Bovie Movie

Viewers familiar with the 1996 Mel Gibson blockbuster Ransom may be disappointed that there are no smirking villains, car chases, or bloody fistfights in the original 1956 version of the same story. Even so, the earlier Ransom! has much to offer on a purely dramatic level. Based on the Richard Maibaum-Cyril Hume TV play Fearful Decision, the film stars Glenn Ford as self-made industrialist David Stannard. When his son is kidnapped and held for 500,000 dollars ransom, Stannard at first sets about to cooperate with the abductors and to raise the necessary funds. Somewhere along the line, however, Stannard’s outrage erupts and boils over. Buying air time on a local TV station, he pulls out the half-million dollars, then informs the kidnappers that they’ll never get their hands on a single penny. He further threatens to use the money as a reward for the kidnappers’ capture, dead or alive, should any harm befall his son. Despite the protests of his wife, Edith (Donna Reed), and the admonishments of his friends, family, business associates and even the police, Stannard sticks fast to his decision…but will he live to regret it? The boy’s abductors are never seen in Ransom!; instead, the film concentrates on the multitude of ramifications (including a few political ones) stemming from David Stannard’s bold stance. As such, the 1956 Ransom! is in its own way as tense and exciting as the more elaborate 1996 remake.

The true story of one woman’s effort to keep her family afloat under difficult circumstances comes to the screen in this bittersweet comedy drama. Evelyn Ryan (Julianne Moore) was a woman of intelligence, talent, and pluck living in the small town of Defiance, OH, in the 1950s. Evelyn was married to Kelly Ryan (Woody Harrelson), a man who gave her ten children but not much else; Kelly had a severe drinking problem, struggled to hold on to a job, and tended to spend his money as soon as he earned it. It was seemingly up to Evelyn to support the family, but with ten kids to look after, taking a job outside the home hardly seemed practical. But the resourceful Evelyn discovered a way to bring some extra money into the household — at a time when a number of companies held contests to find new advertising jingles for their products, Evelyn had a genius for coming up with slogans and winning contests, and for the better part of a decade Evelyn kept food on the table and a roof over her head by dreaming up jingles, tag lines, and ad headlines and winning contests with her handiwork, often selling the merchandise she won to pay the bills. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio was based on the best-selling memoir by Terry Ryan, who was the sixth of Evelyn Ryan’s ten kids.