Arthur O'Connell

In 1840s Missouri, young Huckleberry Finn, wanting to escape his violent drunkard father, joins Black runaway slave Jim on a quest for freedom down the Mississippi River on a raft. Huckleberry Finn, a rambuctious boy adventurer chafing under the bonds of civilization, escapes his humdrum world and his selfish, plotting father by sailing a raft down the Mississippi River. Accompanying him is Jim, a slave running away from being sold. Together the two strike a bond of friendship that takes them through harrowing events and thrilling adventures. —Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net> In Hannibal, Missouri in the mid nineteenth century, young Huckleberry Finn and his guardians' slave, Jim, run away independently of each other but for the same reason. Huck's no good father is holding Huck for ransom, the only way Huck's guardians can come up with the money is to sell Jim to the slave traders. After leaving, Jim runs into Huck and they decide to travel together down the Mississippi River on a raft to the free state of Illinois where Jim can live free. They learn that the news around Hannibal is that Jim murdered Huck, so the two have no choice but to escape. On their travels, they run into one adventure after another, including run-ins with wealthy Colonel Grangeford and his unusual family, slave traders, and con men known as the King and Duke. But before they get to their final destination, Huck changes their collective plans for what he feels is the best for both. —Huggo

A mysterious circus comes to a western town bearing wonders and characters that entertain the inhabitants and teach valuable lessons. An old Chinese gentleman rides into the town of Abalone, Arizona and changes it forever, as the citizens see themselves reflected in the mirror of Lao's mysterious circus of mythical beasts. —Edward E. Pringle <pringle@atb.teradyne.com> is prepared to buy them all out. What he doesn't tell anyone is that the railroad will run through the town in less than a year's time. The local newspaperman and the librarian both think he's up to no good. Dr. Lao gets them to look at life differently and not to sell out to the highest bidder. —garykmcd In the early 20th century, Dr. Lao brings his circus to the town of Abalone. The town is under threat due to a break in the water supply system and wealthy businessman is prepared to buy them all out. What he doesn't tell anyone is that the railroad will run through the town in less than a year's time. The local newspaperman and the librarian both think he's up to no good. Dr. Lao gets them to look at life differently and to change. their future and behaviour for the better. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The Oklahoma Land Run of April 1889 sets the stage for an epic saga of a frontier adventurer, his wife and family and their friends. The epic saga of a frontier family, Cimarron starts with the Oklahoma Land Rush on 22 April 1889. The Cravet family builds their newspaper Oklahoma Wigwam into a business empire and Yancey Cravet is the adventurer-idealist who, to his wife's anger, spurns the opportunity to become governor since this means helping to defraud the native Americans of their land and resources. —Mattias Thuresson

Frances Lawrence (Sandra Dee) is a socially awkward, 16-year-old girl about to turn 17 and is on her summer break between her junior and senior years of high school. She resists the pressure to go "man-hunting" with her girlfriends and laments the days when the girls had fun together without boys. Frances also rejects her parents wishing to fix her up on a date with the son of a friend of the family, Jeffrey Matthews. On a jaunt to the beach with her bikini-clad girlfriends, flat-chested tomboy Frances meets surfer Moondoggie (James Darren). She quickly becomes infatuated with him, but he shows no romantic interest; however, Frances is more attracted to surfing than man-hunting. At home, Francie importunes her parents for $25 for a used surfboard. Russ and Dorothy Lawrence (Arthur O'Connell and Mary LaRoche) grant their daughter's request as an early birthday present and the excited youngster returns to the beach to surf. The gang dubs their female associate "Gidget," a portmanteau word based on 'girl' and 'midget.' She associates with an all-male surfer gang led by the worldly beach bum, The Big Kahuna (Cliff Robertson). Kahuna, (who's real name is Burt Vail) is a Korean War Air Force veteran twice the age of Frances who was fed up with all the rules he had to live by when he flew combat missions and has dropped out of normal society. He travels the hemisphere surfing with his pet myna bird. Moondoggie admires Kahuna and wants to emulate him by joining Kahuna in