James Wheaton Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
James Wheaton
Acting
Biography
James Wheaton first made a name for himself on the stage. First, as a member of the Bishop's Company, a repertory theatre group which toured the United States, and later with the Ebony Showcase which was based in Los Angeles. After NBC aired an adaptation of "Carnival Island," an Ebony Showcase production, on their affiliate KNBC in Los Angeles, Wheaton began to find work in television and film. He made his major film debut as OMM, the narrator in "THX 1138" (1971), the debut feature of director George Lucas. Throughout the 1970s, he appeared in some of the most popular series of the period including "Sanford and Son," "Good Times," "Kojak," and "Ironside." In 1999, "Masks Before the Altar," a memoir about his experiences with the Bishop's Company was published. He was working on a one man show based on the poetry of Langston Hughes at the time of his death.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Guncrazy
California teen Anita Minteer struggles in the face of an absentee mother, her mom's abusive boyfriend, Rooney, and a lack of respect from her classmates. This all changes when a pen-pal school project connects her with convict Howard. Anita secures Howard's parole and violently squares off against Rooney after he rapes her. Soon enough, the gun-crazy teen is on the run with Howard, with his parole officer in pursuit.
THX 1138
People in the future live in a totalitarian society. A technician named THX 1138 lives a mundane life between work and taking a controlled consumption of drugs that the government uses to make puppets out of people. As THX is without drugs for the first time he has feelings for a woman and they start a secret relationship.
A Piece of the Action
How does retired cop Joshua Burke (James Earl Jones) get two career criminals, Manny Durrell (Sidney Poitier) and Dave Anderson (Bill Cosby), to follow the straight and narrow? Con them into helping juvenile delinquents turn over a new leaf. But how? Burke has never been able to nail the duo, but he uses what he knows of their seedy past to blackmail them into volunteering.
Gasline
Ben Crosby, suburban gas station owner struggles through the gas crisis, desperately trying to get through it, to keep it all together, to live with the choices he's made, to survive one more day.
The Black Beyond
Shot on video, this anthology consists of three episodes. In "Deathly Realities," a serial killer hiding behind a rubber mask receives comeuppance from his victims, beyond the grave. In "The Coming of the Saturnites," a space alien struggles to ingratiate himself among humans without blowing his cover. In "Money'll Eat You Up!!!," a rogue dollar bill (or "dirty green") makes its victims disappear - a brutal riposte to Gordon Gekko's then-popular mantra of "greed is good."
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