Movies to Watch

Judith Traherne is at the height of young society when Dr. Frederick Steele diagnoses a brain tumor. After surgery, she falls in love with Steele. The doctor tells her secretary that the tumor will come back and eventually kill her. Learning this, Judith becomes manic and depressive. Her horse trainer Michael, who loves her, tells her to get as much out of life as she can. She marries Steele who intends to find a cure for her illness. As he goes off to a conference in New York failing eyesight indicates to Judith that she is dying.

Jerry Ryan is wandering aimlessly around New York, having given up his law career in Nebraska when his wife asked for a divorce. He meets up with Gittel Mosca, an impoverished dancer from Greenwich Village, and the two try to straighten out their lives together.

It's 1928 in oil rich southeast Kansas. High school seniors Bud Stamper and Deanie Loomis are in love with each other. Bud, the popular football captain, and Deanie, the sensitive soul, are "good" kids who have only gone as far as kissing. Unspoken to each other, they expect to get married to each other one day. But both face pressures within the relationship, Bud who has the urges to go farther despite knowing in his heart that if they do that Deanie will end up with a reputation like his own sister, Ginny Stamper, known as the loose, immoral party girl, and Deanie who will do anything to hold onto Bud regardless of the consequences. They also face pressures from their parents who have their own expectation for their offspring. Bud's overbearing father, Ace Stamper, the local oil baron, does not believe Bud can do wrong and expects him to go to Yale after graduation, which does not fit within Bud's own expectations for himself. And the money and image conscious Mrs. Loomis just wants Deanie to get married as soon as possible to Bud so that Deanie will have a prosperous life in a rich family. When Bud makes a unilateral decision under these pressures, it leads to a path which affects both his and Deanie's future.

Three New York models, Shatze, Pola and Loco set up in an exclusive apartment with a plan....tired of cheap men and a lack of money, they intend to use all their talents to trap and marry three millionaires. The trouble is that it's not so easy to tell the rich men from the hucksters - and even when they can, is the money really worth it?

When Mike Hagen and Marilla Brown marry after a whirlwind romance on the west coast, they return to New York to find that they don't have much in common. She is a clothing designer who lives in a swanky apartment and whose friends are actors, artists and the like. He is a sports writer who likes to go boxing matches and horse races. They clearly love one another and make every effort to be flexible. When a mobster, whom Mike has been accusing of fixing sports events, decides to go after him he must pretend to be out of town and mayhem ensues.

Small, plain and poor, Jane Eyre (Joan Fontaine) comes to Thornfield Hall as governess to the young ward of Edward Rochester (Orson Welles). Denied love all of her life, Jane can't help but be attracted to the intelligent, vibrant, energetic Mr. Rochester, a man twice her age. But just when Mr. Rochester seems to be returning the attention, he invites the beautiful and wealthy Blanche Ingraham (Hillary Brooke) and her party to stay at his estate. Meanwhile, the secret of Thornfield Hall could ruin all of their chances for happiness.

Gloria Wondrous awakens in a luxurious bedroom that's not hers. She swallows a jolt of distilled courage, tosses aside $250 left by an admirer, leaves a scornful reply in lipstick on the mirror, dials her service for messages and slips into a mink coat she finds in the closet. The day and the movie are off to a roaring start. Moviegoers and Hollywood left a message of "Hurrah!" for Elizabeth Taylor and Butterfield 8. Audiences made the film, co-starring Laurence Harvey and Eddie Fisher as a married lover and platonic friend who matter to Gloria, a box-office hit. And Taylor won her first Best Actress Academy Award as a woman whose life comes with a complete set of emotional baggage. For a glossy, good time, don't call. Watch.

Robert Lomax, tired of working in an office, wants to be an artist. So he moves to Hong Kong to try his hand at painting. Finding a cheap hotel, he checks in, only to find it's used by prostitutes and their "dates" they meet in the bar downstairs. Since he never picks up any of the ladies, they all want to know more about him. Eventually, he does hire one to model for him... and soon falls in love. However, since he's on a limited budget, he can't afford her exclusively, but doesn't want to "share" her with anyone else.

