Sam Levene Filmography

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

The Royal Family

Synopsis: Based upon the 1927 George S. Kaufman-Edna Ferber stage hit, The Royal Family is about a famous, more than somewhat eccentric theater family that may bring to mind the real-life Barrymores. The Cavendish clan is headed by Fanny, a grande dame of the highest order. Although her best days are Read More

For the Record [TV Series]

Crew: Producer

Synopsis: For the Record was an outgrowth of Camera 76, a component of the CBC series Performance. Concentrating on social issues pertinent to Canadian viewers, the erratically scheduled series adopted a dramatized documentary format which was labeled as "journalistic drama" by the producers. The fact-based Read More

God Told Me To

Actors: Tony Lo Bianco, Richard Lynch, Sylvia Sidney

Synopsis: Released theatrically as God Told Me To, this inventive film from "B"-movie auteur Larry Cohen was later re-named Demon after television distributors refused to air it under the original title. The convoluted, tabloid-flavored storyline (predating the kind of stories frequently featured on The Read More

Atlantic City Jackpot

Actors: Laurence Luckinbill, Graham Beckel, Regina Baff, Elizabeth Richards, Sam Levene

Synopsis: A young thug needs money, so he visits his girlfriend while she's baby-sitting. While there, he plans to tie up the girl, kidnap the child, and hold him for ransom in the hope that his wealthy father will pay up. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Money

Gallery [TV Series]

Crew: Executive Producer

Synopsis: Throughout its two-year lifespan, the Canadian documentary series Gallery never settled on a single permanent time slot: Indeed, it wandered all over the CBC schedule, requiring fans to keep both eyes on the local TV listings at all times. Essentially lightweight in nature, the series specialized Read More

Such Good Friends

Synopsis: Based upon the novel by Lois Gould and adapted (under the pseudonym Esther Dale) by Elaine May, Such Good Friends focuses on Julie Messinger (played by Dyan Cannon), a woman with intense, often wild emotions that are held in check beneath a rather conventional façade. After her chauvinistic and Read More

A Dream of Kings

Actors: Anthony Quinn, Irene Papas, Inger Stevens, Sam Levene, Val Avery

Synopsis: Anthony Quinn plays Matsoukas, a Greek/American ne'er do well, living in Chicago with his long-suffering wife Caliope (Irene Papas). When Matsoukas discovers that his son (Radames Pera) is dying, he decides that the boy needs to get out of the Windy City and recuperate in the more agreeable Read More

Act One

Actors: George Hamilton, Jason Robards, Jr., Jack Klugman, Sam Levene, Ruth Ford, Eli Wallach, George Segal

Synopsis: This autobiographical story traces the career of playwright Moss Hart. Moss (George Hamilton) struggles as a dramatic writer until he concentrates his efforts on writing comedy. He suffers through a series of professional and romantic failures before a meeting with George S. Kaufman (Jason Robards Jr Read More

The Untouchables: The Larry Fay Story

Synopsis: Racketeer Larry Fay (Sam Levene) gains control of New York's dairy industry, forcing the price of milk to an astronomical (for 1933) price of 13 cents a quart. Hoping to put Fay out of business, Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) appeals to the better nature of singer Sally Kansas (Claire Trevor), star Read More

Kathy O'

Actors: Dan Duryea, Patty McCormack, Jan Sterling, Mary Fickett, Sam Levene

Synopsis: A child star becomes a brat to hide her loneliness in this drama. The popular little actress is quite insolent and refuses to allow anyone to push her around. She becomes quite stubborn when a studio publicist asks her to do an interview with his ex-wife, a prominent columnist. He finally bribes Read More

Designing Woman

Actors: Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall, Dolores Gray, Sam Levene, Tom Helmore

Synopsis: Vincente Minnelli directed this sophisticated comedy, which owes a debt to Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn vehicles. Sportswriter Mike Hagen (Gregory Peck) and fashion designer Marilla (Lauren Bacall) are New Yorkers who meet while both are vacationing in California. It's love at first sight, and Read More

Sweet Smell of Success

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Sam Levene

Synopsis: Ernest Lehman drew upon his experiences as a Broadway press agent to write the devastating a clef short story "Tell Me About Tomorrow." This in turn was adapted by Lehman and Clifford Odets into the sharp-edged, penetrating feature film Sweet Smell of Success. Burt Lancaster stars as J. J. Read More

A Farewell to Arms

Actors: Rock Hudson, Jennifer Jones, Vittorio De Sica, Alberto Sordi, Kurt Kasznar, Mercedes McCambridge

