Dean Riesner Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Dean Riesner
Writing
Biography
Dean Riesner (November 3, 1918, New Rochelle, New York – August 18, 2002, Encino, California) was an American film and television writer. Riesner's father, Charles Reisner, was a German American silent film director, and Dean began acting in films at the age of five as "Dinky Dean". His most notable role was in Charlie Chaplin's 1923 film The Pilgrim. His career at this young age ended because his mother wanted her son to have a real childhood. As an adult, his first job in films was as a co-writer of the 1939 Ronald Reagan movie Code of the Secret Service. Riesner won an Oscar for directing Bill and Coo (1948), a feature film with a cast of real birds, costumed as humans, acting on the world's smallest film set. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Riesner worked primarily in television, including writing for Rawhide and the "Tourist Attraction" episode of The Outer Limits, although he occasionally contributed to feature films like The Helen Morgan Story. In 1968 he landed a job working on the Clint Eastwood action film Coogan's Bluff, and this in turn would lead to him writing several other Eastwood features throughout the 1970s. Riesner helped pen the screenplays for two Eastwood films in 1971, Play Misty for Me and the original Dirty Harry. In 1973 he provided an uncredited rewrite for High Plains Drifter, and in 1976 he was one of the writers to draft The Enforcer, the third Dirty Harry thriller. That same year he provided the teleplay for NBC's highly rated miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, starring Nick Nolte. In 1979 he wrote an early draft screenplay for The Godfather Part III, but his script was discarded when Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo finally agreed to collaborate on a third entry in the series. Riesner continued to write into the 1980s, though most of his work from that period went uncredited. Those films include Das Boot, The Sting II, and Starman. Riesner died in 2002 of natural causes. He had been married to actress Maila Nurmi, better known as the horror hostess Vampira.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Hollywood
Angela comes to Hollywood with only two things: Her dream to become a movie star, and Grandpa. She leaves an Aunt, a brother, Grandma, and her longtime boyfriend back in Centerville. Despite seeing major movie stars around every corner, and knocking on every casting office door in town, at the end of her first day she is still unemployed. To her horror, when she arrives back at their hotel, she finds that Grandpa has been cast in a movie by William DeMille and quickly becomes a star during the ensuing weeks. Her family, worried that Angela and Grandpa are getting into trouble, come to Hollywood to drag them back home. In short order Aunt, Grandma, brother, boyfriend and even the parrot become superstars, but Angela is still unemployed...
The Pilgrim
The Tramp is an escaped convict who is mistaken as a pastor in a small town church.
The Traveling Saleswoman
The daughter of a soap manufacturer heads to the wild and woolly west to sell her daddy's product.
The Chaplin Revue
Three Chaplin silent comedies "A Dog's Life", "Shoulder Arms", and "The Pilgrim" are strung together to form a single feature length film. Chaplin provides new music, narration, and a small amount of new connecting material. "Shoulder Arms" is now described as taking place in a time before "the atom bomb".
Peck's Bad Boy
This portrayal of small town life before the War is based on a small boys determination to get to see the circus, over all obstacles. Escaped lions, lightheaded blackmail of his father, and playfully planting stolen papers on his sisters boyfriend are all in a days work for little Henry Peck.
It's in the Air
Con men Calvin Churchill and Clip McGurk know how to fix a horse-race or boxing match. Calvin wants to go straight and win back his estranged wife, but first the men must dodge a dogged IRS agent and bilk a bunch of aviation investors out of the backing boodle for a balloon excursion into the stratosphere.
Gunfire
Tubercular Frank James has become a born again and retired from his career as an outlaw with his family but a look-a-like outlaw causes suspicion to fall back on him.
The Cobra Strikes
A newspaper reporter investigates the near-fatal shooting of a medical scientist.
Everybody Dance
When her sister dies, a nightclub singer is left with her children. In order to raise the children properly, she leaves her singing career and takes her new family to a farm. However, her greedy manager--seeing his "cash cow" slipping away--goes to court to have her declared legally incompetent.
Play It Again: A Look Back at 'Play Misty for Me'
Clint Eastwood tells us how he yearned to be a director from the time he was on "Rawhide" to finally obtaining the approval of his mentor, Don Siegel. He then asked Lew R. Wasserman, a Universal executive, if he could direct a story called "Play Misty For Me." Lew said yes but that he wouldn't be paid as the director. Clint agreed and began to locate the cast and crew he desired.
Production
Das Boot
A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.
Dirty Harry
When a madman dubbed 'Scorpio' terrorizes San Francisco, hard-nosed cop, Harry Callahan – famous for his take-no-prisoners approach to law enforcement – is tasked with hunting down the psychopath.
The Enforcer
Dirty Harry Callahan returns again, this time saddled with a rookie female partner. Together, they must stop a terrorist group consisting of angry Vietnam veterans.
Coogan's Bluff
Coogan, an Arizona deputy sheriff goes to New York to pick up a prisoner. While escorting the prisoner to the airport, he escapes and Coogan heads into the city to recapture him.
Charley Varrick
Charley Varrick robs a bank in a small town with his friends, but instead of obtaining a small amount of money, they discover they stole a very large amount of money belonging to the mob. Charley must now come up with a plan to not only evade the police but the mob as well.
The Sting II
Hooker and Gondorf pull a con on Macalinski, an especially nasty mob boss with the help of Veronica, a new grifter. They convince this new victim that Hooker is a somewhat dull boxer who is tired of taking dives for Gondorf. There is a ringer. Lonigan, their victim from the first movie, is setting them up to take the fall.
Bill and Coo
The feathered residents of Chirpendale are terrorized by an evil black crow by the name of "The Black Menace". But to the citizen's rescue comes a brave young taxi puller named Bill! In other words, every single role in this film is played by birds. Actual birds.
Bill and Coo
The feathered residents of Chirpendale are terrorized by an evil black crow by the name of "The Black Menace". But to the citizen's rescue comes a brave young taxi puller named Bill! In other words, every single role in this film is played by birds. Actual birds.
The Man from Galveston
Circuit-riding Texas lawyer Timothy Higgins defends a former girlfriend against a murder charge stemming from an extortionist's threat to reveal her shady past. Through adroit courtroom work, Higgins is able to acquit her and reveal who actually shot the fatal bullet.
Stranger on the Run
A drifter finds himself wrongly accused of murder by a power-crazed sheriff. The sheriff gives him a horse, some supplies, and a one-hour head start into the desert before sending his murderous posse after him.
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