Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Murder Case

Last updated
Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Murder Case
Nina van Pallandt and George Peppard, NBC 1977.jpg
GenreDrama
Written byHarold Gast
Lou Randolph
Directed byRobert Michael Lewis
Starring George Peppard
Barnard Hughes
William Windom
Claudette Nevins
Russell Thorson
George Murdock
Theme music composer Lalo Schifrin
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
Production
Executive producer Harve Bennett
ProducerHarold Gast
Cinematography Stevan Larner
EditorRobert F. Shugrue
Running time144 min
Production companiesSilverton Productions
Universal Television
Original release
Network NBC
ReleaseNovember 17, 1975 (1975-11-17)

Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Murder Case (1975) is a TV drama film, starring George Peppard and directed by Robert Michael Lewis. It was produced by Harold Gast and Harve Bennett.

Contents

Plot

The film traces the story of Sam Sheppard (George Peppard), an Ohio doctor wrongly accused of murdering his wife in 1954. As the film begins, a dying Dr. Sam gasps “I know who killed Marilyn.” [1]

Sheppard is a successful osteopath in Cleveland working at the family clinic. He has an attractive wife Marilyn and a nine-year-old son. His idyllic life comes to an end one July morning when the police are called to his home after he reports an intruder attacked him and murdered his wife.

The case and the ensuing trial get nationwide publicity. Despite an able defense lawyer, Sam is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, never ceasing to proclaim his innocence. He is released after ten years through the efforts of his brilliant new young lawyer F. Lee Bailey and given a retrial. Bailey's aggressive defense overwhelms the prosecution and Sheppard is found not guilty at last; however, his life afterwards is not happy.

He remarries soon after getting out of prison but it ends in divorce and he is sued for malpractice after regaining his medical license. Desperate to make a living he becomes a small time professional wrestler. The strain of his never-ending ordeal wears on him and he turns to alcohol. He dies a broken man at 46 of a liver disease.

As the film ends, a narrator notes that the murderer has never been found and that “the rest is mystery.” [1]

Cast

ActorRole
George Peppard Dr. Samuel Sheppard
Barnard Hughes Attorney Philip J. Madden
Walter McGinn F. Lee Bailey
Claudette Nevins Marilyn Sheppard
William Windom Walt Adamson
William Dozier Dr. Richard Sheppard, Sr.
Jack Knight Detective Moore
Russell Thorson Judge Edwards
Paul Fix Supreme Court Justice
George Murdock Procesutor Simons
Nina Van Pallandt Ilse Brandt

Reception

The New York Times commented that the aspects of the Sam Sheppard murder case were "misinterpreted or botched," and criticized the production for "shabby and sordid sensationalism." [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Peppard</span> American actor (1928–1994)

George Peppard was an American actor. He secured a major role as struggling writer Paul Varjak when he starred alongside Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and later portrayed a character based on Howard Hughes in The Carpetbaggers (1964). On television, he played the title role of millionaire insurance investigator and sleuth Thomas Banacek in the early-1970s mystery series Banacek. He played Col. John "Hannibal" Smith, the cigar-smoking leader of a renegade commando squad in the 1980s action television series The A-Team.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Blake (actor)</span> American actor (1933–2023)

Robert Blake, billed early in his career as Mickey Gubitosi and Bobby Blake, was an American actor. He was best known for starring in the 1967 film In Cold Blood, playing the title role in the late 1970s television series Baretta, and playing the Mystery Man in the 1997 film Lost Highway.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert DeSalvo</span> American rapist and suspected serial killer (1931–1973)

Albert Henry DeSalvo was an American murderer and rapist who was active in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 1960s. He is known to have confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", a serial killer who murdered thirteen women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. Lack of physical evidence supported his confession, and he was only prosecuted in 1967 for a series of unrelated rapes, for which he was convicted and imprisoned until his death in 1973. His confessing to having murdered multiple women was disputed, and debates continued regarding which crimes he truly had committed.

<i>Rumpole of the Bailey</i> British television drama series (1978–1992)

Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, a middle-aged London barrister who defended a broad variety of clients, often underdogs. The popularity of the TV series led to the stories being presented in other media, including books and radio.

Samuel Holmes Sheppard was an American osteopath. He was convicted of the 1954 murder of his pregnant wife, Marilyn Reese Sheppard, but the conviction was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which cited a "carnival atmosphere" at the trial. Sheppard was acquitted at a retrial in 1966.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy Kilgallen</span> American journalist and TV personality (1913–1965)

Dorothy Mae Kilgallen was an American columnist, journalist, and television game show panelist. After spending two semesters at the College of New Rochelle, she started her career shortly before her 18th birthday as a reporter for the Hearst Corporation's New York Evening Journal. In 1938, she began her newspaper column "The Voice of Broadway", which was eventually syndicated to more than 140 papers. In 1950, she became a regular panelist on the television game show What's My Line?, continuing in the role until her death.

