Because the miniseries movement made a virtual sub-genre about anything having to do with the Kennedys, naturally it got around to Ari Onassis, though he was certain a dramatic larger-than-life figure of his own, perfect dramatic fodder for the personalities the miniseries celebrated. He appears in nearly all of the Kennedy miniseries and had at least one theatrical movie made about him ("The Greek Tycoon," though it's "fiction," it's clearly about Onassis), usually played by an elderly vet who looks like a gross old man next to ethereal Jackie, so it's nice to have a story where he's allowed to be a gross young man next to everyone, Jackie included (this movie is awfully kind to his aging process, not to mention his looks). In life, Ari Onassis was the very personification of 20th Century Eurotrash, parvenu nouveu riche, a man coarse and vulgar, but with so much money that everyone paid homage. If he hadn't been for real, the miniseries would have certainly invented him. So, it stands to reason that it instead gets to re-invent him as some sort of charming Lothario who went from woman to woman as he happened to be gathering the world's greatest fortune.
"Onassis: The Richest Man in the World" also features our muse of the miniseries, Jane Seymour, in her only Emmy-winning role. Can you believe it? Just one Emmy. I thought she won at least a few for "Dr. Quinn," but nope. Not "East of Eden" and not even "War and Remembrance." She sure as hell deserved a wall full of Emmys, but for now, this one will have to do (and it does, because she's magnificent).
This movie is a Grade-A cheese-fest, the kind that made American television so delicious in the 1980s. Ridiculously cast and no deeper than page two of a tabloid, "Onassis: The Richest Man in the World" is presented as a Greek-infused "Dallas," with Onassis basically J.R. Ewing on a boat.
The movie begs us to laugh from the onset where Raul Julia does does his version of a dramatic Greek dance amidst ruins on a Greek cliff while the major players on his life give one-line obituaries about him. It's okay, you can hit pause while you stop laughing. Raul Julia as Ari Onassis? The most Hispanic of actors playing the most Greek of men? Fine if the movie wants a star, but Raul Julia? Not once in his career (not even here) did he try to hide his natural accent for a film role. But, on top of that, wow, they certainly upped Ari, who was an ugly little gnome of a man, on the handsome scale!
The movie starts with Young Ari (Elias Koteas) running a race on the beach while his disapproving father watches. Socrates Onassis (Anthony Quinn, who played the Ari character in "The Greek Tycoon"), clucks to his family, "I have to teach him something...before life does," when he's told he's too hard on his son. That's interesting parenting. Because Socrates is so nasty, Young Ari loses the second race. But, his uncle sweeps him off to a local whorehouse where Young Ari is baffled to find out that someone may like him only for his money. He better get used to it, because everyone in the man's life would do the same.
Socrates Onassis is a Smyrna merchant who dispenses advice to his son that sounds like the Greek version of fortune cookies, but with a sincerity that borders on the fanatical (Tony Quinn had long given up trying to actually act by this point in his career). War between the Greeks and Turks splits Socrates from his brother, Ari's favorite relative, and the Turks confiscate Socrates' property and money. Ari volunteers to stay on in the house to avoid being sent to a labor camp.
Anthony Quinn goes into melodrama hysterics living in a prison camp, begging his son through the fence to get him some new pants as he has soiled himself. Young Ari can help by sharing a bed with the Turkish general who has taken his family's home, but it takes his papa's money, hidden under the floorboards, to bribe officials and reunite the family. Is Socrates grateful? Of course not! He castigates his son for leaving him nothing to restart his business. Of course the argument is REALLY about Ari's relationship with the Turk. Papa tosses Ari out of the house, but he's more than willing to go, boarding a ship to Buenos Aires and vowing to return, wearing a suit but playing good old-fashioned Greek tragedy.
He sends his family letters about how he lives among "high society" in Buenos Aires (he works in a restaurant where they eat) and he has the finest instruction in the tango (he reads it out of a book and draws chalk outlines on the floor) and has a job in communications (he's a switchboard operator who listens in on conversations). It's the importation of Turkish tobacco that starts Ari's fortune, swindling a bank into giving him a loan for the materials because he listens in on a call that says Turkish cigarettes are all the rage.
Only when Ari returns to Greece does Raul Julia take over playing him. I suppose that makes sense. One leaves Greece Greek and returns to from Argentina Latin. That's the only explanation I can think of for how the hell anyone cast Raul Julia as Ari Onassis. Because Ari returns to Greece wealthy, Papa Socrates is thrilled to see him. A welcome home dinner gives Quinn a chance to revisit his Zorba dance moves, and when he invites his son to dance with him, one expects a tango from the son and a heart attack from the father. Only the latter happens, of course, because old people who dance in miniseries are not long for the world, and the next scene shows everyone on the way to his funeral.
Onassis is interesting in shipping, helped by his loyal friend Costa Gratsos (John Kapelos), and a montage shows us how quickly he became a gazillionaire, inventing the supertanker, exploiting wars and finally making it to America, where he works his smooth Latin charm (sorry, Greek charm...no, Latin charm, because Raul Julia isn't even attempting to play Greek here) on the Tina Livanos, a Greek girl whose father is a shipping magnate. Onassis suggests "a merger...a personal merger" to her father, telling him he might as well take him into the family and avoid being competition. His "killer instinct," as Costa calls it, is fully in bloom. Tina (Beatie Edney) is certainly no prize, but Onassis is too focused on monopolizing the oil shipping industry. Even at his wedding he's all business.
The wedding night is not exactly as upper-crust Tina expected. No silk pajamas, just Ari in a towel, delighting in his physical prowess. Time passes, two children are born, Onassis fills his home with golden everything and he goes after an airline company. The marriage doesn't work. Ari sleeps around and Tina resents being "a possession." "You're nothing but a Turkish peasant," she snaps in a dialogue exchange that occurs in every miniseries about a rich person with an unhappy spouse (we saw it a few times with Barbara Hutton already), but this miniseries gives us a twist here. Ari slaps her and then kisses her for it. The man is a sexual fiend.
It's Jane Seymour time! We have our first glimpse of her Maria Callas mid-opera, with Onassis bewitched in the audience. Okay, is Jane any better cast as Maria than Raul as Ari? Probably not, but here's the difference: Jane Seymour can act and therefore makes us believe, whereas Raul plays himself and remembers only periodically he's being filmed.
Callas is invited aboard the Christina, Onassis' island-sized yacht, and the two oversized personalities meld beautifully. Callas is nagged by her manager-husband about an upcoming concert and Jane runs around the boat yelling, "I will always have another concert. I may never have another yacht," before tossing a newspaper into the sea, getting a standing ovation from Ari for that bit of histrionics. Ari counters with some cheese of his own, plucking flowers and talking about how they remind him of the past and then seducing her in a tiny watering hole with more of that Greek dancing he doesn't do so well. Watch this scene for the contrast in styles: Julia smolders like Valentino because every actor dancing sensually since the 1920s is supposed to do that; Seymour works from the eyes, never forgetting she's in character. Mr. Callas (Geoffrey Hutchings) doesn't stand a chance, even though he rails at his wife that he turned her from a "fat kid from Brooklyn" into the world's reigning opera diva.
The pull from Ari is just too strong and she leaves the argument with her husband to go to Ari's room, where she gives in, but not without expected dramatics. "My heart is beating so fast," she whispers, contorting her body like she's on stage as Ari just wants to get it on. Oh, and did I mention they left the door open, too hot to bother with details? Cue Tina, who finally leaves Ari, because she won't "stand around while you and your canary cavort in public." Their goodbye argument returns us to the world of cliche (she can't handle his whoring and he's bought her everything but never given her himself, blah, blah, blah).
Having learned the fine art of over-the-top fighting from Maria Callas, Onassis threatens Tina's father not to mess with him in a scene that is gut-bustingly amusing. He won't give Tina what she wants in the divorce, but he also won't give up Maria, he tells Costa in an equally goofy scene following. When the press asks him about his Callas, Ari's response is "I'm a sailor, these things happen." Yes, and in only 10 minutes of screen time.
Although Raul Julia has finally decided to open up his performance a little, he picked the wrong time. He's no match for Jane Seymour's Callas, who gets all pissy when he refers to her as a "friend" in the paper, throwing a tantrum that she wants to be known as the mistress of Onassis. She's not at all thrilled that Ari's kids make fun of her, but this is a woman who packs her luggage in a full face of make-up, not exactly the maternal type. Every discussion turns into a fiery argument where Callas explodes again and again. It's great fun to watch, because Jane wipes the deck with Raul each time.
But Maria Callas doesn't have Ari to herself for long. Ari entertains the Churchills (yes, those Churchills) on his yacht along with Lee Radziwill (yes, that Lee Radziwill). Talk turns to her sister Jackie (yes, that Jackie) immediately, though there's a gigantic historical error here. When Lee tells all that Jackie is pregnant, Churchill says, "why not? A Camelot on the other side of the Atlantic." The whole Camelot-Kennedy connection wouldn't actually start until the tail end of JFK's life, but it wouldn't turn myth until after his death, because Jackie carefully created it. I know, I know, I'm the only person who would even hear that sentence, let alone note it.
So here come the Kennedys. Jackie (Francesca Annis) loses her baby and accepts an invitation to recuperate on Ari's yacht. Annis doesn't do a lot but whisper, not one of the better Jackie O impersonations in miniseries history. Ari lays it on thick when he squires Jackie, talking nonsense about legacies and history. "You, you could become a legend," he tells her, which of course she wants to hear. He's learned to manipulate women. The Kennedy brothers, basically a bunch of guys with Boston accents, are not happy with Jackie's choice in yacht mates. They order her home and Bobby tells Jack the next time she needs to rest, "send her to Hyannisport." Oh, yeah, kick back during tackle football, that's exactly what Jackie wanted.
This Jackie is frankly annoying. "I just realized, I haven't seen your eyes this entire trip," she whispers to Ari, the sunglasses-wearing Jack Nicholson of the high seas "and eyes are the windows of the soul," sounding like one of the highfalutin' books she read at Miss Porter's. "I like to keep the curtains drawn," he replies, sounding like a hokum-laden miniseries character. "I think I'll start wearing glasses all the time. It does add a certain mystique," Jackie replies. Ah, mystery solved! Now we know where Jackie got her obsession for sunglasses: a chance quip on the Onassis yacht.
Just because Jackie has entered the picture doesn't mean Maria Callas has left it. Maria isn't initially that jealous. "I heard her speak once. She sounded like Marilyn Monroe playing Ophelia," she jokes in the movie's best line. They start mauling each other with kisses and then JFK is killed. Onassis is invited to the funeral by Lee. "A Greek in the White House?" Bobby rages. Onassis, in hushed tones, offers Jackie any solace she may require, but he's still with Maria, at least physically for his attentions have of course been turned to the world's highest prize, the widow Kennedy. He visits her at a rehearsal (which she conducts in a fur coat), and she tells him she needs him at an upcoming concert because she knows the audiences are turning on her. He says he'll be back in time for the concert and invents an excuse about having to visit one of his tankers.
Maria is fit to be tied when Ari isn't at the concert. "Roses, roses, but where is Aristo?" she howls when she gets baskets of flowers and downs pills to calm her down before the performance. Aristo is in a tuxedo serving a fine meal to Jackie, long having abandoned her widow's weeds for sparkling diamonds. The scene where Onassis talks to himself in the mirror about how virile he still is, rehearsing a speech for Jackie is terrific camp, especially because Raul looks 40 and Onassis was over 60 by this point. But, his goony speech works on Jackie, much to Bobby's ire. He complains to her on a walk through the woods, but I could only understand his dialogue because hers is so whispered it's not picked up by the microphones. He needs her support for his campaign and I think she goes into her "I'm frightened for the kids" speech (a bit prematurely, historically), but again, it's hard to hear, even at full volume. Practical Bobby insists that she at least wait until he wins the election before she goes public with her affair. "Sooner or later it is going to come down to a test of wills," Ari roars when he gets the news, setting up his well-documented hatred for Bobby (this movie is based on Peter Evans book, his first about Onassis, and his second would be about their actual dispute, making an interesting argument for Onassis' part in Bobby's assassination).
Costa reminds Ari that while Jackie is unavailable, he still has Maria, so he shows up with flowers and more of that silky Latin...Greek...Laek...Gratin...whatever, charm. They end up in bed together, where they work best, Maria happy with "your beautiful lies."
We return to the land of the miniseries cliche where Ari's grown-up son is nervously flying a plane with Dad. Onassis only wants to hear about boats, while Alexander wants to run the airline. You don't have to know Alexander's story to know where flying a plane will lead.
But, before we can get to that tragedy, Bobby Kennedy is killed. Jackie goes into whispering hysterics, with her famous line, "they're killing Kennedys now" and she wants out of the family. "She's free of the Kennedys," Ari tells Costa, now fully able to go after what he wants. Jackie's priest doesn't make it easy, giving her a supreme Catholic guilt trip, throwing in her dead husband, dead son and even Ari's living wife. She's whispers back a fairly long speech that begs for a commercial to stop viewers from falling asleep.
Teddy Kennedy is dispatched to Greece to bargain Jackie's marriage to Ari. Ari insists on a prenup in a business-like fashion. Here's a failing of the writing. Until now, Ari has actually seemed enchanted by Jackie, so turning him into a harsh mercenary in just one scene is awfully jarring. But don't worry folks, in to clean up that mess is Maria Callas. Ari tries to blunt her shrieking by saying Jackie needs him. "She needs your money, while I need youuuuuuuuu," she insists. "You are a coward, you are afraid of love," Maria rails, alternating a scream-a-thon with her own guilt trip about how she's lost her voice and now his love, which he certainly doesn't have for Jackie. "Jackie's done well, finding a grandfather for her children," our beloved Jane heckles.
Onassis, with sudden gray hair, marries Jackie and declares it's the happiest day of his life. When Jackie whispers complaints about how the American press has turned on her, Ari says, "the only place you'll find secrecy is in the dictionary." Ari said that? I have trouble believing he could ever come up with a line that clever. Ari is actually very good with the kids, though Jackie's queeny pal Billy Baldwin isn't impressed by Ari's lack of finesse (if the limp-wrist act doesn't peg him as one of Jackie's gay boys, when he hears that breakfast is one and rushes off saying, "ooooh, sausage" certainly will).
Costa is summoned by Maria, crying her mascara into a Dali painting on her face because she can't understand how Ari has betrayed her. I am confident in my assumption that this scene only exists because the final part of the movie without Jane's performance would be an awfully whispered dull affair.
Back in the questionable writing, Ari seems to be back in love with Jackie, lavishing gifts on her because he wants her to be "totally dependent on me." Costa tries to keep Ari in line, explaining to him how he managed to spent $20 million in one year. "She's a poor girl from a rich family, I'm trying to give her what she needs," Ari argues, determined to live up to his end of the bargain and keep her spoiled with luxury. But, she's not fulfilled because Ari is never around (which in real life was apparently made her quite happy).
Ari has another argument on Alexander's plane that ends with Alexander refusing to pay homage to his step-mother and as Alexander flies off, Ari yells, "spoiled kid! I was only trying to teach you how to do business!" Don't worry, we're getting closer to capping Alexander's cliche.
When Jackie refuses to wait for him on his island, he follows her to New York, where in the middle of a lavish party, Ari very obnoxiously loads her with jewelry in front of the guest, much to her horror. This cues an argument where Jackie whispers some nonsense about how he's never around when she needs him and he counters that she should stay in Greece. He gets back at her by taking Maria to Maxim's where she delights in his vulgar thigh-grabbing under the table with the press snapping pictures. What does Jackie do? She flies to Paris and takes him to Maxim's, sitting at the same table. They resume their argument about how neither is getting what he or she wanted out of the marriage. Ari goes to Roy Cohn (Garrick Hogan) of all people, to try to figure out how to divorce her. "I don't mind a million or two, but I won't be looted and I won't have lawyers dancing on my grave," Ari chides Roy. Then what the hell is he doing with Roy Cohn?
Ari is trying his best to divorce Jackie and not lose a fortune when Alexander takes off in his plane. Costa has to deliver the bad news: yup, plane crash. We saw it coming many scenes ago, but Ari is surprised. Alexander is not instantly killed, lying in the hospital while Raul Julia gets his first chance to cry (would it be a lead TV performance without tears?). "Why would you do this to me? How did this happen? You were everything. I'm human. I make mistakes, but there was always love in my heart," he says in a monologue before Alexander finally does die. He refuses Jackie's sympathy, going instead to Maria for succor, and to share his theories that the Greek gods have done this to him, "because I squandered their gifts."
Now Onassis has gone beyond gray, straight to a full shock of white hair, but the addition of a bit of jowls doesn't make Raul Julia look at all like Onassis did near the end of his life. Costa wants him to get back to business, to teach daughter Christina the family business, but he's too grief-stricken. Even his beloved sister can't snap him out of the funk. It gets worse, because his doctor tells him he has a fatal illness. As he loses control of his muscles, Christina has to tape his eyelids open, though he can still smoke a cigar. Ari starts in on the fortune cookie business savvy his father taught him and Christina takes to it pretty well. They bond over mutual hatred for Jackie, who will not give into his divorce demands, instead waiting for him to die.
In full (but cheap-looking) old-man prosthetics, Ari is dying in a hospital bed when Maria comes in incognito to visit. He admits his cruelty to her and his love, "as much as I knew how." It's actually a touching scene, a rare chance instance where Jane gives the scene over to Raul. If the movie hasn't painted Jackie as villainous so broadly enough, her pre-written speech delivered on airplane steps makes her a real bitch! The Onassis family gets back at her by stuffing her into the back of the funeral line. Costa stands over his coffin and gives him a cold send-off, saying "you were the best of men and the worst." Jackie plants a kiss on the coffin and that's it. I mean, that's it for the movie. Other than a shot of Raul dancing on the rock again, the movie actually ends with Jackie and not Ari. Cheated by the Kennedys even in his own miniseries!
Prince or bastard, one thing Ari Onassis was not was two-dimensional. But, as portrayed by Raul Julia, it's a struggle to get even those two dimensions from him. Once again, it's Jane Seymour who takes mediocre trash and makes it sparkle. She's working from the same script as uninterested Raul and very bored (and boring) Francesca, but she manages to make her scenes work. Then again, Maria Callas was probably the most exciting person in the Onassis story, though Jackie O will always be its centerpiece.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The Bunker (1981)
Since the miniseries is obsessed with anything related to World War II, Adolf Hitler pops up a lot. In "The Bunker," he pops up to be played by Anthony Hopkins, who won an Emmy for his work, taking on one of the craziest roles of his career (his actual career, not the crap he churned out after winning an Oscar and deciding to phone in the rest of his performances). He comes closer than most Hitlers to being human, because he's such a damn amazing actor, but the piece is very clear that he's no hero. He's a dying man, his nerves worn and his mind eaten away, and Hopkins is masterful, creating a fleshed-out character, but making sure not to overdo the pleas for sympathy because that would be cinematically unrealistic and historically untrue.
As expected, this being a historical miniseries, the movie starts at the end. It's Occupied Berlin, 1945. Soldier James Naughton (playing James O'Donnell on whose book the movie is based) is looking for the bunker. He asks a few Russian soldiers, but they don't understand "da boonker" he yells, like a good ugly American and of course now they get it. At the entrance, even that doesn't help, but two cigarettes finally get him entry. James O'Donnell's book was actually filled with interviews
Back to January of the same year. The Russians and Americans are advancing on Berlin. Hitler has decided it's time to go down and there he will stay for over 100 days until his cowardly end. A picture of Frederick the Great (an awfully flattering one) is placed on the wall and smoking is not allowed. Everyone is very pre-occupied with the little things, but by this point in history, Hitler had long lost a sense of reality. The first of our friendly bunker denizens to arrive is Albert Speer (an impossibly dashing Richard Jordan), who gets ushered into a meeting where Hitler is listening to a report from his generals that contains very little truth, because they know he can't handle it.
Speer and Hitler meet privately, where Hitler is clearly out of his gourd. He indeed wants Germany destroyed so the enemies can't get to it. Speer notes that it would bring Germany "back to the Middle Ages," which gets a smile from Hitler, who also says that any German who doesn't survive isn't a good German. "The good ones will have already died," he says plainly. Speer is dumbfounded, but formulates a plan to gas the bunker (how's that for irony?) in order to spare Germany from Hitler's madness, well, what hasn't been destroyed already.
It doesn't take too long for Hitler to have one of his infamous tirades, ripping into his generals, who seem to barely notice, having been through it before. Anthony Hopkins not only performs the tirade as written, but his whole body gets into the act. Not once during the meeting with the generals does he actually look anyone directly in the eye and his body languages suggests a confused old man.
