Starring Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Boris Karloff, Fay Bainter, George Chandler, Fritz Feld, Ann Rutherford, and Thurston Hall. Directed by Norman Z. McLeod. A mousy proofreader for a magazine publisher is incapable of standing up for himself. As he muses over the lurid covers of the magazines put out by his firm, he retreats into his fantasy world, where he is heroic, poised, self-assured, and the master of his fate. Glancing at the cover of a western periodical, he fancies himself the two-gun "Perth Amboy Kid"; a war magazine prompts him to envision himself as a fearless RAF pilot; and so on.
Starring Debbie Reynolds, Dick Powell, Anne Francis, Ellen Corby, Red Skelton, Alvy Moore, Glenda Farrell, Horace MacMahon, Herb Vigran, and Rita Johnson. Directed by Frank Tashlin. Knowing that a Hollywood screenwriter is working on a script about juvenile delinquency, two police officers deposit a teen-aged troublemaker on his doorstep on Christmas Eve.
Starring Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Dean Martin, Martha Hyer, Arthur Kennedy, Denny Miller, William Shallert, Larion Ross, Len Lesser, and Larry Gates. Directed by Vincente Minnelli. A recently discharged soldier whose promising writing career has derailed finds himself aboard a bus bound for his Indiana hometown after a drunken card game. Accompanied by a recent acquaintance, an unrefined call girl, he reluctantly sets about re-establishing ties he thought to have abandoned over a decade earlier.
Starring Clifton Webb, Robert Wagner, Debra Paget, Roy Roberts, Finlay Currie, Ruth Hussey, Olan Soule, and Nicolas Coster. Directed by Henry Koster. In the 1890s, John Philip Sousa, leader of the Marine Corps Band, meets Private Willie Little, the inventor of an instrument he calls the Sousaphone. To support his growing family, Sousa leaves the Marines and forms own band, bringing Willie along.
Starring Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis, Rheodore Bikel, Lon Chaney Jr., Charles McGraw, Claude Akins, Whit Bissell, Cara Williams, and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer. Directed by Stanley Kramer. Two convicts, one black, one white, who hate each other escape from a chain gang. Manacled together, they are forced to rely on each other to survive.
Starring James Dean, Burl Ives, Raymond Massey, Julie Harris, Jo Van Fleet, Carolyn Jones, Pat Priest, and Albert Dekker. Directed by Elia Kazan. The son of lettuce farmer Adam Trask means well but can't stay out of trouble, nor is he able to match the esteem in which his father holds his brother Aaron . Only Aaron's girlfriend and the kindly old sheriff can see the essential goodness in the troublesome boy. When Adam invests in a chancy and wholly unsuccessful method of shipping his crops east his wealth plummets. In an effort to save the business, the boy obtains money from his estranged mother (the proprietor of a whorehouse) and invests it in a risky new bean crop. The gamble pays off (thanks in no small part to the war), but Adam refuses to take the money from his son and the resulting quarrel causes Adam to have a stroke.
Starring James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Shirley Jones, Sue Ane Langdon, Robert Middleton, Dabbs Greer, Arch Johnson, Jackie Joseph, J. Pat O'Malley, and John Dehner. Directed by Gene Kelly. A cowboy working with his friend for very little money gets word that his brother has left him The Cheyenne Social Club. They ride for near a thousand miles so the cowboy can claim his inheritance, only to find he is now the owner of a first class brothel.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 24, 1947, actor Kevin Kline turns 64 years old today.