<i>Twilight of Honor</i> 1963 film by Boris Sagal

Twilight of Honor, released in the UK as The Charge is Murder, is a 1963 American neo noir crime film directed by Boris Sagal and starring Richard Chamberlain, Nick Adams, Claude Rains, and featuring Joey Heatherton and Linda Evans in their film debuts. Twilight of Honor is a courtroom drama based on Al Dewlen's novel, with a screenplay by Henry Denker. Like the 1959 courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder, it continued a recent trend of descriptions of things previously never mentioned in American cinema, such as vivid accounts of sexual assault, adultery, and prostitution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">F. Lee Bailey</span> American criminal defense attorney (1933–2021)

Francis Lee Bailey Jr., better known to the general public as F. Lee Bailey, was an American criminal defense attorney. Bailey's name first came to nationwide attention for his involvement in the second murder trial of Sam Sheppard, a surgeon accused of murdering his wife. He later served as the attorney in a number of other high-profile cases, such as Albert DeSalvo, a suspect in the "Boston Strangler" murders, heiress Patty Hearst's trial for bank robberies committed during her involvement with the Symbionese Liberation Army, and US Army Captain Ernest Medina for the My Lai Massacre. He was a member of the "Dream Team" in the trial of former football player O. J. Simpson, who was accused of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. He is considered one of the greatest lawyers of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder trial of O. J. Simpson</span> 1995 US criminal trial

The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson was a criminal trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court, in which former NFL player and actor O. J. Simpson was tried and acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, who were stabbed to death outside Brown's condominium in Los Angeles on June 12, 1994. The trial spanned eight months, from January 24 to October 3, 1995.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Bosch</span> Fictional detective created by author Michael Connelly

Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch is a fictional character created by American author Michael Connelly. Bosch debuted as the lead character in the 1992 novel The Black Echo, the first in a best-selling police procedural series now numbering 24 novels.

<i>Petrocelli</i> American television series (1974–1976)

Petrocelli is an American legal drama that ran for two seasons on NBC from September 11, 1974, to March 31, 1976.

Candice Ann Rialson, also known as Candy Rialson, was an American actress known for her starring role in Hollywood Boulevard (1976). According to one obituary, "although never reluctant to take her clothes off, Rialson was always more 'cutie' than sleazy, but she became so notorious for her B-movie work that mainstream directors hesitated to hire her". She inspired the character played by Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown.

<i>Roxie Hart</i> (film) 1942 film by William A. Wellman

Roxie Hart is a 1942 American comedy film directed by William A. Wellman, and starring Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou and George Montgomery. A film adaptation of a 1926 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins, a journalist who found inspiration in two real-life Chicago trials she had covered for the press. The play had been adapted once prior, in a 1927 silent film. In 1975, a hit stage musical premiered, and was once more adapted as the Oscar-winning 2002 musical film.

<i>The Lincoln Lawyer</i> 2005 book by Michael Connelly

The Lincoln Lawyer is a 2005 novel, the 16th by American crime writer Michael Connelly. It introduces Los Angeles attorney Mickey Haller, half-brother of Connelly's mainstay character Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch.

<i>The Lawyer</i> (film) 1970 film by Sidney J. Furie

The Lawyer is a 1970 American courtroom drama film loosely based on the Sam Sheppard murder case in which a physician is charged with killing his wife following a highly publicized and sloppy investigation. The film was directed by Sidney J. Furie and stars Barry Newman as the energetic, opportunistic defense attorney Tony Petrocelli and Diana Muldaur as his wife Ruth Petrocelli.,

Presumed Guilty is a documentary following Antonio Zúñiga, who was falsely convicted of murder. It holds the box office record for documentary in Mexico, previously held by Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. According to The Economist, this is "by far the most successful documentary in Mexico's history." The plot of the film is the attempt by two young Mexican attorneys to exonerate a wrongly convicted man by making a documentary. The film was released theatrically at about the same time the Oscar nominated films such as Black Swan and The King's Speech were being shown on cinema screens in Mexico. It surpassed both of those films at the box office. The film was televised by Televisa on Channel 2 in the fall of 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Morton (criminal justice)</span> American wrongly convicted of murder

Michael Morton is an American who was wrongfully convicted in 1987 in a Williamson County, Texas court of the 1986 murder of his wife Christine Morton. He spent nearly 25 years in prison before he was exonerated by DNA evidence which supported his claim of innocence and pointed to the crime being committed by another individual. Morton was released from prison on October 4, 2011, and another man, Mark Alan Norwood, was convicted of the murder in 2013. The prosecutor in the case, Ken Anderson, was convicted of contempt of court for withholding evidence after the judge had ordered its release to the defense.

The "Dream Team" refers to the team of trial lawyers that represented American athlete O. J. Simpson in his 1995 trial for the murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. The team included Robert Shapiro, Johnnie Cochran, Carl Douglas, Shawn Chapman Holley, Gerald Uelmen, Robert Kardashian, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, Robert Blasier, and William Thompson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis B. Seltzer</span> American journalist

Louis Benson Seltzer was an American journalist who was editor-in-chief of the Cleveland Press, a now-defunct daily newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1928 until his retirement in 1966. As editor of the Press, Seltzer became one of the most powerful and most well-known citizens of Cleveland, earning the nickname "Mr. Cleveland". Under Seltzer's leadership, the Press gained the largest circulation of any newspaper in Ohio and cultivated a reputation as a "fighting paper" that "fought like hell for the people".

George Kearon Joseph Fitzsimmons, known as The Karate Chop Killer, was an American serial killer convicted of killing his uncle and aunt in Roulette, Pennsylvania in 1973, after being previously deemed insane for the 1969 murders of his parents in Eggertsville, New York. At Fitzsimmons' subsequent trial, in which he was represented by famous attorney F. Lee Bailey, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he served until his death in 1999.

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 O'Connor, John J. (1975-11-17). "TV: 3-Hour 'Guilty or Innocent: Sheppard Murder Case'". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-04-20.