Get used to the arguments between Speer and Hitler. Speer is the one voice in the chorus who doesn't agree with the destruction of Germany just for the sake of it, but Hitler is insistent. His hands constantly shaking and his legs barely shuffling, Hitler interrupts the conversation to present Speer with a birthday present, his photograph, and then returns to his orders to raze Germany. Speer decides to give up assassination attempts, but he also decides not to follow Hitler's orders. He's going to have to battle Martin Bormann (Michael Lonsdale), who has it out for Speer and is hell bent on doing anything Hitler says.
After Hitler's beloved dog gives birth, Hitler hauls Speer in for yet another two-way discussion where he lists every war Germany has survived since the Romans. Hitler knows Speer has disobeyed his orders to have Germany destroyed, and graciously offers to have his longtime friend on leave, which Speer refuses. Speer is blunt: "the war is lost." Hitler is fiery: "I will destroy the pestilence of Jewish Marxism...I will defeat them all! I will defy the entire world!" Hitler asks for Speer to have faith in him and his life will be spared, but Speer again sticks to the truth, and then there is some very good writing, a moment that makes us wonder if perhaps Hitler has a tiny grasp on reality still. "Can you at least HOPE that the world is not lost? Surely you must be able to HOPE, Speer. That will be enough to satisfy me," he says, almost trying to convince himself, and gives Speer 24 hours to think it over.
Speer decides to play Hitler's game and tell him what he wants to hear, but his plan is that the destruction operation will never happen, tying it up in red tape.
Also not playing in the sandbox of mental health is Joseph Goebbels (played by Cliff Gorman with the strangest and most annoying American accent). Eyebrows ablaze, Goebbels delights in the news of Roosevelt's death and probably believes his own propaganda that the war is being won.
Into the bunker sweeps Eva Braun (miniseries regular Susan Blakely, whose salary is probably only a fraction of Hopkins' and therefore plays it like she knows she got a raw deal), portrayed here as a daffy dame who brings all of her clothes and furs because she wants to be pretty for Hitler. She's not the only woman in the bunker. There is cook Constanze Manziarly (Pam St. Clement), who is rabidly devoted to Hitler and who has the movie's second time-wasting flashback as she readies candles for Hitler's birthday cake.
The whole gang shows up for the birthday party, bombs bursting outside. Bormann is worried that Hitler isn't strong enough to greet the throngs. Himmler voices secret doubts and even thinks of negotiating peace, though he's still delighting in his concentration camp plans. Hitler fakes his way through an acceptance speech, minimizing his frailty and sticking to the crap about fighting until the end and not being defeated. He spits out, "we shall not be defeated" like a stuck record and then mingles.
Given the news that Berlin is closed on three sides, Hitler orders a huge offensive, and anyone who doesn't obey is to be killed. "He's having enough trouble retreating," his officers snarl to each other about the general who is given this task. Hitler leaves the bunker to greet the Hitler Youth, now drafted into being actual soldiers as there are no adult men left. Human Hitler shines through just a tad as he tells one boy he wishes his generals were as brave as the young.
Quiz time. What element has been missing so far? Like I even have to ask! A slumming movie star, of course! This time, it's Piper Laurie, playing Magda Goebbels, given "guest star" billing. She enters halfway through when her hubby calls and tells her to bring their gaggle to the bunker. Bormann takes the opposite attitude, sending his wife and children away with a cover story about refugee children as he fondles his secretary's hand. Hitler's loyal doctor is sent away, but two secretaries ask his permission personally to be allowed to stay. The denizens of the bunker are finally assembled, all aboard who's going aboard, hunkering down on Berlin's own Titanic below the ground. Gathering the whole staff, Hitler nearly collapses in a screaming fit about staying in Berlin and dying in Berlin, blaming everyone else, but actually admitting, haltingly, that the war is lost.
Yeah, he says that, but soon enough he's spouting gibberish and ordering armies this way and that. One general, who was caught trying to flee, is killed in the bunker, his body left dangling from the ceiling as Hitler reads stories to the Goebbels brood. Things are so bad that the guards on duty have either fled or are upstairs partying with some drunk women.
Speer shows up to say ta-ta, and Bormann wants him to speak to Hitler about leaving the bunker and hightailing it to his aerie home in the country. The Hitler he encounters is completely broken, seeming to go downhill by the minute. Hitler rambles about the plans they once made for a glittering expensive Germany, "what might have been," he admits. Hitler wants to know Speer's opinion on whether he should flee or not, and Speer tells him the leader of the German people should die in Berlin. Hitler has, of course, already decided that, because he knows if he leaves, he may fall into the hands of his captors. Instead he wants to be cremated, so he's "free of everything," as he says, in a moment of wistfulness. Speer bravely admits he has been lying to Hitler, but Hitler is too far gone to comprehend and sends Speer off to bid adieu to Eva, who is in her room, dressed up, hair done and dancing to a peppy record with a bottle of champagne on hand. Blakely plays this scene with a smile plastered on her face, overdoing the innocence routine, at one point even asking, "why did so many people have to be killed?" Has she NOT been living with Hitler through the entire war?
As Speer is on the way out, he runs into Magda, made up to look like a million bucks (Magda Goebbels should have been so lucky). Speer wants to help her leave, but she says, "our lives have no further meaning without the Fuhrer," and she intends to die, along with her children, with the big boss.
Goring has informed Von Ribbentrop that Hitler has gone 'round the bend and he has assumed all of his offices. Bormann tells Hitler it's an act of treason, hoping for a tirade that will end in Goring's head, but Hitler is oddly peaceful. "He's a drug addict," Hitler says and shuffles out of the room. Speer tries to say goodbye, but Hitler's mind is too gone to comprehend and Speer never gets his tender farewell.
To hammer in the fact that this bunker is filled with only nutcases, the women have "afternoon tea and crumpets," chattering about the past, but Hitler is off in a world of his own, croaking about Vienna. Eva will have none of that. She wants to talk of flowers and pretty things...and their impending marriage! Some poor soul is found who can perform the ceremony, rather hysterically saying that all documents are in order. Both promise they are of pure Aryan blood and then can sign the marriage document. Or try, at least, because Hitler's hands shake so badly at this point his signature looks like that of a preschooler. Eva, makes it worse by dashing off a pretty signature at top speed at the same time.
There's a party in full bloom, but Hitler sequesters himself with a secretary and dictates his famous last letter. He blames the Jews, he fires Goring and Himmler and then decides he wants to stay alive until May 5, the date of Napoleon's death. I'm sure the ghost of Napoleon was thrilled.
Goebbels takes it all a step further by throwing himself a party (with his New York accent intact), even summoning dying soldiers to attend. His job as propaganda minister is never finished, so he takes the opportunity to blame the Jews again. He offers the wounded soldiers gratitude and they play along, the sum total of their ages being about 27 and not knowing any better.
It's not a good month to be a world leader. First Roosevelt dies and now Hitler gets the news that Mussolini has been killed. Hitler is unmoved, instead asking his doctor for the cyanide tablets he ordered. They are untested, so he has them fed to the poor dog. They work. Who will take care of the puppies? No one, since the doctor orders them killed too. Geez, the Nazis are puppy killers too?
Eva and Magda hug and Magda knows God will forgive her for doing in her own children. Eva then gets dolled up so she and Hitler can say goodbye to everyone in history's grimmest receiving line. Hitler bequests the painting of Frederick the Great and locks himself in with Eva, who gets comfy on the sofa and removes her shoes.
Hitler and the Mrs. each take their tablet and then Hitler shoots himself in the head, too much of a coward to even wait for the pill to kick in! The staff takes their bodies out of the bunker where they are doused in gasoline and burned. Persniketty little creep Goebbels looks weirdly proud watching the bodies go up in flames.
Magda tells the kids they are flying to the country the next day, but wants them to get a good night's sleep with a special piece of chocolate. She puts on a ravishing gown and collects the kids from playing, taking time to brush their hair and get them all pretty. The staff members are horrified, but bushy-browed Goebbels is only worried that the bodies of Adolf and Eva are charred beyond recognition (or perhaps on the way to Argentina). Goebbels then delivers a monologue in a voice that evokes a tough in an Arthur Miller play. I'm sorry, couldn't he even TRY to go a bit German? None of the other cast members are German, but they attempt accents. After killing the kids, Medea...sorry, Magda has one last cigarette. Her husband prattles on and on and on, also with a cigarette (geez, they didn't wait ten minutes for Hitler to be gone before they lifted the ban on smoking). She sits down to play solitaire and he puts on his flashy leather coat. The Hitlers didn't make nearly as much of offing themselves as these two melodramatic hams. He even chirps to the staff, "at least you won't have to carry our bodies up the stairs," as he and his wife do themselves in outside of the bunker. What a guy!
The secretaries dot their faces with make-up to feign small pox so as not to be raped by the Russian soldiers and everyone leaves. The poor overworked engineer is the last one remaining, clutching a pretty flower and turning on music, interrupted on the radio by news that Hitler has died "fighting in Berlin."
The voice of James Naughton returns to tell us what happened to everyone in the bunker. Most were captured by the Russians, except for Bormann, who killed himself.
Too long by at least half an hour, "The Bunker" is actually very well done. Anthony Hopkins' Hitler is remarkably done, emphasizing the dying man, physically and mentall undone, rather than the irate lunatic. It's not exactly a touching performance, but why should it be? He's playing Hitler after all!
As expected, this being a historical miniseries, the movie starts at the end. It's Occupied Berlin, 1945. Soldier James Naughton (playing James O'Donnell on whose book the movie is based) is looking for the bunker. He asks a few Russian soldiers, but they don't understand "da boonker" he yells, like a good ugly American and of course now they get it. At the entrance, even that doesn't help, but two cigarettes finally get him entry. James O'Donnell's book was actually filled with interviews
Back to January of the same year. The Russians and Americans are advancing on Berlin. Hitler has decided it's time to go down and there he will stay for over 100 days until his cowardly end. A picture of Frederick the Great (an awfully flattering one) is placed on the wall and smoking is not allowed. Everyone is very pre-occupied with the little things, but by this point in history, Hitler had long lost a sense of reality. The first of our friendly bunker denizens to arrive is Albert Speer (an impossibly dashing Richard Jordan), who gets ushered into a meeting where Hitler is listening to a report from his generals that contains very little truth, because they know he can't handle it.
Speer and Hitler meet privately, where Hitler is clearly out of his gourd. He indeed wants Germany destroyed so the enemies can't get to it. Speer notes that it would bring Germany "back to the Middle Ages," which gets a smile from Hitler, who also says that any German who doesn't survive isn't a good German. "The good ones will have already died," he says plainly. Speer is dumbfounded, but formulates a plan to gas the bunker (how's that for irony?) in order to spare Germany from Hitler's madness, well, what hasn't been destroyed already.
It doesn't take too long for Hitler to have one of his infamous tirades, ripping into his generals, who seem to barely notice, having been through it before. Anthony Hopkins not only performs the tirade as written, but his whole body gets into the act. Not once during the meeting with the generals does he actually look anyone directly in the eye and his body languages suggests a confused old man.
Get used to the arguments between Speer and Hitler. Speer is the one voice in the chorus who doesn't agree with the destruction of Germany just for the sake of it, but Hitler is insistent. His hands constantly shaking and his legs barely shuffling, Hitler interrupts the conversation to present Speer with a birthday present, his photograph, and then returns to his orders to raze Germany. Speer decides to give up assassination attempts, but he also decides not to follow Hitler's orders. He's going to have to battle Martin Bormann (Michael Lonsdale), who has it out for Speer and is hell bent on doing anything Hitler says.
After Hitler's beloved dog gives birth, Hitler hauls Speer in for yet another two-way discussion where he lists every war Germany has survived since the Romans. Hitler knows Speer has disobeyed his orders to have Germany destroyed, and graciously offers to have his longtime friend on leave, which Speer refuses. Speer is blunt: "the war is lost." Hitler is fiery: "I will destroy the pestilence of Jewish Marxism...I will defeat them all! I will defy the entire world!" Hitler asks for Speer to have faith in him and his life will be spared, but Speer again sticks to the truth, and then there is some very good writing, a moment that makes us wonder if perhaps Hitler has a tiny grasp on reality still. "Can you at least HOPE that the world is not lost? Surely you must be able to HOPE, Speer. That will be enough to satisfy me," he says, almost trying to convince himself, and gives Speer 24 hours to think it over.
Speer decides to play Hitler's game and tell him what he wants to hear, but his plan is that the destruction operation will never happen, tying it up in red tape.
Also not playing in the sandbox of mental health is Joseph Goebbels (played by Cliff Gorman with the strangest and most annoying American accent). Eyebrows ablaze, Goebbels delights in the news of Roosevelt's death and probably believes his own propaganda that the war is being won.
Into the bunker sweeps Eva Braun (miniseries regular Susan Blakely, whose salary is probably only a fraction of Hopkins' and therefore plays it like she knows she got a raw deal), portrayed here as a daffy dame who brings all of her clothes and furs because she wants to be pretty for Hitler. She's not the only woman in the bunker. There is cook Constanze Manziarly (Pam St. Clement), who is rabidly devoted to Hitler and who has the movie's second time-wasting flashback as she readies candles for Hitler's birthday cake.
The whole gang shows up for the birthday party, bombs bursting outside. Bormann is worried that Hitler isn't strong enough to greet the throngs. Himmler voices secret doubts and even thinks of negotiating peace, though he's still delighting in his concentration camp plans. Hitler fakes his way through an acceptance speech, minimizing his frailty and sticking to the crap about fighting until the end and not being defeated. He spits out, "we shall not be defeated" like a stuck record and then mingles.
Given the news that Berlin is closed on three sides, Hitler orders a huge offensive, and anyone who doesn't obey is to be killed. "He's having enough trouble retreating," his officers snarl to each other about the general who is given this task. Hitler leaves the bunker to greet the Hitler Youth, now drafted into being actual soldiers as there are no adult men left. Human Hitler shines through just a tad as he tells one boy he wishes his generals were as brave as the young.
Quiz time. What element has been missing so far? Like I even have to ask! A slumming movie star, of course! This time, it's Piper Laurie, playing Magda Goebbels, given "guest star" billing. She enters halfway through when her hubby calls and tells her to bring their gaggle to the bunker. Bormann takes the opposite attitude, sending his wife and children away with a cover story about refugee children as he fondles his secretary's hand. Hitler's loyal doctor is sent away, but two secretaries ask his permission personally to be allowed to stay. The denizens of the bunker are finally assembled, all aboard who's going aboard, hunkering down on Berlin's own Titanic below the ground. Gathering the whole staff, Hitler nearly collapses in a screaming fit about staying in Berlin and dying in Berlin, blaming everyone else, but actually admitting, haltingly, that the war is lost.
Yeah, he says that, but soon enough he's spouting gibberish and ordering armies this way and that. One general, who was caught trying to flee, is killed in the bunker, his body left dangling from the ceiling as Hitler reads stories to the Goebbels brood. Things are so bad that the guards on duty have either fled or are upstairs partying with some drunk women.
Speer shows up to say ta-ta, and Bormann wants him to speak to Hitler about leaving the bunker and hightailing it to his aerie home in the country. The Hitler he encounters is completely broken, seeming to go downhill by the minute. Hitler rambles about the plans they once made for a glittering expensive Germany, "what might have been," he admits. Hitler wants to know Speer's opinion on whether he should flee or not, and Speer tells him the leader of the German people should die in Berlin. Hitler has, of course, already decided that, because he knows if he leaves, he may fall into the hands of his captors. Instead he wants to be cremated, so he's "free of everything," as he says, in a moment of wistfulness. Speer bravely admits he has been lying to Hitler, but Hitler is too far gone to comprehend and sends Speer off to bid adieu to Eva, who is in her room, dressed up, hair done and dancing to a peppy record with a bottle of champagne on hand. Blakely plays this scene with a smile plastered on her face, overdoing the innocence routine, at one point even asking, "why did so many people have to be killed?" Has she NOT been living with Hitler through the entire war?
As Speer is on the way out, he runs into Magda, made up to look like a million bucks (Magda Goebbels should have been so lucky). Speer wants to help her leave, but she says, "our lives have no further meaning without the Fuhrer," and she intends to die, along with her children, with the big boss.
Goring has informed Von Ribbentrop that Hitler has gone 'round the bend and he has assumed all of his offices. Bormann tells Hitler it's an act of treason, hoping for a tirade that will end in Goring's head, but Hitler is oddly peaceful. "He's a drug addict," Hitler says and shuffles out of the room. Speer tries to say goodbye, but Hitler's mind is too gone to comprehend and Speer never gets his tender farewell.
To hammer in the fact that this bunker is filled with only nutcases, the women have "afternoon tea and crumpets," chattering about the past, but Hitler is off in a world of his own, croaking about Vienna. Eva will have none of that. She wants to talk of flowers and pretty things...and their impending marriage! Some poor soul is found who can perform the ceremony, rather hysterically saying that all documents are in order. Both promise they are of pure Aryan blood and then can sign the marriage document. Or try, at least, because Hitler's hands shake so badly at this point his signature looks like that of a preschooler. Eva, makes it worse by dashing off a pretty signature at top speed at the same time.
There's a party in full bloom, but Hitler sequesters himself with a secretary and dictates his famous last letter. He blames the Jews, he fires Goring and Himmler and then decides he wants to stay alive until May 5, the date of Napoleon's death. I'm sure the ghost of Napoleon was thrilled.
Goebbels takes it all a step further by throwing himself a party (with his New York accent intact), even summoning dying soldiers to attend. His job as propaganda minister is never finished, so he takes the opportunity to blame the Jews again. He offers the wounded soldiers gratitude and they play along, the sum total of their ages being about 27 and not knowing any better.
It's not a good month to be a world leader. First Roosevelt dies and now Hitler gets the news that Mussolini has been killed. Hitler is unmoved, instead asking his doctor for the cyanide tablets he ordered. They are untested, so he has them fed to the poor dog. They work. Who will take care of the puppies? No one, since the doctor orders them killed too. Geez, the Nazis are puppy killers too?
Eva and Magda hug and Magda knows God will forgive her for doing in her own children. Eva then gets dolled up so she and Hitler can say goodbye to everyone in history's grimmest receiving line. Hitler bequests the painting of Frederick the Great and locks himself in with Eva, who gets comfy on the sofa and removes her shoes.
Hitler and the Mrs. each take their tablet and then Hitler shoots himself in the head, too much of a coward to even wait for the pill to kick in! The staff takes their bodies out of the bunker where they are doused in gasoline and burned. Persniketty little creep Goebbels looks weirdly proud watching the bodies go up in flames.
Magda tells the kids they are flying to the country the next day, but wants them to get a good night's sleep with a special piece of chocolate. She puts on a ravishing gown and collects the kids from playing, taking time to brush their hair and get them all pretty. The staff members are horrified, but bushy-browed Goebbels is only worried that the bodies of Adolf and Eva are charred beyond recognition (or perhaps on the way to Argentina). Goebbels then delivers a monologue in a voice that evokes a tough in an Arthur Miller play. I'm sorry, couldn't he even TRY to go a bit German? None of the other cast members are German, but they attempt accents. After killing the kids, Medea...sorry, Magda has one last cigarette. Her husband prattles on and on and on, also with a cigarette (geez, they didn't wait ten minutes for Hitler to be gone before they lifted the ban on smoking). She sits down to play solitaire and he puts on his flashy leather coat. The Hitlers didn't make nearly as much of offing themselves as these two melodramatic hams. He even chirps to the staff, "at least you won't have to carry our bodies up the stairs," as he and his wife do themselves in outside of the bunker. What a guy!
The secretaries dot their faces with make-up to feign small pox so as not to be raped by the Russian soldiers and everyone leaves. The poor overworked engineer is the last one remaining, clutching a pretty flower and turning on music, interrupted on the radio by news that Hitler has died "fighting in Berlin."
The voice of James Naughton returns to tell us what happened to everyone in the bunker. Most were captured by the Russians, except for Bormann, who killed himself.
Too long by at least half an hour, "The Bunker" is actually very well done. Anthony Hopkins' Hitler is remarkably done, emphasizing the dying man, physically and mentall undone, rather than the irate lunatic. It's not exactly a touching performance, but why should it be? He's playing Hitler after all!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
The Users (1978)
Here's a miniseries so bad even the laughter it evokes from being stupid end after a while and leave us with a whole bunch of hammy actors running around Hollywood with seemingly no purpose. With a title like "The Users," and a story set in Hollywood, all one can do is sit back and watch the cliches arrive, one after another.
We start on a movie set where start Tony Curtis is having a hissy fit because his scene is not working. In a tank top, jeans and a cowboy hat, Tony already looks past his prime, but he's the leading man. Producer George Hamilton is more patient than the director, calling a wrap for the day. George heads off to his trailer to call agent Red Buttons, relaxing in the hot tub with two women, because he wants the galleys of an upcoming book. Before hanging up, George tells Red to get out of the hot tub. "You can't afford to shrink." "Jealous?" Red answers?
