Gene SaksFilmography

Born:: November 8, 1921 in New York City, NY
Occupation:: Actor, Director
Biography:: Trained as an actor, Gene Saks organized a number of New York-based workshop organizations before making his Broadway debut. He began directing in 1963, helming such Neil Simon Broadway plays as Biloxi Blues and Brighton Beach Memoirs and such Simon-scripted films as Barefoot in the Park (1967), The Odd Couple...Read More

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Melinda and Melinda

Actors: Radha Mitchell, Chloë Sevigny, Jonny Lee Miller, Will Ferrell, Amanda Peet

Synopsis: While Woody Allen has long fused comedy and drama in his films, he embraces the two styles in a new and unusual way in this feature. Sy (Wallace Shawn) is enjoying dinner with some friends when they begin debating the nature of the tragic and the humorous. Sy, observing that a very fine line Read More

3/18/05
Law & Order: Castoff

Synopsis: The most recent victims of an apparent serial killer are a woman who worked with underprivileged children and a sportscaster. Upon investigating the background of one of the victims, it is discovered that a fondness for kinky sex may have been the motivation for the murder. The captured killer Read More

1998
Deconstructing Harry

Actors: Woody Allen, Kirstie Alley, Bob Balaban, Richard Benjamin, Billy Crystal

Synopsis: Woody Allen wrote, directed, and stars in this very dark comedy about a novelist, Harry Block, who says with admirable honesty, "I'm a guy who can't function well in life, but I can in art." So far, Harry has made his way through six psychiatrists and three marriages (one, conveniently enough Read More

1997
On Seventh Avenue

Synopsis: Created by William Finkelstein of Civil Wars fame, the made-for-TV feature On Seventh Avenue was intended as the pilot for a weekly series. Wendy Makkena stars as Nadine Jacobs, the owner of a high-profile fashion business established by her father (played by actor-director Gene Saks). In order to Read More

1996
Bye Bye Birdie

Crew: Director

Actors: Jason Alexander

Synopsis: Seinfeld's Jason Alexander stars in this made-for-television remake of the 1963 classic musical. Alexander stars as Albert J. Peterson, a man hoping to make his fortune and get the girl by promoting the big send-off for a newly drafted pop star named Conrad Birdie (Marc Kudish). A song-and-dance Read More

1995
Nobody's Fool

Actors: Paul Newman, Jessica Tandy, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Dylan Walsh

Synopsis: Paul Newman earned an Oscar nomination (and won citations from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Berlin International Film Festival) for his performance in this well-drawn comedy-drama. Sully (Newman) is a 60-year-old man who emotionally seems to have never quite emerged from adolescence; Read More

1994
I.Q.

Actors: Tim Robbins, Meg Ryan, Walter Matthau, Lou Jacobi, Gene Saks

Synopsis: Legendary scientist Albert Einstein (played here by Walter Matthau) takes a break from theoretical physics to try to set up his intellectual niece with a handsome auto mechanic in this romantic comedy. The movie's central conceit is that Einstein's brilliance extends to matters of the heart Read More

1994
A Fine Romance

Crew: Director

Actors: Marcello Mastroianni, Julie Andrews, Jonathan Cecil, Ian Fitzgibbon, Jean-Pierre Castaldi

Synopsis: Devastated by the news of his wife's affair with the suave Dr. Piquet (Jean-Michel Cannone), Cesario Garibaldi (Marcello Mastroianni) hatches a plan with Dr. Piquet's wife, Pamela (Julie Andrews). Neither of them realized, however, that curtailing the extramarital bliss of their respective spouses Read More

9/11/92
Brighton Beach Memoirs

Crew: Director

Actors: Blythe Danner, Bob Dishy, Brian Drillinger, Stacey Glick, Judith Ivey, Jonathan Silverman

Synopsis: Brighton Beach Memoirs is the first of playwright Neil Simon's unofficial "autobiographical trilogy" (it was followed by Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound). Jonathan Silverman repeats his stage role as Simon's teenaged alter-ego Eugene, who lives in 1937 Brooklyn with his parents (Blythe Danner and Bob Dishy Read More

12/25/86
Lovesick

Actors: Dudley Moore, Elizabeth McGovern, Alec Guinness, John Huston, Wallace Shawn

