Janet MargolinFilmography

Columbo: Murder in Malibu

Synopsis: The murder of a popular romance novelist sets America's favorite rumpled detective on the case. Columbo gets off on the wrong gumshoe when he forces an innocent gigolo to confess to the crime. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Murder, She Wrote: Deadly Misunderstanding

Synopsis: Saddled with a broken arm, Jessica (Angela Lansbury) hires a temporary typist named Melissa (Lise Cutter) to help her meet a deadline. "Dead" is right: It turns out that Melissa is a virtual mystery novel all in herself, as proven when she inveigles a moonstruck cub reporter into helping her Read More

Ghostbusters 2

Actors: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis

Synopsis: Ivan Reitman's sequel to the phenomenally successful Ghostbusters is looser and more self-assured than the original. The film opens with a title reading "Five Years Later" and finds the ghostbusters living in hard times. A restraining order has forbidden the boys to partake in paranormal warfare Read More

Distant Thunder

Actors: John Lithgow, Ralph Macchio, Kerrie Keane, Reb Brown, Janet Margolin

Synopsis: Discharged from Vietnam, John Lithgow and his army buddies have trouble fitting into a hostile home-front society. Rather than endure dirty looks and taunts of "baby killer," Lithgow and his friends wander aimlessly all through the Pacific Northwest. Several years pass, during which time Lithgow's Read More

Tonight's the Night

Synopsis: It's a slow night at the local single's bar, so three guys end up sitting around sharing their widely-differing viewpoints on finding romance. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Plutonium Incident

Synopsis: This made-for-TV drama produced by David Susskind preceded the release of Silkwood by three years, but tells basically the same story. Janet Margolin is the nuclear plant employee who blows the whistle on hazardous conditions and finds herself intimidated, harassed and finally targeted for Read More

The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal

Synopsis: This made-for-television drama tells of an actual event in 1911 where 145 workers in the Triangle garment factory were killed in a huge industrial fire. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide Read More

The Last Embrace

Actors: Roy Scheider, Janet Margolin, Christopher Walken, Sam Levene, John Glover

Synopsis: In 1979, Jonathan Demme was still a cutting-edge director and The Last Embrace was his first effort at a completely commercial assignment. Very much in the Hitchcock vein, The Last Embrace is an intense suspense film concerning Harry Hannan (Roy Scheider), a government agent recovering from a Read More

Sharon: Portrait of a Mistress

Synopsis: In this drama, a beautiful woman with a taste for married men begins looking at her life in a new way. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Murder in Peyton Place

Synopsis: The cast of the popular old TV series Peyton Place reunite when Allison MacKenzie and Rodney Harrington are found dead. Other than that, and a decade's worth of gossip, nothing much has changed there. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Annie Hall

Actors: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon

Synopsis: Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade follows the up and down relationship of two mismatched New York neurotics. Jewish comedy writer Alvy Singer (Allen) ponders the modern quest for love and his past romance with tightly-wound WASP singer Annie Hall (Diane Keaton, née Diane Hall). The Read More

Lanigan's Rabbi

Synopsis: Lanigan's Rabbi is the pilot for the subsequent TV series based on Harry Kemelman's novels about crimesolving Rabbi David Small. Stuart Margolin plays the Rabbi, while Art Carney is top-billed as the police detective who frequently relies on Small's intuition. This initial episode, adapted from Read More

Planet Earth

Synopsis: Planet Earth was the second of three look-alike attempts by Star Trek maven Gene Roddenberry to launch a futuristic TV series for the 1970s (the first was 1973's Genesis II, and the third was 1975's Strange New World). John Saxon stars as Dylan Hunt, who awakens from suspended animation in the Read More

Pray for the Wildcats

Synopsis: In this made-for-television drama, a trio of advertising executives take a motorcycle trip across the desert and end up in a life-threatening situation. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Your Three Minutes Are Up

Actors: Robert Funk, Suzi Goei, Leigh Heine, Pat Houtchens, Candace Howerton, Carol Kristy, Tom Moses, Sam Nudell, Michael Perrotta, Patti Shayne

Synopsis: Beau Bridges plays an uptight insurance clerk. Ron Leibman plays Bridges' laid-back pal, who talks Beau into skipping work in order to drive Leibman to the airport. This little trip across town turns into an idyllic trek up the California coast. While Leibman wheels and deals in his efforts to con Read More

