The Princess Bride is a 1987 American fantasy adventure comedy film directed and co-produced by Rob Reiner and starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant, and Robin Wright. Adapted by William Goldman from his 1973 novel, it tells the story of a swashbuckling farmhand named Westley, accompanied by companions befriended along the way, who must rescue his true love Princess Buttercup from the odious Prince Humperdinck. The film preserves the novel's metafictional narrative style by presenting the story as a book being read by a grandfather to his sick grandson.
The Sting is a 1973 American heist film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Robert Shaw. Set in September 1936, involving a complicated plot by two professional grifters to con a mob boss (Shaw). Hill had previously directed Newman and Redford in the Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). The screenplay, written by David S. Ward, was inspired by real-life cons perpetrated by brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff and documented by David Maurer in his 1940 book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man.
Judgment at Nuremberg is a 1961 American epic legal drama film directed and produced by Stanley Kramer, and written by Abby Mann. It features Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Werner Klemperer, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, William Shatner, and Montgomery Clift. Set in Nuremberg, West Germany, the film depicts a fictionalized version – with fictional characters – of the Judges' Trial of 1947, one of the twelve Nuremberg Military Tribunals conducted under the auspices of the U.S. military in the aftermath of World War II.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a 1969 American Western buddy film directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman. Based loosely on fact, the film tells the story of Wild West outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker, known as Butch Cassidy, and his partner Harry Longabaugh, the "Sundance Kid", who are on the run from a crack US posse after a string of train robberies. The pair and Sundance's lover, Etta Place, flee to Bolivia to escape the posse.
The Verdict is a 1982 American legal drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and written by David Mamet, adapted from Barry Reed's 1980 novel of the same name. The film stars Paul Newman as a down-on-his-luck alcoholic lawyer who accepts a medical malpractice case to improve his own situation, but discovers along the way that he is doing the right thing. Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason, Milo O'Shea and Lindsay Crouse also star in supporting roles.
Maximilian Schell was a Swiss actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film Judgment at Nuremberg, his second acting role in Hollywood. Born in Austria, his parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he was still a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, and they settled in Zürich. After World War II ended, Schell took up acting and directing full-time. He appeared in numerous German films, often anti-war, before moving to Hollywood.
Robert Archibald Shaw was an English actor and writer. Beginning his career in theatre, Shaw joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre after the Second World War and appeared in productions of Macbeth, Henry VIII, Cymbeline, and other Shakespeare plays. With the Old Vic company (1951–52), he continued primarily in Shakespearean roles. In 1959 he starred in a West End production of The Long and the Short and the Tall.
Arthur Hiller, was a Canadian television and film director with over 33 films to his credit during a 50-year career. He began his career directing television in Canada and later in the U.S. By the late 1950s, he was directing films, most often comedies, but also dramas and romantic subjects, such as in Love Story (1970), which was nominated for seven Oscars.
Nothing Sacred is a 1937 American Technicolor screwball comedy film directed by William A. Wellman, produced by David O. Selznick, and starring Carole Lombard and Fredric March with a supporting cast featuring Charles Winninger and Walter Connolly. Ben Hecht was credited with the screenplay based on the 1937 story "Letter to the Editor" by James H. Street, and an array of additional writers, including Ring Lardner Jr., Budd Schulberg, Dorothy Parker, Sidney Howard, Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman and Robert Carson made uncredited contributions.
The Chase is a 1946 American film noir directed by Arthur Ripley. The screenplay by Philip Yordan is based on Cornell Woolrich's 1944 novel The Black Path of Fear. It stars Robert Cummings as Chuck Scott, a veteran who suffers from hallucinations. When he returns a lost wallet to violent mobster Eddie Roman, Eddie offers to hire him as a chauffeur. Chuck becomes mixed up in a plot to help Eddie's wife Lorna run off to Havana to escape her cruel husband.
Edward Anhalt was an American screenwriter, producer, and documentary filmmaker. After working as a journalist and documentary filmmaker for Pathé and CBS-TV, he teamed with his wife Edna Anhalt, one of his five wives, during World War II to write pulp fiction.
A Foreign Affair is a 1948 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jean Arthur, Marlene Dietrich and John Lund. The screenplay by Charles Brackett, Wilder and Richard L. Breen is based on a story by David Shaw adapted by Robert Harari.
Misery is a 1990 American psychological horror thriller film directed by Rob Reiner from a script by William Goldman, based on Stephen King's 1987 novel of the same name, The plot centers around an author who is held captive by an obsessive fan who forces him to rewrite the finale to his novel series. Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen, and Lauren Bacall also star.
From 1973 to 1975, using approximately 500 movie theaters across the US, The American Film Theatre presented two seasons of film adaptations of well-known plays. Each film was shown only four times at each theatre. By design, these were not films of stage productions — they were plays "translated to the film medium, but with complete faithfulness to the original play script." Filmgoers generally subscribed to an entire season of films, as they might if they purchased a season's tickets for a conventional stage theater. About 500,000 subscriptions were sold for the first season of eight plays using direct mail and newspaper advertising. Ely Landau was the producer for the series.
Tobor the Great is a 1954 independently made American black-and-white science fiction film, produced by Richard Goldstone, directed by Lee Sholem, and starring Charles Drake, Karin Booth, and Billy Chapin. The film was written by Carl Dudley and Philip MacDonald and was distributed by Republic Pictures.
Little Lord Fauntleroy is a 1936 American drama film based on the 1886 novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The film stars Freddie Bartholomew, Dolores Costello, and C. Aubrey Smith. The first film produced by David O. Selznick's Selznick International Pictures, it was the studio's most profitable film until Gone with the Wind. The film is directed by John Cromwell.
The Cheat is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film directed by George Abbott and starring Tallulah Bankhead and Harvey Stephens. The film is a remake of the 1915 silent film of the same title, directed by Cecil B. DeMille.
And Hope to Die is a 1972 French-Italian-Canadian crime-drama film directed by René Clément and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Aldo Ray and Robert Ryan. It is loosely based on the novel Black Friday by David Goodis.
Henry Brown is an American film, television and stage actor whose career began in the early 1970s. With over sixty credits, he has appeared in over thirty films and thirty television shows. He quite often plays policemen and law enforcement officials. He played the main role in Carmen Madden's 2010 film, Everyday Black Man.
"Judgment at Nuremberg" is an American television play broadcast live on April 16, 1959, as part of the CBS television series, Playhouse 90. It was a courtroom drama written by Abby Mann and directed by George Roy Hill that depicts the trial of four German judicial officials as part of the Nuremberg trials. Claude Rains starred as the presiding judge with Maximilian Schell as the defense attorney, Melvyn Douglas as the prosecutor, and Paul Lukas as the former German Minister of Justice.
