The File on Devlin is a 1969 American TV film for the Hallmark Hall of Fame , and was directed by George Schaefer. It was based on a novel by Catherine Gaskin.
The novel was published in 1965. [1]
George Schaefer had just directed the feature film Pendulum. He called the film "an old fashioned spy story with a mysterious disappearance, an old castle, dark corridors and secret passages, great fun." [2]
Elizabeth Ashley made it after having been retired for five years. [3] Rehearsals started in July 1969, [4] and it was mostly shot in the studio with two days location. [2]
One review called it "a thriller that thrilled indifferently." [5] The New York Times called it "an overstuffed, improbable bit of claptrap without suspense, wit or intelligence." [6]
Franklin James Schaffner was an American film, television, and stage director. He won an Academy Award for Best Director for Patton (1970), and is known for the films Planet of the Apes (1968), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), Papillon (1973), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). He served as president of the Directors Guild of America between 1987 and 1989.
George Peppard was an American actor. He is best remembered for his role as struggling writer Paul Varjak in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's, and for playing commando leader Lt.Col./Col. John "Hannibal" Smith in the 1980s television series The A-Team.
Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was a British actor, film director and photographer. He is best known for portraying Cornelius and Caesar in the original Planet of the Apes film series, as well as Galen in the spin-off television series. He began his acting career as a child in England, and then in the United States, in How Green Was My Valley (1941), My Friend Flicka (1943) and Lassie Come Home (1943).
Young Bess is a 1953 Technicolor biographical film made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about the early life of Elizabeth I, from her turbulent childhood to the eve of her accession to the throne of England. It stars Jean Simmons as Elizabeth and Stewart Granger as Thomas Seymour, with Charles Laughton as Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, a part he had played 20 years before in The Private Life of Henry VIII. The film was directed by George Sidney and produced by Sidney Franklin, from a screenplay by Jan Lustig and Arthur Wimperis based on the novel of the same title by Margaret Irwin (1944).
Dame Frances Margaret Anderson,, known professionally as Judith Anderson, was an Australian actress who had a successful career in stage, film and television. A pre-eminent stage actress in her era, she won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award. She is considered one of the 20th century's greatest classical stage actors.
Billion Dollar Brain is a 1967 British Technicolor espionage film directed by Ken Russell and based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Len Deighton. The film features Michael Caine as secret agent Harry Palmer, the anti-hero protagonist. The "brain" of the title is a sophisticated computer with which an anti-communist organisation controls its worldwide anti-Soviet spy network.
Andrew Victor McLaglen was a British-born American film and television director, known for Westerns and adventure films, often starring John Wayne or James Stewart.
How to Stuff a Wild Bikini is a 1965 Pathécolor beach party film from American International Pictures. The sixth entry in a seven-film series, the movie features Mickey Rooney, Annette Funicello, Dwayne Hickman, Brian Donlevy, and Beverly Adams. The film features a brief appearance by Frankie Avalon and includes Buster Keaton in one of his last roles.
Elliott Kastner was an American film producer, whose best known credits include Where Eagles Dare (1968), The Long Goodbye (1973), The Missouri Breaks (1976), and Angel Heart (1987).
Ghost in the Invisible Bikini is the seventh and last of American International Pictures' beach party films. Released in 1966, the film features the cast cavorting in and around a haunted house and the adjacent swimming pool. No beach appears in the film.
John Ashley was an American actor, producer and singer. He was best known for his work as an actor in films for American International Pictures, producing and acting in horror films shot in the Philippines, and for producing various television series, including The A-Team.
Gordon Hessler was a German-born British film and television director, screenwriter, and producer.
Elizabeth Ann Cole, known professionally as Elizabeth Ashley, is an American actress of theatre, film, and television. She has been nominated for three Tony Awards, winning once in 1962 for Take Her, She's Mine. Ashley was also nominated for the BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for her supporting performance in The Carpetbaggers (1964), and was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1991 for Evening Shade. Elizabeth was a guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson 24 times. She appeared in several episodes of In the Heat of the Night as Maybelle Chesboro.
George Louis Schaefer was an American director of television and Broadway theatre, who was active from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Lamp At Midnight is a play that was written by Barrie Stavis, and first produced in 1947 at New Stages, New York. The play treats the 17th Century Galileo affair, which was a profound conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and Galileo Galilei over the interpretation of his astronomical observations using the newly invented telescope. By coincidence, Bertolt Brecht's play on the same theme, Life of Galileo, opened in New York just a few weeks before Lamp at Midnight. Some critics now consider Galileo to be a masterpiece, but in 1947 the New York Times reviewer, Brooks Atkinson, preferred Lamp at Midnight.
Suicide Battalion is a 1958 World War II film directed by Edward L. Cahn and starring Mike Connors and John Ashley, who made the film while on leave from the United States Army. In 1968, it was remade for television by Larry Buchanan as Hell Raiders, which was the film's original working title.
Rumble on the Docks is a 1956 American crime film noir directed by Fred F. Sears and starring James Darren.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a 1968 Canadian-American TV film based on the 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was directed by Charles Jarrott, produced by Dan Curtis, and written by Ian McLellan Hunter.
Saint Joan is a 1967 American TV film adaptation of the 1923 George Bernard Shaw play Saint Joan for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. It was directed by George Schaefer.
Breaking Up is a 1978 American TV film. It was directed by Delbert Mann and written by Loring Mandel.