Herbert Ross Filmography

Boys on the Side

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker, Drew Barrymore, Matthew McConaughey, James Remar

Synopsis: This emotion-filled story stars Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker, and Drew Barrymore as three women from different walks of life who find comfort in each other through tragedy. Parker plays Robin, an HIV-positive real estate executive who meets Jane (Goldberg), a lesbian lounge singer on her Read More

Undercover Blues

Crew: Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Kathleen Turner, Dennis Quaid, Fiona Shaw, Stanley Tucci, Larry Miller

Synopsis: Nick and Nora Charles are updated to a touchy-feely couple of the 1990s who take a break from the action to raise their eleven-month-old child. Kathleen Turner and Dennis Quaid star as Jane and Jeff Blue, two CIA super-agents who have abandoned the daily grind to devote quality time to their baby Read More

Soapdish

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Robert Downey, Jr., Cathy Moriarty, Whoopi Goldberg

Synopsis: In the comedic farce Soapdish, the behind-the-scenes lives of several soap opera actors are just as melodramatic as those of their television counterparts. Sally Field stars as Celeste Talbert, the star of a declining TV show. To make matters worse, Talbert's career is thrown into turmoil when her Read More

True Colors

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: John Cusack, James Spader, Imogen Stubbs, Mandy Patinkin, Richard Widmark

Synopsis: John Cusack and James Spader play against type in Kevin Wade's morality play, directed by Herbert Ross. Spader plays Tim Gerrity, a well-heeled WASP blueblood, who has dedicated his life to justice and public service. Engaged to Diana Stiles (Imogene Stubbs), the daughter of a powerful senator (Richard Widmark Read More

My Blue Heaven

Crew: Co-producer, Director

Actors: Jesse Bradford, Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, Joan Cusack, Melanie Mayron, Carol Kane

Synopsis: Herbert Ross directed this Nora Ephron-scripted buddy comedy starring Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, and Joan Cusack. Steve Martin plays Vinnie Antonelli, a street smart mobster who agrees to turn state's evidence and is forced to move to Fryburg, California as part of the witness relocation program. Rick Moranis Read More

Steel Magnolias

Crew: Director

Actors: Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, Julia Roberts

Synopsis: The title refers to those seemingly frail Southern belles who survive any and all deprivations through whims of iron. Robert Harling's original stage play was set exclusively in a Louisiana beauty parlor where an all-female cast of characters laughed, cried and compared menfolk. The film expands Read More

The Dancers

Crew: Director

Actors: Mikhail Baryshnikov, Alessandra Ferri, Leslie Browne, Thomas Rall, Lynn Seymour

Synopsis: Choreographer and filmmaker Herbert Ross directs the romantic backstage drama The Dancers, which features a production of Giselle by the American Ballet Theatre. Mikhail Baryshnikov stars as macho lead dancer Tony Sergoyev, the director of a ballet company beginning a production of Giselle in Read More

The Secret of My Success

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Michael J. Fox, Helen Slater, Richard Jordan, Margaret Whitton, John Pankow

Synopsis: Released at the height of his popularity on Family Ties and in the wake of Back to the Future and Teen Wolf, Michael J. Fox stars in this "country boy in the big city" comedy, directed by Herbert Ross. After making the move from Kansas to New York City, Brantley Foster (Fox) secures a job in the Read More

Follies in Concert

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Including such songs as "Broadway Baby," "I'm Still Here," "The Ladies Who Lunch," and "Losing My Mind," this video features a filming of the well-known Stephen Sondheim musical as it was performed at New York's Lincoln Center in 1985. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

Footloose

Crew: Director

Actors: Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer, John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Chris Penn

Synopsis: In this lively adolescent-oriented musical, a city kid attempts to adapt to life in an ultra-conservative backwater Midwestern town. Once there he ends up leading the repressed teenagers into a rebellion against the town fathers who have outlawed rock & roll and dancing. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Read More

Protocol

Crew: Director

Actors: Goldie Hawn, Chris Sarandon, Richard Romanus, Andre Gregory, Gail Strickland

Synopsis: In this routine spoof of government and media foibles, Sunny (Goldie Hawn) is an ordinary cocktail waitress, someone who graduated in the top 75% of her class. When she dramatically prevents the assassination of a visiting dignitary, an Emir (Richard Romanus) from an Arab country. the event puts Read More

