Joyce Van Patten Filmography

Touched by an Angel: Family Business

Synopsis: Bill Cosby guest stars as Phil, the Angel of Reconciliation. Phil's current assignment is to mend the rifts that have separated prosperous car dealer Ben Mangione (Pat Hingle) and his prodigal son Buddy (Josh Carmichael). Ben's anger over Buddy's refusal to take over the family business--not to Read More

Jake's Women

Actors: Alan Alda, Anne Archer, Lolita Davidovich, Julie Kavner, Mira Sorvino

Synopsis: Assembled by the same team responsible for "The Hallmark Hall of Fame", this TV adaptation of Neil Simon's hit play Jake's Woman stars Alan Alda, recreating his Broadway role as Simon-esque writer Jake. Mired in an unhappy marriage with current spouse Maggie (Anne Archer), Jake tries to cope with Read More

Breathing Lessons

Synopsis: In this drama based on Anne Tyler's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the long marriage of a couple en route to a funeral is seen from the viewpoint of those they encounter during the trip. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Gift of Love

Actors: Andy Griffith, Blair Brown, Olivia Burnette, Will Friedle, Joyce Van Patten

Synopsis: Reeling with guilt after he accepts the healthy heart of his darling, deceased grandson, an elderly man lapses into a deep depression that does not abate until he hooks up with a troubled teenage runaway. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Law & Order: Extended Family

Synopsis: The seven-year-old daughter (Madeline Zima) of prominent Broadway producer Gary Silver (Barry Primus) is kidnapped. As it turns out, the girl's abductor is her own natural mother. But things get even more complex -- and more unsavory -- when charges of sexual molestation enter the picture, leading Read More

Maid for Each Other

Actors: Nell Carter, Dinah Manoff

Synopsis: Nell Carter stars a a popular singer and Dinah Manoff costars as her maid du jour in the made-for-TV Maid For Each Other. A spoiled-rotten widow whose wealthy husband left her penniless, Dinah hasn't quite latched onto the concept of being at someone else's beck and call. As for Nell, she doesn't Read More

The Haunted

Actors: Sally Kirkland

Synopsis: The Haunted is a Fox Network TV-movie purportedly based on eyewitness testimony. The story goes that in the mid-1980s, the Smurl family of Pittston, Pennsylvania began noticing something askew in their four-bedroom Victorian home. Apparently there are agents of Satan at work, bedeviling the family Read More

Trust Me

Actors: Adam Ant, David Packer, Talia Balsam, William de Acutis, Joyce Van Patten

Synopsis: Rock star Adam Ant tops the cast in Trust Me. The premise is as old as dirt, maybe older: art dealer Ant decides that his paintings would be far more valuable if the artists were dead. Now comes the twist: Ant fully intends to make certain that his artists are dead. In particular danger is Ant's Read More

Monkey Shines

Actors: Jason Beghe, John Pankow, Kate McNeil, Joyce Van Patten, Christine Forrest

Synopsis: A quadriplegic former athlete finds his darkest urges being acted out by an animal familiar in this psychological horror film. When Allan Mann (Jason Beghe) loses the use of his legs and arms in an accident, he becomes bitter -- no surprise given that his girlfriend dumps him for his surgeon, his Read More

Blind Date

Actors: Joyce Van Patten, Kim Basinger, Bruce Willis, John Larroquette, William Daniels, Phil Hartman, George Coe

Synopsis: When speaking of Laurel and Hardy's first feature film Pardon Us, Stan Laurel described it as "a three-story building on a one-story base"-in other words, a 2-reeler stretched and bloated into 6 reels. Much the same could be said of Blake Edwards's Blind Date, though one wonders if Stan Laurel Read More

Billy Galvin

Actors: Karl Malden, Lenny Von Dohlen, Joyce Van Patten, Toni Kalem, Keith Szarabajka

Synopsis: Lenny Von Dohlen plays Billy Galvin, the son of a no-nonsense construction worker (Karl Malden). Though his dad insists that he go to college to become an architect, Billy would rather go into his father's line of work. To prevent this, dad pulls strings to keep Billy out of the ironworker's Read More

Crawlspace

Actors: Klaus Kinski, Talia Balsam, Barbara Whinnery, Sally Brown, Carole Francis

