Stanley KramerFilmography

The Runner Stumbles

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Dick Van Dyke, Kathleen Quinlan, Maureen Stapleton, Ray Bolger, Tammy Grimes

Synopsis: Director Stanley Kramer ended his career with this absorbing drama, adapted from the play by Milan Stitt and based on a real-life event from 1927. Dick Van Dyke stars as Father Rivard, an intellectual priest in a small, impoverished mining town in the state of Washington. A lonely man with low Read More

The Domino Principle

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, Richard Widmark, Mickey Rooney, Edward Albert

Synopsis: Stanley Kramer directed this paranoid thriller involving a murderer who is inexplicably released from prison by a mysterious organization. Gene Hackman is Roy Tucker, serving time in San Quentin when he's busted out by a secret organization in return for having to assassinate an unnamed person. Read More

Judgement: The Court Martial of Lt. William Calley

Crew: Director, Producer

Synopsis: Stanley Kramer, a director known for his socially pointed films, tackles yet another political topic with Judgement: The Court Martial of Lt. William Calley. This docudrama follows the court-martial of the title character, the man held responsible for the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. Read More

Oklahoma Crude

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: George C. Scott, Faye Dunaway, John Mills, Jack Palance, William Lucking

Synopsis: Taciturn Faye Dunaway insists upon drilling for oil in her small, unpromising patch of Oklahoma land. Drifter George C. Scott signs on to work the derrick, but only after Dunaway, who for unspecified reasons hates all men, warns him to stay at arm's length. Jack Palance, the strong-arm Read More

Bless the Beasts and Children

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Barry Robins, Miles Chapin, Darel Glaser, Bob Kramer

Synopsis: Bless the Beasts and Children is most fondly remembered as the film which introduced the song "Nadia's Theme" (better known as the title music for CBS' Young and the Restless). The film itself is a well-meaning if heavy-handed tale of six idealistic young boys whom come to the rescue of a buffalo Read More

R.P.M.

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Anthony Quinn, Ann-Margret, Gary Lockwood, Paul Winfield, Graham Jarvis

Synopsis: Set against the political turmoil of the late 60's, R.P.M. (Revolutions Per Minute) stars Anthony Quinn as "Paco" Perez, a free-thinking liberal college professor whom the campus leftists regard as an authority figure they can understand. Perez is also free-thinking enough to have a grad student Read More

The Secret of Santa Vittoria

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Anthony Quinn, Anna Magnani, Virna Lisi, Hardy Kruger, Sergio Franchi

Synopsis: Italo Bombolini (Anthony Quinn) is the mayor of the hillside village of Santa Vittorio. The wine-loving town leader erases a pro-Mussolini slogan when he hears of the fascist being killed and hanged from a meathook. His wife Rosa (Anna Magnani) throws him out of their wine shop when he and his Read More

Journey into Self

Synopsis: Journey Into Self is a documentary concerning a group-therapy session of eight well-adjusted people who have never met before. Doctors Richard Farson and Carl Rogers lead the group discussion which include a cashier, a theology student, a teacher, a principal, three businessmen and a housewife. Read More

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Houghton, Beah Richards, Roy E. Glenn, Sr., Isabel Sanford, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: Old-line liberals Matt and Christina Drayton (Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) have raised their daughter Joey (Katharine Houghton) to think for herself and not blindly conform to the conventional. Still, they aren't prepared for the shock when she returns home from a vacation with a new Read More

Ship of Fools

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, José Ferrer, Lee Marvin, Oskar Werner

Synopsis: The first person the audience sees in Ship of Fools is dwarf Michael Dunn, who speaks to viewers directly and acts as a Greek chorus throughout the film. It begins on the deck of an ocean liner travelling from Vera Cruz to Bremerhaven. The time is the 1930s, so close and yet so far from war. The Read More

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers, Dick Shawn, Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton

Synopsis: With this all-star Cinerama epic, producer/director Stanley Kramer vowed to make "the comedy that would end all comedies." The story begins during a massive traffic jam, caused by reckless driver Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), who, before (literally) kicking the bucket, cryptically tells the Read More

A Child Is Waiting

Crew: Producer

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Gena Rowlands, Steven Hill, Bruce Ritchey

Synopsis: Produced by Stanley Kramer, A Child is Waiting is set in an institution for the mentally handicapped, with many actual residents playing supporting and bit roles. Doctor Burt Lancaster and instructor Judy Garland often find themselves at odds over teaching methods, with Garland preferring an Read More

Pressure Point

Crew: Producer

Actors: Sidney Poitier, Bobby Darin, Peter Falk, Carl Benton Reid, Mary Munday

Synopsis: Unable to get through to a particularly hostile patient, psychiatrist Peter Falk goes to gray-haired senior shrink Sidney Poitier for advice. This prompts Poitier to recall his experiences during World War II. While working on behalf of the government, Poitier was assigned the case of psycho Nazi Read More