Max Dugan Returns

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Marsha Mason, Jason Robards, Jr., Donald Sutherland, Matthew Broderick, Dody Goodman

Synopsis: Max Dugan (Jason Robards Jr.) is an elderly ne'er-do-well whose tenuous mob connections have made him persona non grata with his daughter Marsha Mason. Struggling to raise her restless son Matthew Broderick on her own, Mason is none too pleased when Max returns to the family fold with yet another Read More

I Ought to Be in Pictures

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Walter Matthau, Ann-Margret, Dinah Manoff, Lance Guest, Lewis Smith

Synopsis: Neil Simon based his screenplay for I Ought to Be in Pictures on one of his more serious theatrical pieces. Walter Matthau is top-billed as Herbert Tucker, a struggling screenwriter who suddenly finds his 19-year-old daughter, Libby(Dinah Manoff), on his Hollywood doorstep. Having deserted his Read More

Pennies from Heaven

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Christopher Walken, Jessica Harper

Synopsis: Adapted from Dennis Potter's landmark British TV miniseries and relocated to the United States during the Depression, Pennies from Heaven dramatizes how popular songs both shaped and reflected the thoughts of people living through economic (and emotional) hardship. Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) is Read More

Nijinsky

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Bates, George de la Pena, Leslie Browne, Alan Badel, Carla Fracci, Janet Suzman

Synopsis: The deeper, broader issues behind the rise and fall of one of the world's greatest ballet dancers and choreographers, Vaslav Nijinksy (1888-1950), is not at the fulcrum of this two-hour British biographical drama. Director Herbert Ross and screenwriter Hugh Wheeler base the film on Nijinsky's Read More

California Suite

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Alda, Michael Caine, Bill Cosby, Jane Fonda, Walter Matthau, Richard Pryor, Maggie Smith

Synopsis: Playwright Neil Simon turned to the hotel setting he used so successfully in his stage-play (later a movie) Plaza Suite to explore four more human dramas in his play California Suite, which was adapted into this quite successful movie. In the first episode, the divorced couple of Bill and Hannah Read More

The Goodbye Girl

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Dreyfuss, Marsha Mason, Quinn Cummings, Paul Benedict, Barbara Rhoades

Synopsis: Marsha Mason is known as "The Goodbye Girl" because of all the live-in boyfriends who have said ta-ta to her in the past few years. A former Broadway chorus dancer, the divorced Mason lives in the Manhattan apartment of her latest lost love with her daughter Quinn Cummings. Enter arrogant actor Richard Dreyfuss Read More

The Turning Point

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Leslie Browne, Tom Skerritt

Synopsis: One of a cycle of '70s post-Women's Liberation "women's pictures," Herbert Ross's drama uses the ballet world to examine the conflict between family and career. Former dance colleagues Deedee (Shirley MacLaine) and Emma (Anne Bancroft) are reunited when Emma's New York ballet company stops in Read More

The Seven-Percent Solution

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Alan Arkin, Vanessa Redgrave, Robert Duvall, Nicol Williamson, Laurence Olivier

Synopsis: Nicholas Meyer based his screenplay for the "retro" Sherlock Holmes adventure The Seven Percent Solution on his own best-selling novel. As any Baker Street Irregular will tell you, the title refers to the dosage of cocaine taken by Sherlock Holmes (Nicol Williamson). The Great Detective's friend Read More

The Sunshine Boys

Crew: Director

Actors: Walter Matthau, George Burns, Richard Benjamin, Lee Meredith, Carol Arthur

Synopsis: In this 1975 adaptation of Neil Simon's stage play, director Herbert Ross presents the story of two old-time Vaudvillians played by Walter Matthau and George Burns in his first starring role since 1939's Honolulu. After decades apart, the cantankerous duo is persuaded to reunite for a television Read More

Funny Lady

Crew: Director

Actors: Barbra Streisand, James Caan, Omar Sharif, Roddy McDowall, Ben Vereen

Synopsis: Funny Lady, the follow-up to the 1968 Funny Girl which made a movie star of Barbra Streisand, picks up the character of Fanny Brice in the 1930s. Although she is a tremendously famous Broadway star, she has suffered from the stock market crash and needs to boost her finances. Even Ziegfeld, who Read More

