Joe Versus the Volcano
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
John Patrick Shanley
Tom Hanks
Meg Ryan
Lloyd Bridges
Robert Stack
William Ward
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Convinced that he's dying, a man agrees to jump into a volcano to save an island from an angry god.
Director
John Patrick Shanley
Cast
Tom Hanks
Meg Ryan
Lloyd Bridges
Robert Stack
William Ward
David Burton
Abe Vigoda
Nathan Lane
Courtney Gibbs
Jon Pochran
Brian Esteban
Jane Haynes
James Leo Ryan
Barry Mcgovern
Dan Hedaya
Tony Salome
Jennifer Stewart
Carol Kane
Chuck Mcsorley
Jim Hudson
Wally Ruiz
Lisa Leblanc
Paul Michael Thorpe
Lala Sloatman
Antoni Gatti
Darrell Zwerling
Amanda Plummer
Ossie Davis
Tommy Franco
Guilermo Guzman
Karl Rumberg
Crew
Donovan Ahuna
Carl Aldana
David Amborn
Stan Amborn
James M Anderson
Win Anderson
Sarah James Arbeid
John Ashby
Carl Assmus
Colleen Atwood
Summer Banner
Ted Barba
Jorge Ben
Lon Bentley
Tom Bertino
Catherine Best
Stanley Bogest
Jeff Bornstein
Ian Bryce
Stan Burden
Eric Burdon
Red Burke
John Cade
Anne Calanchini
Frank Campanella
Cheryl Carasik
Ralph Carpenter
Dave Carson
Jo Carson
Lyle Carter
Andrew Casey
Catherine Cederquist
Lanny Cermak
Eric Chambers
Ray Charles
Bob Chase
Phil Chong
Terry Chostner
Rudy Clark
Charlie Clavadetscher
Clarke Coleman
Steve Collins
Elise Couvillion
Paulette Crammond
Allegra Curtis
Gordon Davidson
Gordon Davidson
Tom Davidson
Brian Davis
Yvonne Davis
Ray De La Motte
Georges Delerue
Georges Delerue
Berny Demolski
Bill Derham
Ed Desisso
Angelo Digiacomo
Greg Dillon
Edward Dodds
R Scott Doran
Marion Dougherty
Dick Dova
Chris Doyle
Richard Drake
Tom Duffield
Robert Dunn
Alan Edmisten
Patricia Eiben
Joaquin Elizalde
John Elizalde
William M Elvin
Leonard Engelman
William Erickson
Dan Falkengren
Chris Silver Finigan
Robert Finley Iii
Rolf Fleischmann
Ron Fode
Jim Fredburg
Jack Gallagher
Susan Germaine
Brian Gernand
Ray Gilberti
Sandra Gimpel
Mark Ginther
Stephen Goldblatt
Stephen Goldblatt
Roberto Gonzalez-rubio
John Goodson
Peter Gordon
Peter Gordon
Ned Gorman
Mark C Grech
Johnny Green
Timothy J Griffith
Jeff Haas
Lee Haas
Joanne Hafner
Colleen Halsey
Richard Halsey
Oscar Hammerstein Ii
Emil Clayton Hampton
Tom Hanks
Anne Harmon
Lorenz Hart
Angela Heald
Janet Healy
Rick Heinrichs
David Heron
Phil Heron
Kurt Hessler
Edward Heyman
Owens Hills
Ed Hirsh
Nancy Hopton
Tony Hudson
Peg Hunter
David P I James
Rod Janusch
Greg Jensen
Jeff Jensen
Harly Jessup
Albert Jeyte
John C Johnson
Brett Jones
Carol Kane
Jamie Kehoe
Kathleen Kennedy
Jerome Kern
Grace Kerr
David Kirk
Oliver Konia
Brad Kuen
Lynn Kuwahara
Ron Lambert
Sheri Lee
Jerry Leeds
Alan Jay Lerner
Ellis Lierow
James Lim
Gary Littlejohn
Frederick Loewe
Keith London
Richard Lopez
Barbara Lorenz
Fred Lucky
Jeffrey C Machit
Carl Mahakian
Dennis Maitland
David Manhan
Kim Marks
Frank Marshall
Pat Marshall
Solly Marx
Molly M. Mayeux
Richard F Mays
Patrick Mcardle
George Mcdowell
Frank Mceldowney
Gearey Mcleod
Donald O Mitchell
Dave Moon
Sue Moore
James C Morance
Patrick T Myers
Nick Navarro
Hal Nelson
Lori J Nelson
Walter J Nichols
Dan O'connell
Buck O'hare
Jane O'neal
Mike Ohta
Michael Olague
Isamu Oshiro
Lucille Ouyang
Lauren Palmer
Gary Parker
Tally Paulos
Alan Peterson
Jerry Pirozzi
Elvis Presley
Maya Pruett
C E Quick
Daniel C Quick
J Suzanne Rampe
Richard Ratliff
Charles Renfoe
Arthur Resnick
Jason Roberts
Richard Rodgers
John Rodrigues
Roxanne Rogers
Richard C Rose
Tom Rosseter
Greg P. Russell
Chris Salano
Charlie Saldana
Tim Salmon
Ben Salomone
Film Details
Technical Specs
Articles
Ossie Davis (1917-2005)
He was born Raiford Chatman Davis on December 18, 1917 in Cogdell, Georgia. His parents called him "R.C." When his mother registered his birth, the county clerk misunderstood her and thought she said "Ossie" instead of "R.C.," and the name stuck. He graduated high school in 1936 and was offered two scholarships: one to Savannah State College in Georgia and the other to the famed Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, but he could not afford the tuition and turned them down. He eventually saved enough money to hitchhike to Washington, D.C., where he lived with relatives while attending Howard University and studied drama.