Family Flight

Synopsis: The family in "flight" is played by Rod Taylor, Dina Merrill and Kristoffer Tabori. While taking an airborne vacation to Mexico, the family crash-lands somewhere in the Baja peninsula. Having taken the vacation as a means to patch up a variety of differences, the family is forced to pull together Read More

The Last Child

Actors: Michael Cole, Van Heflin, Janet Margolin

Synopsis: Back before he was producing Charlie's Angels, Aaron Spelling was a major supplier of made-for-television feature films, particularly to ABC, on which this movie premiered in 1971. The Last Child takes place in America in 1994, a time in which a massive, chronic overpopulation crisis has resulted Read More

Take the Money and Run

Actors: Woody Allen, Janet Margolin, Marcel Hillaire, Jacquelyn Hyde, Lonny Chapman

Synopsis: When Woody Allen's fans refer to his "earlier, funnier" pictures, they often cite his directorial debut as a shining example. Co-written by Allen and Mickey Rose, this side-splitting takeoff of crime documentaries stars Allen as Virgil Starkwell, a sweetly inept career criminal. The film's most Read More

Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell

Actors: Gina Lollobrigida, Shelley Winters, Phil Silvers, Peter Lawford, Telly Savalas

Synopsis: Gina Lollobrigida delivers a bright comic turn in Melvin Frank's farce concerning Carla, an Italian woman who, during World War II, had affairs with three American soldiers who served in the U.S. Army Air Force -- Phil Newman (Phil Silvers), Justin Young (Peter Lawford), and Walter Braddock (Telly Savalas Read More

Enter Laughing

Actors: José Ferrer, Reni Santoni, Shelley Winters, Elaine May, Jack Gilford

Synopsis: Carl Reiner's semi-autobiographical novel Enter Laughing makes a largely successful transition to the screen. Reni Santoni plays the Reiner character, here named David Kolowitz. A machinist's apprentice in Depression-era New York, David dreams of becoming the new Ronald Colman. Defying the wishes Read More

Nevada Smith

Actors: Steve McQueen, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Arthur Kennedy, Suzanne Pleshette

Synopsis: Henry Hathaway's film is based on a character from Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers, who, in turn, based it on cowboy actor Ken Maynard. Set in the West of the 1890s, the film opens with the torture and murder of the parents of Max Sand (Steve McQueen) by a trio of gunslingers seemingly motivated Read More

The Eavesdropper

Actors: Janet Margolin, Stathis Giallelis, Lautaro Murúa, Leonardo Favio

Synopsis: This drama, set in a Buenos Aires hotel, centers upon a fascist who goes into hiding after his organization's activities are banned by the government. Within the hotel he finds a group of Spanish exiles and actors. He begins eavesdropping after he overhears them planning to assassinate a visiting Read More

Morituri

Actors: Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Janet Margolin, Trevor Howard, Marlin Beneath

Synopsis: Bernhard Wicki directed this hard-hitting World War II espionage drama. Marlon Brando plays Robert Crain, a German deserter who is coerced by British Intelligence officer Colonel Statter (Trevor Howard) to impersonate a Gestapo officer in order to get aboard a German blockade runner that is Read More

Bus Riley's Back in Town

Actors: Ann-Margret, Michael Parks, Janet Margolin, Brad Dexter, Jocelyn Brando

Synopsis: William Inge co-wrote this story about a young man who may have outgrown the straight-laced boundaries of his home town. After a hitch in the Navy, Bus Riley (Michael Thomas Parks) comes home to the staid Midwestern town of his birth; however, home doesn't feel quite like it used to, and Riley is Read More

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Actors: Max von Sydow, Dorothy McGuire, Robert Loggia, Claude Rains, José Ferrer, Charlton Heston

Synopsis: Filmmaker George Stevens chose Monument Valley, Utah for his exterior sequences in The Greatest Story Ever Told, this ($20 million) adaptation of Fulton Oursler's best-selling book. The "Greatest Story" is, of course, the life of Jesus Christ, played herein by Max Von Sydow. The large supporting Read More

David and Lisa

Actors: Keir Dullea, Janet Margolin, Howard Da Silva, Neva Patterson, Clifton James

Synopsis: This stark and spare look at the world of the mentally disturbed was one of the beacons of the new American independent film movement. Keir Dullea and Janet Margolin star as two adolescents who make contact with each other in a home for disturbed youngsters. Dullea is David Clemens, who is placed Read More