Synopsis: Saul (Dudley Moore), a married psychiatrist, becomes romantically obsessed with Chloe (Elizabeth McGovern), one of his patients. Chloe has already devastated one psychoanalyst, and although the venerable Freud himself (Alec Guinness) appears to counsel Saul in his worst moments, the man continues Read More

1983
The Goodbye People

Actors: Judd Hirsch, Martin Balsam, Pamela Reed, Ron Silver, Michael Tucker

Synopsis: Playwright Herb Gardner's patented combination of cynicism and sentimentality that worked so well in his A Thousand Clowns didn't quite jell in his subsequent The Goodbye People. This film version, adapted and directed by Gardner, stars Martin Balsam, who'd won an Oscar for his work in the 1966 Read More

1983
The One and Only

Actors: Henry Winkler, Kim Darby, Gene Saks, William Daniels, Polly Holliday

Synopsis: Brash young Andy Schmidt (Henry Winkler) can't make a go of it as an actor in the early 1950s. Still, he wins the hand of Mary Crawford (Kim Darby), and the two of them try to make ends meet in New York City. Andy is on the verge of starvation when he befriends wrestling-promoter Sidney Seltzer (Gene Saks Read More

1978
Mame

Crew: Director

Actors: George Chiang, Lucille Ball, Robert Preston, Bea Arthur, Kirby Furlong, Bruce Davison

Synopsis: Lucille Ball stars in this film version of the hit Jerry Herman Broadway musical, which featured an electrifying performance by Angela Lansbury. As Patrick Dennis' plucky and resilient Auntie Mame, Ball's low-pitched, growling moan of a voice (a spine-chilling reminder of the sound of Linda Read More

1974
The Prisoner of Second Avenue

Actors: Jack Lemmon, Anne Bancroft, Gene Saks, Elizabeth Wilson, Florence Stanley

Synopsis: A lesser but still entertaining Neil Simon work, The Prisoner of Second Avenue was adapted to film in 1974. Jack Lemmon takes over the role played on Broadway by Peter Falk: Mel is a New York-based advertising man who goes through hell when he loses his job. The gods seem to conspire against him Read More

1974
Last of the Red Hot Lovers

Crew: Director

Actors: John Batiste, Oliver Steindecker, Alan Arkin, Sally Kellerman, Paula Prentiss, Renée Taylor

Synopsis: Based on a play by Neil Simon, this comedy concerns Barney Cashman (Alan Arkin), the owner of successful seafood restaurant who is stuck in the depths of a mid-life crisis. Barney's marriage is no longer providing him with a sense of romantic adventure, and when he discovers his mother's apartment Read More

1972
Cactus Flower

Crew: Director

Actors: Irene Hervey, Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman, Goldie Hawn, Jack Weston, Rick Lenz, Vito Scotti

Synopsis: Goldie Hawn won an Oscar for her performance as a Greenwich Village free spirit in Cactus Flower. Middle-aged dentist Winston (Walter Matthau) is enjoying an affair with Toni (Goldie Hawn) but doesn't want to be hemmed in by marriage. He prevails upon his non-glamorous assistant Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman Read More

1969
The Odd Couple

Crew: Director

Actors: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, John Fiedler, Herb Edelman, David Sheiner

Synopsis: Compulsive neatnik Felix Unger (Jack Lemmon) is thrown out of his house by his divorce-bound wife. He wanders aimlessly through the streets of New York, toying with the idea of suicide, before gravitating to the apartment of his best friend, incorrigibly sloppy sportswriter Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau Read More

1968
Barefoot in the Park

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Charles Boyer, Mildred Natwick, Herb Edelman

Synopsis: Based on the hit Broadway play by Neil Simon, who made his screenwriting debut with this adaptation, Barefoot In The Park follows the lives of newlyweds Paul (Robert Redford) and Corie Bratter (Jane Fonda) as they adjust to married life in a tiny Greenwich Village apartment. Paul is a Read More

1967
A Thousand Clowns

Actors: Jason Robards, Jr., Barbara Harris, Martin Balsam, Gene Saks, William Daniels

Synopsis: Jason Robards Jr. superbly re-creates his Broadway role in this 1965 film version of Herb Gardner's play. Robards plays Murray Burns, head writer of TV's popular Chuckles the Chipmunk show. Fed up with the rat race, Murray quits his job and retreats to his cluttered Manhattan apartment, where he Read More

1965