Synopsis: A homicidal maniac doctor specializes in murder and owns a peaceful boarding house for lovely aspiring actresses. They feel safe and comfortable there. Little do they know, the good-doctor is getting his jollies by crawling through narrow spaces between the walls peeking at them through the Read More

Under the Influence

Actors: Andy Griffith

Synopsis: Under the Influence is a TV movie about an alcoholic, scripted by recovered alcoholic Joyce Rebeta-Burdett. Andy Griffith plays the head of an outwardly respectable New England family. Griffith drinks heavily, but the rest of the family sweeps his addiction under the rug. When Griffith lands in Read More

Picking Up the Pieces

Actors: Margot Kidder, David Ackroyd, James Farentino, Ari Meyers, Joyce Van Patten

Synopsis: Picking Up the Pieces is a TV movie firmly locked in mid-1980s sensibilities: beware your husband, ladies, he's pond scum. Margot Kidder, a high school guidance counselor and mother of two, is the wife of wealthy surgeon and all-around heel David Ackroyd. After 17 years of emotional abuse, Kidder Read More

The Falcon and the Snowman

Actors: Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, David Suchet, Lori Singer, Pat Hingle

Synopsis: John Schlesinger directed this fact-based drama - adapted from Robert Lindsay's bestseller of the same title -- about two Californians, friends since boyhood, who are caught selling government secrets to the Soviet Union. Christopher Boyce (Timothy Hutton) is an all-American boy, studying for the Read More

Annie Oakley

Synopsis: This made-for-TV biography appeared as part of the Shelley Duvall series, Tall Tales and Legends, and stars Jamie Lee Curtis as Annie Oakley and Brian Dennehy as Buffalo Bill Cody, who Ms. Oakley accompanied on a hugely successful Wild West show. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

St. Elmo's Fire

Actors: Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Mare Winningham, Andie MacDowell

Synopsis: Post-collegiate angst, '80s style, is the subject of this coming-of-age ensemble piece, which traces the fortunes of a group of Georgetown grads as they enter the real world and grapple with work, infidelity, and adulthood. The most outwardly upscale member of the gang, Jules (Demi Moore), hides a Read More

Malice in Wonderland

Actors: Jane Alexander, Denise Crosby, Elizabeth Taylor, Jason Wingreen, Tim Robbins

Synopsis: When the made-for-TV The Rumor Mill first aired on May 12, 1985, it bore the title Malice in Wonderland. This joyously inaccurate biopic concerns itself with Hollywood's two foremost gossipmongers of the 1930s and 1940s: Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. Long involved in the film industry, Parsons Read More

Another Woman's Child

Actors: Linda Lavin, Jenny O'Hara

Synopsis: Initially titled The Far Shore, the made-for-TV Another Woman's Child was co-produced by Linda Lavin, who also starred. Lavin and Tony LoBianco play a long-married couple who are confronted with a flash from the past. Young Jenny O'Hara shows up at the couple's doorstep, announcing that she is LoBianco Read More

The Demon Murder Case

Actors: Eddie Albert, Ken Kercheval, Joyce Van Patten

Synopsis: The made-for-TV Demon Murder Case has received an inordinate amount of airplay since its initial telecast on March 6, 1983. We suspect that this has something to do with its star, a young and callow fellow name of Kevin Bacon. Though he receives top billing, Bacon is hardly the hero of the piece; Read More

In Defense of Kids

Actors: Beth Ehlers

Synopsis: Blythe Danner stars as a successful and somewhat sheltered attorney. After a chance meeting with abused teenaged streetwalker Beth Ehlers and tough social worker Joyce vanPatten, Ms. Danner quits her job to set up her own legal defense office for children. Four different "cases" intersect in this Read More

Eleanor: First Lady of the World

Synopsis: Jean Stapleton stars as Eleanor Roosevelt in this made-for-TV biography, first telecast May 12, 1982. The film recounts Mrs. Roosevelt's life after the 1945 death of her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At the request of new president Truman, Eleanor serves as a United Nations Read More

To Kill a Cop

Synopsis: Joe Don Baker stars as chief of detectives, Eischeid, in the 4-hour, 2-part TV film To Kill A Cop. Eischeid must contend with a series of seemingly unrelated bank robberies and the vicious murders of two police officers. Eischeid deduces that the culprits are members of a violent African-American Read More