The Last of Sheila

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, Joan Hackett, James Mason

Synopsis: This suspense drama features an all-star cast, including Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, James Mason, Ian McShane, and Raquel Welch. An interesting production fact about the film: its screenplay was written by actor Anthony Perkins and lyricist/songwriter Stephen Sondheim. Their Read More

Play It Again, Sam

Crew: Director

Actors: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Jerry Lacy, Susan Anspach

Synopsis: Herbert Ross directed this adaptation of Woody Allen's hit Broadway play concerning a shy film critic who has trouble with women. Woody Allen plays Allan Felix, a writer for Film Quarterly consumed by movies, particularly his favorite film of all time, Casablanca. At the start of the film, Allan's Read More

T.R. Baskin

Crew: Director

Actors: Candice Bergen, Peter Boyle, James Caan, Marcia Rodd, Erin O'Reilly

Synopsis: Candice Bergen plays the title character, a naïve young woman from the countryside who ventures to the bright lights of Chicago in search of an interesting career, true love, and happiness. She ends up working a meaningless job and living in a drab apartment, and she remains lonely as her Read More

The Owl and the Pussycat

Crew: Director

Actors: Barbra Streisand, George Segal, Robert Klein, Allen Garfield, Roz Kelly

Synopsis: The Owl and the Pussycat began life as a two-character Broadway play by Bill Manhoff, about a stuffy author who entered into an explosive relationship with his neighbor, a foulmouthed, freewheeling prostitute. Manhoff wrote the part of the hooker for a black actress, but all that changed when Barbra Streisand Read More

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Crew: Director

Actors: Peter O'Toole, Petula Clark, Michael Redgrave, George Baker, Michael Bryant

Synopsis: While it might not have been the best idea on earth to remake the 1939 classic Goodbye Mr. Chips as a musical, the end result is not altogether displeasing. Peter O'Toole steps into the old Robert Donat role of Arthur Chipping (originally Charles Chipping), a young by-the-book schoolmaster at a Read More

Funny Girl

Crew: Choreography, Musical Direction/Supervision

Actors: Barbra Streisand, Omar Sharif, Kay Medford, Anne Francis, Walter Pidgeon

Synopsis: "Hello, gorgeous!" was Barbra Streisand's first comment to the Oscar statuette which she won for her performance in this biopic of entertainer Fanny Brice. This is also her first line in the film itself, the catalyst for a movie-long flashback. Repeating her Broadway role, Streisand stars as Read More

Doctor Dolittle

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Rex Harrison, Samantha Eggar, Anthony Newley, Richard Attenborough, Peter Bull

Synopsis: Rex Harrison, although not at all like the portly man described in Hugh Lofting's charming series of children's stories, is sheer perfection as the kindly animal doctor in Leslie Bricusse's musical fantasy Doctor Dolittle. Sadly, Harrison is the only thing nearing perfection in this overstuffed Read More

Inside Daisy Clover

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Natalie Wood, Christopher Plummer, Robert Redford, Roddy McDowall, Ruth Gordon

Synopsis: Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood) goes from teenage girl to movie star practically overnight when her demented mother enters her voice in a talent-search contest. From a broken-down carnival on the Santa Monica Pier, in no time at all she is attending glamorous Hollywood parties. But Daisy soon learns Read More

Summer Holiday

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Cliff Richard, Lauri Peters, Melvyn Hayes, Una Stubbs, The Shadows, Teddy Green

Synopsis: British filmmaker Peter Yates directs singer Cliff Richard in the starring role in this early 1960s pop music romp. Richard plays Don, a mechanic who, with three friends, is preparing to launch an offbeat European continental travel service using an old London double-decker bus. On a test run Read More

The Young Ones

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Cliff Richard, Robert Morley, Carole Gray, Richard O'Sullivan, Melvyn Hayes

Synopsis: Wonderful to Be Young! was released in Britain as The Young Ones. Given the later output of director Sidney J. Furie, one might suspect that the original title was meant as irony, but in fact this is an upbeat, life-affirming vehicle for British pop singer Cliff Richard. In this one, Richard, the Read More

Carmen Jones

Crew: Choreography

Actors: Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Olga James, Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll

Synopsis: In 1943, Oscar Hammerstein Jr. took Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, rewrote the lyrics, changed the characters from 19th century Spaniards to World War II-era African-Americans, switched the locale to a Southern military base, and the result was Carmen Jones. Dorothy Dandridge stars as Carmen Jones Read More