Self (archive footage)
Don Siegel’s classic crime thriller CHARLEY VARRICK, made in 1972 in the wake of the immensely successful DIRTY HARRY, stars Walter Matthau in what is probably the actor’s finest dramatic role, airshow pilot turned crop duster turned bank robber turned mob target Charley Varrick. This feature-length documentary takes the viewer back to the time of the shooting of this cult item and features original interviews with Siegel’s son, Kristoffer Tabori, actors Andy Robinson and Jacqueline Scott, stunt driver and actor Craig R. Baxley, composer Lalo Schifrin, and Howard A. Rodman, whose father co-wrote the screenplay. LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS, directed by Robert Fischer, was shot in August 2014 in Los Angeles.
Self (archive footage)
The story of the gold-plated statuette that became the film industry's most coveted prize, AND THE OSCAR GOES TO... traces the history of the Academy itself, which began in 1927 when Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM, led other prominent members of the industry in forming this professional honorary organization. Two years later the Academy began bestowing awards, which were nicknamed "Oscar," and quickly came to represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.
Lou Mozell
A trio of sisters bond over their ambivalence toward the approaching death of their curmudgeonly father, to whom none of them was particularly close.
Frank Walsh
A widower becomes re-charged when he meets an outgoing widow, but his son tries to block the romance.
Self
Robert Osborne hosts this TCM original featuring an exclusive interview with the original Odd Couple.
Oscar Madison
Brucey, the son of Oscar, calls his father to invite him to his wedding to Felix's daughter next Sunday in California. Oscar and Felix meet again at Los Angeles International Airport and rent a car in order to go to San Malina for the wedding.
Self
A profile of writer-director Billy Wilder
Charlie Gordon
Care-free Charlie cons his widower brother-in-law Herb into an expenses-paid luxury cruise in search of rich, lonely ladies. The catch is that they are required to be dance hosts! With a tyrannical cruise director, and the luscious Liz and lovely Vivian, our heroes have lots of mis-adventures before they finally return to port.
Self
A profile of the life of actor Walter Matthau.
Nat Moyer
Old Nat Moyer is a talker, a philosopher, and a troublemaker with a fanciful imagination. His companion is Midge Carter, who is half-blind, but still the super of an apartment house. When he is threatened with retirement, Nat battles on his behalf. Nat also takes on his daughter, a drug dealer, and a mugger in this appealing version of a really 'odd couple'.
Self
Jack Lemmon made over sixty films and received numerous awards, including eight Academy Award Nominations and two Oscars. Later in life, his achievement was enriched by new challenges in which he exposed the vulnerability and emotion of the later years as few had dared. He reveled in his ongoing screen partnerships with directors like Billy Wilder and stars like Walter Matthau. Narrated on-camera by Jack Lemmon, this documentary includes interviews with Lemmon's son, the actor Chris Lemmon. Also appearing are such legends as Jack's life-long friend, the writer and director Billy Wilder, writer-director Garson Kanin, drama teacher Uta Hagen, and actor Gregory Peck. Actors Charles Durning, Maureen Stapleton, Betty Garrett, and Kevin Spacey, writer Neil Simon, director Delbert Mann, and other Hollywood luminaries help complete the profile. Clips from some of Lemmon's major films as well as archival footage add to this portrait of one of our most illustrious and productive stars
Max Goldman
A family wedding reignites the ancient feud between next-door neighbors and fishing buddies John and Max. Meanwhile, a sultry Italian divorcée opens a restaurant at the local bait shop, alarming the locals who worry she'll scare the fish away. But she's less interested in seafood than she is in cooking up a hot time with Max.
Judge Charlie Cool
Based on the novel by Truman Capote, this often-witty coming-of-age drama looks at a young man growing up with an unusual family in the Deep South in the 1940s. Becoming an orphan in 1935, Collin moves to his dad's cousins Verena and Dolly. Verena is a rich, bossy businesswoman. Dolly, Collin and the maid revolt, moving to a tree house.
Self
Based on the first centenary of the largest exporter of films in the world, that is Hollywood, is the story told by its protagonists, actors and writers and other people who made life in this business, interspersing images of famous movies.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein helps a young man who's in love with Einstein's niece to catch her attention by pretending temporarily to be a great physicist.