Listening to this whole conversation is Jaclyn Smith, a hooker who charges $100 per night. Hey, it's Arizona. George wants to hire her for a night with Tony Curtis, but doesn't want Tony to know she's a working girl. Apparently, Tony needs a confidence boost because he hasn't had a movie in seven years, since his wife died, and this comeback is his last chance.
Pause.
Okay, including the title sequence, we're about 10 minutes into the movie. Already, we have Tony Curtis as an over-the-hill leading man (true enough), George Hamilton as a slimy producer (drop producer, true enough), Red Buttons as a lusty agent and Jaclyn Smith as a hooker. In a movie about Hollywood produced by Dominick Dunne. Is the smell of delicious cheese as pungent for you as it is for me? "The Users" is going to be mind-melting fun...I can't wait!
Jacklyn, looking so young and dewy, plays her part with Tony at George's party that night. Hooker or not, she's well-read when it comes to Tony and his career. "Do you want me to name every picture you've ever made in chronological order?" she asks. "Don't, please don't." He's hooked. Tony kicks everyone out so he can be alone with Jaclyn. Tony's pillow talk is all about his worries in doing the next day's love scene, but of course Jaclyn is fixing that.
The next morning, Jaclyn returns the money to George Hamilton. She says Tony was able to "perform," and he doesn't understand why he's getting a refund. "You'll see," she says with a knowing glint. Tony repeats the scene from the day before (in a different costume) and with Jaclyn watching, he pulls it off spectacularly. Even he's excited by how well he did, and he attributes it to her, but now he's worried about what he'll do when he shoots the rest in Hollywood without her. He wants her to go with him, but as what? "Agent? Cook? Housekeeper? Companion? Lover?" "How about all of them?" She says she'll get back to him.
Care to know why Jaclyn leads the lifestyle she does in Arizona? She has a sick mother. Well, of course she does! Mom knows all about Jaclyn's evening activities, and she also takes the blame for ruining her life, having to resort to prostitution to pay the bills. She wants Jaclyn to go to Hollywood with Tony, making her promise one thing: "When you get there, let 'em KNOW you're there."
Jaclyn and her one bag (to Tony's huge haul of luggage) arrive at Tony's Hollywood mansion. On the piano are glossy shots of Garland, Sinatra and others, as well as Tony's daughter, Michelle Phillips, also an actress, who has a checkered past with dad. Tony offers a tour, but Jaclyn wants to see "the most important room" and he carries her up to the bedroom.
Michelle, in fact, shows up in the very next scene and as soon as she walks through the door, she tells Jaclyn she knows she's "special." How? Is there some particular way she opened the door with a dish rag over her shoulder that speaks of genius? The two chat over wine and Jaclyn says she loves Tony. Michelle looks like she's ready to pounce at that, but instead says, "I think you mean that" and then begs Jaclyn to get Tony "back on the scene." The two are instant chums, though there's something strangely manipulative in Michelle.
Jaclyn and Michelle have lunch at one of the "really in places," where Michelle has to get past lecherous Red Buttons before finding her table. Jaclyn is curious to know why all of the glamour doesn't matter to Michelle. She's been "hustled" too many times. However, she is in love, but with a married man whose wife has the money. They then go on a jaunt to Rodeo Drive, where they bump into George Hamilton and his wife, Carrie Nye. It's an uncomfortable moment for all, though Michelle pulls them through, buys Jaclyn a gold necklace and treats her to a spa day. It's here that Jaclyn tells Michelle the truth about how she and Tony met (and of course that she gave the money back). And here's the kicker: Tony didn't need to get it up, he just needed someone to talk to. So, we officially cannot have any bad feelings towards Jaclyn because they just talked and she gave back the money, so the love is real. Isn't that a neat little package?
Into the restful spa sweeps Joan Fontaine, a Hollywood stalwart who gets paid to make sure people are seen in the right places. We need a slumming legend (more slumming than Red Buttons), and she fits the bill, a little older, a little heavier, but having a grand time as the mile-a-minute gabber (her sister would take more dignified miniseries roles: the Queen Mother, Grand Duchess Marie of Russia and Wallis Simpson's Aunt Bessie and keep the camp to a minimum--Joan isn't holding back). Jaclyn decides she will use Joan's help to get herself known. After the girls day out, Michelle reminds Jaclyn that if the picture is a bomb, she's in for something "pretty stormy." "I've been rained on before," Jaclyn retorts.
Tony is getting a massage from Michael Baseleon, who offers to do Jaclyn next. Jaclyn wants some gossip from him, and she sure as hell gets it. He has a looser tongue than an toothless Alabama grandmother. He tells her that the frost between Michelle and Carrie is due to the fact that Michelle's boyfriend is...you guessed it...George Hamilton! "We all use each other," he tells her and Jaclyn grabs at it. She wants him to spread the word that she and Tony are "terribly happy." It's true, but she wants to make sure everyone knows it.
Having learned amazingly fast, Jaclyn has already arranged a lunch for Tony with Joan, so he can be seen. She intends to make sure this picture is a hit. Jaclyn has all sorts of plans for her life with Tony, but he asks just to sit quietly for five minutes...and they do! They literally sit for five wasted minutes of screen time. And then he opines that they should get married that night. And they do! On their wedding night, he says he doesn't care that she was a hooker because everyone is a hooker, "some more, some less, including me." "You know what that makes us? The perfect couple!" With dialogue like this, how can you not keep watching?
Jaclyn goes to a pool party at Joan Fontaine's. Before they even start, Joan quotes her fee of $500 a week, which Jaclyn can't afford, but Joan is willing to wait because "putting a hooker in the A group, it's my dream come true!" Joan has a whole plan, from redoing her house to redoing her wardrobe. One scheme is to take dresses from stores on approval and get a studio dressmaker to do exact copies, returning the original. This is an insider's guide to Hollywood? They do that in Little Rock!
They can't keep us in suspense any longer. Are you dying to know how fabulously successful Tony's comeback movie is? I know I am (well, not really, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt). It's screened for the executives and it's a big wonderful spectacular...bomb. The head of the studio wants 30 minutes chopped off. To make it worse, said exec tells the director and producer he wants to work with them again, "just bring me a hot star." Oh, man, let's home that doesn't leak out to Tony (the character...oh, wait, and the actor himself, he did have a jolly big ego), because it will take every trick Jaclyn is learning to pull him out of that hole.
There's a crushingly boring scene where Jaclyn visits Michelle at her pool, where Michelle holds court in a shirt and heels. They discuss the reason why George wants Michelle when he has Carrie. "My talents," she says and we know what she's talking about. Jaclyn then says she wants the book George wanted as a vehicle for Tony.
Carrie and George throw a party for Tony. Michelle has her boy toy with her. When Tony asks, "what do you do?" the boy toy says, "I tan." He, at least he's honest. Dumb, but honest. Jaclyn oozes around the room. She starts with George, making sure he keeps her secret and she will keep his about Michelle. Then she moves on to Red Buttons, angling for the book everyone wants ("Rogue's Gallery"). He propositions her with the damn hot tub. "I could help you turn the pages," he says to Jaclyn when she says she might like it as much as reading the book.
John Forsythe is there, sizing up Jaclyn as a mover in an instant, and she tries to get the dirt on him from Joan. Oh, and for comic value, Judy Landers is there, as a character named Merry. Her presence makes this scene an instant rip-off of the party scene in "All About Eve" and she's Miss Caswell. It all ends badly the studio head tells Tony the picture is terrible. We've been told about 14 times that he'll react extremely poorly if the movie is not a hit. Well, bring it on!
He goes to a nightclub where men seem to be the only denizens and Douglas Warner slithers over to him immediately, telling him he's a writer and has the perfect screenplay for Tony. Naturally, the script is back at Douglas' apartment. Sooooooo, when Tony is upset he goes gay? That's the big secret? It's not like he tries to kill himself or someone else or blow up The Brown Derby or steal Chasen's chili from Elizabeth Taylor's plate!
At least this "twist" temporarily woke up a movie in danger of putting itself to sleep.
Jaclyn goes to Red's hot tub, which I hope has been cleaned for all he talks about it. She wants to know how much the book will cost. After toying with her for a while, he says he's already sold the movie rights to John Forsythe. Cue Joan Fontaine, who shows up to distract Red while Jaclyn sneaks a copy of the book out of Red's office. Damn, she's good! Smartest Arizona hooker this side of...well, all the other Arizona hookers. As if the movie couldn't be ANY more obvious, Jaclyn comes home to find a party invitation at John's.
Racing up the stairs to tell Tony all about what she's pulled off, she finds him with Douglas. "If you put this scene in a movie, no one would believe it," Douglas wryly notes. Even worse, Jaclyn tells him he could have told her and she would have understood. If that were the case, dear friends, wouldn't she have stayed instead of flying out the door at top speed?
When she returns home, she finds out that Tony has tried to kill himself (and if you want the laugh of a lifetime, wait until you see him trying to pour from a teapot with bandaged wrists). He would have succeeded if the masseur hadn't come for his usual appointment.
Off to John's party they go. The theme is the gardens at Versailles. Huh? John pegs Jaclyn's earrings as on approval. Party scene, take two. Jaclyn looks radiant in a fur huge gown. Red asks her how she likes the galleys of the book. "The only galleys are on boats," she retorts. Everyone is there, Joan for fun and even Tony's little boyfriend, there with a producer now. Jaclyn hides out in a room where she knows John will find her, and he does. She gets down to business quickly, mentioning Tony would be perfect for the lead in "Rogue's Gallery." He knows her past and is astounded she's not ashamed. "After a few months in this town, I'm rather proud of it," she quips. John plays crystal ball and tells her that even if Tony makes a comeback in "Rogue's Gallery" she'll still need to prop him up again and again because she lacks money. Hmmm, she's gotten this far without it. John basically wants her for himself, but not as a lover. "Power and romance rarely mix," she tells her. "We all exist to be used," he tells her, as the cliche parade that is called a scene here churns on. Both of these pros play it with eyebrows raised and bland sincerity. Jaclyn wants the "Rogue's Gallery" author to come to dinner and that means owing John a favor and she doesn't mind that and the dip at the party is made with too much milk and everyone gets sick and the house falls off the hill and disaster ensues and California slides into the ocean. Okay, okay, noting beyond "she doesn't mind" happens, but I wish it did because damn, it's getting so dull!
Michelle and George steal a few minutes together to plan stealing a few minutes together. If they fling one more double entendre at each other, someone is going to end up with a broken nose. They agree to meet in the sauna, which has a lock on the door from the outside, always trouble. Carrie follows her cheating husband and confronts them half dressed. She lowers the boom that the only way George can produce the film is if Michelle agrees to star in it. More users, we get it.
From that party, we go right to the party Jaclyn throws for the author of "Rogue's Gallery," who has casting approval. Did they simply change the sets around the actors? That might have been cheaper than moving the actors to a new set. But, the plans are foiled when the author shows up, or seemingly so. John, suddenly gone stupid, tells Jaclyn where the author is without realizing it (everything but the number of the bungalow in Santa Barbara) and she hightails it over there, leaving her own party.
The author who has been at the center of this whole story is Darren McGavin, entering nearly two hours into the movie. "You wouldn't come to my party, so I decided to come to yours." "There's no party here," he says." "Not yet," says the ex-hooker as she pours herself a bourbon to impress him. I hope in quoting these lines, the four-year-old who wrote them get some pleasure out of hearing them again. Jaclyn thinks her best weapon his honesty and admits her past, which also impresses Darren. Darren swears that he never gets drunk, no matter how many he has. Jaclyn bets him that he can get drunk, going drink for drink with him, and then can't actually "perform." The stakes in the bet? She wants the role for her husband and if he wins..."neither one of us loses." That hardly seems fair. Tony gets a movie role and Darren gets a few minutes in the sack with a pro?
As you would expect, because he's a human being Darren actually does pass out, losing the bet. She sweeps out once he wakes up, snatching her fur and telling him her husband will be wonderful in the movie. When she arrives at home, Tony is cheery because the party went so well. He doesn't seem to mind that she was out all night. When she tells him that she's secured him the lead in "Rogue's Gallery," Tony shows the most emotion he has so far. He's excited and then curious as to how she worked it out, but she doesn't tell him. In fact, she tells him it's "goodbye." Her speech about parting is awfully confusing. Something about both of them having what they want, no regrets, best time of their lives coming. I can't say I quite understood it. He has his part and she's going "where I belong." That would be John Forsythe's bigger mansion, of course.
It's Oscar time! "Rogue's Gallery" is a gigantic hit and both Tony and Michelle are nominated. They arrive together and the crowd of extras jump up and down so hard they must have been fed sugar pills. Tony and Jaclyn meet on the red carpet and neither is upset. "Did I ever say thanks?" Tony asks and confesses his love for her. John and Jaclyn are interviewed by Army Archerd, perplexing because John is only the movie's executive producer and when was the last time you saw one of those interviewed? Army asks Jaclyn if she's proud and she says, "you know, I'm not actually in the business." Freeze, cut and print.
Help me out here: is the movie titled "The Users" because of the characters and their actions or because it uses plots from so many other movies ("All About Eve, "Sunset Boulevard," "A Star is Born," you name a Hollywood-based movie and "The Users" finds a way to rip it off)? Watching Jaclyn Smith play a bad girl is kind of neat, but she's so damn wholesome that she's not fully successful. All of the other wax figures just say their lines and collect checks, except for Joan Fontaine, who, by that point in her career, had nothing to lose.
We start on a movie set where start Tony Curtis is having a hissy fit because his scene is not working. In a tank top, jeans and a cowboy hat, Tony already looks past his prime, but he's the leading man. Producer George Hamilton is more patient than the director, calling a wrap for the day. George heads off to his trailer to call agent Red Buttons, relaxing in the hot tub with two women, because he wants the galleys of an upcoming book. Before hanging up, George tells Red to get out of the hot tub. "You can't afford to shrink." "Jealous?" Red answers?
Listening to this whole conversation is Jaclyn Smith, a hooker who charges $100 per night. Hey, it's Arizona. George wants to hire her for a night with Tony Curtis, but doesn't want Tony to know she's a working girl. Apparently, Tony needs a confidence boost because he hasn't had a movie in seven years, since his wife died, and this comeback is his last chance.
Pause.
Okay, including the title sequence, we're about 10 minutes into the movie. Already, we have Tony Curtis as an over-the-hill leading man (true enough), George Hamilton as a slimy producer (drop producer, true enough), Red Buttons as a lusty agent and Jaclyn Smith as a hooker. In a movie about Hollywood produced by Dominick Dunne. Is the smell of delicious cheese as pungent for you as it is for me? "The Users" is going to be mind-melting fun...I can't wait!
Jacklyn, looking so young and dewy, plays her part with Tony at George's party that night. Hooker or not, she's well-read when it comes to Tony and his career. "Do you want me to name every picture you've ever made in chronological order?" she asks. "Don't, please don't." He's hooked. Tony kicks everyone out so he can be alone with Jaclyn. Tony's pillow talk is all about his worries in doing the next day's love scene, but of course Jaclyn is fixing that.
The next morning, Jaclyn returns the money to George Hamilton. She says Tony was able to "perform," and he doesn't understand why he's getting a refund. "You'll see," she says with a knowing glint. Tony repeats the scene from the day before (in a different costume) and with Jaclyn watching, he pulls it off spectacularly. Even he's excited by how well he did, and he attributes it to her, but now he's worried about what he'll do when he shoots the rest in Hollywood without her. He wants her to go with him, but as what? "Agent? Cook? Housekeeper? Companion? Lover?" "How about all of them?" She says she'll get back to him.
Care to know why Jaclyn leads the lifestyle she does in Arizona? She has a sick mother. Well, of course she does! Mom knows all about Jaclyn's evening activities, and she also takes the blame for ruining her life, having to resort to prostitution to pay the bills. She wants Jaclyn to go to Hollywood with Tony, making her promise one thing: "When you get there, let 'em KNOW you're there."
Jaclyn and her one bag (to Tony's huge haul of luggage) arrive at Tony's Hollywood mansion. On the piano are glossy shots of Garland, Sinatra and others, as well as Tony's daughter, Michelle Phillips, also an actress, who has a checkered past with dad. Tony offers a tour, but Jaclyn wants to see "the most important room" and he carries her up to the bedroom.
Michelle, in fact, shows up in the very next scene and as soon as she walks through the door, she tells Jaclyn she knows she's "special." How? Is there some particular way she opened the door with a dish rag over her shoulder that speaks of genius? The two chat over wine and Jaclyn says she loves Tony. Michelle looks like she's ready to pounce at that, but instead says, "I think you mean that" and then begs Jaclyn to get Tony "back on the scene." The two are instant chums, though there's something strangely manipulative in Michelle.
Jaclyn and Michelle have lunch at one of the "really in places," where Michelle has to get past lecherous Red Buttons before finding her table. Jaclyn is curious to know why all of the glamour doesn't matter to Michelle. She's been "hustled" too many times. However, she is in love, but with a married man whose wife has the money. They then go on a jaunt to Rodeo Drive, where they bump into George Hamilton and his wife, Carrie Nye. It's an uncomfortable moment for all, though Michelle pulls them through, buys Jaclyn a gold necklace and treats her to a spa day. It's here that Jaclyn tells Michelle the truth about how she and Tony met (and of course that she gave the money back). And here's the kicker: Tony didn't need to get it up, he just needed someone to talk to. So, we officially cannot have any bad feelings towards Jaclyn because they just talked and she gave back the money, so the love is real. Isn't that a neat little package?
Into the restful spa sweeps Joan Fontaine, a Hollywood stalwart who gets paid to make sure people are seen in the right places. We need a slumming legend (more slumming than Red Buttons), and she fits the bill, a little older, a little heavier, but having a grand time as the mile-a-minute gabber (her sister would take more dignified miniseries roles: the Queen Mother, Grand Duchess Marie of Russia and Wallis Simpson's Aunt Bessie and keep the camp to a minimum--Joan isn't holding back). Jaclyn decides she will use Joan's help to get herself known. After the girls day out, Michelle reminds Jaclyn that if the picture is a bomb, she's in for something "pretty stormy." "I've been rained on before," Jaclyn retorts.
Tony is getting a massage from Michael Baseleon, who offers to do Jaclyn next. Jaclyn wants some gossip from him, and she sure as hell gets it. He has a looser tongue than an toothless Alabama grandmother. He tells her that the frost between Michelle and Carrie is due to the fact that Michelle's boyfriend is...you guessed it...George Hamilton! "We all use each other," he tells her and Jaclyn grabs at it. She wants him to spread the word that she and Tony are "terribly happy." It's true, but she wants to make sure everyone knows it.
Having learned amazingly fast, Jaclyn has already arranged a lunch for Tony with Joan, so he can be seen. She intends to make sure this picture is a hit. Jaclyn has all sorts of plans for her life with Tony, but he asks just to sit quietly for five minutes...and they do! They literally sit for five wasted minutes of screen time. And then he opines that they should get married that night. And they do! On their wedding night, he says he doesn't care that she was a hooker because everyone is a hooker, "some more, some less, including me." "You know what that makes us? The perfect couple!" With dialogue like this, how can you not keep watching?
Jaclyn goes to a pool party at Joan Fontaine's. Before they even start, Joan quotes her fee of $500 a week, which Jaclyn can't afford, but Joan is willing to wait because "putting a hooker in the A group, it's my dream come true!" Joan has a whole plan, from redoing her house to redoing her wardrobe. One scheme is to take dresses from stores on approval and get a studio dressmaker to do exact copies, returning the original. This is an insider's guide to Hollywood? They do that in Little Rock!
They can't keep us in suspense any longer. Are you dying to know how fabulously successful Tony's comeback movie is? I know I am (well, not really, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt). It's screened for the executives and it's a big wonderful spectacular...bomb. The head of the studio wants 30 minutes chopped off. To make it worse, said exec tells the director and producer he wants to work with them again, "just bring me a hot star." Oh, man, let's home that doesn't leak out to Tony (the character...oh, wait, and the actor himself, he did have a jolly big ego), because it will take every trick Jaclyn is learning to pull him out of that hole.
There's a crushingly boring scene where Jaclyn visits Michelle at her pool, where Michelle holds court in a shirt and heels. They discuss the reason why George wants Michelle when he has Carrie. "My talents," she says and we know what she's talking about. Jaclyn then says she wants the book George wanted as a vehicle for Tony.
Carrie and George throw a party for Tony. Michelle has her boy toy with her. When Tony asks, "what do you do?" the boy toy says, "I tan." He, at least he's honest. Dumb, but honest. Jaclyn oozes around the room. She starts with George, making sure he keeps her secret and she will keep his about Michelle. Then she moves on to Red Buttons, angling for the book everyone wants ("Rogue's Gallery"). He propositions her with the damn hot tub. "I could help you turn the pages," he says to Jaclyn when she says she might like it as much as reading the book.