Judgment at Nuremberg

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Werner Klemperer

Synopsis: After the end of World War II, the world gradually became aware of the full extent of the war crimes perpetrated by the Third Reich. In 1948, a series of trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, by an international tribunal, headed by American legal and military officials, with the intent of Read More

Inherit the Wind

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gene Kelly, Florence Eldridge, Dick York, Henry "Harry" Morgan

Synopsis: The Evolution vs. Creationism argument is at the center of the Jerome Lawrence-Robert E. Lee Broadway play Inherit the Wind. Lawrence and Lee's inspiration was the 1925 "Monkey Trial," in which Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in violation Read More

On the Beach

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins, Donna Anderson

Synopsis: Although there'd been "doomsday dramas" before it, Stanley Kramer's On the Beach was considered the first "important" entry in this genre when originally released in 1959. Based on the novel by Nevil Shute, the film is set in the future (1964) when virtually all life on earth has been exterminated Read More

The Defiant Ones

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel, Charles McGraw, Cara Williams, Lon Chaney, Jr.

Synopsis: Convicts Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier escape from a chain gang. Curtis' character, John "Joker" Jackson, hates blacks, while Poitier's character, Noah Cullen, hates whites. However, the men are manacled together, forced to rely on each other to survive. Captured at one point by a lynch-happy Read More

The Pride and the Passion

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren, Theodore Bikel, John Wengraf

Synopsis: As was his custom, producer/director Stanley Kramer made some iconoclastic casting decisions when mounting his $5 million production The Pride and the Passion. Adapted from The Gun, a novel by C. S. Forester, the film is set in Spain during the Napoleonic wars. Captain Anthony Trumbull (Cary Read More

Not as a Stranger

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Olivia de Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, Charles Bickford

Synopsis: Ambitious but impecunious medical student Lucas Marsh (Robert Mitchum) marries the older and (in this film, at least) not especially attractive Kristina Hedvigson (Olivia de Havilland) so that she can pay his tuition fees. Kristina loves Lucas, but he loves nothing but his work. Emotionally Read More

The Caine Mutiny

Crew: Producer

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, José Ferrer, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, Robert Francis, May Wynn

Synopsis: Robert Francis is at the center of the story as Willis Keith, a newly-minted ensign assigned to the destroyer/minesweeper U.S.S. Caine during World War II. Soon after his arrival, the ship gets a new captain, Lt. Comdr. Philip Francis Queeg Humphrey Bogart, a tough, no-nonsense veteran officer who Read More

The Wild One

Crew: Producer

Actors: Marlon Brando, Mary Murphy, Robert Keith, Lee Marvin, Jay C. Flippen

Synopsis: "What are you rebelling against?" asks someone. "What've you got?" responds surly, leather-jacketed motorcycle punk Marlon Brando. It comes as a disappointment to discover that The Wild One, the quintessential Brando "rebel" film, is at base a traditional "misunderstood youth vs. the nasty system" Read More

The Juggler

Crew: Producer

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Milly Vitale, Paul Stewart, Alf Kjellin

Synopsis: A man finds himself running from both the police and his own troubling memories in this drama. Hans Muller (Kirk Douglas), a German Jew, was once a well-known juggler before he was committed to a concentration camp; Muller survived, but his wife and children did not. After the war, Muller and many Read More

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

Crew: Producer

Actors: Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Hans Conried, Tommy Rettig, John Heasley

Synopsis: Ted Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, wrote and helped design this eccentric fantasy about a young boy named Bart (Tommy Rettig) who, like most young boys, doesn't enjoy his piano lessons with the mean-spirited Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried). He figures his time would be better spent playing Read More

Eight Iron Men

Crew: Producer

Actors: Bonar Colleano, Arthur Franz, Lee Marvin, Richard Kiley, Nick Dennis

Synopsis: Bonar Colleano, who spent the war years playing brash Americans in British films, makes his final screen appearance in the Stanley Kramer production Eight Iron Men. Set during WW II, the film follows the exploits of a small Army squadron, billeted in a bombed-out house on the front lines. Tensions Read More

The Happy Time

Crew: Producer

Actors: Charles Boyer, Louis Jourdan, Marsha Hunt, Kurt Kasznar, Linda Christian

Synopsis: The Happy Time was adapted from the long-running Broadway play by Samuel Taylor, which in turn was based on the novel by Robert Fontaine. Set in Quebec during the early part of the 20th century, the film concentrates on the activities of a large French-Canadian family headed by Charles Boyer. Most Read More

The Sniper

Crew: Producer

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Arthur Franz, Gerald Mohr, Marie Windsor, Frank Faylen