Harmon Cobb
Lily and her son John live alone in a small town as her husband has been killed fighting the war in France. Or at least that is what she told John, but the arrival of Frank back in the town leads him to find out that she not only has been lying about that but also about the fact that she never married him. When Frank tussles with Lily in her yard she applies for a restraining order, calling on the help of her father (the esteemed judge Stoddard Bell) and his partner (lawyer Harmon Cobb). The case fails and when Frank is found murdered later that night Stoddard is arrested and Cobb has a defence case on his hands.
Max Goldman
For decades, next-door neighbors and former friends John and Max have feuded, trading insults and wicked pranks. When an attractive widow moves in nearby, their bad blood erupts into a high-stakes rivalry full of naughty jokes and adolescent hijinks.
George Wilson
Mr. Wilson's ever-present annoyance comes in the form of one mischievous kid named Dennis. But he'll need Dennis's tricks to uncover a collection of gold coins that go missing when a shady drifter named Switchblade Sam comes to town.
Narrator (voice)
This short video features illustrations from the Dr Seuss story book with narration by Walter Matthau. A hermit known as the Grinch hates Christmas and is tired of the Whos of Who-ville celebrating it. This year, he plans to steal it from them. Video also includes the story If I Ran The Zoo.
Himself
Modern comedians share their thoughts about Laurel and Hardy. Also includes archival footage of contemporary comedians. Hosted by Dom DeLuise.
Harmon Cobb
In the second dramatic case for lawyer Harmon Cobb, he defends an incarcerated woman who is wrongly imprisoned and refused release from a mental institution.
Self
A documentary destined to calmly explain and analyze the facts, myths and rumours about John Kennedy's assassination and the overwhelming use of information in Oliver Stone's epic "JFK" (1991), at the same time it presents a behind the scenes documentary on the controversial film. Features interviews with the cast and director, and the personalities who lived and remember the facts concerning the November 22, 1963, like reporters, eyewitnesses and others, and some of the real characters from the movie, like Jim Garrison, Numa Bertel, Lou Ivon and Perry Russo.
Senator Long
Follows the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy led by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison.
Clifford Pepperman
Longtime singles Lillian Lambert and Clifford Pepperman enjoy a romance late in their lives.
Harmon Cobb
Small town lawyer, Harmon Cobb, defends a Nazi prisoner of war against murder charges. Set during World War II, Cobb has to contend with the difficulties of defending the devil when the town's only doctor (Barnard Hughes) dies while at "Camp Bremen" in the fictitious town of Bremen, Colorado.
Self
Documentary about James Stewart's long career as an actor and positive personal life.
Maurice
Father Maurice, a priest living in a residential college for priests in Rome, is called out one day to "exorcise" the devil from someone. The devil turns out to be in the form of a fun-loving man called Giuditta. What Father Maurice doesn't know is that this type of devil will turn his life around.
Donald Becker
The escaped delinquent John W. Burns, Jr. replaces Dr. Maitlin on a radio show, saying he's the psychiatrist Lawrence Baird.
Captain Thomas Bartholomew Red
Captain Red runs a hardy pirate ship with the able assistance of Frog, a dashing young French sailor. One day Capt. Red is captured and taken aboard a Spanish galleon, but thanks to his inventiveness, he raises the crew to mutiny, takes over the ship, and kidnaps the niece of the governor of Maracaibo. The question is, can he keep this pace up?
Joe Mulholland
Joe Mulholland, Head of Production at a Hollywood studio, makes a rather fool-hardy promise to a dying friend. He undertakes to make a major movie using the title - if not the content - of a best-selling sex manual "Love in Sex". Enlisting the help of depressed screenwriter Herb Derman and rather off-centre director Sid Spokane to try and come up with an idea or two, Joe soon wishes he was not one of those people who always try to keep their promises.
Sonny Paluso
Having both lost their jobs, two strangers become unlikely friends after a run in with a would be robber, who is actually a hitman with a grudge against the two.
Self
French film critic Michel Ciment interviews Billy Wilder about his life and filmmaking.
Herbert Tucker
Grandmother has nothing to say when Libby tells her that she is off to LA to look up Dad, a Hollywood screenwriter. Grandmother has been in a New York cemetery for six years and Dad has been out of Libby's life for 16 of her 19 years. Libby arrives in LA on a Tuesday and phones Dad the one night that Stephanie, who does Jane Fonda's hair, stays over. Stephanie is there the next morning when Libby decides she needs to tell her story face-to-face.