Synopsis: Farewell to Arms is the second film version of Ernest Hemingway's World War One novel--and also the last film produced by David O. Selznick (Gone with the Wind). Rock Hudson plays an American serving in the Italian Army during the "War to End All Wars". Jennifer Jones is his lover, a Red cross Read More

Slaughter on Tenth Avenue

Actors: Richard Egan, Jan Sterling, Dan Duryea, Julie Adams, Walter Matthau

Synopsis: Though Slaughter on Tenth Avenue's background music relies heavily on the Richard Rodgers composition of the same name, the film itself bears no relation to the ten-minute ballet for which Rodgers wrote the piece. Instead, this Albert Zugsmith-produced crime meller attempts to expose waterfront Read More

The Opposite Sex

Actors: June Allyson, Joan Collins, Dolores Gray, Jeff Richards, Ann Sheridan, Ann Miller, Leslie Nielsen, Harry James, Dick Shawn, Jim Backus

Synopsis: The Opposite Sex is an opulent musical remake of Clare Booth Luce's The Women (1939). June Allyson stars in the old Norma Shearer role, playing the virtuous wife who loses her husband to scheming Joan Collins (as the Joan Crawford character). At first agreeing to a divorce, June decides to win Read More

Three Sailors and a Girl

Actors: Jane Powell, Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson, Sam Levene, George Givot

Synopsis: Though it isn't obvious at first glance, Three Sailors and a Girl is the fourth screen version of the George S. Kaufman stage comedy The Butter and Egg Man. The titular gobs are Jones, Twitch, and Parky, played respectively by Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson, and Jack E. Leonard. On leave in New York Read More

Guilty Bystander

Actors: Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson, Mary Boland, Sam Levene, J. Edward Bromberg

Synopsis: Zachary Scott plays Max Thursday, an alcoholic ex-police detective working as a bouncer at a sleazy rooming house owned by Smitty (Mary Boland), a likeable, earthy old lady. Thursday's former wife, Georgia (Faye Emerson), shows up one night, while her ex-husband is in an alcoholic stupor, to tell Read More

With These Hands

Actors: Sam Levene, Arlene Francis, Joseph Wiseman, Louis Sorin, Alexander Scourby

Synopsis: With These Hands is an entertaining 47-minute slice of propaganda, courtesy of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The film dramatizes the rise of the American labor movement, beginning with the dark days of the sweatshop in 1910 and culminating with the much-improved working Read More

Dial 1119

Actors: Marshall Thompson, Virginia Field, Sam Levene, Leon Ames

Synopsis: Louis B. Mayer's nephew Gerald proved himself an able director with the MGM "B" thriller Dial 1119. Marshall Thompson stars as an emotionally disturbed young man who pulls out a gun at a bar and holds the patrons hostage. As the police gather outside, the film concentrates on the various bar Read More

The Babe Ruth Story

Actors: William Bendix, Claire Trevor, Charles Bickford, Sam Levene, William Frawley

Synopsis: The Plan 9 From Outer Space of baseball biopics, The Babe Ruth Story is definitely in the "So Bad It's Good" category. An outrageously miscast William Bendix stars as George Herman "Babe" Ruth, who as depicted herein is a childish, misunderstood oaf who happens to be one of the greatest Read More

Leather Gloves

Actors: Cameron Mitchell, Virginia Grey, Jane Nigh, Sam Levene, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: In this drama, a wanderer is put on a fight card after promising the promoter that he will take a dive. He soon falls in love with a woman, but later discovers that she is in love with his opponent. He then attempts to scare his rival away from prizefighting by beating him up. He then hits the Read More

A Likely Story

Actors: Barbara Hale, Bill Williams, Lanny Rees, Sam Levene, Dan Tobin

Synopsis: Soon to be married in real life, Barbara Hale and Bill Williams also played sweethearts on screen in the frantic farce A Likely Story. After a routine medical examination, ex-GI Bill Baker (Bill Williams) overhears a conversation between two doctors, leading him to the mistaken conclusion that Read More

Killer McCoy

Actors: Mickey Rooney, Brian Donlevy, Ann Blyth, James Dunn, Tom Tully

Synopsis: In one of his first "adult" roles (he made his last Andy Hardy vehicle only a year earlier), Mickey Rooney plays Tommy McCoy, a dancer who performs in a going-nowhere nightclub act with his alcoholic father, Brian (James Dunn). Johnny Martin (Mickey Knox), a lightweight boxing champ who is Read More

Boomerang!

