In the period being discussed, roughly 1975-1995, the American miniseries took on some enormous topics, historical pageants and outrageous stories. But, not everything deserved a multi-episode miniseries. Some movies only needed one night and one sitting. They are what we will call "Essential Telemovies." I've used two previously ("The Woman He Love" to show off Jane Seymour and "Bella Mafia" to show off how trashy and gleeful American television could get), but there are a bunch I would like to slip into the Miniseries Marathon because they play and behave like miniseries. In fact, their shorter length probably made them classics, and some might have been completely forgotten up against miniseries powerhouses.
Few telemovies are as famous as "The Day After." What happens after the nuclear bombs go off? This movie was endlessly discussed before it aired, it was presented very uniquely and ABC followed it with a round-table panel about nuclear war. Not every child of the 80s will remember it, but my school actually recommended that parents sit down with their children and watch (and it was taught to me again in college in the early 90s as a demonstration of the world's manic obsession with nuclear war in the early 80s). There were guides to the movie. You couldn't miss the hype. Ultimately, the excitement bagged 100 million viewers! Roughly half the country watched "The Day After" on one night in November 1983. I don't know whether or not anyone learned anything profound and maybe it was just entertainment, but it's impossible to ignore it as a watershed of American television in this time period.
Of course, the world-at-large helped stir up controversy on a daily basis. Hawkish Ronald Reagan was busy denouncing the Soviet Union as "the Evil Empire" and every gunshot in every foreign country seemed to have US versus USSR meaning behind it. This was before Gorbachev and his reforms; this was the era of the cranky old Soviets leaders, whose names are barely remembered in the West as they came and went so quickly. Hardliners ruled the world, from Reagan and Thatcher and their NATO allies to the scowls of their opposites in graying Communist Warsaw Pact members (whose names were never forced on us because we were taught there was no news from behind the Iron Curtain--how many Soviet leaders came between 1982 and 1985? Didn't it seem like they were constantly dying and being replaced?).
Most schools had given up on air raid drills where kids crouched under their desks, but the Emergency Broadcast System still ran those piercing tests always at the most inconvenient moments of family television time (that was just the point, but we just grumbled). The threat of nuclear war was still strong, not Cuban Missile Crisis strong, but strong enough that Reagan ordered the largest build-up of military might the world had ever seen. We were constantly being told that there were enough nuclear missiles to blow up the world many times over. The world was still scared that someone would press that button.
And though the thought of nuclear fallout was not new, there had never been one that showed what happened after the bombs went off. No one could know We had to extrapolate from what atomic bombs did to Japan and what tests showed. Three Mile Island had leaked, but Chernobyl had not. Would the world be wiped out? Would we all die slow horrible deaths from cancer? Were there underground bunkers build just for the notables?
"The Day After" aimed to answer those questions, and still wanted to entertain. This was fiction, but just barely. Nearly 30 years later, nuclear war seems almost trite. What the hell were we so worried about? Why would we start a war that would kill us all? But, that's history for you. "The Day After" certainly had the feel of a miniseries (and it was originally filmed as a two-nighter, edited down by nervous network executives to fit into just one night), it has all the hallmarks of one, but it's abbreviated run-time makes it almost scarier, more immediate. In under 2.5 hours, we would see nuclear devastation. That certainly seemed far more relevant than yet another celebration of American power masquerading as history (the colossal "Winds of War") or the giddy pleasures of Sidney Sheldon ("Rage of Angels"). "The Day After" was now. Any day could be the day after.
Paranoia seems absolutely normal to the military when the film begins. On a base in Omaha, Nebraska of all places, there is a briefing that says where all important US leaders are and then where any suspicious nuclear warhead movement might be. "Coffee, General?" he's asked after buckling himself in and sitting down after the briefing. Nothing out of the ordinary today.
I would like to also propose the movie is meant to be incredibly entertaining in a stupid way, like the disaster movies of the 70s. Big stars, big natural occurrence (usually), so many people will die if not for the vacationing vet will be able to save everyone. "Towering Inferno," all four "Airport" movies, and on and on. This actually does follow similar patterns while also being miniseries-like, all that for the people who did not want to be bothered with the main point. However, those had happy endings.
Then we get to Kansas. There is a tuneful Copeland-esque score (actually adapted from Virgil Thompson), overhead shots of farms and corn silos and peaceful suburbia, blond kids in music class, cowboys in stockyards, milk production and baseball fields. In other words, pure Americana. We've only missed ma in a gingham dress. Life is idyllic. Nothing is wrong in Kansas, except for a news report about more Soviet build-ups along Eastern European rivers, though no one is paying attention to that.