Trabucco
During a high profile Mafia testimony case, a contract killer checks-in a hotel room near the courthouse while his next door depressed neighbor wants to commit suicide due to marital problems.
Dan Snow
For the first time in history a woman is appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she becomes a friendly rival to a liberal associate.
Miles Kendig
When CIA operative Miles Kendig deliberately lets KGB agent Yaskov get away, his boss threatens to retire him. Kendig beats him to it, however, destroying his own records and traveling to Austria where he begins work on a memoir that will expose all his former agency's covert practices. The CIA catches wind of the book and sends other agents after him, initiating a frenetic game of cat and mouse that spans the globe.
Executive Producer
Sorrowful Jones is a cheap bookie in the 1930s. When a gambler leaves his daughter as a marker for a bet, he gets stuck with her. His life will change a great deal with her arrival and his sudden love for a woman also involved in gambling operations.
Sorrowful Jones
Sorrowful Jones is a cheap bookie in the 1930s. When a gambler leaves his daughter as a marker for a bet, he gets stuck with her. His life will change a great deal with her arrival and his sudden love for a woman also involved in gambling operations.
Ebenezer Scrooge (voice)
This cartoon version of A Christmas Carol hails from the production house of Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass--the team that brought you just about every other Christmas special you saw as a kid (including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). Reinvented as a 49-minute musical ghost story, Stingiest stars the voice of Walter Matthau as the bedeviled Scrooge and Tom Bosley as the Jiminy Cricket-type narrator, B. Humbug, Esq.
Marvin Michaels
The misadventures of four groups of guests at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Dr. Charley Nichols
Charley is a surgeon who's recently lost his wife; he embarks on a tragicomic romantic quest with one woman after another until he meets up with Ann, a singular woman, closer to his own age, who immediately and unexpectedly captures his heart.
Boris Thomashevsky
A musical play based on the early years of actor Paul Muni.
Lloyd Bourdelle
Casey's family raises and trains race horses, and their latest undersized foal named Casey's Shadow does not seem to have a lot going for it, but may turn out to be a champion.
Narrator
A film about the life and work of the master comedy filmmaker, Charles Chaplin.
Coach Morris Buttermaker
An aging, down-on-his-luck ex-minor leaguer coaches a team of misfits in an ultra-competitive California little league.
Willy Clark
Lewis and Clark, aka The Sunshine Boys, were famous comedians during the vaudeville era, but off-stage they couldn't stand each other and haven't spoken in over 20 years of retirement. Willy Clark's nephew is the producer of a TV variety show that wants to feature a reunion of this classic duo. It is up to him to try to get the Sunshine Boys back together again.
Himself
A chronicle of the 1975 International Press Conclave hosted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer over two days in May 1975.
Walter Burns
A journalist suffering from burn-out wants to finally say goodbye to his office – but his boss doesn’t like the idea one bit.
Lt. Garber
In New York, armed men hijack a subway car and demand a ransom for the passengers. Even if it's paid, how could they get away?
Drunk
Various interconnected people struggle to survive when an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude hits Los Angeles, California.
Sgt. Jake Martin SFPD
When a gunman opens fire on a crowded city bus in San Francisco, Detective Dave Evans is killed, along with the man he'd been following in relation to a murder. Evans' partner, Sgt. Jake Martin, becomes obsessed with solving the case.
Charley Varrick
Charley Varrick robs a bank in a small town with his friends, but instead of obtaining a small amount of money, they discover they stole a very large amount of money belonging to the mob. Charley must now come up with a plan to not only evade the police but the mob as well.
Pete Seltzer
A fun-loving bachelor woos and weds a secretary, but the bonds of this marriage aren't strong enough to stop his philandering from continuing.
Moe Axelrod
The Bergers, a blue-collar Jewish family living in an overstuffed tenement and undone by the Depression, struggle through hard times and dream of a better future in this 1972 production of Clifford Odets' pungent play. Personalities and politics clash as Odets' mélange of characters try to survive on pennies a day. Walter Matthau plays cynical World War I amputee Moe Axelrod, and Leo Fuchs portrays the family's iron-willed leftist grandfather.