Synopsis: The "regeneration" of blacklisted director Edward Dmytryk was expedited when he was hired by producer Stanley Kramer to helm the location-filmed melodrama The Sniper. In the interests of political expediency, Dmytrk was required to direct Adolphe Menjou, one of the most virulent Red-baiters of the Read More

My Six Convicts

Crew: Producer

Actors: Millard Mitchell, Gilbert Roland, John Beal, Marshall Thompson, Alf Kjellin

Synopsis: Stanley Kramer's production unit at Columbia Pictures was known for its willingness to tackle subject matter that was not necessarily "box office" (much to the dismay, of course, of Columbia head man Harry Cohn!) Adapted by Michael Blankfort from the autobiography by Donald Powell Wilson, My Six Read More

The Four Poster

Crew: Producer

Actors: Rex Harrison, Lilli Palmer

Synopsis: Jan de Hartog's two-person stage play The Fourposter has always seemed to attract married acting couples, a tradition established by the play's first Broadway stars Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. The film version featured Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer, who (you guessed it) were man and wife at the Read More

High Noon

Crew: Producer

Actors: Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado, Otto Kruger

Synopsis: This Western classic stars Gary Cooper as Hadleyville marshal Will Kane, about to retire from office and go on his honeymoon with his new Quaker bride, Amy (Grace Kelly). But his happiness is short-lived when he is informed that the Miller gang, whose leader (Ian McDonald) Will had arrested, is Read More

The Member of the Wedding

Crew: Producer

Actors: Julie Harris, Ethel Waters, Brandon de Wilde, Arthur Franz, Nancy Gates

Synopsis: 25-year-old Julie Harris convincingly recreates her Broadway role of 12-year-old tomboy Frankie Addams in the 1952 screen version of Carson McCullers' play. Feeling rejected when her older brother goes off on his honeymoon without inviting her along, Frankie runs away from her middle-class Read More

Death of a Salesman

Crew: Producer

Actors: Fredric March, Mildred Dunnock, Kevin McCarthy, Cameron Mitchell, Howard I. Smith

Synopsis: It was considered a serious coup at Columbia Pictures when producer Stanley Kramer landed the rights to Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, and got most of the key members of the Broadway cast for the movie, plus Kevin McCarthy from the original London cast. The one exception was Lee J. Read More

The Men

Crew: Producer

Actors: Marlon Brando, Teresa Wright, Everett Sloane, Jack Webb, Richard Erdman

Synopsis: Fred Zinnemann's sensitive film on the plight of paraplegic WWII veterans features Marlon Brando in his superbly moving screen debut. He plays Lt. Bud Wilozek, one of a group of veterans recovering in the paraplegic ward of a hospital in his hometown. His former fiancée, Ellen (Theresa Wright) Read More

Cyrano De Bergerac

Crew: Producer

Actors: José Ferrer, Mala Powers, William Prince, Morris Carnovsky, Ralph Clanton, Lloyd Corrigan

Synopsis: Recreating his stage role, Jose Ferrer stars as Edmond Rostand's Cyrano, a 17th-century French cavalier, poet and swordsman whose prominent proboscis is the subject of many a duel. Cyrano is madly in love with the beautiful Roxanne (Mala Powers), but assumes that she'd never love him back due to Read More

Champion

Crew: Producer

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Marilyn Maxwell, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman

Synopsis: While far from the only good film on boxing, Champion is perhaps the best drama ever based on the fight game. It is remarkable for a number of things: the unrelenting, grinding logic that leads to the hero's tragic fate; the beautiful cinematography and editing that make it a masterpiece of light Read More

Home of the Brave

Crew: Producer

Actors: Frank Lovejoy, Douglas Dick, James Edwards, Steve Brodie, Jeff Corey, Lloyd Bridges

Synopsis: Arthur Laurents' play Home of the Brave concerned a paralyzed Jewish war veteran who begins to walk again only when he confronts his fear of forever being an "outsider." The film version of the Laurents play changes the protagonist into an African-American, played by James Edwards. The soldier's Read More

So This Is New York

Crew: Producer

Actors: Henry Morgan, Rudy Vallee, Bill Goodwin, Leo Gorcey, Virginia Grey

Synopsis: Radio humorist Henry Morgan made his film debut in So This is New York. Based on The Big Town, a collection of stories by Ring Lardner, the film traces country bumpkin Morgan's progress as he uses an inheritance to take a trip with his wife (Virginia Grey) and sister-in-law (Dona Drake) to the New Read More

The Moon and Sixpence

Crew: Associate Producer

Actors: George Sanders, Herbert Marshall, Doris Dudley, Steven Geray, Eric Blore

Synopsis: The Moon and Sixpence, W. Somerset Maugham's account of the life of artist Paul Gauguin, was brought to the screen as a labor of love by writer/director Albert Lewin. George Sanders plays Charles Strickland, a staid London broker who kicks over the traces to become an artist. Strickland pursues Read More