Actors: Dana Andrews, E.J. Ballantine, Jane Wyatt, Lee J. Cobb, Royal Beal, Ed Begley, Sr., Arthur Kennedy, Cara Williams, Karl Malden, Wryley Birch

Synopsis: Boomerang, directed by Elia Kazan, is a chilling film noir, the true story about the murder of a priest, the subsequent arrest and trial of a jobless drifter, and the efforts of young state's attorney Henry Harvey (Dana Andrews) to uncover the truth. Closely based on the actual 1924 murder of Fr. Read More

Crossfire

Actors: Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Gloria Grahame, Paul Kelly

Synopsis: This drama was one of the first major-studio efforts to confront anti-Semitism (beating the Oscar-winning Gentleman's Agreement by several months), and it features a standout performance from Robert Ryan as a bigoted soldier on the run. Monty Montogomery (Ryan) is a violent and unstable soldier Read More

Brute Force

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth

Synopsis: Burt Lancaster had one of his first starring roles in this hard-hitting prison drama. Capt. Munsey (Hume Cronyn) is a cruel, corrupt prison guard who has his own less-than-ethical ways of dealing with inmates, enough so that Joe Collins (Lancaster) -- the toughest inmate in the cell block -- has Read More

The Killers

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker, Jeff Corey, Sam Levene, Jack Lambert

Synopsis: The Killers uses Ernest Hemingway's short story as a springboard for a complex film noir. Two mysterious men (William Conrad and Charles McGraw) muscle their way into a small town and kill an aging boxer (Burt Lancaster, making his screen debut), who offers no resistance and seems to be welcoming Read More

The Purple Heart

Actors: Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, Farley Granger, Sam Levene, Kevin O'Shea, Don "Red" Barry, Tala Birell

Synopsis: The year is 1942: eight American airmen crash-land during the Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo and are taken prisoner. Though slated for execution, the pilots are put through a "show trial" by the military, on a charge of committing war crimes. The Japanese judges promise to be merciful if only the Read More

Action in the North Atlantic

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Raymond Massey, Ruth Gordon, Alan Hale, Julie Bishop

Synopsis: Action in the North Atlantic is solid wartime propaganda with a rather endearing inner lining of left-wing politics, courtesy (no doubt) of scenarist John Howard Lawson, who based his screenplay on a novel by maritime specialist Guy Gilpatric. While running war goods to America's Russian allies, a Read More

Gung Ho!

Actors: Randolph Scott, Grace McDonald, Noah Beery, Jr., Alan Curtis, J. Carrol Naish, Robert Mitchum

Synopsis: Accepted in 1943 as standard wartime propaganda, Gung Ho can be seen today as an outrageous exercise in raging machismo. Randolph Scott plays Thorwald, a marine colonel assigned to assemble a crack squadron of fearless jungle fighters for the all-important raid on Japanese-held Makim Island (which Read More

Whistling in Brooklyn

Actors: Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford, Jean Rogers, Ray Collins

Synopsis: The last of three films starring Red Skelton as ace radio detective Wally "The Fox" Benton, Whistling in Brooklyn opens with Fox and girl friend Carol Lambert (Ann Rutherford) making final preparations for a trip to Niagara Falls, where they intend to get married. Of course, they've made these Read More

I Dood It

Actors: Red Skelton, Eleanor Powell, Lena Horne, Patricia Dane, Richard Ainley, Sam Levene

Synopsis: In later years, director Vincente Minnelli would dismiss I Dood It as his worst picture, though a more deserving candidate for that "honor" would be Minnelli's valedictory film A Matter of Time. In this remake of Buster Keaton's Spite Marriage, Red Skelton plays pants-presser Joseph Rivington Read More

The Big Street

Actors: Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Agnes Moorehead, Barton MacLane, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Lucille Ball delivers the finest dramatic performance of her career in this satisfying adaptation of Damon Runyon's The Big Street. Ball is cast as Gloria, aka "Your Highness," the vain and thoroughly selfish star attraction of gangster Case Ables' (Barton MacLaine) New York nightclub. Henry Fonda Read More

Sing Your Worries Away

Actors: Bert Lahr, June Havoc, Buddy Ebsen, Patsy Kelly, Dorothy Lovett

Synopsis: How could anyone resist a 1940s film starring Bert Lahr, June Havoc, Buddy Ebsen and Patsy Kelly-even a film as relentlessly silly as RKO Radio's Sing Your Worries Away? Lahr is cast as zany songwriter Chow Brewster, the sweetheart of cigarette girl Carol (Dorothy Lovett). Unbeknownst to eveyone Read More