Joseph P. Kotcher
When retired salesman Joseph Kotcher begins to feel pressure to move out of the house he shares with the family of his son, he opts to embark on a road trip instead of settling in a retirement home. Befriending Erica, a young pregnant woman and his grandson's former nanny, Kotch begins to finds new meaning in life as he helps her prepare to welcome her baby into the world.
Roy Hubley / Jesse Kiplinger / Sam Nash
Film version of the Neil Simon play has three separate acts set in the same hotel suite in New York's Plaza Hotel with Walter Matthau in a triple role. In the first, Karen Nash tries to get her inattentive husband Sam's attention to spruce up their failing marriage. In the second, brash film producer Jesse Kiplinger tries to get his former one-time flame Muriel to see him for what he stands for. In the third, Roy Hubley and his wife Norma try and try to get their uncertain-of-herself daughter out of the bathroom before her approaching wedding.
Henry Graham
Henry Graham lives the life of a playboy. When his lawyer tells him one day that his lifestyle has consumed all his funds, he needs an idea to avoid climbing down the social ladder.
Dr. Julian Winston
Distraught when her middle-aged lover breaks a date with her, 21-year-old Toni Simmons attempts suicide. Impressed by her action, her lover, dentist Julian Winston reconsiders marrying Toni, but he worries about her insistence on honesty. Having fabricated a wife and three children, Julian readily accepts when his devoted nurse, Stephanie, who has secretly loved Julian for years, offers to act as his wife and demand a divorce.
Horace Vandergelder
Dolly Levi is a strong-willed matchmaker who travels to Yonkers, New York in order to see the miserly "well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire" Horace Vandergelder. In doing so, she convinces his niece, his niece's intended, and Horace's two clerks to travel to New York City.
Gen. R.A. Smight
A high school girl encounters a variety of kookie characters and humorous sexual situations while searching for the meaning of life.
The Movie Star
A bored housewife poses as a call girl for a movie star sex-symbol, hoping she can prove to her husband, the star's agent, that she is still desirable to other men and thereby, rekindle the spark in their marriage.
Oscar Madison
In New York, Felix, a neurotic news writer who just broke up with his wife, is urged by his chaotic friend Oscar, a sports journalist, to move in with him, but their lifestyles are as different as night and day are, so Felix's ideas about housekeeping soon begin to irritate Oscar.
Self
Carol Channing hosts musical variety special with guests Walter Matthau, George Burns, U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Chorale, The Association, Eddy Arnold.
Paul Manning
A man gives his friend a series of lessons on how to cheat on one's wife without being caught.
Willie Gingrich
A cameraman is knocked over during a football game. His brother-in-law, as the king of the ambulance-chasing lawyers, starts a suit while he's still knocked out. The cameraman is against it until he hears that his ex-wife will be coming to see him. He pretends to be injured to get her back, but also sees what the strain is doing to the football player who injured him.
Ted Caselle
New York City. David Stillwell struggles to recover his memory before the people who are trying to kill him succeed. Who is he, who are they, and why is he surrounded by murder?
Leo Sartori
When a cavorting Hollywood writer is killed by the angry husband of a woman he was having an affair with, he comes back as a spirit in the form of a beautiful woman and moves in with his/her best friend as a base operation for enacting sweet revenge.
Prof. Groeteschele
Because of a technical defect an American bomber team mistakenly orders the destruction of Moscow. The President of the United States has but little time to prevent an atomic catastrophe from occurring.
Doc
1945, on an old cargo ship somewhere deep in the Pacific ocean: Captain Morton strives to become commander, so he demands the maximum quality of work from his crew, without granting them any freedom or favors - ignoring that they're thousand of miles away from the front. In one word: he drives his crew crazy. They are near mutiny, but no-one dares to do the first step. Until Ensign Pulver plays a prank on the captain that triggers fatal consequences...
Hamilton Bartholemew
After Regina Lampert falls for the dashing Peter Joshua on a skiing holiday in the French Alps, she discovers upon her return to Paris that her husband has been murdered. Soon, she and Peter are giving chase to three of her late husband's World War II cronies, Tex, Scobie and Gideon, who are after a quarter of a million dollars the quartet stole while behind enemy lines. But why does Peter keep changing his name?