John Forsythe is there, sizing up Jaclyn as a mover in an instant, and she tries to get the dirt on him from Joan. Oh, and for comic value, Judy Landers is there, as a character named Merry. Her presence makes this scene an instant rip-off of the party scene in "All About Eve" and she's Miss Caswell. It all ends badly the studio head tells Tony the picture is terrible. We've been told about 14 times that he'll react extremely poorly if the movie is not a hit. Well, bring it on!
He goes to a nightclub where men seem to be the only denizens and Douglas Warner slithers over to him immediately, telling him he's a writer and has the perfect screenplay for Tony. Naturally, the script is back at Douglas' apartment. Sooooooo, when Tony is upset he goes gay? That's the big secret? It's not like he tries to kill himself or someone else or blow up The Brown Derby or steal Chasen's chili from Elizabeth Taylor's plate!
At least this "twist" temporarily woke up a movie in danger of putting itself to sleep.
Jaclyn goes to Red's hot tub, which I hope has been cleaned for all he talks about it. She wants to know how much the book will cost. After toying with her for a while, he says he's already sold the movie rights to John Forsythe. Cue Joan Fontaine, who shows up to distract Red while Jaclyn sneaks a copy of the book out of Red's office. Damn, she's good! Smartest Arizona hooker this side of...well, all the other Arizona hookers. As if the movie couldn't be ANY more obvious, Jaclyn comes home to find a party invitation at John's.
Racing up the stairs to tell Tony all about what she's pulled off, she finds him with Douglas. "If you put this scene in a movie, no one would believe it," Douglas wryly notes. Even worse, Jaclyn tells him he could have told her and she would have understood. If that were the case, dear friends, wouldn't she have stayed instead of flying out the door at top speed?
When she returns home, she finds out that Tony has tried to kill himself (and if you want the laugh of a lifetime, wait until you see him trying to pour from a teapot with bandaged wrists). He would have succeeded if the masseur hadn't come for his usual appointment.
Off to John's party they go. The theme is the gardens at Versailles. Huh? John pegs Jaclyn's earrings as on approval. Party scene, take two. Jaclyn looks radiant in a fur huge gown. Red asks her how she likes the galleys of the book. "The only galleys are on boats," she retorts. Everyone is there, Joan for fun and even Tony's little boyfriend, there with a producer now. Jaclyn hides out in a room where she knows John will find her, and he does. She gets down to business quickly, mentioning Tony would be perfect for the lead in "Rogue's Gallery." He knows her past and is astounded she's not ashamed. "After a few months in this town, I'm rather proud of it," she quips. John plays crystal ball and tells her that even if Tony makes a comeback in "Rogue's Gallery" she'll still need to prop him up again and again because she lacks money. Hmmm, she's gotten this far without it. John basically wants her for himself, but not as a lover. "Power and romance rarely mix," she tells her. "We all exist to be used," he tells her, as the cliche parade that is called a scene here churns on. Both of these pros play it with eyebrows raised and bland sincerity. Jaclyn wants the "Rogue's Gallery" author to come to dinner and that means owing John a favor and she doesn't mind that and the dip at the party is made with too much milk and everyone gets sick and the house falls off the hill and disaster ensues and California slides into the ocean. Okay, okay, noting beyond "she doesn't mind" happens, but I wish it did because damn, it's getting so dull!
Michelle and George steal a few minutes together to plan stealing a few minutes together. If they fling one more double entendre at each other, someone is going to end up with a broken nose. They agree to meet in the sauna, which has a lock on the door from the outside, always trouble. Carrie follows her cheating husband and confronts them half dressed. She lowers the boom that the only way George can produce the film is if Michelle agrees to star in it. More users, we get it.
From that party, we go right to the party Jaclyn throws for the author of "Rogue's Gallery," who has casting approval. Did they simply change the sets around the actors? That might have been cheaper than moving the actors to a new set. But, the plans are foiled when the author shows up, or seemingly so. John, suddenly gone stupid, tells Jaclyn where the author is without realizing it (everything but the number of the bungalow in Santa Barbara) and she hightails it over there, leaving her own party.
The author who has been at the center of this whole story is Darren McGavin, entering nearly two hours into the movie. "You wouldn't come to my party, so I decided to come to yours." "There's no party here," he says." "Not yet," says the ex-hooker as she pours herself a bourbon to impress him. I hope in quoting these lines, the four-year-old who wrote them get some pleasure out of hearing them again. Jaclyn thinks her best weapon his honesty and admits her past, which also impresses Darren. Darren swears that he never gets drunk, no matter how many he has. Jaclyn bets him that he can get drunk, going drink for drink with him, and then can't actually "perform." The stakes in the bet? She wants the role for her husband and if he wins..."neither one of us loses." That hardly seems fair. Tony gets a movie role and Darren gets a few minutes in the sack with a pro?
As you would expect, because he's a human being Darren actually does pass out, losing the bet. She sweeps out once he wakes up, snatching her fur and telling him her husband will be wonderful in the movie. When she arrives at home, Tony is cheery because the party went so well. He doesn't seem to mind that she was out all night. When she tells him that she's secured him the lead in "Rogue's Gallery," Tony shows the most emotion he has so far. He's excited and then curious as to how she worked it out, but she doesn't tell him. In fact, she tells him it's "goodbye." Her speech about parting is awfully confusing. Something about both of them having what they want, no regrets, best time of their lives coming. I can't say I quite understood it. He has his part and she's going "where I belong." That would be John Forsythe's bigger mansion, of course.
It's Oscar time! "Rogue's Gallery" is a gigantic hit and both Tony and Michelle are nominated. They arrive together and the crowd of extras jump up and down so hard they must have been fed sugar pills. Tony and Jaclyn meet on the red carpet and neither is upset. "Did I ever say thanks?" Tony asks and confesses his love for her. John and Jaclyn are interviewed by Army Archerd, perplexing because John is only the movie's executive producer and when was the last time you saw one of those interviewed? Army asks Jaclyn if she's proud and she says, "you know, I'm not actually in the business." Freeze, cut and print.
Help me out here: is the movie titled "The Users" because of the characters and their actions or because it uses plots from so many other movies ("All About Eve, "Sunset Boulevard," "A Star is Born," you name a Hollywood-based movie and "The Users" finds a way to rip it off)? Watching Jaclyn Smith play a bad girl is kind of neat, but she's so damn wholesome that she's not fully successful. All of the other wax figures just say their lines and collect checks, except for Joan Fontaine, who, by that point in her career, had nothing to lose.
Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980)
In the history of American cults, Jim Jones and the People's Temple tragedy are unlikely ever to be forgotten, despite the decades that have passed since everyone drank the Kool-Aid. The true story is so outlandish that it's ideal for a screen representation. The atrocities speak for themselves, but one thing made Guyana stand out above all else: Jim Jones. A maniac, insane, drug-addicted, power-mad egotist, Jim Jones was so forceful a personality that he duped thousands. However, in order for this to work as a miniseries, it needs a strong leading man, a problem because, especially in the later years, Jim would merely sit on his throne and bark orders into a microphone, dynamism be damned. Luckily, Powers Boothe is on hand (in an Emmy-winning performance) to all but channel Jim Jones. His performance is what makes this movie so fascinating. If not for him, he would almost seem like fiction, and bland fiction at that. The writing is merely functional, but the characterization of Jim Jones so strong, it off-sets any problems. Let's face it, cults themselves are all about brainwashing, which in itself is not inherently dramatic as its too internal and psychological, but a pill-popping sex fiend who thinks he is God IS the stuff to propel a miniseries.
True to genre form, the film starts at the end, with Jim Jones telling everyone to drink the juice as he's shot, the "enemy" on the approach.
PSYCH! It was a "loyalty test." No one has been shot and the juice is just juice. But, it proves how much of a hold Jim Jones (Powers Boothe) has over his followers. It's close to the end in 1978 and Representative Leo Ryan (Ned Beatty) is on his way to Guyana to ascertain exactly what's happening down in Guyana.
Even as a 10-year old child in 1941, Jim was a bully and a religious zealot. He's in charge of leading the funeral for a pet, with only other children watching. His sermon goes on so long that the other kids get fidgety, but he's not afraid to smack them with a stick to keep them in line. Toting around a Bible, he tells other kids they are going to hell. The only voice of reason against Jim's fundamentalism is his father, Jim Jones, Sr. (Ed Lauter), who tells him all he's going to get for egging on the other kids is a beating. Mama Lynette (Diane Ladd) is more practical, wanting her lazy husband to go back to work. Jim's only solace is with Mrs. Kennedy (Colleen Dewhurst), the woman responsible for teaching Jim her version of the Good Book. "Get out of my way, you Psalm-singin' little creep," Jim Sr. tells the boy as his mother plots their escape.
Eight years later, Jim is fully grown (and ready to be played for maximum bang by Powers Boothe). Working at a hospital, he meets Marcy (Veronica Cartwright), a nurse. I don't know that his tactic is exactly foolproof, because he spews more religion than love, but she's hooked.
Jim has a way of turning even the best moments into religious lunacy. He's getting a hair cut when a black child walks in for one. The owner refuses to cut his hair and Jim is furious. Okay, so far, so good, he's not racist. But, he blows it by then damning the owner to hell and spouting off.
He marries Marcy and then is invited to run a church where membership is dwindling. At first, he's depressed at the lack of turnout, but he is hell bent on getting youth involved in the church. He even goes after the town's prostitutes, and it works. Hooker Rosalind Cash believes in him instantly and wants to go to church, but she worries about how the others will look at her. He tells her to come anyway and she remains fiercely loyal to him, staying all the way through the end in Guyana. Depressed pet shop owner Randy Quaid decides to come to church just to see how the whites will react to the blacks, but at least he's there. . The church elders aren't thrilled with the mixing and goons even throw a dead dog through the window. He's fired by the bigots, and decides never again to work for a church with "small minded me with no vision!"
So, he does what any preacher without a church would do--he goes to the ghetto and starts praying on the rubble. He finds an abandoned synagogue and turns it into "The People's Temple." Again, so far, so good. He's a bit nutsy in his religious fervor, but he wants people of all shapes, sizes and colors. His specialty is ministering to the so-called lost puppies, overwhelming them with kindness and earning their undying (oops, bad word choice) loyalty.
As Jim struggles to make a go of it, he visits Father Divine (James Earl Jones), who may actually believe he's God. He asks Father Divine what to do about the feelings he's having for some of the female parishioners. Basically, celebrate it and help them bring it out. "Mary wasn't a virgin," Father Divine notes.
A medley of all the good Jim does wanders a breakneck speed as a hymn is sung. The man sure as hell seems a saint at this point, ministering to the poor and downtrodden, worried about each and every parishioner with such passion. Heck, even I could forgive some overzealous behavior since he's doing so well. His wife tells him to delegate and his response is, "does God delegate?" Ah, that seems like a crack in the plaster. Does he think he's God now? He brings some old-time tent revival shenanigans to his services, healing the sick, though they are actually just his loyal friends in disguise. Starting to believe he's God, he feels he has the right to sleep around. When is wife sees him with a young girl, he says he "has to be all things to be all people." That's a nice excuse that covers just about anything possible. It's an all-encompassing tent of free space for him to do whatever the hell he wants. It seems that any young woman who walks into a room where he's sitting ends up having sex with him.
Jim is named to the city's Human Rights Commission, which gives him the power force the mixing of the races, such as a cute scene where Jim rams his whole congregation into a movie theater flashing his credentials and cash.
He takes in a drug addict to prove he can cure him by holding him in the bed, where it looks a little more touchy-feely than doctor/patient. He also starts to use drugs himself. Hidden behind sunglasses most of the time, Jim has officially turned the corner on the way to Nutsville.
By 1965, things are booming at The People's Temple so much that they can move into fancier digs and Randy Quaid can propose to and marry Meg Foster. Randy is unusually sanguine about Jim's role in his wife's life. He's simply willing to accept it. As for where all the money is coming from, it's from the members. All of the senior citizens sign over their welfare checks or anything else they have.
After having saved Brad Dourif from a life of drugs, Jim makes the moves on his girlfriend Diana Scarwid in the forest using some honey-coated phrases that prove only that he's horny. He also still has Brad in his bed and under his thrall. This last fact has Diana being one of the first to question Jim's methods. "He has special needs," Brad says, after Rosalind tells her sins in the Bible don't apply to people like Jim who is spreading a special message (his sperm, mostly, because the rest of the message is getting increasingly muddled). Diana convinces Brad to escape with her, but Jim finds them. "I saved him and I will not lose him to you, to drugs or to anything else," Jim declares. There is one too many of the letter I in that sentence and not enough about religion. Jim insists that Diana stay in the room while he and Brad get it on.
His speeches are also more about himself than anything. "It wasn't God that brought you here," he tells a packed crowd, "it was Jim Jones." He says this before revealing tableaux of lynching and welfare and scary film clips of the atomic bomb. In essence, he's scaring his followers into staying in line. He's theatrical, show biz, flash and dazzle. He's also the father of Meg's baby, as opposed to her husband Randy. Every member is his personal plaything.
Within a few years, Jim has taken his People's Temple country-wide, busing everyone this way and that and playing to gigantic tabernacles and halls. Linda Haynes is sent to Geneva to deposit hoards of cash in a Swiss bank and Randy is sent to San Francisco to find a permanent (and huge) base there.
In 1971, Jim decides to open up in Guyana. "Bring plenty of money," he tells Randy. He buys 3000 acres there and then tells the government that they need special protection. In other words, heavy artillery. The government official can hardly say no the way Linda is silently flirting with him. She's learned from the master, and after she's done with him, he'll allow all of Jim's needs.
Super-rich Brenda Vaccaro shows up to see if there is anything Jim can do for her mother, dying of cancer. Jim snaps that the doctor's assessment that she's beyond help, "is a medical myth" and mom is brought in on a gurney during one of his over-the-top prayer services. Mom is a big watcher of Jim on TV, so she's ready to believe. In a bit of outrageous theatrics, he pulls the cancer out of her, although to anyone paying attention, it's only a piece of raw meet that was in the palm of his hand, the oldest card trick in the world! But, Brenda believes in him and Brenda happily joins the flock of women who belong to him sexually.
Mayor Mosconi selects Jim as his Housing Commissioner because he preaches to be a friend to everyone, white and black, rich and poor, gay and straight. During a service, a lackey of Jim's finds LeVar Burton sleeping and he's brought into the aisle to be slapped in public. LeVar argues that he was up all night painting the nursery, at Jim's insistence, but Jim says that was only a small thing, that he needs to devote himself fully. Okay, now they are just bullies. The next time LeVar falls asleep, he's flogged. "This is worse than the Klan, for God's sake," his father says. Oh, and by now everyone in the congregation is calling him Dad.
LeVar's father goes to Rep Ned Beatty with his fears, but Ned is skeptical. After all, Jim is the Housing Commissioner, but he decides to check into everything, including bank accounts. Jim decides to turn this on his congregation. "Who is my Judas?" he asks the congregation. LeVar's mother, deep into Jim's teachings, doesn't even realize it's her husband, but to teach the family a lesson, LeVar is locked in his painting shed with a lit cigarette and blown up (though he survives, with nary a scratch). With investigations closing in, it's time to move to Jonestown, Guyana. A spirited version of "Down by the Riverside," excites people so much that they can't say no. Once again, theatrics have won the day.
LeVar does not want to go to Guyana, especially since he's met a new girl. His mother is upset because her husband has left. "The family has never been apart," she says, the last vestige of her old life still alive in there somewhere. But, she leaves without LeVar.
Guyana certainly looks like paradise, but the crops are going to fail because Jim has driven the natives from the land instead of listening to them. "I will make it happen here with God's help," he barks at the government official who is trying to help. His ego has grown so large that he can't be bothered listening to anyone.
Indeed LeVar does go to Guyana, with his new wife Irene Cara in tow. Upon arriving, everyone gives up all passports and travel documents. No one seems to find that strange. LeVar finds it strange and he and his wife are not being housed together, but those are the rules. Jim keeps all of his hens together without any other roosters to get in the way.
Jim's nightly new broadcasts are a mixture of rambling paranoia and no-nonsense instructions. Richard and Irene do not fit in well. Jim summons Irene. He drugs her and has his way with her, pissing off LeVar, but LeVar has little choice as Jim outlaws marriage. His reasoning is beyond wacky: that marriages outside of the church are made of mismatched people and have to be destroyed. LeVar stands up and objects, so Jim proclaims him a homosexual, which is why his wife came to Jim in the first place (remember, she was summoned and drugged). Spewing all sorts of anti-gay rhetoric, he works the congregation into a dither enough to put LeVar in a small box for a few days. He's not judge and jury. There's only one step left.
From San Francisco, Randy calls to tell Jim he's off the housing commission and that he should return to the states to answer the charges against him. Naturally, Jim refuses, knowing that's he's guilty and will be arrested. "Is Jim as out of control as he sounds on the radio?" Randy asks when he arrives in Guyana? His wife says it's actually worse. They decide they have to take their son and leave. Randy tries his best to reason with Jim as Ned Beatty widens his investigation, but Jim has a fit, going through every level of melodrama to defend his position. Randy wants to take his son back to the US and Jim will not let that happen to "my son." He's manipulated so many minds, the kids follow whatever he wants. Randy and his wife decide to leave. Since his wife Meg is being sent to Brazil to deposit more illegal cash, and they decide not to go back. He calls Ned and begs for his help in order to get his son out of there. He even asks Ned to go to Guyana to see for himself. Jim spins this to the faithful as the CIA spending spies to kill him.
When Brenda's mother dies, she realizes she's been had. Not only did he not cure her mother, but he's taken her family and money from her. However, LeVar and Brenda do not add up to much. Ned, his staff, Diana, Meg and Randy arrive in Jonestown with reporters, but Jim's minions will allow only the Congressman and his aide, though Diana and Brenda's husband somehow gets to go too. They are greeted by a very chipper Veronica, who takes them to his throne. Brenda launches an attack that Ned can hear, but Jim sweeps her away, saying that she has simply lost her faith. Veronica shows Ned and his aide around, but of course only the parts that are complete safe to report on. The whole commune is fed a gigantic meal, something they have never had so far. "I must admit, Mr. Jones, I expected to come down and see a hell hole," and says that instead he found a wonderful place. For crying out loud, Jim tosses in a chorus of kids to sing.
Some of Jim's goons see LeVar making moves to perhaps attempt an escape, so they "stash him in the jungle." Then there is Brad, who encounters Diana. He believes that as the cult doctor, he has saved lives and will never leave. He tells her to stop living in the past and forget him.
Ned does ask Jim about the financial irregularities and sexual offenses. Jim has excuses to cover them all. Jim says he slept with only one woman other than Veronica, and it resulted in his son (Randy's son, but Ned doesn't know that). The way he delivers the speech makes one thing that not only is he acting just the way Ned will appreciate, but that he even believes his own lives by now. Ned isn't really buying it and neither is his assistant, who says they need to leave immediately. Ned tells the whole commune that anyone wanting to leave can do so the next day with him.
Only a few people actually take Ned up on his offer. Jim is worried about the lies they will spread and his head of security wants to stop them. "It's all over, it's all over. I've been betrayed...ask everyone to come to the pavilion, I have to talk to them," he cries to Veronica. Kool-Aid time! "Sounds like Dad wants us to have another one of his loyalty tests," LeVar's mother says and everyone arrives like sheep. To hammer in what's about to happen, the movie shows us hobbling old people and infants being brought.
Jim gets one last speech to the flock. "If we can't live in peace, then let's die in peace," he rails to the cheering crowd. He says that the Congressman is going to be shot (though saying that he didn't ask anyone to do it--of course not, he's never to blame). Suicide is merely a revolution. When someone disagrees, he says he would rather choose his own time of death, rather than live in torment. He's got an answer for everything, no matter how nonsensical it sounds.
At the airstrip, everyone is killed, the Congressmen included. A cameraman filmed it until getting shot, but the camera kept rolling.
In Jonestown, the juice is given to everyone. People who try to refuse are forced. The bodies pile up, but Jim continues to ramble through his microphone, saying death is better than living with what is to come. Only LeVar and his brother run into the forest. Randy and Jean arrive at the airstrip, see the dead bodies and are themselves killed. Linda tries to run away with the money, but she's shot too. With everyone dead, it's down to Brad, Veronica and Jim. And yet Jim still pontificates, only now to hundreds of dead bodies. Finally he too dies.