In case you missed that this is strictly the American side of things, good old Jason Robards, as squeaky clean as you can get, is on board as a doctor at a Kansas City hospital. He's a gosh darn trustworthy as President Reagan! He teaches a class and then takes a fine upstanding Asian resident on his rounds, where a perky black man tells him he just had a hospital meal of "turkey, yams, beans...nurse says she's getting me some ice cream, but she didn't come back." "What flavor you like best?" Dr. Jason asks. Yup, we get it. Hokum is here and it's not leaving. This is Middle America, everything worth saving about this great land of ours. Forget the quirky liberals, celebrities and politicians on the coasts, Dr. Jason Robards and his grinning hospital patients are what we're fighting for.
Even soldiers are smiling. A nice cultural mix (a white guy who "falls in love every weekend," a guy who reads a newspaper, a redneck and a black guy) is aboard a helicopter, a happy little microcosm, not paying attention the newspaper reader's warning that there might be trouble somewhere. Sure, there are nuclear warheads in this Eden, but no one is thinking about them. Heck, Dr. Jason's daughter is moving to Boston and even the folks who live next to the nuclear base simply wave when soldiers come and go. News is simply background noise.
When Jason comes home with flowers, an idea to go to the drive-in and "neck" with his wife Georgann Johnson, she knows something is up. Both are upset over their daughter's impending move. Just as Georgann is getting started on a rant, there is a "special report" signal on the TV. "East Germany sealed off the borders to West Berlin," the anchor reads. This is worrisome. "I just want to go upstairs and get into bed," Georgann tells Jason, "with you."
Equally unconcerned about the world around them is the family of John Cullum. Daughter Lori Lethin, days from marrying Jeff East, who wants some before the wedding, dashes upstairs in curlers to get her diaphragm, which has been snatched by sister Ellen Anthony, all while an annoying brother badly plays a clarinet. John is thoroughly annoyed by the noise interrupting his television viewing, though he does concentrate when another special report tells of more menace from the Soviets. We hear that if they don't back down by a certain hour, it will be "regarded as an act of war." The President has put the military on a "stage two alert." Mom Bibi Besch has to ref the fight between the sisters, ending the conversation with a demand that one daughter come "help with the casserole." Only John pays attention.
"God, it's 1962 all over again," Georgann says in bed. Now we've officially hit a panic button. In 1983, bringing up the Cuban Missile Crisis was a sure way to rattle the masses. She and Jason rehash the incident, but only in their own context. "I swear we made [their daughter] that night," Georgann remembers fondly. "It's not gonna happen," she chirps. "People are crazy, but not that crazy," Jason says and they go on to joke about friends that have canceled a vacation. "What if it does happen? What do we do?" she wonders at the very end of the scene.
John is puzzled, but the American flag on his lawn waving as his daughter sneaks out with her boyfriend on his motorcycle seems to placate him for the time being.
Not pleased by the turn of events is William Allen Young's wife (this was before he landed in "Sins," mind you). He's an airman who has his leave schedule disrupted. He tries to assuage her that "we just have to check things twice instead of once," but they are supposed to go to her mother's with their son. She immediately regrets her tantrum, so he goes into one. It starts off happy enough, since he'll be done with his service in "five and a half months," but he's soon snapping, "it's an alert...it's strictly by the book." Yes, we know, they fight out of fear.
The next morning, things seem very average. John and his brood (except possibly slutty Lori, who was out all night) slop the pigs, Jason kisses his wife and goes to work. Lori is getting married the next day and they are uneasy about change, but sassy sister Ellen listens in before being shooed away. "The whole world is holding its breath waiting to hear what you two are talking about," she yells at John and Lori. If only, Ellen. If only.
At the hospital, Jason and a fellow doctor wonder what will become of the world. Rumors are that Moscow has been evacuated. "Where does one go from Kansas City, the Yukon?" Jason is asked. He has no answer. No answer.
In Lawrence, Kansas, Nurse JoBeth Williams wonders who is in charge of the hospital in case an evacuation is needed. She can only find Dr. Calvin Jung, who declares, "I'm only a Resident with 150 bodies to examine, most of them unfortunately male!" He's actually examining potential military recruits, including a very young Steve Guttenberg. JoBeth goes back to work, taking Amy Madigan to maternity since she's about to have a baby. Jeff and Steve hear on campus that "the Soviets have just invaded West Germany." How will NATO respond? One student is a cynic, saying nothing will happen. "Did we help the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Afghans or the Poles? We're not going to nuke the Russians to save the Germans. I mean, if you were talking oil in Saudi Arabia, then I'd be real worried," she groans, basically summing up every one's understanding of US foreign policy throughout most of the last decade.