As tears well up in her eyes, once-happy Julie listens to her favourite songs, reminiscing about the ups and downs of her life. Indeed, Julie and her husband, Roger, have always been there for each other through thick and thin. However, it seems that the love is gone. But, before leaving the house, Julie decides to listen to their old, memory-laden records for one last time, eager to relive all the fundamental stages of her love story with Roger. Now, a flurry of mixed emotions overcomes Julie. Is all hope lost?

The Hunter family has long owned a mansion on Pine Island, a summer resort located off the Maine coast. Bart Hunter's now-deceased father was able to open the mansion for free when Bart was younger. But current owner Bart, a drunkard and weak man, must now live there year round for financial survival with his wife Sylvia and their late teen-aged son Johnny, the family which is barely able to eke out a living with the mansion now as a year-round inn in an extreme state of disrepair. Bart and Sylvia are in a quietly unhappy marriage due largely to Bart's drinking. The Buffalo-based Jorgensons - husband Ken Jorgenson, his wife Helen Jorgenson and their late teen-aged daughter Molly Jorgenson - have rented rooms at the inn for the summer, while Ken looks for a summer house on the island. Ken lived on the island 20 years ago when he was a working-class lifeguard for Bart's father at that time. Ken is now a self-made millionaire as a research scientist, who had never been back to the island until now. Ken and Helen too are in an unsatisfying marriage, Helen, a shrew and prude, who seems to hate and mistrust anything and everything, including her husband and daughter. Helen only seems concerned with public perception that their lives are perfect. Upon first meeting, Johnny and Molly fall in love. Meanwhile, Ken and Sylvia rekindle a romance from 20 years earlier, uncertain if Bart knew at the time of their relationship, which did not last because of the differences in their social background. The two romances have a rocky road to potential happiness. Helen does not trust either Johnny or Molly to be morally proper. Ken and Sylvia know that their respective spouses will never consent to divorce, and if they do will do whatever they can so that they will never get to see their children again. And despite knowing that their respective parents are unhappy in their marriages, Johnny and Molly do not approve of a liaison between his mother and her father. Regardless, Ken and Sylvia want to provide their children with as much love and guidance as possible, including encouraging them to follow their hearts while not getting into trouble, a message which may not be heard if only because of Johnny and Molly believing that what they are doing is disgusting, and because of Johnny and Molly's own raging hormones.

While she was growing up, Sabrina Fairchild spent more time perched in a tree watching the Larrabee family than she ever did on solid ground. As the chauffeur's daughter on their lavish Long Island estate, Sabrina was invisible behind the branches, but she knew them all below - There is Maude Larrabee, the modern matriarch of the Larrabee Corporation; Linus Larrabee, the serious older son who expanded a successful family business into the world's largest communications company; and David, the handsome, fun-loving Larrabee, who was the center of Sabrina's world until she was shipped off to Paris. After two years on the staff of Vogue magazine, Sabrina has returned to the Larrabee estate but now she has blossomed into a beautiful and sophisticated woman. And she's standing in the way of a billion dollar deal.

In Lincoln, the ambitious aspirant-designer Rae Smith has an incident with a wolf department store businessman and is rescued by the Marine Paul Saxon. They immediately fall in love with each other and spend the night together. On the next morning, Paul needs to return to Chicago and calls Rae to go with him. However she misses the plane and Paul travels alone. Soon she learns that he is married with children and she is convinced by her sister to move to New York where she succeeds in the fashion world. Paul, who owns a department store chain, stumbles upon her on the street and their love is rekindled. However, Rae decides to leave New York and her boss and partner convinces her to open a store in Rome. Some time later, they meet each other again and Rae learn that Paul is indeed unhappily married with the alcoholic Liz Saxon. They have a love affair and Paul buys a country house at the countryside of France where they spend their leisure time together. But their lives shatter when Paul's son discovers their love affair.

