking-blues record The Alice's Restaurant Massacree, director Arthur Penn, co-scripting with playwright Venable Herndon, adapted the song into the 1969 feature Alice's Restaurant. Hippie outsider Arlo (Guthrie, playing himself) Read More

The Other Side of Bonnie and Clyde

Crew: Book Author

Synopsis: The legend of the bloody duo is presented from a different perspective in this offbeat outing that features actual footage of the criminal pair, fascinating interviews with former mobster Floyd Hamilton and Sheriff Frank Hammer. It also contains some reenactments. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Bonnie and Clyde

Crew: Director

Actors: Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J. Pollard, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Gene Wilder

Synopsis: Producer/star Warren Beatty had to convince Warner Bros. to finance this film, which went on to become the studio's second-highest grosser. It also caused major controversy by redefining violence in cinema and casting its criminal protagonists as sympathetic anti-heroes. Based loosely on the true Read More

The Chase

Crew: Director

Actors: Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, James Fox, E.G. Marshall, Angie Dickinson

Synopsis: All hell breaks loose in a Texas town when an escaped convict heads home in Arthur Penn's Southern gothic melodrama. Appointed by local kingpin Val Rogers (E. G. Marshall), benevolent Sheriff Calder (Marlon Brando) manages to keep the peace in Tarl, but the situation starts to fester one Saturday Read More

Mickey One

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Warren Beatty, Hurd Hatfield, Alexandra Stewart, Teddy Hart, Jeff Corey

Synopsis: Often described as a French New Wave film made in Hollywood, Arthur Penn's 1965 art movie enters the unsettlingly paranoid world of a nightclub comic on the run from the Mob. Having fooled around with the wrong blonde and gambled himself into an unpayable debt, an entertainer (Warren Beatty) flees Read More

The Miracle Worker

Crew: Director

Actors: Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke, Victor Jory, Inga Swenson, Andrew Prine

Synopsis: Based on William Gibson's Broadway play and retaining its acclaimed cast, Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker tells the true story of Helen Keller (Patty Duke), an Alabama girl struck blind and deaf as a baby after an elevated fever. Enter Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft), a partially-blind woman Read More

The Left-Handed Gun

Crew: Director

Actors: Paul Newman, Lita Milan, Hurd Hatfield, James Congdon, James Best

Synopsis: The Left Handed Gun was adapted by Gore Vidal from his own TV play, The Death of Billy the Kid. 33-year-old Paul Newman stars as 21-year-old William Bonney, the hotheaded gunslinger known as Billy the Kid. Avoiding the usual Hollywood glamourization of this controversial character, Newman portays Read More

Playhouse 90: The Miracle Worker

Crew: Director

Actors: Teresa Wright, Patricia McCormack, Burl Ives, Katherine Bard, John Drew Barrymore

Playhouse 90: Charley's Aunt

Crew: Director

Actors: Art Carney, Jeanette MacDonald, Tom Tryon, Orson Bean, Jackie Coogan

Synopsis: Art Carney plays the title role, so to speak, in this live, 90-minute Playhouse 90 adaptation of Brandon Thomas' classic stage farce Charley's Aunt. The play's basic premise--Oxford undergrad Lord Fancourt Babberly (Carney) must pose as the elderly aunt of his roommate Charley Wyckeham so that Read More

Philco Television Playhouse: The Death of Billy the Kid

Crew: Director

Actors: Paul Newman, Frank Overton, Joseph Anthony, Michael Conrad, George Mitchell

Synopsis: The 1958 theatrical feature The Left-Handed Gun was adapted from the 1955 Philco Television Playhouse offering The Death of Billy the Kid. Both the film and the TV program boasted the same star (Paul Newman), the same author (Gore Vidal) and the same director (Arthur Penn). Broadcast live, The Read More

Playwrights '56: "The Battler"

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Ernest Hemingway's story inspired this television film starring a young Paul Newman hitchhiking across the country and his encounters with interesting people. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

State of the Union

Crew: Director

The Tears of My Sister

Crew: Director