Airing this miniseries in 1980 was taking a risk. After all, it has been only two years since the deaths in Jonestown and the details were still fresh in everyone's minds. So, is this sordid calculation? Perhaps. But, it's also riveting storytelling, with Powers Boothe so eerily channeling Jim Jones that one begins to think perhaps Jim Jones lived on a bit longer to inhibit Powers Boothe and make sure his message wasn't completely dead.
True to genre form, the film starts at the end, with Jim Jones telling everyone to drink the juice as he's shot, the "enemy" on the approach.
PSYCH! It was a "loyalty test." No one has been shot and the juice is just juice. But, it proves how much of a hold Jim Jones (Powers Boothe) has over his followers. It's close to the end in 1978 and Representative Leo Ryan (Ned Beatty) is on his way to Guyana to ascertain exactly what's happening down in Guyana.
Even as a 10-year old child in 1941, Jim was a bully and a religious zealot. He's in charge of leading the funeral for a pet, with only other children watching. His sermon goes on so long that the other kids get fidgety, but he's not afraid to smack them with a stick to keep them in line. Toting around a Bible, he tells other kids they are going to hell. The only voice of reason against Jim's fundamentalism is his father, Jim Jones, Sr. (Ed Lauter), who tells him all he's going to get for egging on the other kids is a beating. Mama Lynette (Diane Ladd) is more practical, wanting her lazy husband to go back to work. Jim's only solace is with Mrs. Kennedy (Colleen Dewhurst), the woman responsible for teaching Jim her version of the Good Book. "Get out of my way, you Psalm-singin' little creep," Jim Sr. tells the boy as his mother plots their escape.
Eight years later, Jim is fully grown (and ready to be played for maximum bang by Powers Boothe). Working at a hospital, he meets Marcy (Veronica Cartwright), a nurse. I don't know that his tactic is exactly foolproof, because he spews more religion than love, but she's hooked.
Jim has a way of turning even the best moments into religious lunacy. He's getting a hair cut when a black child walks in for one. The owner refuses to cut his hair and Jim is furious. Okay, so far, so good, he's not racist. But, he blows it by then damning the owner to hell and spouting off.
He marries Marcy and then is invited to run a church where membership is dwindling. At first, he's depressed at the lack of turnout, but he is hell bent on getting youth involved in the church. He even goes after the town's prostitutes, and it works. Hooker Rosalind Cash believes in him instantly and wants to go to church, but she worries about how the others will look at her. He tells her to come anyway and she remains fiercely loyal to him, staying all the way through the end in Guyana. Depressed pet shop owner Randy Quaid decides to come to church just to see how the whites will react to the blacks, but at least he's there. . The church elders aren't thrilled with the mixing and goons even throw a dead dog through the window. He's fired by the bigots, and decides never again to work for a church with "small minded me with no vision!"
So, he does what any preacher without a church would do--he goes to the ghetto and starts praying on the rubble. He finds an abandoned synagogue and turns it into "The People's Temple." Again, so far, so good. He's a bit nutsy in his religious fervor, but he wants people of all shapes, sizes and colors. His specialty is ministering to the so-called lost puppies, overwhelming them with kindness and earning their undying (oops, bad word choice) loyalty.
As Jim struggles to make a go of it, he visits Father Divine (James Earl Jones), who may actually believe he's God. He asks Father Divine what to do about the feelings he's having for some of the female parishioners. Basically, celebrate it and help them bring it out. "Mary wasn't a virgin," Father Divine notes.
A medley of all the good Jim does wanders a breakneck speed as a hymn is sung. The man sure as hell seems a saint at this point, ministering to the poor and downtrodden, worried about each and every parishioner with such passion. Heck, even I could forgive some overzealous behavior since he's doing so well. His wife tells him to delegate and his response is, "does God delegate?" Ah, that seems like a crack in the plaster. Does he think he's God now? He brings some old-time tent revival shenanigans to his services, healing the sick, though they are actually just his loyal friends in disguise. Starting to believe he's God, he feels he has the right to sleep around. When is wife sees him with a young girl, he says he "has to be all things to be all people." That's a nice excuse that covers just about anything possible. It's an all-encompassing tent of free space for him to do whatever the hell he wants. It seems that any young woman who walks into a room where he's sitting ends up having sex with him.
Jim is named to the city's Human Rights Commission, which gives him the power force the mixing of the races, such as a cute scene where Jim rams his whole congregation into a movie theater flashing his credentials and cash.
He takes in a drug addict to prove he can cure him by holding him in the bed, where it looks a little more touchy-feely than doctor/patient. He also starts to use drugs himself. Hidden behind sunglasses most of the time, Jim has officially turned the corner on the way to Nutsville.
By 1965, things are booming at The People's Temple so much that they can move into fancier digs and Randy Quaid can propose to and marry Meg Foster. Randy is unusually sanguine about Jim's role in his wife's life. He's simply willing to accept it. As for where all the money is coming from, it's from the members. All of the senior citizens sign over their welfare checks or anything else they have.
After having saved Brad Dourif from a life of drugs, Jim makes the moves on his girlfriend Diana Scarwid in the forest using some honey-coated phrases that prove only that he's horny. He also still has Brad in his bed and under his thrall. This last fact has Diana being one of the first to question Jim's methods. "He has special needs," Brad says, after Rosalind tells her sins in the Bible don't apply to people like Jim who is spreading a special message (his sperm, mostly, because the rest of the message is getting increasingly muddled). Diana convinces Brad to escape with her, but Jim finds them. "I saved him and I will not lose him to you, to drugs or to anything else," Jim declares. There is one too many of the letter I in that sentence and not enough about religion. Jim insists that Diana stay in the room while he and Brad get it on.
His speeches are also more about himself than anything. "It wasn't God that brought you here," he tells a packed crowd, "it was Jim Jones." He says this before revealing tableaux of lynching and welfare and scary film clips of the atomic bomb. In essence, he's scaring his followers into staying in line. He's theatrical, show biz, flash and dazzle. He's also the father of Meg's baby, as opposed to her husband Randy. Every member is his personal plaything.
Within a few years, Jim has taken his People's Temple country-wide, busing everyone this way and that and playing to gigantic tabernacles and halls. Linda Haynes is sent to Geneva to deposit hoards of cash in a Swiss bank and Randy is sent to San Francisco to find a permanent (and huge) base there.
In 1971, Jim decides to open up in Guyana. "Bring plenty of money," he tells Randy. He buys 3000 acres there and then tells the government that they need special protection. In other words, heavy artillery. The government official can hardly say no the way Linda is silently flirting with him. She's learned from the master, and after she's done with him, he'll allow all of Jim's needs.
Super-rich Brenda Vaccaro shows up to see if there is anything Jim can do for her mother, dying of cancer. Jim snaps that the doctor's assessment that she's beyond help, "is a medical myth" and mom is brought in on a gurney during one of his over-the-top prayer services. Mom is a big watcher of Jim on TV, so she's ready to believe. In a bit of outrageous theatrics, he pulls the cancer out of her, although to anyone paying attention, it's only a piece of raw meet that was in the palm of his hand, the oldest card trick in the world! But, Brenda believes in him and Brenda happily joins the flock of women who belong to him sexually.
Mayor Mosconi selects Jim as his Housing Commissioner because he preaches to be a friend to everyone, white and black, rich and poor, gay and straight. During a service, a lackey of Jim's finds LeVar Burton sleeping and he's brought into the aisle to be slapped in public. LeVar argues that he was up all night painting the nursery, at Jim's insistence, but Jim says that was only a small thing, that he needs to devote himself fully. Okay, now they are just bullies. The next time LeVar falls asleep, he's flogged. "This is worse than the Klan, for God's sake," his father says. Oh, and by now everyone in the congregation is calling him Dad.
LeVar's father goes to Rep Ned Beatty with his fears, but Ned is skeptical. After all, Jim is the Housing Commissioner, but he decides to check into everything, including bank accounts. Jim decides to turn this on his congregation. "Who is my Judas?" he asks the congregation. LeVar's mother, deep into Jim's teachings, doesn't even realize it's her husband, but to teach the family a lesson, LeVar is locked in his painting shed with a lit cigarette and blown up (though he survives, with nary a scratch). With investigations closing in, it's time to move to Jonestown, Guyana. A spirited version of "Down by the Riverside," excites people so much that they can't say no. Once again, theatrics have won the day.
LeVar does not want to go to Guyana, especially since he's met a new girl. His mother is upset because her husband has left. "The family has never been apart," she says, the last vestige of her old life still alive in there somewhere. But, she leaves without LeVar.
Guyana certainly looks like paradise, but the crops are going to fail because Jim has driven the natives from the land instead of listening to them. "I will make it happen here with God's help," he barks at the government official who is trying to help. His ego has grown so large that he can't be bothered listening to anyone.
Indeed LeVar does go to Guyana, with his new wife Irene Cara in tow. Upon arriving, everyone gives up all passports and travel documents. No one seems to find that strange. LeVar finds it strange and he and his wife are not being housed together, but those are the rules. Jim keeps all of his hens together without any other roosters to get in the way.
Jim's nightly new broadcasts are a mixture of rambling paranoia and no-nonsense instructions. Richard and Irene do not fit in well. Jim summons Irene. He drugs her and has his way with her, pissing off LeVar, but LeVar has little choice as Jim outlaws marriage. His reasoning is beyond wacky: that marriages outside of the church are made of mismatched people and have to be destroyed. LeVar stands up and objects, so Jim proclaims him a homosexual, which is why his wife came to Jim in the first place (remember, she was summoned and drugged). Spewing all sorts of anti-gay rhetoric, he works the congregation into a dither enough to put LeVar in a small box for a few days. He's not judge and jury. There's only one step left.
From San Francisco, Randy calls to tell Jim he's off the housing commission and that he should return to the states to answer the charges against him. Naturally, Jim refuses, knowing that's he's guilty and will be arrested. "Is Jim as out of control as he sounds on the radio?" Randy asks when he arrives in Guyana? His wife says it's actually worse. They decide they have to take their son and leave. Randy tries his best to reason with Jim as Ned Beatty widens his investigation, but Jim has a fit, going through every level of melodrama to defend his position. Randy wants to take his son back to the US and Jim will not let that happen to "my son." He's manipulated so many minds, the kids follow whatever he wants. Randy and his wife decide to leave. Since his wife Meg is being sent to Brazil to deposit more illegal cash, and they decide not to go back. He calls Ned and begs for his help in order to get his son out of there. He even asks Ned to go to Guyana to see for himself. Jim spins this to the faithful as the CIA spending spies to kill him.
When Brenda's mother dies, she realizes she's been had. Not only did he not cure her mother, but he's taken her family and money from her. However, LeVar and Brenda do not add up to much. Ned, his staff, Diana, Meg and Randy arrive in Jonestown with reporters, but Jim's minions will allow only the Congressman and his aide, though Diana and Brenda's husband somehow gets to go too. They are greeted by a very chipper Veronica, who takes them to his throne. Brenda launches an attack that Ned can hear, but Jim sweeps her away, saying that she has simply lost her faith. Veronica shows Ned and his aide around, but of course only the parts that are complete safe to report on. The whole commune is fed a gigantic meal, something they have never had so far. "I must admit, Mr. Jones, I expected to come down and see a hell hole," and says that instead he found a wonderful place. For crying out loud, Jim tosses in a chorus of kids to sing.
Some of Jim's goons see LeVar making moves to perhaps attempt an escape, so they "stash him in the jungle." Then there is Brad, who encounters Diana. He believes that as the cult doctor, he has saved lives and will never leave. He tells her to stop living in the past and forget him.
Ned does ask Jim about the financial irregularities and sexual offenses. Jim has excuses to cover them all. Jim says he slept with only one woman other than Veronica, and it resulted in his son (Randy's son, but Ned doesn't know that). The way he delivers the speech makes one thing that not only is he acting just the way Ned will appreciate, but that he even believes his own lives by now. Ned isn't really buying it and neither is his assistant, who says they need to leave immediately. Ned tells the whole commune that anyone wanting to leave can do so the next day with him.
Only a few people actually take Ned up on his offer. Jim is worried about the lies they will spread and his head of security wants to stop them. "It's all over, it's all over. I've been betrayed...ask everyone to come to the pavilion, I have to talk to them," he cries to Veronica. Kool-Aid time! "Sounds like Dad wants us to have another one of his loyalty tests," LeVar's mother says and everyone arrives like sheep. To hammer in what's about to happen, the movie shows us hobbling old people and infants being brought.
Jim gets one last speech to the flock. "If we can't live in peace, then let's die in peace," he rails to the cheering crowd. He says that the Congressman is going to be shot (though saying that he didn't ask anyone to do it--of course not, he's never to blame). Suicide is merely a revolution. When someone disagrees, he says he would rather choose his own time of death, rather than live in torment. He's got an answer for everything, no matter how nonsensical it sounds.
At the airstrip, everyone is killed, the Congressmen included. A cameraman filmed it until getting shot, but the camera kept rolling.
In Jonestown, the juice is given to everyone. People who try to refuse are forced. The bodies pile up, but Jim continues to ramble through his microphone, saying death is better than living with what is to come. Only LeVar and his brother run into the forest. Randy and Jean arrive at the airstrip, see the dead bodies and are themselves killed. Linda tries to run away with the money, but she's shot too. With everyone dead, it's down to Brad, Veronica and Jim. And yet Jim still pontificates, only now to hundreds of dead bodies. Finally he too dies.
Airing this miniseries in 1980 was taking a risk. After all, it has been only two years since the deaths in Jonestown and the details were still fresh in everyone's minds. So, is this sordid calculation? Perhaps. But, it's also riveting storytelling, with Powers Boothe so eerily channeling Jim Jones that one begins to think perhaps Jim Jones lived on a bit longer to inhibit Powers Boothe and make sure his message wasn't completely dead.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Captains and the Kings (1976)
If you want, you can look at "Captains and the Kings" as a very thinly-veiled miniseries about the Kennedys, but that's undermining the quality of the piece. It makes it sound cheap and tawdry, like the actual Kennedy miniseries (all 403 of them). Sure, the hero is an Irish immigrant who scrapes his way to untold riches and...well, you know the rest. "Captain and the Kings" is a terrific homage to the American dream, both sides of it, and owes plenty to other giants of industry like Rockefeller and Carnegie. Its central character, Joseph Armagh, is the embodiment of both sides, a great hero with great flaws. Expertly written and free enough of the clutter that would have schmaltzed this up if it had been produced a decade later (hell, even half a decade later), "Captain and the Kings" is a true classic of the genre, as American as they come in sincerity and opulence, two other sides of the American dream.
Though "Rich Man, Poor Man" pre-dated "Captains and the Kings" by about seven months and thus earns the distinction of being the groundbreaking miniseries, the one that started it all, I would say that "Captain and the Kings" is actually a better cornerstone. "Rich Man, Poor Man" certainly set up the future of the romance miniseries, but its scope is rather small, staying tight on its three lead characters. "Captain and the Kings" is history and adventure, a fore running to the decade-spawning and character-driven epics to follow in the coming twenty years or so. It also foreshadows the seedier side of the miniseries genre, the Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz sagas, full of greed and lust, which are a whole lot of fun. Therefore, "Captains and the Kings" is far more comprehensive an effort than "Richard Man, Poor Man" even if it's been more forgotten over time.
All good epics start with a tragedy, giving the hero something to make up for his whole life long. It's 1857, New York harbor and a ship of Irish immigrants is waiting to get in. A young boy and his two siblings are on board with their mother, who promptly dies after five minutes. Priest John Carradine tells the young boy that the ship is being sent back to Ireland, and he'll have none of that, this plucky smart youth. He tosses his siblings overboard with a life preserver.
The city's homeless feed them and put them on a train to find their father. They show up at the address they remember, with a sign outside that says "Irish Allowed." Grumpy frumpy Ann Southern runs the place, milking the Irish accent and a cane for all they are worth, but she has more bad news for the kids: Dad is dead too. The youth decides that he can no longer be a child and support his siblings. He deposits them in a convent run by Sister Celeste Holm. He tells his siblings to lose their Irish accents, to become Americans. He then goes off to work in a coal mine, doing backbreaking labor during the day and studying at night. The kid isn't stupid, cunning enough to realize that Ray Bolger runs the town and all of its crime, offering his services.
Four years later, our boy has matured into Richard Jordan, still carrying illegal goods for Ray Bolger, playing his few scenes to the back of the balcony. Ray can't imagine what Richard does with his free time and books. "I'm the secret lover of a lady librarian," he says. He gets his books from rich Joanna Pettet, on whom he has a crush. He tells a priest he doesn't covet her, he "adores her" and intends to someday live her lifestyle.
Joanna may be rich, but her life isn't perfect. Hubby Vic Morrow is a drunk who beats their young daughter. Vic churns through his intro scene with an accent anything but Irish, blasting a lot of hot air as his wife because he intends to be Senator. He drunkenly goes to make an oath on the Bible, which Joanna considers blasphemy and they fight over...at the top of the staircase. Yup, she takes a tumble down the stairs, killing the child she was about to have, though she survives. It was a boy, and Vic knows how much she wanted a son. Arguing with his wife's doctor, who is no fan of his, Vic remembers a boy at the orphanage. He wonders...
As resilient as ever, Richard is attacked by three men for his money belt and beats the crap out of all three without breaking a sweat. Nothing stops him from delivering Ray Bolger's illegal money. Ray knows about the three guys, "a-moanin' and a-groanin'" in an alley, but he's impressed by the fact that Richard never spills the beans or has any trouble with the illegal activities. Ray offers him a job, at $20 a week, no less, but he turns it down. It's not part of his plan.
When Vic wondered about the kids in the orphanage, it was Richard's siblings he was talking about. Joanna and Sister Celeste Holm try to get him to agree to let them be adopted, but he refuses. He has always wanted to keep his siblings together, the three of them as a family. Despite the soft lighting just on Joanna's pretty eyes, he keeps saying no, but he can't refuse a visit to her home, to see how she lives, to see what he's turning down. Thuggish Vic is in bed with a maid when Joanna comes hope, drunk and ornery. Having finished with the maid, Vic argues with Richard about the kids, Richard still standing firm against the adoption. Richard won't let the kids live in Vic's home, "until it's up for sale." Vic even tries to buy the kids, which infuriates Richard, but makes it worse by telling Richard he'll never amount to anything. Richard has a comeback to Vic's high-handed attitude (not as good as when Vic calls him "smug-mouth potato boiler") because he knows Vic has made his money from selling slaves, and this is 1861 after all.
Having realized money is the only way to make it in America, he wants it quickly. He pays off Sister Celeste to take care of the kids for a year or more, and she promises to care for them as long as she lives. He then steals Ray Bolger's money, writing him a letter that he's doing so, promising to bring it back with interest in a year. On his way to the train, he's detained by Sargent Martin Kove, who tries to force him into the army, but he knocks him out and still can't get to the train because Lebanese pick pocket/chatterbox Harvey Jason stops him, figuring of all the men in the crowd, he stands the best chance of getting on the train with Richard. He's right, for they do get on the train, but just as he's describing the best way to get rich, Harvey's leg gets stuck and almost amputated, but Richard does a bit of daring and saves his new buddy.
Impressed by Richard's bravery is Charles Durning, slurping down a bottle of whiskey and renaming Harvey's character to make him sound less like a "heathen." He's another bombastic loud mouth. Richard can't escape them! Richard tells Charles of his ambition, and after Charles stops choking on his liquor and laughing, he actually agrees. The two gab the whole train ride, where Richard reveals himself to be educated and ambitious. "You've got all the makings of a good scoundrel," Charles admires. Charles is something of a big deal in Titusville, and he takes Richard and Harvey under his wing, insisting that Richard is responsible for Harvey. The lure of Titusville is its oil, Richard's surest way to success.
Talk about your attempt at scene stealing, Charles introduces Richard to "Martinique," not his wife, but the woman living with him, played by Barbara Parkins like a slutty Mrs. Danvers. Also living at Charles' is Beverly D'Angelo, not his daughter, but a hooker he bought. "She loves me like a father in every way but one," he boasts. Charles decides to teach Richard everything, but for Richard, it's all about money and since Charles won't pay him much, he decides to work in the fields, against Charles' advice.
Richard takes the worst possible job he can, hauling nitro glycerine around, while he learns everything he can and tends to his now-hobbled friend Harvey, who has caught the attention of Miss Beverly. Using their combined skills (Harvey is a banker), Richard decides to buy up oil field options for his new company. In less than a year, Richard is able to pay Ray Bolger back, with interest. Ray notes that Richard paid him back in less than half the time promised, which reminds us that Richard may be hungry for money, but he's a man of his word, so much so that he's able to wheedle an exorbitant amount of money from Ray to give to Harvey to buy up the oil field options (remember, he's the hero, so he's once again promised to pay Ray back, even though this money isn't stolen).