Tony Dallas
Con artist Steve Blair persuades Tony Dallas, a Manhattan gangster, to finance a movie about Adam and Eve by offering the female lead to Tony's stripper girl friend, Cha Cha Miller. The film is such a disaster, however, that Steve and his writer, Paul Ferris, decide to escape on a freighter to Greece. En route, Steve learns that the island of Paradeisos has lost its tourist trade because it has no apparent historical or mythological heritage. Intrigued, he hits upon the scheme of turning Paradeisos into a legendary island of love and taking a cut from all commercial enterprises. After planting Greek antiquities in the waters surrounding the island, Steve induces Paul to "recover" them, thus causing the tourist trade to increase.
Tony Gagouts
A lawyer begins to win after his wife secretly becomes his bookie to save their money.
Meredith
A timid man with money problems gets into a big card game with some high-rollers.
Sheriff Morey Johnson
A fiercely independent cowboy arranges to have himself locked up in jail in order to then escape with an old friend who has been sentenced to the penitentiary.
Felix Anders
A suburban architect loves his wife but is bored with his marriage and with his work, so he takes up with the neglected, married beauty who lives down the street.
Jack Martin
Gangster and cop killer Jack Martin is on the run from the law, and hides out in a small town. Low on funds, he engineers a clever bank robbery that yields him a big bundle. Now he has not only the cops and the FBI after him, but also the local crime boss, who's outraged that an outsider can pull off a heist like that in his territory and not cut him in on it.
Director
Gangster and cop killer Jack Martin is on the run from the law, and hides out in a small town. Low on funds, he engineers a clever bank robbery that yields him a big bundle. Now he has not only the cops and the FBI after him, but also the local crime boss, who's outraged that an outsider can pull off a heist like that in his territory and not cut him in on it.
Judge Kyle
After robbing a bank Murphy assumes the identity of his pursuer, a famous US Marshal, when he stumbles into a town and is confronted by the local judge, Matthau. Murphy is forced to remain as the new Marshal; an old flame, Scala, nearly unmasks him by accident, only to be forced to assume the ruse of being Murphy's wife. The "couple" given a house and respectability, which neither has had before. They maintain the charade to avoid hurting a young orphan boy, Matthau's ward. Scala is torn by her loyalty to boyfriend planning to rob the bank and growing feelings for Murphy
'Red' Wildoe
Follow-up to Andy Griffith's big hit in "No Time for Sergeants" moves the action to the Coast Guard and WW II.
Dr. Karnes
Jim Burton, chronic alcoholic, is cared for by Ellen, his incredibly patient, sexy, hard-working wife. A doctor's warning that Jim could become mentally ill strikes enough fear into him that he really wants to cure himself...but can't. One night, he meets William Tobin, a fellow drunk, and finds that he helps himself by trying to help Tobin. Thus is born, amid setbacks, a group resembling Alcoholics Anonymous.
Maxie Fields
Danny Fisher, young delinquent, flunks out of high school. He quits his job as a busboy in a nightclub, and one night he gets the chance to perform. Success is imminent and the local crime boss Maxie Fields wants to hire him to perform at his night club The Blue Shade. Danny refuses, but Fields won't take no for an answer.
Al Dahlke
A rookie assistant DA is assigned to investigate the murder of a longshoreman, killed for exposing gangster involvement on the piers, and meets up with a "code of silence" amongst all potential witnesses.
Mel Miller
The rise of a raucous hayseed named Lonesome Rhodes from itinerant Ozark guitar picker to local media rabble-rouser to TV superstar and political king-maker. Marcia Jeffries is the innocent Sarah Lawrence girl who discovers the great man in a back-country jail and is the first to fall under his spell.
Wally Gibbs
A friendly, successful suburban teacher and father grows dangerously addicted to cortisone, resulting in his transformation into a household despot.
Wes Todd
A scout leading a wagon train through hostile Indian country gets involved with a Sioux chief's daughter.
Stan Bodine
A frontiersman and his son fight to build a new home in Texas.
Dr. Spinelli
A family living 50 miles away try to flee from the fallout of an atomic bomb that fell on New York City.
Self - Host
A documentary hosted by Walter Matthau, which discussed and showed examples from cinematic comedy classics. Long portions of the documentary were devoted to the comedy teams of Abbot & Costello and Laurel & Hardy, and to the films of director Ernst Lubitsch.