As much as he enjoyed studying dramatics, Davis had a hunger to practice the trade professionally and in 1939, he left Howard University and headed to Harlem to work in the Rose McClendon Players, a highly respected, all-black theater ensemble in its day.
Davis' good looks and deep voice were impressive from the beginning, and he quickly joined the company and remained for three years. With the onset of World War II, Davis spent nearly four years in service, mainly as a surgical technician in an all-black Army hospital in Liberia, serving both wounded troops and local inhabitants before being transferred to Special Services to write and produce stage shows for the troops.
Back in New York in 1946, Davis debuted on Broadway in Jeb, a play about a returning black soldier who runs afoul of the Ku Klux Klan in the deep south. His co-star was Ruby Dee, an attractive leading lady who was one of the leading lights of black theater and film. Their initial romance soon developed into a lasting bond, and the two were married on December 9, 1948.
With Hollywood making much more socially conscious, adult films, particularly those that tackled themes of race (Lonely Are The Brave, Pinky, Lost Boundaries all 1949), it wasn't long before Hollywood came calling for Davis. His first film, with which he co-starred with his wife Dee, was a tense Joseph L. Mankiewicz's prison drama with strong racial overtones No Way Out (1950). He followed that up with a role as a cab driver in Henry Hathaway's Fourteen Hours (1951). Yet for the most part, Davis and Dee were primarily stage actors, and made few film appearances throughout the decade.
However, in should be noted that much of Davis time in the '50s was spent in social causes. Among them, a vocal protest against the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and an alignment with singer and black activist Paul Robeson. Davis remained loyal to Robeson even after he was denounced by other black political, sports and show business figures for his openly communist and pro-Soviet sympathies. Such affiliation led them to suspicions in the anti-Communist witch hunts of the early '50s, but Davis, nor his wife Dee, were never openly accused of any wrongdoing.
If there was ever a decade that Ossie Davis was destined for greatness, it was undoubtly the '60s. He began with a hit Broadway show, A Raisin in the Sun in 1960, and followed that up a year later with his debut as a playwright - the satire, Purlie Victorious. In it, Davis starred as Purlie, a roustabout preacher who returns to southern Georgia with a plan to buy his former master's plantation barn and turn it into a racially integrated church.
Although not an initial success, the play would be adapted into a Tony-award winning musical, Purlie years later. Yet just as important as his stage success, was the fact that Davis' film roles became much more rich and varied: a liberal priest in John Huston's The Cardinal (1963); an unflinching tough performance as a black soldier who won't break against a sadistic sergeant's racial taunts in Sidney Lumet's searing war drama The Hill (1965); and a shrewd, evil butler who turns the tables on his employer in Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969).
In 1970, he tried his hand at film directing, and scored a hit with Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), a sharp urban action comedy with Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques as two black cops trying to stop a con artist from stealing Harlem's poor. It's generally considered the first major crossover film for the black market that was a hit with white audiences. Elsewhere, he found roles in some popular television mini-series such as King, and Roots: The Next Generation (both 1978), but for the most part, was committed to the theater.
