The Lawyer *** (1970, Barry Newman, Harold Gould, Diana Muldaur, Robert Colbert) – Classic Movie Review 8,550

Co-writer/ producer/ director Sidney J Furie’s entertaining 1970 crime drama mystery movie The Lawyer inspired the Seventies TV show Petrocelli, with Barry Newman creating the role of pushy Italian-American Harvard-educated lawyer Tony Petrocelli, practising in the rich Southern cattle town of Baker, who is involved in a case of a doctor’s murder trial.

Robert Colbert plays the rich Jack Harrison, who finds himself arrested after his socialite party girl wife Wilma Harrison is found brutally murdered in her own bed. Petrocelli takes on Jack Harrison as his client and is determined to win whether he is guilty or not.

Courtroom dramas are pretty well guaranteed successes anyway, and, though this one has little new to add, the characters and small-town atmosphere are involving and meticulously drawn. Newman and director Furie are briskly professional rather than inspired. It also stars Harold Gould as Eric P Scott and Diana Muldaur as Ruth Petrocelli.

Barry Newman stars in The Lawyer (1970).

Also in the cast are Kathleen Crowley, Booth Colman, Warren J Kemmerling, Ken Swofford, William Syvester, Mary Wilcox, Jeffery Thompson, Ralph Thomas, Robert L Poyner, Gene O’Donnell, James McEachin, Walter Mathews, John Himes, Tom Harvey, Melkendy Britt, Ivor Barry, Ray Ballard and E J André.

Sidney J Furie and Harold Buchman’s screenplay is a fictionalisation of a real-life case. The story is based on the case of American neurosurgeon Sam Sheppard, tried for murder in 1954.

Petrocelli ran for 44 episodes and two seasons from 1974 to 1976.

Barry Newman (November 7, 1930 – May 11, 2023) was best known for Vanishing Point, The Salzburg Connection and Fear Is the Key, and for playing Tony Petrocelli in The Lawyer (1970) and in the 1970s spinoff TV series Petrocelli.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8,550

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