Even nature can't get in the way of Richard's drive. He and a fellow nitro glycerine hauler are doing their work when a convenient avalanche kills the other guy. Later in the day, he's dressed in his finest, visiting with Barbara Parkins, ogling all the books in the library. The difference between the money Charles has and Richard will have is in these books: Charles told Barbara to buy the finest books, but he doesn't care what the books are. Richard knows all of the authors and what is IN the books. Okay, okay, it's a bit on the heavy-handed side, but it keeps Richard human. No one ever talked about Joe Kennedy's library.
Charles proposes another scheme, this one requiring Richard to dress up in brand-new finery to get into a "venture" with Peter Donat. At $2000 per month, Richard accepts the job without even finding out what the job is. "The alternative to the success of this job is not failure, but death," Peter warns him, but Richard is undaunted, asking only to write out a sort of will. It turns out the job is to run guns during the height of the Civil War. Richard isn't afraid of that.
He then gets a visit on a stormy night from va-va-vooming Barbara Parkins, who pegs him as a virgin. With serious intent, she decides to solve that problem. It's the least romantic deflowering I can think of in any miniseries. She starts kissing his chest, but he stops her. "Before you take off all my clothes, take off yours," he commands. The camera pans to the window and then back to the two, now finished, Barbara resting her head on Richard's sprawling chest, as we've seen so many times in the genre. Barbara tells a somewhat cryptic history of her time with Charles, and that they do not have sex. "His needs are very simple, and, as you can tell, mine are not," she purrs, saying that she's been waiting for a man like him. This one sexual experience has given Richard sexual balls as well, and he wants Barbara for his own, but she shoots that one down, refusing to be owned by anyone. Vamping the hell out of the scene, standing naked at the window, she tells him she'll be his any time he wants her, but he is never to ask what hold Charles has over her ever again.
Peter takes Richard to meet Pernell Roberts, the Union Colonel who is part of the gun-running scheme. His is initially afraid to be caught as a traitor, but receiving $50K for his part in it soothes those worries. Richard turns out to be a better deal-maker than anyone expects. That night, it's off to the theater to see Edwin Booth (Peter notes that he's never seen him, but has met his brother, John Wilkes Booth, "excellent"--yes, we know, it's still the Civil War). What I'm not mentioning here is the way all of these deals go down. It's beautiful writing (we have to thank Taylor Caldwell's novel as well as the writers of the script), very cleverly handled, like a mystery novel.
With the gun running episode successful, Richard returns to visit his siblings, Sister Celeste Holm and Joanna Pettet. Richard and Joanna have a talky scene about, well, not a whole lot, and she insists that he better not be in love with him. He never has been. To make sure we understand, the next scene has Barbara accosting him on the doorstep with an open mouth. Charles' daughter is in town, and the house rule is that when she is in residence, Beverly isn't. They stash her in a hotel. Hanging out the window that evening, she spies Harvey on the street and beckons him to her room. Beverly keeps trying to take her clothes off and seduce him, but nervous Harvey, like Richard, is too focused on the financial rewards of life. He's also scared of fooling around with her because Charles won't like it. "I didn't ask you up here to do anything bad," Beverly mopes, "it's just that I'm so lonely." To make sure he understands her flirtations are more pure, she gives him a token to a whorehouse, which he says he will keep "forever."
Charles' daughter is lovely Blair Brown, a belle pure as snow, especially coming from such a hard-boiled tough as her conniving father. Charles makes it clear that Blair is only good enough for someone high-toned (Charles would play Honey Fitz later on his career, Rose Kennedy's father, in some very similar scenes). Charles announces the gun running is over and he wants Richard to come into the oil business with him, but Richard has no money to buy stocks, all of his money in what is considered the oil-free land he and Harry have been buying. Basically, the scene rolls on as Charles tries to screw Richard out of everything he owns, and a furious Richard storms out, which makes Charles all contrary. He knows Richard's land is worth a fortune, so he wants to be his partner. Richard agrees, but on his terms. Charles has no choice but to agree, with a few conditions of his own and a promise that he'll "never cheat ya." Richard tries to angle in one last term, that Charles tell him what hold he has over Barbara, but he refuses. At any rate, they agree.
Richard sets out to re-invent the oil industry, starting with the railroads, bringing us Robert Vaughn. It's here that Richard shows is darker side, getting the railroad barons to agree to ship only oil controlled by his company or those of his friends. "That's nasty...and I love it," perpetual villain Robert sneers.
Among all the scenes of corporate greed, we have to suffer through a little more pain between Harvey and Beverly. Their scenes reek of the dippy secondary love plots in creaky musical comedies. But, they finally do have sex and though Richard is thrilled, he knows Charles will be pissed, so he sends Harvey out the back way to avoid detection. Unfortunately for Richard, the sex happened in his bed, so when Charles' hulking manservant comes in, he thinks it's Richard who has had his way with her. A fight ensues and the manservant ends up dead, with Beverly pretending that the manservant tried to rape her. Charles doesn't believe that, still thinking it was Richard, but Barbara gives him a true alibi. No one rats out Harvey, and Peter Donat steps in to save the whole mess by concocting a story where the manservant was drunk and fell out of the window.
The biggest question is whether or not Charles and Richard can trust each other anymore.
Blair Brown has an instant crush on Richard. Daddy's chaste little girl is an avowed flirt, but Richard will not allow himself to be taken in, as he promised Charles. Late one night in the kitchen, Blair lays it on the line: she's not looking for a husband, just fun and sex, like the arrangement he has with Barbara. Just as Blair tells Richard she does not intend to be a virgin forever, Charles and Barbara arrive back home with Vic Morrow, Richard's old nemesis who wanted to buy his siblings. To make Richard jealous, Blair takes up Vic on his offer to take her back to school on his private train. And it's there that Blair ceases to be a virgin.
Over a pool game, Richard gets back to business, buying out George Gaynes' company without actually spending a dime, and now the robber barons and Robert Vaughn consider him for membership in their exclusive club of fat cats.
For the first time, we venture into real-life characters in a brief scene where President Lincoln welcomes Vic Morrow to Washington as its newest Senator. Blair follows him to DC to drop the bomb that she's pregnant. This smart cookie has decided to marry a "socially prominent Protestant" man to act as the father of the baby, a man who has asked for her hand in marriage. He can't say no because he's just died in battle, so Blair insists that Senator Vic forge the necessary papers to make her an instant war widow with a legitimate child on the way. Richard and Barbara go along with the scheme (whether they believe it or not doesn't matter), but Charles gets rip-roaring drunk, going for the gold with a hoot of a scene and then dies.
Charles' will is a hoot. He leaves an awfully lot of money to his servants and employees, $50K to Beverly, who can now marry Harvey, and $150K to Barbara. She is now free to tell her story: she's part black from parentage in Jamaica, killed the son of the Jamaican government who tried to make her a slave and was taken to safety by Charles. She will go to Europe and seek a rich man, telling Richard to stay and marry Blair. Charles leaves the bulk of his fortune to Richard, with the stipulation that he manage Blair's money. With Richard and Blair now tied together by this condition, Richard wants to marry Blair, but she refuses. "It's just too late!"
Now that Richard is sole owner of Charles' oil company, he's invited join the robber barons on Good Friday, 1865, just as Lincoln is shot.
Fast forward to 1873. Richard is fabulously wealthy in his massive garish house, finding that money isn't enough for him. He wants power! So, he gets Harvey to buy a bunch of politicians. Speaking of politicians, his neighbors are Vic's family, with now-grown daughter Patty Duke.
Also grown are Richard's siblings. Katherine Crawford is first seen at confession, saying she wants to join a convent in Baltimore. Brother David Huffman, at Harvard, is bent on labor reform, pushing unionization on the workers, much to Richard's chagrin. Richard sees the irony in this: David is "weeping for the downtrodden" without "having worked a day in his life." He quips that he should have never left his siblings so long in the church. Unfortunately for David, he's caught in the middle of a labor battle where Richard's goons mow down a bunch of workers before being saved by Jenny Sullivan, a mine worker herself, who sends David to his brother to report on the heinous crime.
Joanna is dying, so she gets a deathbed scene with Richard. She had once asked Richard not to love her, but now she admits that she's loved him all along, and he admits the same. Geez, it only took a few decades! The conversation takes a creepy turn when Joanna tells Richard that her daughter Patty also loves him and she wants Richard to take her safely from obnoxious Vic's house and to marry her. It's one hell of a deathbed scene, full of halting whispered sentences delivered only with the light from a nearby fire. As soon as Richard agrees to marry Patty, Joanna dies peacefully.
Rather than actually grieve for his wife, Vic decides to lambaste Richard, accusing him of having an affair with his wife. The two have a gigantic fight, and of course old alkie Vic is no match for strapping Richard. Stopped from beating him to a pulp, Richard declares, "I won't kill him. I'll destroy him, and by God he'll wish I had killed him!" That makes for a great cliffhanger as the episode ends.
Vic chases Richard, who asks him for Patty's hand in marriage, which prompts Vic to think that it's Patty Richard has wanted all along. Richard doesn't bother correcting him.
His siblings are still proving a problem. Richard and David have a blowout over the labor issue, where David sounds like like any labor organizer of the 1870s, ending with the capper that he feels Richard made all of his money only for himself, not his siblings. Well, he may not be entirely wrong. After all, we do have a flawed hero here. It's possible Richard had his siblings in mind, but also himself. The argument ends with Richard cutting David out of his life and David vowing that he'll be a permanent thorn in his side over the labor issue, even from afar. Katherine has been listening to all of this while praying upstairs for the courage to leave Richard and join the convent. The causes Richard's second argument in ten minutes. If anyone else arrives, the poor man will lose his voice, not to mention he's fast running out of cliches (his siblings are so dull and I get the feeling the writers agree). "Sean can go to hell and you...can go to Jesus!" Richard bellows at the end of the argument, with Katherine playing herself on the floor. At least he ended on a grandiose note.
The problem of labor takes over for a while. The governor, the railroads and management gang up on the workers, with David and Jenny at the center of it. David is a fierce orator. He actually castigates the workers at a meeting for forming a mob because that "invites suppressive action from government." A different tactic is needed.
In 1880 and Patty, who knows she's stuck in a marriage springing from a deathbed promise, has given birth to four children, and now Patty's father Vic is marrying Blair. Not only does he think Blair is too good for Vic, but Richard has been keeping a dossier on the Senator that he intends to use at some point, to utterly destroy him. That might make his marriage a little uncomfortable. Harvey hopes to blunt this action by reminding Richard of this, but Richard says that what Patty thinks means absolutely nothing to him. Richard is becoming far more of a flawed hero.
Six months later, Richard's plan has worked so well that Vic is politically neutered and about to be destroyed financially because the government is demanding "recompense." Drunk as hell, Vic spews a whole speech at Richard, not knowing it's Richard who has ruined him, but he soon finds out! Vic pulls a gun and says he's going to make his daughter "a widow," but Richard is calm, even telling him to wait for a thunderclap in order to shoot so his daughter and grandchildren will never know. But Vic can't pull the trigger. Having thoroughly destroyed Vic, Richard literally tosses him out of the house into the violent storm.
David is sent to prison on a fake charge of inciting a gang of men to blow up a train and sentenced to hang. Jenny, baby in tow, begs David to contact Richard to help, but he refuses. So, she goes herself. Richard agrees to help only if Jenny agrees never to tell anyone he has done so. When Robert Vaughn wonders why Richard has not gone after the culprits of train bombing with more venom, he claims it's not because of his brother, but for his son. Why? Because he wants him to be the first Irish Catholic President (that does indeed sound familiar) and an uncle who was executed will not be a help. Robert retorts that "he has as much chance as little black Sambo." That's certainly laying it on the line. Richard and Robert even agree to marry their small children at some future date.
Vic dies in the gutter one rainy night (it always rains when he's around, have you noticed that?) and even President Garfield expresses his sympathy, introducing Richard to Senator Henry Fonda. He's a problem for the robber barons because he's pro-labor and apparently squeaky clean.
Things get ugly when, at the Capitol rotunda, Blair demands to see Richard. She knows everything Richard has done and she wants her money separated from Richard's, against the will of her father. Richard refuses anyway because in order to disentangle their money, he would lose money and that he refuses to do. Blair picks this moment to tell Richard that the baby of the dead fake husband was actually Vic's. "It seems we all wasted our best years...without love," Richard tells Blair before grabbing her and marching her upstairs to the bedroom. He's always wanted her and now his reasons for not having her have all disappeared.
Richard wants to marry Blair but she knows of his plans to put his son in the White House and she's fine being his mistress so as not to ruin those plans. "For the first time, everything is as it should be," she says before doing what all miniseries lovers do, placing her head on his chest.
An intimate dinner is thrown by Richard for just himself and Senator Henry Fonda. Richard oozes charm at first, but Henry wants honesty, so they hash out the issues. Henry has a bill in Congress that will help even the poorest workers by outlawing foreign workers. Richard and his gang want the foreign labor because they come damn cheap. Henry notes that Richard is attempting to bribe him, which Richard knows he can't prove, and Henry has had enough. But, Richard has a surprise waiting and calls in Harvey. He brings a bunch of documents that would ruin Henry. The big secret? Henry had a mulatto grandmother. It's 1881 and that still carries some weight. Henry nails this scene, his usual understated acting style a virtue in handling the character's conflicts.
Once Henry leaves, Richard burns the documents, his only hold over Henry, much to the admiration of Harvey, but events may have gone too far already. Henry leaves a note at the hotel desk that he plans to kill himself and leave that curse hanging over Richard's head forever. That's a delicious plot twist. Yes, we could see it coming by Henry's demeanor, but watching it unfold is great TV.
Wifey Patty has had Richard followed by a detective, who says Richard is completely faithful, except for "the party." "Stop calling her a party. It sounds positively festive," Patty snaps. When she finds out it's Blair, she's calm and actually offers the detective a new job. She's figured out that Blair's son is actually Vic's. She wants her detective to find out the truth she already knows, this time with physical proof. Patty races off to Blair's house for the showdown. In no uncertain terms, Patty wants the affair to end, but Blair refuses, so Patty pulls out the evidence. However, Blair doesn't give Patty the reaction she was hoping for. Blair doesn't care if the truth comes out: she'll help put it out there! She was only holding it back while Vic was alive. What does it matter now? No wonder Patty won an Emmy for this performance. She's sensational here. She goes from calm and definitive to wild and angry with a slow build and then to utter devastation when foiled. By the end she's begging Blair not to tell Richard any of this because she "fears his hate" more than anything. It's a gorgeous performance and a great way to handle plotting.
In 1892, Richard's son has grown into Perry King. At the theater, Richard tries to push Perry into Robert Vaughn's daughter Cynthia Syke's arms, but Perry likes to squire around many women and doesn't want the unintelligent Terry.
When Richard gets home, he finds Patty drunk. It seems she's degenerated into an alcoholic worse than her father. The showdown with Blair has completely undone her and forced her into this depraved lifestyle. She hisses at Robert that he's using his son to get back at the world for treating him badly as a child and ignoring his other kids. She begs him to hit her. "It's the first time you'll have touched me since you started sleeping with my S...T...E...P...M...O...T...H...E...R!"
Perry is about to be kicked out of school for fighting and this angers Richard, who threatens to fight back by blackmailing the other kid's father, who was forced to drop out of a campaign for cloudy reasons. He dispatches Harvey to Mayor Burl Ives' house to find out the dirt (a homosexual liaison) and gluttonous Burl is happy to oblige. The plan, naturally, works.
As for Perry, he's infatuated with a Vassar girl...wait for it...she's here...Jane Seymour! Yup, she's here, gracing this story with her presence! With the help of his relative Terry Kiser (Blair's son), he meets her in an ice cream shop where she's on a date with another man. Perry refuses to leave and Jane's date's friends gang up on him. He leaves, but he's just beginning his assault on Jane's attentions. It's working during a Romeo and Juliet-like balcony scene when the thugs from the ice cream shop beat him up. They douse him in alcohol and hang a sign around his neck: NO IRISH.
Though Perry wants no immediate revenge, his brother Doug Heyes doesn't see it like that and beats the hell out of Jane's other suitor. Perry is still infatuated with Jane, who is definitely cracking under the full weight of his charm. The biggest problem is that Jane is Protestant and Perry is Catholic. As violins suddenly spring up on the soundtrack, Jane tells Perry that she can't disobey his father, that he's confined to a wheelchair and needs her. But, Perry is tough and they two make out on the grass as Jane confesses her love.
And who should be playing Jane's papa but John Houseman? A miniseries regular, he and Jane missed out on working together in the Herman Wouk pieces, with Houseman in "Winds of War," replaced by John Gielgud in "War and Remembrance," while Jane took over Ali McGraw's role for the latter. In his spitting venomously way of speaking, John spells out all the reasons he hates the whole Armagh family (father cheats, son is a "libertine"). He then has a convenient attack of whatever ails him and then lays the guilt on thick. "If you choose to to be seen with this Rory Armagh (Perry King), you've seen the last of me...in the little time I have left." Are we sure he's not playing a Jewish mother? Even an Italian mother?
Perry has to break the news to his father too. Richard is thrilled, only because he assumes it's an affair and won't last. He can't countenance an actual marriage because Catholicism doesn't allow for divorce should Perry grow tired of her, but that's not the worst of it. He tells of Jane's religion, and Richard explodes in a tirade worthy of his long-gone mentor, Charles Durning. He tries to make Perry understand that it's only a select group of men who control the entire world, but Perry doesn't buy it (I guess he hadn't watched the previous five episodes). "They exist. I know, because I'm one of them! And you will be too. And those men will make you President!" Richard yells, but only if he marries a Catholic.
In 1896, Perry graduates and they commemorate the occasion with some photographs on the lawn. Everyone is present except sister Ann Dusenberry, who is in love with Perry's pal Terry Kiser, making out when Perry goes to find them. They want to get married, but that presents a problem because they are blood relatives. No one but Richard and Patty know (which is why Patty hates him), but not Perry does. Richard breaks the news to Terry, who races off to find Ann, dashing off to tell Patty about the impending nuptials. Fate intervenes, as it always does in these situations, and before she can tell Patty, she is thrown from her horse and falls. As good at "Captains and the Kings" is, it's still a soap opera, and these helpful twists of fate have a way of settling difficult situations. Everyone waits for Ann to return, but she doesn't and by nightfall, they are worried and go looking for her. Terry finds her alive, but barely.
Something has happened to her. She's awake, eyes open and such, but she does not understand, cannot comm...okay, I'll say it...she has brain damage! This part does in fact reek of the Kennedy curse, in the form of a Rosemary stand-in. Patty, in a full rage, wants Blair and Terry out of the house, but they leave only after Terry lets loose a little bile in Richard's direction. He's always liked Richard, but now he hates him as much as he hates Patty. Before leaving, Terry demands some alone with Ann to tell her he's leaving, not that she comprehends. Richard and Patty take Ann to the best specialists in Europe, but no one can help. Perry tries to gloss over it by noting Patty gets to spend time alone with Richard as she's always wanted.
Harvey sums up a few plots for us, just because they have been dangling: Richard's siblings are still alive and Kathleen even writes twice a month, though Harvey hides the letters. And Harvey's own beloved Beverly has died.
Perry and Jane get married by a Justice of the Peace and head right to bed while the Justice's wife realizes who Perry is and formulates a plan in her mind due to Richard's wealth.
London, 1897. Cantankerous Patty and Richard are at a hotel, where Patty annoys the staff, but Richard is only excited that Robert Vaughn has been appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James, which means the marriage between Perry and his daughter will be even more important. Oh, and then there's a letter in the same packet from the Justice of the Peace.
Neither father nor son brings up the marriage when Perry arrives in London. Instead, Richard takes Perry to meet the men who rule the world, telling him it may be the most important night of his life.
Perry goes to the meeting and it's downright bizarre. It literally is a collection of accents, men who run the world, or at least they think they do. If we thought Richard was getting too evil, we now have TRUE evil to make him look a little better (though he's one of them, he says he doesn't like them). Just as Perry is about to tell Richard he is married to Jane, when Richard tells him of his plans, $20 million the day he marries Robert Vaughn's daughter. If he does not marry the girl, he's cut out of dad's will and dad's life. Perry chickens out and doesn't tell him (although he already knows).
Back in NYC, and back in bed, because that's where they exist, Perry admits he didn't tell his father about Jane, but that he will stay married to her and his father can make one of his brothers President. The world then gets in the way when the Spanish-American War breaks out and Perry realizes the men in London made it happen.
When Richard returns to Philadelphia, he takes his anger at the marriage out on Harvey, whom he accuses of disloyalty and everything thing else he can think of. An impassioned speech of eternal devotion brings Richard back down to earth and he forgives Harvey. Besides, he has a plan already to "destroy" the marriage.