Happily, along came Spike Lee, who revived his film career when he cast him in School Daze (1988). Davis followed that up with two more Lee films: Do the Right Thing (1989), and Jungle Fever (1991), which also co-starred his wife Dee. From there, Davis found himself in demand for senior character parts in many films throughtout the '90s: Grumpy Old Men (1993), The Client (1994), I'm Not Rappaport (1996), and HBO's remake of 12 Angry Men (1997).
Davis and Dee celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1998 with the publication of a dual autobiography, In This Life Together, and in 2004, they were among the artists selected to receive the Kennedy Center Honors. Davis had been in Miami filming an independent movie called Retirement with co-stars George Segal, Rip Torn and Peter Falk.
In addition to his widow Dee, Davis is survived by three children, Nora Day, Hasna Muhammad and Guy Davis; and seven grandchildren.
by Michael T. Toole
Ossie Davis (1917-2005)
Robert Stack, 1919-2003
Stack was born in Los Angeles on January 13, 1919 to a well-to-do family but his parents divorced when he was a year old. At age three, he moved with his mother to Paris, where she studied singing. They returned to Los Angeles when he was seven, by then French was his native language and was not taught English until he started schooling.
Naturally athletic, Stack was still in high school when he became a national skeet-shooting champion and top-flight polo player. He soon was giving lessons on shooting to such top Hollywood luminaries as Clark Gable and Carol Lombard, and found himself on the polo field with some notable movie moguls like Darryl Zanuck and Walter Wanger.
Stack enrolled in the University of Southern California, where he took some drama courses, and was on the Polo team, but it wasn't long before some influential people in the film industry took notice of his classic good looks, and lithe physique. Soon, his Hollywood connections got him on a film set at Paramount, a screen test, and eventually, his first lead in a picture, opposite Deanna Durbin in First Love (1939). Although he was only 20, Stack's natural delivery and boyish charm made him a natural for the screen.
His range grew with some meatier parts in the next few years, especially noteworthy were his roles as the young Nazi sympathizer in Frank Borzage's chilling The Mortal Storm (1940), with James Stewart, and as the Polish flier who woos a married Carole Lombard in Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942).
After serving as a gunnery officer in the Navy during World War II, Stack returned to the screen, and found a few interesting roles over the next ten years: giving Elizabeth Taylor her first screen kiss in Robert Thorp's A Date With Judy (1948); the leading role as an American bullfighter in Budd Boetticher's The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951); and as a pilot in William Wellman's The High and the Mighty (1954), starring John Wayne. However, Stack saved his best dramatic performances for Douglas Sirk in two knockout films: as a self-destructive alcoholic in Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind (1956), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for supporting actor; and sympathetically portraying a fallen World War I pilot ace who is forced to do barnstorming stunts for mere survival in Tarnished Angels (1958).
Despite proving his capabilities as a solid actor in these roles, front rank stardom oddly eluded Stack at this point. That all changed when Stack gave television a try. The result was the enormously popular series, The Untouchables (1959-63). This exciting crime show about the real-life Prohibition-era crime-fighter Eliot Ness and his G-men taking on the Chicago underworld was successful in its day for several reasons: its catchy theme music, florid violence (which caused quite a sensation in its day), taut narration by Walter Winchell, and of course, Stack's trademark staccato delivery and strong presence. It all proved so popular that the series ran for four years, earned an Emmy for Stack in 1960, and made him a household name.
Stack would return to television in the late '60s, with the The Name of the Game (1968-71), and a string of made-for-television movies throughout the '70s. His career perked up again when Steven Spielberg cast him in his big budget comedy 1941 (1979) as General Joe Stillwell. The film surprised many viewers as few realized Stack was willing to spoof his granite-faced stoicism, but it won him over many new fans, and his dead-pan intensity would be used to perfect comic effect the following year as Captain Rex Kramer (who can forget the sight of him beating up Hare Krishnas at the airport?) in David and Jerry Zucker's wonderful spoof of disaster flicks, Airplane! (1980).
Stack's activity would be sporadic throughout the remainder of his career, but he returned to television, as the host of enormously popular Unsolved Mysteries (1987-2002), and played himself in Lawrence Kasden's comedy-drama Mumford (1999). He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Rosemarie Bowe Stack, a former actress, and two children, Elizabeth and Charles, both of Los Angeles.
by Michael T. Toole
Robert Stack, 1919-2003
Quotes
Trivia
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States on Video August 15, 1990
Released in United States Spring March 9, 1990
Directorial debut for playwright and screenwriter John Patrick Shanley.
Began shooting June 8, 1989.
Completed shooting September 19, 1989.
Released in United States Spring March 9, 1990
Released in United States on Video August 15, 1990