The Comedy Company

Actors: George Burns

Synopsis: Jack Albertson stars as an old-time Borscht Belt comic who owns his own nightclub. Albertson's public has been dwindling for years, and his club is in danger of folding. He decides to renovate his business by changing his establishment into a Comedy Store-like operation, opening his doors to Read More

Murder at the Mardi Gras

Synopsis: Didi Conn, who skyrocketed to fame thanks to Saturday Night Fever (77) and You Light Up My Life (78), did nothing for her career with the made-for-TV Murder at the Mardi Gras. Conn plays a loopy young Philadelphia waitress who witnesses a murder during the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebration, but Read More

The Rockford Files: To Protect and Serve, Part 1

Synopsis: In the first half of a two-part story, police detective Dennis Becker (Joe Santos) is harrassed by Lianne Sweeney (Joyce Van Patten), a "police groupie" who monitors the Department's activities via her radio and dogs Dennis' trail during his investigation of a very difficult case. Lianne's Read More

The Rockford Files: To Protect and Serve, Part 2

Synopsis: In the conclusion of a two-part story, Jim (James Garner) tries to protect Patsy Fossler (Leslie Charleson) from her mob-connected boyfriend Michael Kelly (Jon Cypher) by stashing the girl with his friend Wes (Lou Frizzell). Unfortunately, Patsy's hiding place is revealed by Lianne Sweeney (Joyce Read More

The Bad News Bears

Actors: Walter Matthau, Tatum O'Neal, Vic Morrow, Joyce Van Patten, Ben Piazza, Jackie Earle Haley

Synopsis: The success this underdog comedy from director Michael Ritchie almost single-handedly spawned the kids' sports film boom of the 1980s and '90s. When beer-breathed ex-minor-league ball player and professional pool cleaner Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) agrees to coach a little league team in Read More

Mikey and Nicky

Actors: Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Ned Beatty, Rose Arrick, Carol Grace

Synopsis: Nickey (John Cassavetes) is a small-time Jewish gangster in trouble with the mob. He calls on his lifelong friend Mikey (Peter Falk) for help. During the night the two spend together, the power of their friendship is undermined by their mutual nastiness and pressing financial concerns. Elaine Read More

Let's Switch!

Synopsis: A made-for-TV domestic comedy, Let's Switch stars Barbara Eden as a homemaker and Barbara Feldon as her best friend, a glamorous magazine editor. Both are slightly jealous of each other's life style, so they decide to switch roles for a while. Feldon is consigned to the laundry and kitchen, while Eden Read More

Winner Take All

Synopsis: In this drama, a gambling-addicted housewife resorts to stealing from the family savings account to feed her obsession. Trouble ensues when her husband finds out. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery

Actors: Gabriel Dell, Will Geer, Joyce Van Patten, Anjanette Comer, Vincent Gardenia, Barbara Harris, Jackie Coogan

Synopsis: Detective movies and film-noir are parodied in this comedy that tells the story of a rookie detective who is hired via mail-order to find out who killed the milkman. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Winter Kill

Synopsis: Winter Kill was the pilot film for a potential Andy Griffith TV series, to be titled MacNeil. Griffith plays the easygoing sheriff in a Northwestern ski resort town (actually Big Bear, California). The object of Griffith's attentions is a mysterious serial killer, who leaves puzzling Read More

The Book of Murder

Synopsis: The Book of Murder opens with a wife snuggling into bed next to her husband. She finds the experience a cold one--hubby has been murdered. The victim was a best-selling author, who had been married three previous times. And it just so happens that all three ex-wives, each with motives aplenty, are Read More

Mame

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

The Stranger Within

Synopsis: Richard Matheson picked and chose the most effective elements of such earlier films as Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist, then glossed over all with his own original touch. The result was this superior (if occasionally wavering) TV movie. Barbara Eden, who after five years of I Dream of Jeannie was Read More