Perry and brother Doug argue about what the war means right before a montage of Teddy Roosevelt and Bill McKinley disagree about what to do with the war. Roosevelt wins out and McKinley declares war. Doug even joins Teddy's Rough Riders. Somehow the only solution to bring him back is for Perry to go after him. I could think of about 15 reasons right now that might work better, but so be the vagaries of plot.
Have you been missing Patty Duke? She's losing it, sort of mad, sort of drunk, sort of guilty at Ann's side. Ann is still in the same medical state, and Patty tells her a fairy tale that ends with self-recrimination. They aren't part of the plot much anymore, but Patty is still acting up a storm.
Two different wars are juxtaposed in quick alternating scenes. The first is the war in Cuba, with Perry hunting down his brother. The other is Richard going to John Houseman's office to discuss their children. John his aides he expects to melt Richard's gruff exterior, but if not, he will ring his bell and they will take him forcibly. Uh huh, two old men against Richard. Richard has the upper hand because he knows of the marriage. Judge John is aghast when he finds out Richard has destroyed all records of the marriage, having paid off the Justice of the Peace and the County Clerk. Furthermore, he's forged notes and had a handwriting expert pen them in Perry and Jane's handwriting ending the marriage. To sweeten the pot and get John to go along with it, he'll pay John $10K a month.
In Cuba, Perry looks very sexy in a shirt ripped in all the places to show off his body to maximum effect as he is forced to take up a gun and look for Doug. It takes a while, but he finds his brother, mortally wounded so badly that Perry has to lie to him and tell him the Rough Riders have won the battle, which is far from the truth. Watch Perry as he listens to Doug's patriotic speech about fighting for one's country. He looks like he's going to laugh the whole time. It is over-written to say the least, the kind that makes you want to rush to your closet and dig out that flag you've been saving for the front lawn. Doug dies right after giving the speech, cradled in his brothers arms.
When Richard goes to tell Patty about Doug, she is asleep in bed, clutching a glass. He happily fills it for her because she's going to need it. Before he can tell her about Doug, she admits to having told Ann about Terry (causing her to race out and get herself injured), but Richard forgives that quickly in order to deliver the really bad news. Patty flies into a rage and then crouches on the ground, wide-eyed, talking of a curse on her family: father, daughter, son...at least for now. Patty and Ann are packed off to a nut house and Perry brings back Doug's body for burial.
Perry dashes over to find Jane, but only finds the note his father has planted. It's a doozie, saying she had to leave him and is off to travel with her father. Perry goes on a binge that ends him up in Chicago where a local thief and hooker snatch his wallet, but realize he's the nephew of labor leader Uncle David. So, they call him and David tries to talk sense into his nephew. Perry goes home, admitting defeat to his father. He will marry Robert Vaughn's daughter, collect the $20 million and become President.
It's 1910 and Richard wants Perry to be President in 1912. He's been a dithering Congressman, so Richard wants the governor, whom he pays, to appoint Perry a senator (in the days before senators were directly elected). Marriage to Cynthia has produced some heirs, so everyone has done their duties. Perry does everything asked of him by the men in power, bending their way to kill bills in Congress he believes in.
Then there is brother Cliff DeYoung, up to now ignored. He's a wastrel, flying planes and thinking of selling them to armies should a war come. He even has a movie star girlfriend and a movie studio. She's a ditz. "I cried at my own acting," she proudly says. "So did I," he says sarcastically.
Sorry to end Cliff's mirth, but Richard has had a heart attack. Not expected to live, he's defying the odds and even firing doctors. The dream of Perry being President is not dying with Richard. Cliff is his campaign manager and they bring all their cronies together to buy votes across the country. "And send me the bill," Perry says. Handsome and excitable, Perry is an ideal candidate, with his father reading every paper praising his son from his bed. Not everyone is happy, though. Protestant preachers and the KKK aren't happy. Hell, the KKK does their whole cross burning thing on Richard's lawn.
The campaign goes very well. It has some bumps, some people within his own party who don't like him, but the juggernaut rolls on. And then Jane Seymour calls out of nowhere. Perry dashes off to see her and they fall into each other's arms (and onto the floor) the minute she opens the door. On his deathbed, her father admitted all he had done. They confess eternal love to each other, but Cliff has to find a way to figure this all out.
Blair Brown is dying. She and Richard have stayed apart ever since Ann's accident, but since she is dying, maybe it's time. Harvey is dispatched to see how she is. Other than some bad putty wrinkles and make-up, she looks pretty damn good! The doctor has given her a sedative, so she has to sleep, but she invites Harvey back in a week to "talk all day." Uh oh, don't put timing on it, because that makes it a sure thing she'll be gone in a week. On his way out, Harvey finds a letter that Blair has written but never intended to send, one last love letter. Indeed, Blair croaks four hours after Harvey left.
As Cliff runs around buying votes for Perry, Harvey tells Richard he wants to retire. "Was it something I did...or didn't do?" Richard asks of his one true friend, the only person he really trusts. As a parting gift, he gives Richard his sister's letters that Richard thought were destroyed. Harvey intends to travel the world and be back in time to vote for Perry.
Uh oh. The men in power have decided they want Woodrow Wilson to be President, with Perry as Vice President, still promising to make him President, but not until 1920. The men have decided a war is necessary in the coming years and Wilson is the best man to handle it. This is all rather a nasty plot twist to characters we have come to love, undermining the dream Richard has had for so many years, as good or bad as he may be.
Uncle David gets a surprise when Richard shows up at his house. His wife decides to tell him the truth about how Richard saved him all those years ago, so he agrees to see Richard. This is the first time Richard has appeared timid and tentative, even afraid. There is some power missing from the scene because David was never given a fully developed characterization. Anyway, the reason he's there is to ask his brother's help in winning the election for his son, having to fight against the men in power. This whole scene serves to redeem Richard's character one last time. No longer a member of the evil boy's club, he wants to what he's always wanted now based on merit. Richard tells Perry the men have dropped him and Perry is thrilled, because he has wanted to smash them. Unfortunately, Robert Vaughn has been listening to the whole conversation on a phone extension, so things are going to end badly.
Okay, with only moments to go in the movie, we get a plot twist we did not expect and one that is, frankly, damn annoying. The Titanic sinks with Harvey on it. Come on, is that REALLY necessary? Fine, I understand that Harvey needs to pay for his sins just as much as anyone, but on the Titanic? That's historical fiction at its dumbest.
I hate to bring this up, folks, but with Perry running as an idealist, suddenly on the opposite side of the men in power, he has to die. A story like this demands it. During a campaign stop, he is shot and dies, but at least in Jane's arms. Where else is Richard to turn but to Patty, calling herself "confused," but completely bonkers. She's been paying for her sins for way too long. Richard is just starting. He even invites Jane to mourn with him at the funeral. She tells Richard how much Perry loved him and he starts to cry, not having really understood it all these years. The funeral is an odd assortment: Richard, his nun sister, both of Perry's wives and even Robert Vaughn, who had him killed.
Humbled and broken (we assume that Cliff dies in an airplane accident), Richard sits in a chair in his great mansion, having lost everyone and everything that should have mattered to him as he spend his life racing for power and money.
If the last episode of the miniseries is a bit too sentimental, a completely change of tone from the rest, it's to be expected. People do have to pay for the things they want most, and in this case, it's not payment in money, but in lives. That's a lofty idea, one we might not have expected television to tackle in the 1970s. But here it is and it's splendid.
Though "Rich Man, Poor Man" pre-dated "Captains and the Kings" by about seven months and thus earns the distinction of being the groundbreaking miniseries, the one that started it all, I would say that "Captain and the Kings" is actually a better cornerstone. "Rich Man, Poor Man" certainly set up the future of the romance miniseries, but its scope is rather small, staying tight on its three lead characters. "Captain and the Kings" is history and adventure, a fore running to the decade-spawning and character-driven epics to follow in the coming twenty years or so. It also foreshadows the seedier side of the miniseries genre, the Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz sagas, full of greed and lust, which are a whole lot of fun. Therefore, "Captains and the Kings" is far more comprehensive an effort than "Richard Man, Poor Man" even if it's been more forgotten over time.
All good epics start with a tragedy, giving the hero something to make up for his whole life long. It's 1857, New York harbor and a ship of Irish immigrants is waiting to get in. A young boy and his two siblings are on board with their mother, who promptly dies after five minutes. Priest John Carradine tells the young boy that the ship is being sent back to Ireland, and he'll have none of that, this plucky smart youth. He tosses his siblings overboard with a life preserver.
The city's homeless feed them and put them on a train to find their father. They show up at the address they remember, with a sign outside that says "Irish Allowed." Grumpy frumpy Ann Southern runs the place, milking the Irish accent and a cane for all they are worth, but she has more bad news for the kids: Dad is dead too. The youth decides that he can no longer be a child and support his siblings. He deposits them in a convent run by Sister Celeste Holm. He tells his siblings to lose their Irish accents, to become Americans. He then goes off to work in a coal mine, doing backbreaking labor during the day and studying at night. The kid isn't stupid, cunning enough to realize that Ray Bolger runs the town and all of its crime, offering his services.
Four years later, our boy has matured into Richard Jordan, still carrying illegal goods for Ray Bolger, playing his few scenes to the back of the balcony. Ray can't imagine what Richard does with his free time and books. "I'm the secret lover of a lady librarian," he says. He gets his books from rich Joanna Pettet, on whom he has a crush. He tells a priest he doesn't covet her, he "adores her" and intends to someday live her lifestyle.
Joanna may be rich, but her life isn't perfect. Hubby Vic Morrow is a drunk who beats their young daughter. Vic churns through his intro scene with an accent anything but Irish, blasting a lot of hot air as his wife because he intends to be Senator. He drunkenly goes to make an oath on the Bible, which Joanna considers blasphemy and they fight over...at the top of the staircase. Yup, she takes a tumble down the stairs, killing the child she was about to have, though she survives. It was a boy, and Vic knows how much she wanted a son. Arguing with his wife's doctor, who is no fan of his, Vic remembers a boy at the orphanage. He wonders...
As resilient as ever, Richard is attacked by three men for his money belt and beats the crap out of all three without breaking a sweat. Nothing stops him from delivering Ray Bolger's illegal money. Ray knows about the three guys, "a-moanin' and a-groanin'" in an alley, but he's impressed by the fact that Richard never spills the beans or has any trouble with the illegal activities. Ray offers him a job, at $20 a week, no less, but he turns it down. It's not part of his plan.
When Vic wondered about the kids in the orphanage, it was Richard's siblings he was talking about. Joanna and Sister Celeste Holm try to get him to agree to let them be adopted, but he refuses. He has always wanted to keep his siblings together, the three of them as a family. Despite the soft lighting just on Joanna's pretty eyes, he keeps saying no, but he can't refuse a visit to her home, to see how she lives, to see what he's turning down. Thuggish Vic is in bed with a maid when Joanna comes hope, drunk and ornery. Having finished with the maid, Vic argues with Richard about the kids, Richard still standing firm against the adoption. Richard won't let the kids live in Vic's home, "until it's up for sale." Vic even tries to buy the kids, which infuriates Richard, but makes it worse by telling Richard he'll never amount to anything. Richard has a comeback to Vic's high-handed attitude (not as good as when Vic calls him "smug-mouth potato boiler") because he knows Vic has made his money from selling slaves, and this is 1861 after all.
Having realized money is the only way to make it in America, he wants it quickly. He pays off Sister Celeste to take care of the kids for a year or more, and she promises to care for them as long as she lives. He then steals Ray Bolger's money, writing him a letter that he's doing so, promising to bring it back with interest in a year. On his way to the train, he's detained by Sargent Martin Kove, who tries to force him into the army, but he knocks him out and still can't get to the train because Lebanese pick pocket/chatterbox Harvey Jason stops him, figuring of all the men in the crowd, he stands the best chance of getting on the train with Richard. He's right, for they do get on the train, but just as he's describing the best way to get rich, Harvey's leg gets stuck and almost amputated, but Richard does a bit of daring and saves his new buddy.
Impressed by Richard's bravery is Charles Durning, slurping down a bottle of whiskey and renaming Harvey's character to make him sound less like a "heathen." He's another bombastic loud mouth. Richard can't escape them! Richard tells Charles of his ambition, and after Charles stops choking on his liquor and laughing, he actually agrees. The two gab the whole train ride, where Richard reveals himself to be educated and ambitious. "You've got all the makings of a good scoundrel," Charles admires. Charles is something of a big deal in Titusville, and he takes Richard and Harvey under his wing, insisting that Richard is responsible for Harvey. The lure of Titusville is its oil, Richard's surest way to success.
Talk about your attempt at scene stealing, Charles introduces Richard to "Martinique," not his wife, but the woman living with him, played by Barbara Parkins like a slutty Mrs. Danvers. Also living at Charles' is Beverly D'Angelo, not his daughter, but a hooker he bought. "She loves me like a father in every way but one," he boasts. Charles decides to teach Richard everything, but for Richard, it's all about money and since Charles won't pay him much, he decides to work in the fields, against Charles' advice.
Richard takes the worst possible job he can, hauling nitro glycerine around, while he learns everything he can and tends to his now-hobbled friend Harvey, who has caught the attention of Miss Beverly. Using their combined skills (Harvey is a banker), Richard decides to buy up oil field options for his new company. In less than a year, Richard is able to pay Ray Bolger back, with interest. Ray notes that Richard paid him back in less than half the time promised, which reminds us that Richard may be hungry for money, but he's a man of his word, so much so that he's able to wheedle an exorbitant amount of money from Ray to give to Harvey to buy up the oil field options (remember, he's the hero, so he's once again promised to pay Ray back, even though this money isn't stolen).
Even nature can't get in the way of Richard's drive. He and a fellow nitro glycerine hauler are doing their work when a convenient avalanche kills the other guy. Later in the day, he's dressed in his finest, visiting with Barbara Parkins, ogling all the books in the library. The difference between the money Charles has and Richard will have is in these books: Charles told Barbara to buy the finest books, but he doesn't care what the books are. Richard knows all of the authors and what is IN the books. Okay, okay, it's a bit on the heavy-handed side, but it keeps Richard human. No one ever talked about Joe Kennedy's library.
Charles proposes another scheme, this one requiring Richard to dress up in brand-new finery to get into a "venture" with Peter Donat. At $2000 per month, Richard accepts the job without even finding out what the job is. "The alternative to the success of this job is not failure, but death," Peter warns him, but Richard is undaunted, asking only to write out a sort of will. It turns out the job is to run guns during the height of the Civil War. Richard isn't afraid of that.
He then gets a visit on a stormy night from va-va-vooming Barbara Parkins, who pegs him as a virgin. With serious intent, she decides to solve that problem. It's the least romantic deflowering I can think of in any miniseries. She starts kissing his chest, but he stops her. "Before you take off all my clothes, take off yours," he commands. The camera pans to the window and then back to the two, now finished, Barbara resting her head on Richard's sprawling chest, as we've seen so many times in the genre. Barbara tells a somewhat cryptic history of her time with Charles, and that they do not have sex. "His needs are very simple, and, as you can tell, mine are not," she purrs, saying that she's been waiting for a man like him. This one sexual experience has given Richard sexual balls as well, and he wants Barbara for his own, but she shoots that one down, refusing to be owned by anyone. Vamping the hell out of the scene, standing naked at the window, she tells him she'll be his any time he wants her, but he is never to ask what hold Charles has over her ever again.
Peter takes Richard to meet Pernell Roberts, the Union Colonel who is part of the gun-running scheme. His is initially afraid to be caught as a traitor, but receiving $50K for his part in it soothes those worries. Richard turns out to be a better deal-maker than anyone expects. That night, it's off to the theater to see Edwin Booth (Peter notes that he's never seen him, but has met his brother, John Wilkes Booth, "excellent"--yes, we know, it's still the Civil War). What I'm not mentioning here is the way all of these deals go down. It's beautiful writing (we have to thank Taylor Caldwell's novel as well as the writers of the script), very cleverly handled, like a mystery novel.
With the gun running episode successful, Richard returns to visit his siblings, Sister Celeste Holm and Joanna Pettet. Richard and Joanna have a talky scene about, well, not a whole lot, and she insists that he better not be in love with him. He never has been. To make sure we understand, the next scene has Barbara accosting him on the doorstep with an open mouth. Charles' daughter is in town, and the house rule is that when she is in residence, Beverly isn't. They stash her in a hotel. Hanging out the window that evening, she spies Harvey on the street and beckons him to her room. Beverly keeps trying to take her clothes off and seduce him, but nervous Harvey, like Richard, is too focused on the financial rewards of life. He's also scared of fooling around with her because Charles won't like it. "I didn't ask you up here to do anything bad," Beverly mopes, "it's just that I'm so lonely." To make sure he understands her flirtations are more pure, she gives him a token to a whorehouse, which he says he will keep "forever."
Charles' daughter is lovely Blair Brown, a belle pure as snow, especially coming from such a hard-boiled tough as her conniving father. Charles makes it clear that Blair is only good enough for someone high-toned (Charles would play Honey Fitz later on his career, Rose Kennedy's father, in some very similar scenes). Charles announces the gun running is over and he wants Richard to come into the oil business with him, but Richard has no money to buy stocks, all of his money in what is considered the oil-free land he and Harry have been buying. Basically, the scene rolls on as Charles tries to screw Richard out of everything he owns, and a furious Richard storms out, which makes Charles all contrary. He knows Richard's land is worth a fortune, so he wants to be his partner. Richard agrees, but on his terms. Charles has no choice but to agree, with a few conditions of his own and a promise that he'll "never cheat ya." Richard tries to angle in one last term, that Charles tell him what hold he has over Barbara, but he refuses. At any rate, they agree.
Richard sets out to re-invent the oil industry, starting with the railroads, bringing us Robert Vaughn. It's here that Richard shows is darker side, getting the railroad barons to agree to ship only oil controlled by his company or those of his friends. "That's nasty...and I love it," perpetual villain Robert sneers.
Among all the scenes of corporate greed, we have to suffer through a little more pain between Harvey and Beverly. Their scenes reek of the dippy secondary love plots in creaky musical comedies. But, they finally do have sex and though Richard is thrilled, he knows Charles will be pissed, so he sends Harvey out the back way to avoid detection. Unfortunately for Richard, the sex happened in his bed, so when Charles' hulking manservant comes in, he thinks it's Richard who has had his way with her. A fight ensues and the manservant ends up dead, with Beverly pretending that the manservant tried to rape her. Charles doesn't believe that, still thinking it was Richard, but Barbara gives him a true alibi. No one rats out Harvey, and Peter Donat steps in to save the whole mess by concocting a story where the manservant was drunk and fell out of the window.
The biggest question is whether or not Charles and Richard can trust each other anymore.
Blair Brown has an instant crush on Richard. Daddy's chaste little girl is an avowed flirt, but Richard will not allow himself to be taken in, as he promised Charles. Late one night in the kitchen, Blair lays it on the line: she's not looking for a husband, just fun and sex, like the arrangement he has with Barbara. Just as Blair tells Richard she does not intend to be a virgin forever, Charles and Barbara arrive back home with Vic Morrow, Richard's old nemesis who wanted to buy his siblings. To make Richard jealous, Blair takes up Vic on his offer to take her back to school on his private train. And it's there that Blair ceases to be a virgin.
Over a pool game, Richard gets back to business, buying out George Gaynes' company without actually spending a dime, and now the robber barons and Robert Vaughn consider him for membership in their exclusive club of fat cats.
For the first time, we venture into real-life characters in a brief scene where President Lincoln welcomes Vic Morrow to Washington as its newest Senator. Blair follows him to DC to drop the bomb that she's pregnant. This smart cookie has decided to marry a "socially prominent Protestant" man to act as the father of the baby, a man who has asked for her hand in marriage. He can't say no because he's just died in battle, so Blair insists that Senator Vic forge the necessary papers to make her an instant war widow with a legitimate child on the way. Richard and Barbara go along with the scheme (whether they believe it or not doesn't matter), but Charles gets rip-roaring drunk, going for the gold with a hoot of a scene and then dies.
Charles' will is a hoot. He leaves an awfully lot of money to his servants and employees, $50K to Beverly, who can now marry Harvey, and $150K to Barbara. She is now free to tell her story: she's part black from parentage in Jamaica, killed the son of the Jamaican government who tried to make her a slave and was taken to safety by Charles. She will go to Europe and seek a rich man, telling Richard to stay and marry Blair. Charles leaves the bulk of his fortune to Richard, with the stipulation that he manage Blair's money. With Richard and Blair now tied together by this condition, Richard wants to marry Blair, but she refuses. "It's just too late!"
Now that Richard is sole owner of Charles' oil company, he's invited join the robber barons on Good Friday, 1865, just as Lincoln is shot.
Fast forward to 1873. Richard is fabulously wealthy in his massive garish house, finding that money isn't enough for him. He wants power! So, he gets Harvey to buy a bunch of politicians. Speaking of politicians, his neighbors are Vic's family, with now-grown daughter Patty Duke.
