- TCM schedule today – Sept. 15 (primetime): Turner Classic Movies will be airing two comedies featuring John Ritter, best remembered for the long-running television series Three’s Company. They are: Martin Davidson’s Hero at Large and Peter Bogdanovich’s ensemble piece They All Laughed. Both were critical and commercial duds.
- This John Ritter article includes a brief overview of his two TCM movies.
TCM schedule today – Sept. 15 (primetime): 2 John Ritter movies of the early 1980s, Martin Davidson’s Hero at Large and Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed
On Sunday evening, Sept. 15, Turner Classic Movies will be airing two comedies featuring John Ritter (1948–2003), best remembered as one of the stars of the long-running television sitcom Three’s Company 1976–1984), which in 1984 earned him a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series and a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy.
TCM’s two John Ritter titles, both critical and box office disappointments upon their releases in the early 1980s, are Martin Davidson’s Hero at Large and Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed, which happens to be a TCM premiere. (See TCM’s John Ritter movie schedule further below. Most Sept. 15 titles will remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Although a well-known TV actor in the United States thanks to the success of Three’s Company (also starring Suzanne Somers and Joyce DeWitt), John Ritter never became an international name. His movies were no help, as they tended to underperform even in the domestic market. Besides Hero at Large and They All Laughed, Ritter’s other big-screen flops include Dennis Feldman’s Real Men (1987), Blake Edwards’ Skin Deep (1989), Peter Hyams’ Stay Tuned (1992), and another Peter Bogdanovich ensemble comedy, Noises Off… (1992).
One exception: Dennis Dugan’s critically lambasted domestic sleeper hit Problem Child (1990), which took in $53.5 million in the U.S. and a Canada and a more modest $18.8 million (estimated) internationally. The inevitable (and costlier) sequel, however, Brian Levant’s Problem Child 2 (1991), tanked: $32.7 million worldwide.
Also of note, Ritter is a member of the Sling Blade (1996) ensemble; the Billy Bob Thornton-directed drama earned its cast a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination.
Show business family
John Ritter was the son of Tex Ritter, a singing cowboy in dozens of B Westerns of the 1930s and 1940s (e.g., Sing, Cowboy, Sing; Rainbow Over the Range), and minor actress Dorothy Fay, who had a brief career in mostly B Westerns from 1938–1941 (e.g., Song of the Buckaroo, Sundown on the Prairie – both starring her husband-to-be).
TV actors Jason Ritter (Joan of Arcadia) and Tyler Ritter (The McCarthys) are John Ritter’s sons with actress Nancy Morgan (Grand Theft Auto, Lucky Luke).
Below is a brief glimpse at TCM’s two John Ritter movies (in chronological order). Bear in mind that both were released while Three’s Company was on American television screens just about every week. Although there is no evidence that that fact hindered the box office performance of either title, one thing is undeniable: Ritter’s small-screen success failed to transfer to the big screen.
Hero at Large (1980)
Martin Davidson’s Hero at Large stars John Ritter as a down-and-out but ever-so-optimistic New York City actor who becomes a celebrity after foiling a grocery-store robbery while garbed in a “Captain Avenger” costume. The downside of his newfound fame is that it’s used to promote the interests of others, like those of the mayor (Leonard Harris) and his staff running a reelection campaign.
Future Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Anne Archer* (Fatal Attraction, 1987) plays the titular hero’s love interest, while veteran Kevin McCarthy (Death of a Salesman, Invasion of the Body Snatchers) has a supporting role.
Screenplay credited to AJ Carothers.
* Coincidentally, Anne Archer is also the daughter of Hollywood talent: Actors John Archer (White Heat) and Marjorie Lord (the TV series The Danny Thomas Show).
They All Laughed (1981)
“Any way you look at it – as a comedy, as moviemaking, as a financial investment, They All Laughed is an immodest disaster. It’s aggressive in its ineptitude. It grates on the nerves like a 78 rpm record played at 33 rpm. You cannot believe that it is the work of the same man who made The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, Daisy Miller, What’s Up, Doc? and even At Long Last Love, a movie with an evident appreciation of cinematic style even when it didn’t achieve it.”
The above quote is from The New York Times’ Vincent Canby, who wrote a dozen paragraphs or so panning Peter Bogdanovich’s New York City-set ensemble romantic comedy starring:
- Oscar-winning veteran Audrey Hepburn (Roman Holiday, 1953) in one of her rare post-1967 acting gigs.
- Veteran Ben Gazzara (The Strange One, Anatomy of a Murder).
- Model and future Keith Richards wife Patti Hansen.
- John Ritter. (Vincent Canby: “Appearing to something less than good advantage are John Ritter of television’s Three’s Company, whose role is a variation on the clumsy, bespectacled square played by Ryan O’Neal in the much classier What’s Up, Doc?.)
- Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten, who was murdered at age 20 by her estranged husband in August 1980 and to whose memory They All Laughed is dedicated. Stratten and Bogdanovich began an affair during the making of the film, which to some extent reflects her unhappy married life.
- Colleen Camp (The Swinging Cheerleaders).
- Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer’s son Sean Hepburn Ferrer.
During a 2012 interview with film critic Sheila O’Malley, Peter Bogdanovich recalled the distribution of They All Laughed, which turned out to be a major commercial bomb:
It was a nightmare. Dorothy was murdered and I went crazy. I decided I would buy the film back from Fox and I lost my shirt distributing it myself which was insanity. Unfortunately, nobody stopped me. So it didn’t get great distribution because you can’t self-distribute. It’s impossible. For example, we played 15 weeks at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills. It was a huge success. We got a great theatre in Westwood and it broke all the records,† and they pulled it right out because Paramount wanted the theatre for Reds.
† We were unable to find confirmation that They All Laughed “broke all the records” at a Westwood, Los Angeles, movie house.
Immediately below is TCM’s movie schedule on Sept. 15.
2 John Ritter movies: TCM schedule (EDT) – Sept. 15
6:00 AM Cabin in the Sky (1943)
Director: Vincente Minnelli.
Cast: Ethel Waters, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Rex Ingram, Mantan Moreland, Willie Best, Butterfly McQueen.
98 min. Fantasy Musical.8:00 AM One Foot in Heaven (1941)
Director: Irving Rapper.
Cast: Fredric March, Martha Scott, Beulah Bondi, Gene Lockhart, Elisabeth Fraser, Harry Davenport, Laura Hope Crews.
108 min. Drama.10:00 AM A Lady Without Passport (1950)
Director: Joseph H. Lewis.
Cast: Hedy Lamarr, John Hodiak, James Craig, George Macready, Steven Geray, Bruce Cowling, Nedrick Young.
74 min. Romantic Crime Drama.11:30 AM Oliver Twist (1948)
Director: David Lean.
Cast: John Howard Davies, Robert Newton, Alec Guinness, Francis L. Sullivan, Henry Stephenson, Mary Clare, Anthony Newley.
116 min. Period Drama.1:45 PM Tea and Sympathy (1956)
Director: Vincente Minnelli.
Cast: Deborah Kerr, John Kerr, Leif Erickson, Edward Andrews, Darryl Hickman, Norma Crane, Dean Jones, Tom Laughlin.
122 min. Drama.4:00 PM A Patch of Blue (1965)
Director: Guy Green.
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Shelley Winters, Elizabeth Hartman, Wallace Ford, Ivan Dixon, Elisabeth Fraser, John Qualen.
105 min. Drama.6:00 PM Boys’ Night Out (1962)
Director: Michael Gordon.
Cast: Kim Novak, James Garner, Tony Randall, Howard Duff, Janet Blair, Patti Page, Jessie Royce Landis, Anne Jeffreys.
115 min. Comedy.8:00 PM They All Laughed (1981)
Director: Peter Bogdanovich.
Cast: Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn, Patti Hansen, John Ritter, Dorothy Stratten, Blaine Novak, Linda MacEwen, George Morfogen, Colleen Camp, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, Glenn Scarpelli, Vassili Lambrinos, Elizabeth Peña.
115 min. Comedy.10:15 PM Hero at Large (1980)
Director: Martin Davidson.
Cast: John Ritter, Anne Archer, Bert Convy, Kevin McCarthy, Harry Bellaver, Anita Dangler, Jane Hallaren, Leonard Harris, Rick Podell, Allan Rich, Kurt Andon.
98 min. Comedy.12:15 AM Captain Salvation (1927)
Director: John S. Robertson.
Cast: Lars Hanson, Marceline Day, Pauline Starke, Ernest Torrence, George Fawcett, Sam De Grasse, Jay Hunt, Eugenie Besserer, Eugenie Forde, Flora Finch.
87 min. Silent Drama.2:00 AM Where Is My Friend’s House? (1987)
Director: Abbas Kiarostami.
Cast: Babak Ahmadpoor, Ahmad Ahmadpoor, Khodabaksh Defai.
83 min. Drama.3:30 AM Taste of Cherry (1997)
Director: Abbas Kiarostami.
Cast: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari.
95 min. Psychological Drama.
notes/references
John Ritter movie schedule via the TCM website.
Problem Child and Problem Child 2 grosses via boxofficemojo.com.
John Ritter Hero at Large image: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
“ John Ritter Movies: 2 Critical & Commercial Disappointments” last updated in September 2024.