Sunday, August 14, 2011

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO. . . . . . . . STEVE MARTIN




Born in Waco, Texas, on August 14, 1945, actor-comedian Steve Martin celebrates his 66th birthday today.





HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO. . . . . . . . HALLE BERRY




Born Maria Halle Berry in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 14, 1966, actress Halle Berry turns 45 years old today.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO. . . . . . . . SUSAN SAINT JAMES




Born Susan Jane Miller in Los Angeles, California, on August 14, 1946, and raised in Rockford, Illinois, actress Susan Saint James celebrates her 65th birthday today.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO. . . . . . . . DAVID CROSBY




Born in Los Angeles, California, on August 14, 1941, singer David Crosby turns 70 years old today.



Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)





Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Wendell Corey, Ed Begley, Leif Erickson, William Conrad, and Ann Richards. Directed by Anatole Litvak. While trying to make a call from her bedroom telephone, a bedridden hypochondriac gets her wires crossed and inadvertently overhears two men plotting a murder. Anxiously, she wades through telephone company bureaucracy to trace the call, never catching on until it's too late that the murder being planned is hers.

Spencer's Mountain (1963)



Starring Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara, James MacArthur, Donald Crisp, Wally Cox, Mimsy Farmer, Dub Taylor, Veronica Cartwright, Virginia Gregg, Whit Bissell, Hayden Rorke, Victor French and Hope Summers. Directed by Delmar Daves. The patriarch of a large and growing family living in the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming is fiercely independent yet dedicated to his family. While he resists the influence of religion, he struggles to remain faithful to his wife, to allow his son to attend college, and to build a new home for his family.

The Man From Laramie (1955)





Starring James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Wallace Ford, Jack Elam, Alex Nicol, Frank de Kova, and Cathy O'Donnell. Directed by Anthony Mann. A cowboy is obsessed with finding the man who sold automatic rifles to the Apaches, resulting in the death of his brother. He enters the town of Coronado, New Mexico, ruled by a blind and aging patriarch. Unaware that he is trespassing on the man's land, he finds himself accosted by the man's sociopathic son.

Eye of the Needle (1981)




Starring Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan. Directed by Richard Marquand. Willing to kill even the most innocent of bystanders to complete his task, a Nazi spy manages to remain in Britain until the eve of D-Day in 1944. Discovering that the invasion is to take place on Normandy, he scurries to rendezvous with a U-boat off the treacherous Isle of Storms. His mission is thwarted by the frustrated wife of paralyzed RAF commander. Though having fallen in love with him, she nonetheless prepares to turn the man in when he kills her husband.

Dallas (1950)





Starring Gary Cooper, Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Raymond Massey, Leif Erickson, Barbara Payton, Jerome Cowan, Billie Bird and O.Z. Whitehead. Directed by Stuart Heisler. An ex-Confederate officer rides into Dallas in search of the men who killed his family and stole his land. Because he is considered to be an outlaw by the authorities, he is compelled to switch identities with the U.S. marshal.

The Desperadoes (1943)




Starring Randolph Scott, Glenn Ford, Claire Trevor, Edgar Buchanan, Evelyn Keyes, Glenn Strange, and Irving Bacon. Directed by Charles Vidor. The best friend of the a small town Utah sheriff was once an outlaw but, under his friend's guidance, he's gone straight and is trying to earn an honest living. However, when the local bank is robbed he is the prime suspect. Through he is quickly convicted, the sheriff is convinced his friend is innocent and helps the former outlaw break out of jail. Together they hit the trail trying to find the real culprits and clean up the town.

Cloak & Dagger (1984)



Starring Dabney Coleman, Henry Thomas, Michael Murphy, John McIntire, Jeanette Nolan, William Peterson, and Tim Rossovitch. Directed by Richard Franklin. Given to telling whoppers, a young boy finds himself in a boy-who-cried-wolf dilemma when he overhears two spies plotting to smuggle valuable info out of the country. When he can't get his own father to believe him, he turns to a computer game called "Cloak and Dagger" and begins to fantasize, imagining that he is in cahoots with secret agent Jack Flack. Finally coming to grips with the fact that the mythical Jack Flack cannot help him this time, the boy takes on the spies with the help of his schoolmates, who are also "Cloak and Dagger" addicts.

The Chase (1966)





Starring Marlon Brando, Angie Dickinson, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, E.G. Marshall, James Fox, Janice Rule, Miriam Hopkins, Malcolm Atterbury, Henry Hull, Diana Hyland, Richard Bradford, and Martha Hyer. Directed by Arthur Penn. All hell breaks loose in a Texas town when an escaped convict heads home. Appointed by the local kingpin, the sheriff manages to keep the peace in town, but the situation starts to fester one Saturday night when news filters in that wild child Bubber Reeves has escaped from prison.

Grease (1978)






Starring, Olivia Newton-John, John Travolta, Gary Conaway, Stockard Channing, Didi Conn, Dinah Manoff, Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, Eve Arden, Sid Caesar, Dodie Goodman, Joan Blondell, Frankie Avalon, Alice Ghostley, and Lorenzo Lamas. Directed by Randal Kleiser. It's California 1959 and greaser Danny Zuko and Australian exchange student Sandy Olsson are in love. They spend time at the beach but when they go back to school what either of them don't know is that they both now attend Rydell High. Danny's the leader of the T-Birds, a group of black-jacket greasers, while Sandy hangs with the Pink Ladies, a group of pink-wearing girls led by Rizzo. When they clash at Rydell's first pep rally, Danny isn't the same Danny at the beach.

Rio Bravo (1959)





Starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, Malcolm Atterbury, Claude Akins, John Russell, and Harry Carey Jr. Directed by Howard Hawks. A sheriff is holding a worthless, drunken thug for the murder of an unarmed man in a fight in a saloon -- the problem is that he is the brother of a wealthy land baron who owns a big chunk of the county and can buy all the hired guns he doesn't already have working for him. His men cut the town off to prevent the sheriff from moving his prisoner to more secure surroundings, and then the hired guns come in, waiting around for their chance to break him out of jail. The sheriff has to wait for the United States marshal to show up in six days; his only help is from a toothless, cantankerous old deputy with a bad leg who guards the jail, and his former deputy who's spent the last two years stumbling around in a drunken stupor over a woman that left him.

Live a Little, Love a Little (1968)





Starring Elvis Presley, Michele Carey, Dick Sargent, Don Porter, Sterling Holloway, Eddie Hodges, and Joan Shawlee. Directed by Norman Taurog. A photographer runs himself ragged trying to keep both of the lucrative jobs he's landed. To further complicate matters, he begins romancing a model he's just met on the beach.