The Longest Yard

…another major box-office hit with The Longest Yard. The comedy-drama starred Burt Reynolds as Paul Crewe, a former professional quarterback who earns a prison sentence for impulsively destroying his girlfriend’s car. Crewe gets a chance for redemption when he leads the prisoners’ football team against a squad of tough prison…

… (all 1973), the football movies The Longest Yard (1974) and Semi-Tough (1977), and the comedy W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975). Reynolds’s portrayal of a Southern truck driver in the comic romp Smokey and the Bandit (1977) made the movie such a hit that two sequels (1980 and 1983) followed.…