working his way on a freighter to go surfing in Peru at summer's end instead of going off to college as his self-made father planned. Over the next few weeks, Kahuna and Gidget enjoy each other's company with Gidget questioning how he can survive an aimless and lonely existence without a job. She questions whether if Kahuna knew then what he knew now would he still make the same lifestyle choice after leaving the Air Force. Kahuna later reflects on Gidget's words after the death of his only friend, the pet bird. Hoping to make Moondoggie jealous, Gidget hires one of the other surfers in the gang to be her date to a luau party on the beach. Her plan backfires when the surfer she hired pawns the job off on none other than Moondoggie, unaware that he was the one Gidget wanted to make jealous. Gidget lies and tells Moondoggie that it is Kahuna that she wants to make jealous, and they have a romantic evening at the luau. Eventually convinced Moondoggie still doesn't consider her as a love interest. So at midnight, she flees the luau, she runs into Kahuna and agrees to take him to a nearby beach house. Alone with Kahuna, Gidget tries to make Kahuna take her virginity. Amused, Kahuna attempts to call Gidget's bluff by pretending to take her up on her offer but finds himself falling under her spell. Realizing what he was about to do and angry at the situation he's been put in, Kahuna throws her out of the beach house just as Moondoggie arrives. Gidget is mortified and escapes out the back door of the beach house as Moondoggie confronts Kahuna. The cops are called to break up the fistfight between Kahuna and Moondoggie and, after leaving the beach house, the police find Gidget stranded with a flat tire and without her driver's license. They bring her in to the police station. Gidget's father, having heard about the incident, decides to take over control of her social life, and orders her not to see the surfer gang again. She falls into a depression, to which mother shows her a tapestry from her grandmother reading "A Real Woman brings out the best in a Man." In the end, Mr. Lawrence arranges a blind date for Gidget with Jeffrey Matthews, the college-age son of a family friend, and Frances grudgingly accepts. To her surprise, Matthews turns out to be none other than Moondoggie. The two return to the beach to find Kahuna tearing down his beach shack and learns out that he's taken a job as an airline pilot. Moondoggie and Gidget realize how they feel about each other and, as an act of romantic devotion, Moondoggie asks Gidget to wear his class pin while he is away at college. Kahuna cheerfully warns Moondoggie that Gidget is quite a woman. Kahuna then goes off to his new career, while Gidget and Moondoggie walk off down the beach together.

Link Jones (Gary Cooper rides into the small town of Crosscut, Texas. He sees a beautiful woman (Julie London) leaving the local saloon; they are taking down the sign advertising her as a singer. He gets a meal, and then hires someone to take care of his horse for a few days. He says he's Link Jones from Good Hope, which is five days' ride west. Then he drops his money bag, and we see he is wary about the money. Then he washes up and changes his clothes, and after thinking it over, puts his money bag and his holster and pistol in his satchel. Link heads to the train station and buys a ticket to Fort Worth. There he sees that Billie Ellis (London) is also boarding the train, and he meets Sam Beasley (Arthur O'Connell), a loquacious gambler. The local sheriff seems to recognize Link and asks his name. Link gives a different name, Henry Wright, and says his home town is Sawmill. The sheriff asks if he knows Dock Tobin, but Link denies knowing the name. On the train, Beasley is friendly and talkative, and gets Link to tell him that he is traveling to Fort Worth to hire a schoolteacher. Talking loudly, Beasley observes that you would have to pay someone a year's salary in advance in order to get them to travel so far to such a remote place. Link replies that yes, he has the townspeople's money. A shady character Alcutt hears it all. The train stops to load wood and all able-bodied men are asked to help. The train guard assures that Link he'll watch his bag. But it's an ambush; four men lay in wait for the train, and the shady character is part of the gang. Separated from his gun, Link gets knocked out, and Alcutt takes his satchel off the train. The train guard manages to fight off the bandits, wounding Alcutt, and the train takes off. When Link comes to, he realizes he's been left behind, and soon he finds that Miss Ellis and Mr. Beasley are in the same predicament. They begin to walk with Link telling them the nearest town is about a hundred miles