Shirley Jones

Billy Bigelow has been dead for fifteen years, and now outside the pearly gates, he long waived his right to go back to Earth for a day. But he has heard that there is a problem with his family, namely his wife Julie Bigelow née Jordan and the child he never met, that problem with which he would now like to head back to Earth to assist in rectifying. Before he is allowed back to Earth, he has to get the OK from the gatekeeper, to who he tells his story… Immediately attracted to each other, he and Julie met when he worked as a carousel barker. Both stated to the other that they did not believe in love or marriage, but they did get married. Because the shrewish carousel owner, Mrs. Mullin, was attracted to Billy herself, and since she believed he was only of use as a barker if he was single to attract the young women to the carousel, she fired him. With no other job skills and unwilling to take just any job, Billy did not provide for Julie but rather lived off Julie’s Aunt Nettie. But Billy figured he could be the breadwinner through his association with a criminal lowlife named Jigger Craigin, which led to his death. In going back to Earth, Billy not only hopes to help his child, but “tell” Julie of his true feeling for her.Read More »

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The triumphs and failures of middle age as seen through the eyes of runaway American housewife Mary Wilson (Jean Simmons), a woman who believes that ultimate reality exists above and beyond the routine procedures of conscious, uninspired, everyday life. She feels cheated by an older generation that taught her to settle for nothing less than storybook finales, people who are disillusioned and restless and don’t know why, people for whom life holds no easy answers. Great supporting cast includes John Forsythe, Teresa Wright, Lloyd Bridges, Shirley Jones, Bobby Darin, Tina Louise, Dick Shawn, and Nanette Fabray.Read More »

Recycling elements of My Darling Clementine and The Searchers in a bitter, latter-day light, this late Western by John Ford initiates the last, dark phase of the master’s vision of the corrupting influences of the progress of civilization in the wilderness. James Stewart is introduced to the Ford stock company as a thoroughly venal town marshal, Guthrie McCabe, who’s pressed into service by the cavalry to oversee the ransoming of several whites long held captive by the Indians. McCabe is concerned with nothing but making a buck on the enterprise and coming back with his scalp intact, yet against his better judgment he becomes an arbiter of social and personal justice, and a de facto one-man protest against bigotry and hypocrisy. The cinematography is bleaker than anything seen in Ford’s more heroic Westerns, and the stylistic high point is a hilarious one-take conversation between Stewart and cavalryman Richard Widmark at the river’s edge. –Richard T. JamesonRead More »