Joe Mantell

A strong-willed socialite travels to a coastal town to hook up with a man she`s only just met. Once there, however, bizarre things happen as the birds begin to behave strangely.

A bumbling hero with a photographic memory winds up in Morocco as a private in the French Foreign Legion. He still hasn't adjusted after 18 months. Among other things, he's lost a tank. Private Meredith Bixby is so out of step in the Army that his six weeks of planned basic training has now stretched to 17 months. After he loses a tank, WAC Major Shelton, a psychologist, is assigned to make a good soldier out of him. She requests Corporal Dolan and Private Stan Wensalawsky to help with the training. Dolan and Stan both have scores to settle with Bixby and their "guidance" leads to more mishaps. Sergeant Pulley has them shipped out to Morocco. On leave in North Africa, Bixy wanders alone into a bar, has a few Moroccan Delights, which he thinks are malted milks, and becomes convinced that exotic singer-dancer Zita is THE girl for him. To protect him, Dolan tells him some lies about Zita, and Bixby, in despair, joins the Suicide Division of the Foreign Legion. He is kidnapped by a band of Arabian plotters and, guarded by the knife-happy Abdul, is ordered to assemble a stolen American cannon. Zita learns of his plight and gets Dolan and Stan to join her in a rescue mission. —Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>

A middle-aged butcher and a school teacher who have given up on the idea of love meet at a dance and fall for each other. Stuck as the last of six children at home with an overbearing Italian mother, the only child still unmarried, 34 year old socially awkward Bronx butcher Marty faces middle age with no prospects of marriage, and he faces permanent bachelorhood. But when he is goaded by his mother into going to the Stardust Ballroom one Saturday night, Marty unexpectedly meets Clara, a lonely teacher. Suddenly, Marty's future seems bright. —trivwhiz This acclaimed romantic drama follows the life of Marty Piletti, a stout bachelor butcher who lives with his mother in the Bronx. Always unlucky in love, Marty reluctantly goes out to a ballroom one night and meets a nice teacher named Clara. Though Marty and Clara hit it off, his relatives discourage him from pursuing the relationship, and he must decide between his family's approval or a shot at finding romance. —Jwelch5742 The oldest of several siblings, thirty-four year old Italian-American Marty Piletti is a butcher in the Bronx. He is somewhat a sad man in his life not turning out the way he wanted. An academically intelligent man, he never chose being a butcher as a career, he having fallen into it as the responsible thing to do as the oldest. Regardless, he is thinking about buying the butcher shop where he works in the owner planning to sell. The biggest source of his sadness is while all his younger siblings are now married, some with children, he is still single, living in the family home with his widowed mother Teresa. While he, his best friend Angie and their other bachelor friends hang out together during their free time, sometimes cruising for girls but more often than not just wandering aimlessly, Marty has come to the conclusion that love is not in the cards for him in not having the model good looks that seems to attract girls. In addition, he has had enough heartache in being turned down time and again when he does put himself out there to no longer wanting to do it. Against his better judgment, he, on his mother's urging in wanting him to find a girl, goes out on Saturday night with Angie to the Stardust dance hall. While this night looks like it will turn out like most such nights, namely in heartache, Marty ends up meeting twenty-nine year old schoolteacher, Clara Snyder. A proverbial wallflower, Clara is equally as sad as Marty, she using the excuse of her father in particular needing her as a reason not to strike out on her own, with her and Marty's meeting solely due to her blind date ditching her in being disappointed with the setup due to her looks, she also not model material. In their shared loneliness, Marty and Clara end up connecting emotionally. While there seems to be the possibility that love with each other could end up part of their lives, they not only have to overcome their own insecurities to enter into a relationship, but the open feelings of others, those in Marty's life injecting their own biases in seeing Clara as not the one for him. —Huggo

The U.S. government sends Major Thomas Blake on a secret mission when the Bey of Tripoli starts demanding tribute from American merchant ships in the Mediterranean in the early 1800's. His pose as a Tory on the ship alienates his fellow passengers, Anne Ridgeway, and her brother Sam. Off Tripoli, the ship is captured by the Bey's pirates, but Blake makes a friend of the Bey when he saves his life. Blake learns that a servant girl, Zoltah, and her friends ate plotting to kill the Bey, and that the Bey also has a spy in the State Department, Tobias Sharpe, who sends advance information about American ship movements. —Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>