away. Link leads the trio to a farmhouse, and says he lived there once long ago. He sends his companions to wait in the barn while he cautiously approaches the house. But the would-be train robbers are waiting in the dark, guns drawn, and Link is caught. The situation is tense, when from the back room comes an old man (Lee J. Cobb) who introduces himself as Link's uncle Dock Tobin. Dock reminisces about what a great gang he had when Link was his right hand, and how enraged he was when Link left him all while Link is at gunpoint. He says he wants to rejoin Dock, but guns remain pointed at him. Meanwhile, the wounded Alcutt is dying. Dock insists one of his men put him out of his misery, and at last Coaley shoots him. With the tension still high, they agree that Link will stay, and Link brings in his friends from the barn. Immediately, Beasely is put to work digging a grave. Dock asks if Billie is Link's woman and to protect her, he says yes. Then Link is sent to take out the body. While outside he hears Billie Ellis begin screaming. Link runs back to find that Coaley has her at gunpoint, demanding she undress for the pleasure of them all. When Link tries to intervene, Coaley holds a knife to his throat, drawing blood. Billie removes her shoes, stockings, blouse, skirt, and undershirt, and is wearing only her undergarments when Dock ends the show and allows Link to take Billie to sleep in the barn. In the barn, Link helps Billie get into bed, where she sobs while he tries to comfort her. It is here that Billie begins to fall for Link, who is distraught because he has lost all the townspeople's money. He says he has a wife and two children (ages 8 and 10) at home and he speaks of them with deep affection. Billie says his wife is a very lucky woman. In the morning, Claude (John Dehner) arrives. Coaley and Claude are brothers and Link's first cousins. Dock wants to rob a bank in Lassoo, a bank he says is loaded with money. Now that Link is with them again, he's sure that they can pull off the job. They ride off in three wagons with two on horseback towards Lassoo. When they stop for a break, a "friendly" bit of wrestling turns into a murderous fight between Coaley and Link. Coaley fights dirty in every possible way, but Link gets the upper hand. He can't bring himself to kill, but Link strips Coaley in the same order he forced Billie to strip and leaves him humiliated. Coaley draws his gun and ignores Dock's order to stop. Beasely leaps jumps in front of Link to save him and is shot by Coaley, who is then shot by Dock. Link tells Billie that the folks in Good Hope know all about his murderous past, and he's "broken his back" working to establish himself with them as a decent man. Now, among this gang, he feels he wants to kill them, but he knows if he does, then he's no different from them. Dock's plan is to send one man into Lassoo to case the bank. If the man feels that they can take the bank, then he will wait in town; otherwise, he will ride back. The rest of the gang is to wait four hours, and if the man doesn't ride back, they will ride into Lassoo to meet him, find out how many guns await them, get the layout from their scout, and proceed to get rich. Link convinces Dock that he's the only man who can be the scout: Claude and Dock are known on sight in these parts, Trout (Royal Dano) is mute, and Ponch (Robert J. Wilke) is too stupid. Dock reluctantly agrees but sends Trout along with him. When they arrive, they find that Lassoo is a ghost town, and a scared Mexican woman lives in the former bank. She holds a gun on the two men, terrified, but while Link tries to reassure her, Trout shoots and kills her. Enraged, Link kills Trout with the dead woman's gun. She has no ammunition, so Link gets Trout's guns and gun belt and waits. He also searches Trout, but doesn't find his money. Claude and Ponch ride into Lasso. A tense, exciting battle follows; Link kills both men and is wounded in the left arm. Again, he searches fruitlessly for the money. As he is leaving, a Mexican man rides up; Link just says "I'm sorry." As Link rides off, we hear the husband's grief as he finds his beloved Juanita dead. Back at camp, Link finds Billie stripped and weeping. It appears that she has been molested despite Dock's promise to keep her safe. Link goes after Dock, wanting to take him in alive, but he is forced to return Dock's fire and kills him. His search over, Link gratefully pockets the money from the townspeople of Good Hope. As they drive away together from the awful scene, Billie thinks that Link will be treated as a hero. She says that she regrets nothing because she's never loved before, and although she knows that Link cannot return her love, to have the feeling is worth it.

