Friendly Persuasion (1975 film)

Last updated
Friendly Persuasion
GenreDrama
Based on The Friendly Persuasion
by Jessamyn West
Written by William P. Wood
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Starring Richard Kiley
Shirley Knight
Music by John Cacavas
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
Production
Executive producers Herbert B. Leonard
Emanuel L. Wolf
Producer Joseph Sargent
Production location Jackson, Missouri
Cinematography Mario Tosi
Editors Ed Forsyth
George Jay Nicholson
Running time100 min.
Production companies Allied Artists Pictures
International Television Productions
Original release
Network ABC
ReleaseMay 18, 1975 (1975-05-18)

Friendly Persuasion is a made-for-TV movie. The film is based on the novels The Friendly Persuasion and Except for Me and Thee by Jessamyn West; the former novel was previously adapted in 1956. It originally aired on ABC on May 18, 1975. [1] [2]

Contents

This version is different from the 1956 version because it focuses mainly on West's sequel novel, Except for Me and Thee. [3] It was going to be a TV series with this being the pilot. Friendly Persuasion did not gain as big of an audience as ABC had hoped. This film is not available on VHS or LaserDisc, and there are no plans of a DVD release.

Plot summary

In Civil War era America, a Quaker family, Jess and Eliza Birdwell, helps slaves who have run away, knowing that they could die.

Cast

Source:Hollywood.com; [1] BFI [4]

Related Research Articles

<i>Friendly Persuasion</i> (1956 film) 1956 film by William Wyler

Friendly Persuasion is a 1956 American Civil War drama film produced and directed by William Wyler. It stars Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, Anthony Perkins, Richard Eyer, Robert Middleton, Phyllis Love, Mark Richman, Walter Catlett and Marjorie Main. The screenplay by Michael Wilson was adapted from the 1945 novel The Friendly Persuasion by Jessamyn West. The movie tells the story of a Quaker family in southern Indiana during the American Civil War and the way the war tests their pacifist beliefs.

<i>I Love Lucy</i> American television sitcom (1951–1957)

I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom that originally aired on CBS from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, with a total of 180 half-hour episodes spanning six seasons. The series starred Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, along with Vivian Vance and William Frawley, and follows the life of Lucy Ricardo (Ball), a young, middle-class housewife living in New York City, who often concocts plans with her best friends and landlords, Ethel and Fred Mertz, to appear alongside her bandleader husband, Ricky Ricardo (Arnaz), in his nightclub. Lucy is depicted trying numerous schemes to mingle with and be a part of show business. After the series ended in 1957, a modified version of the show continued for three more seasons, with 13 one-hour specials, which ran from 1957 to 1960. It was first known as The Lucille Ball–Desi Arnaz Show, and later, in reruns, as The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam West</span> American actor (1928–2017)

William West Anderson, known as Adam West, was an American actor. He portrayed Batman in the 1960s ABC series of the same name and its 1966 theatrical feature film, reprising the role in various media until 2017. Making his film debut in the 1950s, West starred opposite Chuck Connors in Geronimo (1962) and The Three Stooges in The Outlaws Is Coming (1965). He also appeared in the science fiction film Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964).

<i>Broken Arrow</i> (TV series) 1956 TV series

Broken Arrow is a Western television series that ran on ABC-TV in prime time from September 25, 1956, through September 18, 1960..The show was based on the 1947 novel Blood Brothers, by Elliott Arnold, which had been made into a film in 1950, starring James Stewart as Tom Jeffords and Jeff Chandler playing as Cochise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessamyn West (writer)</span> American author (1902–1984)

Mary Jessamyn West was an American author of short stories and novels, notably The Friendly Persuasion (1945). A Quaker from Indiana, she graduated from Fullerton Union High School in 1919 and Whittier College in 1923. There she helped found the Palmer Society in 1921. She received an honorary Doctor of Letters (Litt.D) degree from Whittier College in 1946. She received the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in 1975.

Michael O'Keefe is an American actor, known for his roles as Danny Noonan in Caddyshack, Ben Meechum in The Great Santini, for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and Darryl Palmer in the Neil Simon movie The Slugger's Wife. He also appeared as Fred on the television sitcom Roseanne from 1993 to 1995.

Michael Wilson was an American screenwriter known for his work on Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Planet of the Apes (1968), Friendly Persuasion (1956), A Place in the Sun (1951), and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). The latter two screenplays won him Academy Awards. His career was interrupted by the Hollywood blacklist, during which time he wrote numerous uncredited screenplays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marvin Miller (actor)</span> American actor (1913–1985)

Marvin Elliott Miller was an American actor. Possessing a deep baritone voice, he began his career in radio in St. Louis, Missouri before becoming a Hollywood actor. He is remembered for voicing Robby the Robot in the science fiction film Forbidden Planet (1956), a role he reprised in the lesser-known The Invisible Boy (1957).