Destination Unknown

Actors: William Gargan, Irene Hervey, Sam Levene, Turhan Bey, Keye Luke

Synopsis: No relation to the 1933 film of the same name, the 1942 Universal programmer Destination Unknown stars William Gargan as a pilot for General Chennault's Flying Tigers. As such, Gargan is on hand to witness Japanese skullduggery in China, long before Pearl Harbor. When a cache of jewels, intended Read More

Grand Central Murder

Actors: Van Heflin, Patricia Dane, Cecilia Parker, Virginia Grey, Samuel S. Hinds

Synopsis: Grand Central Murder was intended as a followup to the MGM "sleeper" Kid Glove Killer, with the earlier film's star, Van Heflin, appearing in a similar role. When bitchy actress Mida King (Patricia Dane) is bumped off in a private train car at Grand Central Station, police inspector Gunther (Sam Read More

Sunday Punch

Actors: William Lundigan, Jean Rogers, Dan Dailey, Guy Kibbee, J. Carrol Naish

Synopsis: Another graduate of MGM's short-subject department, director David Miller proved he had what it took to helm a feature film for the studio in Sunday Punch. The harmless but diverting story concerns the rivalry, in and out of the ring, between prizefighters Ken Burke (William Lundigan) and Olaf Read More

Shadow of the Thin Man

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Barry Nelson, Donna Reed, Sam Levene

Synopsis: This fourth entry in MGM's Thin Man series could just as well have been titled "Nick and Nora Charles Go to the Races". Officially retired from sleuthing, Nick Charles (William Powell) does his best to be a dutiful husband to his lovely wife Nora (Myrna Loy) and a good father to his young son Nick Read More

Married Bachelor

Actors: Robert Young, Ruth Hussey, Felix Bressart, Lee Bowman, Sheldon Leonard

Synopsis: Married Bachelor is a cute little MGM situation comedy, designed for the bottom half of the studio's double bills. Robert Young plays an married author who has penned several books on how to stay single. Naturally, he has to pose as a bachelor for publicity purposes...but wife Ruth Hussey is Read More

Golden Boy

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou, Lee J. Cobb, Joseph Calleia

Synopsis: Director Rouben Mamoulian often claimed that he'd been inspired to make Golden Boy after reading a newspaper clipping about a recently deceased boxer. While Mamoulian may have genuinely believed that he was the true "auteur" of Golden Boy, he probably wouldn't have made the picture at all had not Clifford Odets Read More

The Mad Miss Manton

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Sam Levene, Frances Mercer, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: Wealthy socialite Melsa Manton (Barbara Stanwyck) is taking her pooches for a walk in the dead of the night when she stumbles upon a dead body and a car fleeing the scene of the crime. She alerts the police but the corpse has disappeared by the time they arrive, and the lieutenant, knowing of her Read More

The Shopworn Angel

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Walter Pidgeon, Hattie McDaniel, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: The second motion picture version of a Saturday Evening Post story by Dana Burnet, this romantic melodrama was also the second pairing of actors James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Stewart plays Private Bill Pettigrew, a naïve young Texan in New York for basic training prior to being shipped Read More

Yellow Jack

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Virginia Bruce, Andy Devine, Henry Hull

Synopsis: The Sidney Howard/Paul de Kruf Broadway play Yellow Jack was transferred to the screen by MGM in 1938. The film is set at the turn of the century, when yellow fever was the Number One killer in Latin America. Army doctors Lewis Stone, Charles Coburn and Stanley Ridges gather in Cuba to attempt to Read More

Three Men on a Horse

Actors: Frank McHugh, Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee, Carolyn Hughes, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: All but forgotten today, the George Abbott-John Cecil Holm stage comedy Three Men on a Horse was once a staple of the community theatre and summer-stock circuit (a 1958 TV production starred no less than Johnny Carson). Though a faithful adaptation of the Broadway original, this 1936 film version Read More

After the Thin Man

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, James Stewart, Elissa Landi, Joseph Calleia

Synopsis: This second of MGM's Thin Man films reteams William Powell and Myrna Loy as, respectively, bibulous private detective Nick Charles and his socialite wife Nora. The Charleses are sucked into another murder case via Nick's lovely cousin Elissa Landi, whose husband Alan Marshall has vanished. Hubby Read More