Also grown are Richard's siblings. Katherine Crawford is first seen at confession, saying she wants to join a convent in Baltimore. Brother David Huffman, at Harvard, is bent on labor reform, pushing unionization on the workers, much to Richard's chagrin. Richard sees the irony in this: David is "weeping for the downtrodden" without "having worked a day in his life." He quips that he should have never left his siblings so long in the church. Unfortunately for David, he's caught in the middle of a labor battle where Richard's goons mow down a bunch of workers before being saved by Jenny Sullivan, a mine worker herself, who sends David to his brother to report on the heinous crime.
Joanna is dying, so she gets a deathbed scene with Richard. She had once asked Richard not to love her, but now she admits that she's loved him all along, and he admits the same. Geez, it only took a few decades! The conversation takes a creepy turn when Joanna tells Richard that her daughter Patty also loves him and she wants Richard to take her safely from obnoxious Vic's house and to marry her. It's one hell of a deathbed scene, full of halting whispered sentences delivered only with the light from a nearby fire. As soon as Richard agrees to marry Patty, Joanna dies peacefully.
Rather than actually grieve for his wife, Vic decides to lambaste Richard, accusing him of having an affair with his wife. The two have a gigantic fight, and of course old alkie Vic is no match for strapping Richard. Stopped from beating him to a pulp, Richard declares, "I won't kill him. I'll destroy him, and by God he'll wish I had killed him!" That makes for a great cliffhanger as the episode ends.
Vic chases Richard, who asks him for Patty's hand in marriage, which prompts Vic to think that it's Patty Richard has wanted all along. Richard doesn't bother correcting him.
His siblings are still proving a problem. Richard and David have a blowout over the labor issue, where David sounds like like any labor organizer of the 1870s, ending with the capper that he feels Richard made all of his money only for himself, not his siblings. Well, he may not be entirely wrong. After all, we do have a flawed hero here. It's possible Richard had his siblings in mind, but also himself. The argument ends with Richard cutting David out of his life and David vowing that he'll be a permanent thorn in his side over the labor issue, even from afar. Katherine has been listening to all of this while praying upstairs for the courage to leave Richard and join the convent. The causes Richard's second argument in ten minutes. If anyone else arrives, the poor man will lose his voice, not to mention he's fast running out of cliches (his siblings are so dull and I get the feeling the writers agree). "Sean can go to hell and you...can go to Jesus!" Richard bellows at the end of the argument, with Katherine playing herself on the floor. At least he ended on a grandiose note.
The problem of labor takes over for a while. The governor, the railroads and management gang up on the workers, with David and Jenny at the center of it. David is a fierce orator. He actually castigates the workers at a meeting for forming a mob because that "invites suppressive action from government." A different tactic is needed.
In 1880 and Patty, who knows she's stuck in a marriage springing from a deathbed promise, has given birth to four children, and now Patty's father Vic is marrying Blair. Not only does he think Blair is too good for Vic, but Richard has been keeping a dossier on the Senator that he intends to use at some point, to utterly destroy him. That might make his marriage a little uncomfortable. Harvey hopes to blunt this action by reminding Richard of this, but Richard says that what Patty thinks means absolutely nothing to him. Richard is becoming far more of a flawed hero.
Six months later, Richard's plan has worked so well that Vic is politically neutered and about to be destroyed financially because the government is demanding "recompense." Drunk as hell, Vic spews a whole speech at Richard, not knowing it's Richard who has ruined him, but he soon finds out! Vic pulls a gun and says he's going to make his daughter "a widow," but Richard is calm, even telling him to wait for a thunderclap in order to shoot so his daughter and grandchildren will never know. But Vic can't pull the trigger. Having thoroughly destroyed Vic, Richard literally tosses him out of the house into the violent storm.
David is sent to prison on a fake charge of inciting a gang of men to blow up a train and sentenced to hang. Jenny, baby in tow, begs David to contact Richard to help, but he refuses. So, she goes herself. Richard agrees to help only if Jenny agrees never to tell anyone he has done so. When Robert Vaughn wonders why Richard has not gone after the culprits of train bombing with more venom, he claims it's not because of his brother, but for his son. Why? Because he wants him to be the first Irish Catholic President (that does indeed sound familiar) and an uncle who was executed will not be a help. Robert retorts that "he has as much chance as little black Sambo." That's certainly laying it on the line. Richard and Robert even agree to marry their small children at some future date.
Vic dies in the gutter one rainy night (it always rains when he's around, have you noticed that?) and even President Garfield expresses his sympathy, introducing Richard to Senator Henry Fonda. He's a problem for the robber barons because he's pro-labor and apparently squeaky clean.
Things get ugly when, at the Capitol rotunda, Blair demands to see Richard. She knows everything Richard has done and she wants her money separated from Richard's, against the will of her father. Richard refuses anyway because in order to disentangle their money, he would lose money and that he refuses to do. Blair picks this moment to tell Richard that the baby of the dead fake husband was actually Vic's. "It seems we all wasted our best years...without love," Richard tells Blair before grabbing her and marching her upstairs to the bedroom. He's always wanted her and now his reasons for not having her have all disappeared.
Richard wants to marry Blair but she knows of his plans to put his son in the White House and she's fine being his mistress so as not to ruin those plans. "For the first time, everything is as it should be," she says before doing what all miniseries lovers do, placing her head on his chest.
An intimate dinner is thrown by Richard for just himself and Senator Henry Fonda. Richard oozes charm at first, but Henry wants honesty, so they hash out the issues. Henry has a bill in Congress that will help even the poorest workers by outlawing foreign workers. Richard and his gang want the foreign labor because they come damn cheap. Henry notes that Richard is attempting to bribe him, which Richard knows he can't prove, and Henry has had enough. But, Richard has a surprise waiting and calls in Harvey. He brings a bunch of documents that would ruin Henry. The big secret? Henry had a mulatto grandmother. It's 1881 and that still carries some weight. Henry nails this scene, his usual understated acting style a virtue in handling the character's conflicts.
Once Henry leaves, Richard burns the documents, his only hold over Henry, much to the admiration of Harvey, but events may have gone too far already. Henry leaves a note at the hotel desk that he plans to kill himself and leave that curse hanging over Richard's head forever. That's a delicious plot twist. Yes, we could see it coming by Henry's demeanor, but watching it unfold is great TV.
Wifey Patty has had Richard followed by a detective, who says Richard is completely faithful, except for "the party." "Stop calling her a party. It sounds positively festive," Patty snaps. When she finds out it's Blair, she's calm and actually offers the detective a new job. She's figured out that Blair's son is actually Vic's. She wants her detective to find out the truth she already knows, this time with physical proof. Patty races off to Blair's house for the showdown. In no uncertain terms, Patty wants the affair to end, but Blair refuses, so Patty pulls out the evidence. However, Blair doesn't give Patty the reaction she was hoping for. Blair doesn't care if the truth comes out: she'll help put it out there! She was only holding it back while Vic was alive. What does it matter now? No wonder Patty won an Emmy for this performance. She's sensational here. She goes from calm and definitive to wild and angry with a slow build and then to utter devastation when foiled. By the end she's begging Blair not to tell Richard any of this because she "fears his hate" more than anything. It's a gorgeous performance and a great way to handle plotting.
In 1892, Richard's son has grown into Perry King. At the theater, Richard tries to push Perry into Robert Vaughn's daughter Cynthia Syke's arms, but Perry likes to squire around many women and doesn't want the unintelligent Terry.
When Richard gets home, he finds Patty drunk. It seems she's degenerated into an alcoholic worse than her father. The showdown with Blair has completely undone her and forced her into this depraved lifestyle. She hisses at Robert that he's using his son to get back at the world for treating him badly as a child and ignoring his other kids. She begs him to hit her. "It's the first time you'll have touched me since you started sleeping with my S...T...E...P...M...O...T...H...E...R!"
Perry is about to be kicked out of school for fighting and this angers Richard, who threatens to fight back by blackmailing the other kid's father, who was forced to drop out of a campaign for cloudy reasons. He dispatches Harvey to Mayor Burl Ives' house to find out the dirt (a homosexual liaison) and gluttonous Burl is happy to oblige. The plan, naturally, works.
As for Perry, he's infatuated with a Vassar girl...wait for it...she's here...Jane Seymour! Yup, she's here, gracing this story with her presence! With the help of his relative Terry Kiser (Blair's son), he meets her in an ice cream shop where she's on a date with another man. Perry refuses to leave and Jane's date's friends gang up on him. He leaves, but he's just beginning his assault on Jane's attentions. It's working during a Romeo and Juliet-like balcony scene when the thugs from the ice cream shop beat him up. They douse him in alcohol and hang a sign around his neck: NO IRISH.
Though Perry wants no immediate revenge, his brother Doug Heyes doesn't see it like that and beats the hell out of Jane's other suitor. Perry is still infatuated with Jane, who is definitely cracking under the full weight of his charm. The biggest problem is that Jane is Protestant and Perry is Catholic. As violins suddenly spring up on the soundtrack, Jane tells Perry that she can't disobey his father, that he's confined to a wheelchair and needs her. But, Perry is tough and they two make out on the grass as Jane confesses her love.
And who should be playing Jane's papa but John Houseman? A miniseries regular, he and Jane missed out on working together in the Herman Wouk pieces, with Houseman in "Winds of War," replaced by John Gielgud in "War and Remembrance," while Jane took over Ali McGraw's role for the latter. In his spitting venomously way of speaking, John spells out all the reasons he hates the whole Armagh family (father cheats, son is a "libertine"). He then has a convenient attack of whatever ails him and then lays the guilt on thick. "If you choose to to be seen with this Rory Armagh (Perry King), you've seen the last of me...in the little time I have left." Are we sure he's not playing a Jewish mother? Even an Italian mother?
Perry has to break the news to his father too. Richard is thrilled, only because he assumes it's an affair and won't last. He can't countenance an actual marriage because Catholicism doesn't allow for divorce should Perry grow tired of her, but that's not the worst of it. He tells of Jane's religion, and Richard explodes in a tirade worthy of his long-gone mentor, Charles Durning. He tries to make Perry understand that it's only a select group of men who control the entire world, but Perry doesn't buy it (I guess he hadn't watched the previous five episodes). "They exist. I know, because I'm one of them! And you will be too. And those men will make you President!" Richard yells, but only if he marries a Catholic.
In 1896, Perry graduates and they commemorate the occasion with some photographs on the lawn. Everyone is present except sister Ann Dusenberry, who is in love with Perry's pal Terry Kiser, making out when Perry goes to find them. They want to get married, but that presents a problem because they are blood relatives. No one but Richard and Patty know (which is why Patty hates him), but not Perry does. Richard breaks the news to Terry, who races off to find Ann, dashing off to tell Patty about the impending nuptials. Fate intervenes, as it always does in these situations, and before she can tell Patty, she is thrown from her horse and falls. As good at "Captains and the Kings" is, it's still a soap opera, and these helpful twists of fate have a way of settling difficult situations. Everyone waits for Ann to return, but she doesn't and by nightfall, they are worried and go looking for her. Terry finds her alive, but barely.
Something has happened to her. She's awake, eyes open and such, but she does not understand, cannot comm...okay, I'll say it...she has brain damage! This part does in fact reek of the Kennedy curse, in the form of a Rosemary stand-in. Patty, in a full rage, wants Blair and Terry out of the house, but they leave only after Terry lets loose a little bile in Richard's direction. He's always liked Richard, but now he hates him as much as he hates Patty. Before leaving, Terry demands some alone with Ann to tell her he's leaving, not that she comprehends. Richard and Patty take Ann to the best specialists in Europe, but no one can help. Perry tries to gloss over it by noting Patty gets to spend time alone with Richard as she's always wanted.
Harvey sums up a few plots for us, just because they have been dangling: Richard's siblings are still alive and Kathleen even writes twice a month, though Harvey hides the letters. And Harvey's own beloved Beverly has died.
Perry and Jane get married by a Justice of the Peace and head right to bed while the Justice's wife realizes who Perry is and formulates a plan in her mind due to Richard's wealth.
London, 1897. Cantankerous Patty and Richard are at a hotel, where Patty annoys the staff, but Richard is only excited that Robert Vaughn has been appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James, which means the marriage between Perry and his daughter will be even more important. Oh, and then there's a letter in the same packet from the Justice of the Peace.
Neither father nor son brings up the marriage when Perry arrives in London. Instead, Richard takes Perry to meet the men who rule the world, telling him it may be the most important night of his life.
Perry goes to the meeting and it's downright bizarre. It literally is a collection of accents, men who run the world, or at least they think they do. If we thought Richard was getting too evil, we now have TRUE evil to make him look a little better (though he's one of them, he says he doesn't like them). Just as Perry is about to tell Richard he is married to Jane, when Richard tells him of his plans, $20 million the day he marries Robert Vaughn's daughter. If he does not marry the girl, he's cut out of dad's will and dad's life. Perry chickens out and doesn't tell him (although he already knows).
Back in NYC, and back in bed, because that's where they exist, Perry admits he didn't tell his father about Jane, but that he will stay married to her and his father can make one of his brothers President. The world then gets in the way when the Spanish-American War breaks out and Perry realizes the men in London made it happen.
When Richard returns to Philadelphia, he takes his anger at the marriage out on Harvey, whom he accuses of disloyalty and everything thing else he can think of. An impassioned speech of eternal devotion brings Richard back down to earth and he forgives Harvey. Besides, he has a plan already to "destroy" the marriage.
Perry and brother Doug argue about what the war means right before a montage of Teddy Roosevelt and Bill McKinley disagree about what to do with the war. Roosevelt wins out and McKinley declares war. Doug even joins Teddy's Rough Riders. Somehow the only solution to bring him back is for Perry to go after him. I could think of about 15 reasons right now that might work better, but so be the vagaries of plot.
Have you been missing Patty Duke? She's losing it, sort of mad, sort of drunk, sort of guilty at Ann's side. Ann is still in the same medical state, and Patty tells her a fairy tale that ends with self-recrimination. They aren't part of the plot much anymore, but Patty is still acting up a storm.
Two different wars are juxtaposed in quick alternating scenes. The first is the war in Cuba, with Perry hunting down his brother. The other is Richard going to John Houseman's office to discuss their children. John his aides he expects to melt Richard's gruff exterior, but if not, he will ring his bell and they will take him forcibly. Uh huh, two old men against Richard. Richard has the upper hand because he knows of the marriage. Judge John is aghast when he finds out Richard has destroyed all records of the marriage, having paid off the Justice of the Peace and the County Clerk. Furthermore, he's forged notes and had a handwriting expert pen them in Perry and Jane's handwriting ending the marriage. To sweeten the pot and get John to go along with it, he'll pay John $10K a month.
In Cuba, Perry looks very sexy in a shirt ripped in all the places to show off his body to maximum effect as he is forced to take up a gun and look for Doug. It takes a while, but he finds his brother, mortally wounded so badly that Perry has to lie to him and tell him the Rough Riders have won the battle, which is far from the truth. Watch Perry as he listens to Doug's patriotic speech about fighting for one's country. He looks like he's going to laugh the whole time. It is over-written to say the least, the kind that makes you want to rush to your closet and dig out that flag you've been saving for the front lawn. Doug dies right after giving the speech, cradled in his brothers arms.
When Richard goes to tell Patty about Doug, she is asleep in bed, clutching a glass. He happily fills it for her because she's going to need it. Before he can tell her about Doug, she admits to having told Ann about Terry (causing her to race out and get herself injured), but Richard forgives that quickly in order to deliver the really bad news. Patty flies into a rage and then crouches on the ground, wide-eyed, talking of a curse on her family: father, daughter, son...at least for now. Patty and Ann are packed off to a nut house and Perry brings back Doug's body for burial.
Perry dashes over to find Jane, but only finds the note his father has planted. It's a doozie, saying she had to leave him and is off to travel with her father. Perry goes on a binge that ends him up in Chicago where a local thief and hooker snatch his wallet, but realize he's the nephew of labor leader Uncle David. So, they call him and David tries to talk sense into his nephew. Perry goes home, admitting defeat to his father. He will marry Robert Vaughn's daughter, collect the $20 million and become President.
It's 1910 and Richard wants Perry to be President in 1912. He's been a dithering Congressman, so Richard wants the governor, whom he pays, to appoint Perry a senator (in the days before senators were directly elected). Marriage to Cynthia has produced some heirs, so everyone has done their duties. Perry does everything asked of him by the men in power, bending their way to kill bills in Congress he believes in.
Then there is brother Cliff DeYoung, up to now ignored. He's a wastrel, flying planes and thinking of selling them to armies should a war come. He even has a movie star girlfriend and a movie studio. She's a ditz. "I cried at my own acting," she proudly says. "So did I," he says sarcastically.
Sorry to end Cliff's mirth, but Richard has had a heart attack. Not expected to live, he's defying the odds and even firing doctors. The dream of Perry being President is not dying with Richard. Cliff is his campaign manager and they bring all their cronies together to buy votes across the country. "And send me the bill," Perry says. Handsome and excitable, Perry is an ideal candidate, with his father reading every paper praising his son from his bed. Not everyone is happy, though. Protestant preachers and the KKK aren't happy. Hell, the KKK does their whole cross burning thing on Richard's lawn.
The campaign goes very well. It has some bumps, some people within his own party who don't like him, but the juggernaut rolls on. And then Jane Seymour calls out of nowhere. Perry dashes off to see her and they fall into each other's arms (and onto the floor) the minute she opens the door. On his deathbed, her father admitted all he had done. They confess eternal love to each other, but Cliff has to find a way to figure this all out.
Blair Brown is dying. She and Richard have stayed apart ever since Ann's accident, but since she is dying, maybe it's time. Harvey is dispatched to see how she is. Other than some bad putty wrinkles and make-up, she looks pretty damn good! The doctor has given her a sedative, so she has to sleep, but she invites Harvey back in a week to "talk all day." Uh oh, don't put timing on it, because that makes it a sure thing she'll be gone in a week. On his way out, Harvey finds a letter that Blair has written but never intended to send, one last love letter. Indeed, Blair croaks four hours after Harvey left.
As Cliff runs around buying votes for Perry, Harvey tells Richard he wants to retire. "Was it something I did...or didn't do?" Richard asks of his one true friend, the only person he really trusts. As a parting gift, he gives Richard his sister's letters that Richard thought were destroyed. Harvey intends to travel the world and be back in time to vote for Perry.
Uh oh. The men in power have decided they want Woodrow Wilson to be President, with Perry as Vice President, still promising to make him President, but not until 1920. The men have decided a war is necessary in the coming years and Wilson is the best man to handle it. This is all rather a nasty plot twist to characters we have come to love, undermining the dream Richard has had for so many years, as good or bad as he may be.
Uncle David gets a surprise when Richard shows up at his house. His wife decides to tell him the truth about how Richard saved him all those years ago, so he agrees to see Richard. This is the first time Richard has appeared timid and tentative, even afraid. There is some power missing from the scene because David was never given a fully developed characterization. Anyway, the reason he's there is to ask his brother's help in winning the election for his son, having to fight against the men in power. This whole scene serves to redeem Richard's character one last time. No longer a member of the evil boy's club, he wants to what he's always wanted now based on merit. Richard tells Perry the men have dropped him and Perry is thrilled, because he has wanted to smash them. Unfortunately, Robert Vaughn has been listening to the whole conversation on a phone extension, so things are going to end badly.
Okay, with only moments to go in the movie, we get a plot twist we did not expect and one that is, frankly, damn annoying. The Titanic sinks with Harvey on it. Come on, is that REALLY necessary? Fine, I understand that Harvey needs to pay for his sins just as much as anyone, but on the Titanic? That's historical fiction at its dumbest.
I hate to bring this up, folks, but with Perry running as an idealist, suddenly on the opposite side of the men in power, he has to die. A story like this demands it. During a campaign stop, he is shot and dies, but at least in Jane's arms. Where else is Richard to turn but to Patty, calling herself "confused," but completely bonkers. She's been paying for her sins for way too long. Richard is just starting. He even invites Jane to mourn with him at the funeral. She tells Richard how much Perry loved him and he starts to cry, not having really understood it all these years. The funeral is an odd assortment: Richard, his nun sister, both of Perry's wives and even Robert Vaughn, who had him killed.
Humbled and broken (we assume that Cliff dies in an airplane accident), Richard sits in a chair in his great mansion, having lost everyone and everything that should have mattered to him as he spend his life racing for power and money.
If the last episode of the miniseries is a bit too sentimental, a completely change of tone from the rest, it's to be expected. People do have to pay for the things they want most, and in this case, it's not payment in money, but in lives. That's a lofty idea, one we might not have expected television to tackle in the 1970s. But here it is and it's splendid.
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