Glenn Gordon Caron, sometimes credited as Glenn Caron, is an American writer, director, and producer, best known for the television series Moonlighting in the 1980s and Medium in the 2000s. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jodi Lyn O'Keefe</span> American actress and model (born 1978)

Jodi Lyn O'Keefe is an American actress, model, and fashion designer. She came to prominence as Cassidy Bridges on the television series Nash Bridges (1996–2001) and played Gretchen Morgan on Prison Break (2007–2009), Jo Laughlin on The Vampire Diaries (2014–2017), and Lionel Davenport on Hit the Floor (2014–2018). Her film credits include Halloween H20 (1998) and She's All That (1999).

"Friendly Persuasion (Thee I Love)" is a popular song with music by Dimitri Tiomkin and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. It was published in 1956 and appeared in the 1956 film of the same name. At the 29th Academy Awards, Friendly Persuasion was nominated for the Best Music – Song but lost out to "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Fuller (actor)</span> American actor (born 1933)

Robert Fuller is a retired American actor. Fuller was known for his deep “charcoal” voice, his roles on the popular Western series Laramie as Jess Harper and Wagon Train as Cooper Smith, and as Dr. Kelly Brackett in the medical/action drama Emergency! (1972-1977).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Middleton</span> American actor (1911–1977)

Robert Middleton was an American film and television actor known for his large size, beetle-like brows, and deep, booming voice, usually in the portrayal of ruthless villains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phyllis Love</span> American actress

Phyllis Ann Love was an American theater and television actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sara Shane</span> American actress (1928–2022)

Sara Shane, born Elaine Sterling, was an American actress, who starred in film and television during the Golden Age Era in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The 1955–56 network television schedule for the four major English language commercial broadcast networks in the United States. The schedule covers primetime hours from September 1955 through March 1956. The schedule is followed by a list per network of returning series, new series, and series cancelled after the 1954–55 season.

<i>The Friendly Persuasion</i> 1945 novel

The Friendly Persuasion is an American novel published in 1945 by Jessamyn West. It was adapted as the motion picture Friendly Persuasion in 1956. The book consists of 14 vignettes about a Quaker farming family, the Birdwells, living near the town of Vernon in southern Indiana along "the banks of the Muscatatuck, where once the woods stretched, dark row on row." The Birdwells' farm, Maple Grove Nursery, was handed down to them by pioneering forebears who came west nearly fifty years before the onset of the novel. Originally published between 1940 and 1945 as individual stories in Prairie Schooner, Collier's, Harper's Bazaar, The Atlantic Monthly, the Ladies' Home Journal, New Mexico Quarterly Review, and Harper's Magazine, West had them reprinted in more or less chronological order covering a forty-year span of the Birdwell family's lives in the latter half of the 19th Century.

<i>Nero Wolfe</i> (film) 1979 American TV series or program

Nero Wolfe is a 1979 American made-for-television film adaptation of the 1965 Nero Wolfe novel The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout. Thayer David stars as Wolfe, gourmet, connoisseur and detective genius. Tom Mason costars as Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's assistant. Written and directed by Frank D. Gilroy, the film was produced by Paramount Television as a pilot for an ABC television series, but it was shelved by the network for more than two years before finally being broadcast December 19, 1979.

<i>New Girl</i> American television sitcom

New Girl is an American television sitcom created by Elizabeth Meriwether and produced by 20th Century Fox Television for Fox that aired from September 20, 2011, to May 15, 2018. The series revolves around quirky teacher, Jessica Day, after she moves into a Los Angeles loft with three men, Nick Miller, Schmidt, and Winston Bishop. Former roommate Coach and Jess's best friend Cece Parekh later join the characters. The show combines comedy and drama elements as the characters, who are in their late 20s and early 30s, deal with relationship issues and career choices. New Girl is a joint production between Elizabeth Meriwether Pictures and 20th Century Fox Television and is syndicated by 20th Television.

Shooting Stars is a 1983 American made-for-television action comedy film starring Billy Dee Williams and Parker Stevenson.

References

  1. 1 2 Friendly Persuasion hollywood.com, retrieved December 6, 2017
  2. Goldberg, Lee. " Friendly Persuasion " Unsold Television Pilots: 1955-1989, Adventures in Television, 2015, ISBN   151159067X
  3. Hischak, Thomas S. " Friendly Persuasion " American Literature on Stage and Screen: 525 Works and Their Adaptations, McFarland, 2012, ISBN   0786492791, pp. 74-75
  4. Friendly Persuasion bfi.org.uk, retrieved December 6, 2017