The Bob Newhart Show: Let's Get Away From It Almost

Actors: Bob Newhart, Suzanne Pleshette, Bill Daily, Peter Bonerz, Marcia Wallace

Synopsis: A three-day vacation at a sparsely populated skiing resort turns into hell on earth for Bob and Emily. Not only are they stuck with the company of an obnoxious couple in the next room (all four vacationers share a single bathroom), but the Hartleys end up snowed in when they try to escape back to Read More

The Streets of San Francisco: The House on Hyde Street

Synopsis: A forbidding old mansion in a residential San Francisco neighborhood is the centerpiece of this grim story. When a young boy disappears, and is subsequently found dead, the neighbors suspect the mysterious recluse residing within the walls of the mansion. It is up to Stone (Karl Malden) and Keller Read More

Thumb Tripping

Synopsis: In this adventure, a stereotypical hippie couple hitchhikes around California and meets various odd people ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide Read More

Bone

Synopsis: When their lavish home is invaded by a violent and unstable black criminal, a high-living white Beverly Hills couple is forced to confront their worst nightmares in filmmaker Larry Cohen's satirical black comedy. Famous car dealer Bill (Andrew Duggan) and his wife, Bernadette (Joyce Van Patten) Read More

The Bravos

Actors: Vincent Van Patten

Synopsis: Filmed in Flagstaff, Arizona, The Bravos top-bills George Peppard as a frontier cavalry commander. It is Peppard's job to protect his fort, and the wagon train passengers sheltered within, from the 2000 Kiowa Indian warriors who dot the surrounding hills. This being a 1972 TV movie, the Native Read More

For the Use of the Hall

Actors: Susan Anspach, Barbara Barrie, George Furth, David Hedison, Aline MacMahon

Something Big

Synopsis: In this western, an outlaw anxiously awaits the arrival of his betrothed, who is under the false impression that her fiancé is worth a fortune. Unfortunately, the fellow has earned nothing during his stint in the West. Desperate to keep her, he begins plotting the theft of a Mexican bandit's loot. Read More

Making it

Actors: Kristoffer Tabori, Joyce Van Patten

Synopsis: In the life of sexually successful young high-school student Phil Fuller (Kristoffer Tabori) the episodes in this story enable him to gain increased maturity and understanding. Phil is attracted to his gym teacher's beautiful wife who has a phobia about growing old and who eventually takes him to Read More

The F.B.I.: The Turnabout

Synopsis: Warren Oates guest stars as Richie Billings, a professional thief who ends up the only survivor of a bloody armored car robbery. As he escapes to Canada with $50,000 in stolen money, Billings undergoes a radical personality change--and it may not be for the better. It is up to the FBI's Inspector Read More

But I Don't Want to Get Married!

Actors: June Lockhart, Tina Louise

Synopsis: This made-for-TV movie stars Herschel Bernardi as a middle-aged widower, contentedly resigned to his bachelorhood. Bernardi's well-meaning friends and relatives are tireless in their efforts to hitch him up with a new bride. All the candidates are played by prominent actresses (Shirley Jones, Tina Louise Read More

Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You

Actors: Ian McShane, Anna Calder-Marshall, John Gavin, Severn Darden, Joyce Van Patten

Synopsis: This uneven comedy finds Fred (Ian McShane) as a writer living off his royalties in Italy. Married to the long-suffering Millie (Ann Calder-Marshall), Fred revels in a series of affairs with a bevy of Italian beauties. Millie soon grows tired of being alone and takes up with two Italian Don Juans (Sammy Pavel Read More

Family Affair: Class Clown

Synopsis: Joyce Van Patten is cast as brassy comedienne Gail Spencer, who pays a visit to her friend Bill (Brian Keith) while stopping over in New York. Impressed that Gail is always "on", always ready with a joke for any occasion, Jody is inspired to become a comedian himself--but at all the wrong times Read More

The Trouble with Girls

Actors: Elvis Presley, Marlyn Mason, Nicole Jaffe, Sheree North, Edward Andrews

Synopsis: Walter Hale (Elvis Presley) is the manager of a chautauqua, a traveling show consisting of performances, lectures and entertainment. Along with manager Johnny (Edward Andrews), he helps some young kids break into show business and contends with the union-organizing Charlene (Marilyn Mason). Vincent Price Read More

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas

Actors: Peter Sellers, Jo Van Fleet, Leigh Taylor-Young, Joyce Van Patten, David Arkin