A minority stockholder takes on the crooked board of directors at a billion dollar corporation. Laura Partridge (Judy Holliday) is a very enthusiastic small stockholder of 10 shares in International Projects, a large corporation based in New York City. She attends her first stockholders meeting ready to question the board of directors from their salaries to their operations. These are not the questions which the board expected to be asked of them, especially since they are all crooked, except for Edward McKeever (Paul Douglas), the current CEO who has resigned in order to take an advisory position at the Pentagon. Following the meeting, he bumps into Laura and offers to drive her home. On the way there, Laura displays her enthusiasm for being a stockholder, as a result, Edward takes a liking to her. With Edward in Washington, D.C., John Blessington (John Williams) and Clifford Snell (Fred Clark) establish their hold on International Projects. They see greater riches now that Edward has influence with the U.S. Senate, especially with the awarding of federal contracts; unfortunately for them, he is honest, and won't do their bidding. In the meantime, Laura continues to be a nuisance to the board. Blessington believes the only way to silence her is to give her a high-paying position with the company. The idea is for her to do absolutely nothing, but Laura has other plans. She begins to correspond with other small stockholders in the company, a problem for the board. They decide to use her influence on Edward and send her to Washington, D.C. to get contracts. Laura, now knowing their true intentions for her, has her own agenda, that is, get Edward back in charge of the company. —Kelly It is the Annual General Meeting of International Projects, a large listed company. The board of directors are a shady lot, but none of the shareholders ever question their decisions or vote against their motions--until now. Laura Partridge (Judy Holliday), a minor shareholder, starts to ask some pretty important questions--questions which the directors don't like. In the aftermath of the meeting, the directors are worried that she will form a committee of minority shareholders, and exercise some control of the company. In order to keep her quiet and in line, they offer her a job in the company, as Director of Shareholder Relations. The idea is to give her nothing to do, but Laura has other plans. —grantss Inheriting ten shares of the company's stock, struggling New York actress Laura Partridge, who has no experience with the workings of multinational corporations, decides to attend an International Projects' stockholders' meeting to understand what is happening with her money in those ten shares. She will discover that this meeting will introduce a change to the Board as company founder Edward L. McKeever is stepping down as President and Board Chair having been seconded, appointed directly by the President of the United States, to a position in procurement for the Department of Defense in Washington, DC, he necessarily having sold his company shares to avoid conflict of interest, with John T. Blessington taking over as President and Board Chair. While McKeever is an ethical and hard working man, Blessington and the rest of the Board executive are less than ethical in only looking out for their own personal interests. On the surface, Laura doesn't like what she sees especially in bloated salaries for the Board executive. In meeting after meeting, Laura is able to be enough of a thorn in the Board executives' sides that Blessington decides that the best tact in dealing with her is to hold her close by offering her a made-up executive position within the company as Director of Shareholder Relations, her responsibilities to answer any correspondence received by shareholders, such correspondence which is basically non-existent. In being on the inside, Laura, despite her naiveté, knows what she believes is best for the company and for the plethora of minor shareholders like herself, namely for McKeever to return to the company, which is the last thing Blessington and the other Board executives want in expecting McKeever to direct government contracts in International Projects' direction to line their pockets further, and in not wanting to relinquish their control of the company. Things only get more complicated when Laura and McKeever fall in love, and they learn that Blessington never had any intention of relinquishing control back to McKeever despite Blessington bestowing upon McKeever as a going away gift a master "golden key", which opens any lock at International Projects, as a symbol of he being welcomed back at any time. —Huggo