The often unlikely joint lives of Katie Morosky and Hubbell Gardiner from the late 1930s to the late 1950s is presented, over which time, they are, in no particular order, strangers, acquaintances, friends, best friends, lovers and adversaries. The unlikely nature of their relationship is due to their fundamental differences, where she is Jewish and passionate about her political activism both in political freedoms and Marxism to an extreme where she takes life a little too seriously, while he is the golden boy WASP, being afforded the privileges in life because of his background but who on the most part is able to capitalize on those privileges. Their lives are shown in four general time periods, in chronological order when they attend the same college, their time in New York City during WWII, his life as a Hollywood screenwriter post-war, and his life as a writer for a New York based live television show. It is during college that Hubbell finds his voice in life as a writer, and that Katie sees beyond his good looks to find a person with substance who realizes his position in a life as something that does not give him an inherent right to those opportunities. External world events, such as the Spanish Civil War, WWII and the House Un-American Activities investigation, do affect their lives directly, but it is how they deal with these effects personally, largely in relation to personal relationships - such as with Hubbell's long term friends J.J. and Carol Ann, the latter his college girlfriend - that may dictate if Katie and Hubbell are able to make it in the long term as a couple.

Three American women, rooming together while working abroad in Rome, Italy, hope for romance and marriage. Frances, oldest of the three, has been fifteen years a secretary to novelist John Frederick Shadwell, a man whom she loves but whose reclusive nature prompts most people to believe him long since dead. Anita, one week away from returning to America (under the claim of getting married), finally bucks company rules (and gets caught) by finally accepting an invitation from an Italian co-worker to visit his family's farm for his sister's wedding. Newly arrived Maria soon sets her generally innocent eyes on Dino di Cessi, an actual prince with a reputation for womanizing, and makes a play for him by making herself his perfect match.

The Wingo family is from South Carolina, they growing up in a house on a tidal plain. The oldest offspring, Lucas, largely acted as the protector for his younger twins siblings, Tom and Savannah, in light of their dysfunctional growing up, with their shrimper father, Henry, distant and abusive if/when he did pay them any attention, and their mother, Lila, while not doting on them most concerned about appearances and striving for social standing. Now in middle age, Savannah is a New York based poet, Tom, still living on the South Carolina coast outside of Charleston with his wife Sally and their own three doting daughters, taking a break from his high school teaching/football coaching job, while Lucas has long since died while still standing up for himself and his beliefs. Lila, divorced and now remarried with that wealth and social standing she so long desired, receives news that Savannah is in the hospital following her most recent suicide attempt. Not wanting to face the blame directly as she suspects, she assigns Tom to go to New York to speak to Savannah's therapist, Susan Loewenstein, to provide any information of a family history nature that could help in Savannah's recovery. Tom agrees despite hating New York, and it being not a good time since he and Sally are experiencing marital problems, they both just knowing that things between them are not working, and not having been intimate in months. As Tom and Loewenstein (as he calls her) begin their sessions, Tom is slow to divulge the Wingo family problems to her. But he learns that she too is having her own family problems, with her concert violinist husband Herbert Woodruff being self absorbed and condescending, with their young adult son, Bernard, hating both largely because of they predestining his life also as a concert violinist. Tom and Loewenstein's sessions blossom into a friendship and romance, where their talks, in addition to helping Savannah, may help them both in dealing with their own life problems, Tom's which have been long buried figuratively and literally.

The morning of a small town Labor Day picnic, a drifter (Hal Carter) blows into town to visit an old fraternity buddy (Alan Benson) who also happens to be the son of the richest man in town. Hal is an egocentric braggart - all potential and no accomplishment. He meets up with Madge Owens, the town beauty queen and girlfriend of Alan Benson.

Alfred Eaton, an ambitious young executive, climbs to the top of New York's financial world as his marriage crumbles. At the brink of attaining his career goals, he is forced to choose between business success, married to the beautiful, but unfaithful Mary and starting over with his true love, the much younger Natalie.

Proud father Stanley T. Banks (Spencer Tracy) remembers the day his daughter, Kay (Dame Elizabeth Taylor), got married. Starting when she announces her engagement through to the wedding itself, we learn of all the surprises and disasters along the way.