80 Steps to Jonah

Police chases after a speeding car which crashes. The car is stolen and one of two men gets killed. Mark Jonah Winters (Wayne Newton) is found in the driver seat, but he claims to be only a hitchhiking passenger. The police officers don't believe him. He crashes the ambulance and escapes. He finds himself in a camp for blind children who mistake him for their new handyman. Blind Tracy Rutledge (Diana Ewing) takes a liking to him.

Jonah is really dumb for rushing away from the gas station. There are a couple of issues with the story. Wayne Newton is doing some mumbling acting until he starts singing. He's trying to be Elvis. This is an odd mix of a kiddie movie, a melodramatic young romance, and a high stakes police fugitive hunt. Mostly, this fails as a Wayne Newton vehicle. He doesn't do well especially if he expects to be the next Elvis.

I uploaded my full recording of 80 Steps To Jonah at google video...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3888172006497514701 Shows up in flash player at that link but if you click the download link you'll get a much clearer mp4 version (330MB)

I put it on my computer from an old VHS tape recording when I saw it years ago on TV. Then I converted it to wmv and mp4 formats for viewing.

Also have some musical scene clips from the movie up at you tube. Includes the scenes where Wayne Newton & kids sing With A Little Seed And Some Love. Also Wayne Newton playing guitar and singing If I Could Be To You What You Are To Me. And scene where Wayne's music is 'Night Rushes In'

I watched this movie when I was so young that I can hardly remember what it is called. I went to my local video stores and they all had books and said that if it was not in their books it was not a movie. All the books you could look up the actors name. It said nothing about this movie when I looked under Wayne Newton. I just have to say I think a lot of people are missing out by not seeing this movie. I was very compelled when I saw it as a young boy and now hope to be compelled again. I just want to thank the people at IMDB.com for being so extensive in their movie selection.

I feel that there was excellent casting in this picture. Wayne Newton handled the lead quite well - he played it with heart, but resisted the temptation to make it overly sentimental. Not afraid of being upstaged by animals or children, he worked well with them to tell us a beautiful story. Brought to the foreground was how independent people with disabilities can really be. The music, too, was a definite plus!

I remember this as a dog of a movie that played on a late-evening flight from O'Hare to San Francisco in January, 1969. Wayne Newton was awful. I saw that he was in a car accident and that he ran away from the police, for some reason. After a bit, I went to sleep, only waking up when Mickey Rooney wandered through to save Newton and a happy ending.

This afternoon, something itched in my brain, so I went looking on IMDB for a Mickey Rooney movie. This is it. I almost never walk out of movies, I would have walked out of this if the exit had not been about 30,000 feet up.