Acting
An anthology series containing drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, and/or horror, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist.
Four Star Playhouse is an American television anthology series that ran from 1952 to 1956, sponsored in its first bi-weekly season by The Singer Company; Bristol-Myers became an alternate sponsor when it became a weekly series in the fall of 1953. The original premise was that Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino, David Niven, and Dick Powell would take turns starring in episodes. However, several other performers took the lead from time to time, including Ronald Colman and Joan Fontaine. Blake Edwards was among the writers and directors who contributed to the series. Edwards created the recurring character of illegal gambling house operator Willie Dante for Dick Powell to play on this series. The character was later revamped and spun off in his own series starring Howard Duff, then-husband of Lupino. The pilot for Meet McGraw, starring Frank Lovejoy, aired here, as did another episode in which Lovejoy recreated his role of Chicago newspaper reporter Randy Stone, from the radio drama Nightbeat.
Coogan, an Arizona deputy sheriff goes to New York to pick up a prisoner. While escorting the prisoner to the airport, he escapes and Coogan heads into the city to recapture him.
A hit man and his partner try to find out why their latest victim, a former race-car driver, did not try to get away.
Pacer Burton, a young man of mixed Kiowa and white heritage, is caught between two worlds as conflict erupts between Native Americans and white settlers in Texas.
After an innocent man is executed in a case he was responsible for, a Scotland Yard superintendent finds himself investigating the murder of his key witness.
Three years into their loving marriage, with two infant daughters at home in Los Angeles, Nicholas Arden and Ellen Wagstaff Arden are on a plane that goes down in the South Pacific. Although most passengers manage to survive the incident, Ellen presumably perishes when swept off her lifeboat, her body never recovered. Fast forward five years. Nicholas, wanting to move on with his life, has Ellen declared legally dead. Part of that moving on includes getting remarried, this time to a young woman named Bianca Steele, who, for their honeymoon, he plans to take to the same Monterrey resort where he and Ellen spent their honeymoon. On that very same day, Ellen is dropped off in Los Angeles by the Navy, who rescued her from the South Pacific island where she was stranded for the past five years. She asks the Navy not to publicize her rescue nor notify Nicholas as she wants to do so herself.
Merchant Marine sailors Joe Rossi (Humphrey Bogart) and Steve Jarvis (Raymond Massey) are charged with getting a supply vessel to Russian allies as part of a sea convoy. When the group of ships comes under attack from a German U-boat, Rossi and Jarvis navigate through dangerous waters to evade Nazi naval forces. Though their mission across the Atlantic is extremely treacherous, they are motivated by the opportunity to strike back at the Germans, who sank one of their earlier ships.
Henry J. Tyroon leaves Texas, where his oil wells are drying up, and arrives in New York with a lot of oil money to play with in the stock market. He meets stock analyst Molly Thatcher, who tries to ignore the lavish attention he spends on her but, in the end, she falls for his charm.
Remake of "To Have and Have Not" based on Hemingway short story. Plot reset to early days of Cuban revolution. A charter boat skipper gets entangled in gunrunning scheme to get money to pay off debts. Sort of a sea-going film noir with bad girl, smarmy villain, and the "innocent" drawn into wrong side of law by circumstances.
Army Lieutenant Halliday, accused of stealing the Army payroll, pursues the real thief on a frantic chase through Mexico aided by the thief's ex-girlfriend and is in turn being chased by his accuser, Capt. Blake.
Ambassador Joseph Davies is sent by FDR to Russia to learn about the Soviet system and returns to the US as an advocate of socialism.
A New Mexico Town Marshal, Clay Morgan, known as 'Black Patch' since he had lost an eye in the Civil War, takes his job seriously, especially after an old friend, Hank Danner, arrives in ...
A young boy discovers the existence of a group called the Mooncussers - a gang of pirates that work at night and sends out false homing signals to ships at sea. The ships then crash on the shore, where they are looted by the gang.
A duped bride joins a bookie in love and crime.
An agent searches for a psychopath guilty of robbery and murder, and falls in love with a murder victim's sister.
An upper-class female reporter is (despite herself) attracted to a hulking laborer digging a tunnel under the Hudson River.
Powder River Rustlers is a western film directed by Philip Ford in 1949. The railroad is coming and to get the townspeople's money. Shears Williams brings in a fake Agent who tells them they must raise $50,000 as their share of a railroad bridge. Railroad Agent Rocky Lane arrives and immediately spots the fake. A phony telegram assures Rocky his friend is still alive and he sets out to find him and his abductor.