Synopsis: One of the few 1960s satires of the hippie culture that doesn't appear to be concocted by grumpy old men, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas stars Peter Sellers as Harold Fine, a staid, fortysomething Jewish attorney. Engaged to the equally straitlaced Joyce (Joyce Van Patten), Harold wistfully dreams of Read More

The Andy Griffith Show: Opie Steps Up in Class

Actors: Paul Hartman, Sandy Kenyon

Synopsis: When Andy enrolls him in an expensive boys' camp, Opie befriends wealthy young Billy Hollander (Don Wyndham). Worried that his son's head will be turned by Billy's opulent lifestyle, Andy warns Opie not to start "putting on airs." But when he meets Billy's parents (Joyce Van Patten and Sandy Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Thermal Thief

Synopsis: This is the second of two Season Eight episodes in which a "special guest attorney" takes over from Perry Mason (Raymond Burr), who is ostensibly in Europe on business. This time the substitute is Perry's lawyer pal Ken Kramer (Barry Sullivan), who is hired by Lona Upton (Kathie Browne) to bail Read More

The Outer Limits: A Feasability Study

Synopsis: In Volume 29 of a collection culled from the 1963-1965 science fiction anthology television series, a neighborhood is transported from Earth to an alien world that plans to use humankind as its slaves. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of the Prankish Professor

Synopsis: This episode opens with an apparent murder in a college classroom--which turns out to be a staged event, dreamed up by Professor Ronald Hewes (Barry Atwater) to test his students' powers of observation. After the demonstration, however, Hewes discovers that the gun used to "kill" him had only one Read More

The Untouchables: The Spoiler

Synopsis: Federal agent Elliot Ness ($Robert Stack}) and gangster boss Vince Majeski (Claude Akins) are both very interested when fugitive hoodlum Johnny Meizo (Rip Torn) returns from Brazil. It seems that just before leaving the States, Meizo had stolen $200,000 of Majeski's money. On the lam from both the Read More

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: The Lonely Hours

Actors: Nancy Kelly, Gena Rowlands, Joyce Van Patten, Juanita Moore, Jesslyn Fax

Synopsis: A woman calling herself Vera (Nancy Kelly) displays a great deal of affection toward the baby son of her landlady, Louise Henderson (Gena Rowlands). Curiously, although the infant is named Lonnie, Vera insists upon referring to him as Michael. What seems innocent enough on the surface is quickly Read More

The Twilight Zone: Passage on the Lady Ann

Actors: Gladys Cooper, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Cecil Kellaway, Lee Philips, Joyce Van Patten

Synopsis: Charles Beaumont adapted this hauntingly-poignant 60-minute Twilight Zone episode from his own short story "Song for a Lady." Hoping to save their tattered marriage, Alan and Eileen Ransome (Lee Philips and Joyce Van Patten) book passage on a luxury liner bound for England. Their first indication Read More

The Goddess

Actors: Kim Stanley, Lloyd Bridges, Steven Hill, Betty Lou Holland, Burt Brinckerhoff

Synopsis: Screenplay writer Paddy Chayefsky, and indeed everyone involved with the film, insisted that The Goddess wasn't really all about Marilyn Monroe. Nawww. Kim Stanley plays a neglected young woman living in poverty who aspires to be a movie star. She gets a few roles here and there on looks alone. Read More

Fourteen Hours

Actors: Richard Basehart, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes, Agnes Moorehead, Debra Paget, Robert Keith

Synopsis: Henry Hathaway directed this high-tension drama about a man teetering on the verge of self-destruction and how his dilemma affects those around him. Robert Cosick (Richard Basehart) is a desperate and despondent young man who has never gotten along with his parents (Robert Keith and Agnes Moorehead Read More

Reg'lar Fellers

Actors: Sarah Padden, Roscoe Ates, Maren Mayo, Netta Packer, Jack C. Smith

Synopsis: Based on the long-running comic strip by Gene Byrne, PRC's Reg'lar Fellers was intended as the first of a series of 6-reel comedies built around the talents of juvenile performers Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer and Billy Lee. The plot is set in motion by Hetty Carter (Sarah Padden), a wealthy dowager who Read More