Some people are truly paying attention now, but no one knows quite what to do. Steve decides to visit his family in Joplin and can't get a ride with anyone, and there are streams of cars evacuating the town. His tight jeans and fit body do the trick and a man in a truck takes him, though the gun hanging over his head worries Steve a bit. Jeff goes to the barber to get his pre-wedding cut, and there John Lithgow is hogging the conversation, noting that the President's speech that night won't say much. "He'll tell us what we want to hear, keep a low sweat stain," John says, before wondering aloud just how much damage could be done. "Well, maybe they'll contain it. After all, I've still got symphony tickets for tonight," he says, as a way of placating the others. Jeff is the dopey one, still thinking Kansas is safe. "There is no 'nowhere' anymore," John schools him, especially since they are so near a military base.
Jason is in the middle of the traffic exodus when the emergency broadcast signal comes on. Frankly, in the case of an emergency, I never expected to hear a really bored young woman giving instructions, but go figure, that's just what happens. She tells everyone to go to a shelter, "while there is no immediate danger to the Kansas City area." John Cullum makes plans to fill up water jugs for the cellar and Jason waits in an interminable line for a pay phone before giving up and driving his Volvo back onto the highway. The market is a melee, with people fighting for every available item. Jeff is just trying to buy orange juice when the man in front of him announces the Russians have bombed a US ship in the Persian Gulf, but "we bombed 'em back."
Here's the con of the movie: we've already seen 45 minutes of the movie and it's just now that the military is leaping to action, juxtaposing their frantic efforts with the rather quiet planning or downright indifference around them. That's a lot of time spent on character development. Now, everything is important, but this movie only runs 2 hours and 8 minutes. Anyway, in one house, only a young boy knows the military has been deployed because his farmer father has taken mom upstairs for a quickie before lunch. John Cullum wants his wife to get everyone the basement, but Bibi whines, "can't you see how much I have to do?" "Don't you know there's almost a national emergency out there?" he asks. "It's just going to have to go on without me because your daughter is getting married and I've got 67 mouths to feed!" Ellen wonders, "there's not going to be a war, is there?"
Indeed, there is, Ellen. Indeed, there is. The General is asked for the all-important keys and the military base is a beehive of activity. But everywhere else is eerily quiet. Steve is dropped off by the bear truck driver (doing everything but waving the red hanky in his right pocket, if you know what I mean), and as he walks along the road, he sees only animals and hears nothing. Inside the base, the keys are inserted and then turned. Stock footage of a rocket going into the air is used, along with special effects that show the town rocking, the horse bucking and the missile going up and away from the hole it just left among the quiet farms. More missiles follow as everyone stops to watch them streaming up into the sky.
John Cullum tries to get his brood into the basement, but Bibi insists on making the beds until he forces her down the stairs and she howls with realization, a big King Lear-like moment. William and his mates arrive at the base too late for the detonation. No one knows who fired first, but one of them knows it doesn't matter. "Either way, we're going to get hit," he announces. They argue about what to do. William says, "the war is over" and wants to get home to his family, but others want to follow protocol. And others want to go underground into the supposedly safe bunkers. William does not go into the bunker with the rest. He's taking his chances racing back to his family.
When everyone is confused as to what the missiles are, John Lithgow knows. "They are on their way to Russia. They take about 30 minutes to reach their target," he warns everyone.
Once the air raid sounds go off, Kansas City goes into panic. Bells are going off everywhere, cars crashing, people running. It has the feel of a 70s disaster flick, with the leads constantly intersecting each other, but then a mushroom cloud overs the city. Everything stops. Clocks, cars, electricity. William runs from his car, but Jason is smart enough to stay down in his as a giant mushroom cloud and furious special effects dominate the next few minutes. Yes, a TV movie with special effects. Because no one knew exactly what would happen, they kind of assumed, so we see people being radiated down to just their bones, vaporized instantly. Stock footage of burning buildings and such help, but really it's the special effects of fire and wind that are most dazzling. For a few minutes, as we cross the halfway point of the movie, it's Armageddon. It's permanent death and destruction to any living organism. There are, of course, some inconsistencies. The lead characters never seem to be affected, no matter how close they got to anything.
In John Cullum's basement, the family members are safe from the fires and winds above them, though what they will encounter when they inevitably have to leave, no on can say. John tells his family they will have to relearn a great deal once things are sorted. "I don't know much about radiation," John says. "What's radiation?" asks Ellen. That's an important dialogue. The government, the military, they gave the American people (and one can assume the Soviets did the same), only the most basic information. So, no one really knew for sure that radiation can burn a person, what kind of cancers will arise, genetic deformities. The military people are somewhere else, so it's just going to be the salt-of-the-earth people left to figure it out. Trial and error won't be easy, but there will be survivors.
Dr. Jason feels safe enough to wander through the campus, which is covered in ash and plucky students under John Lithgow are trying to figure out what works with the planet now under a completely new law of physics. Jason Robards, who was closest to the explosion, tries to take charge of the fear and lack of knowledge, but it's too much to harness.
Steve Guttenberg is caught looking for food at John Cullum's house, but John invites him in. There will no doubt be a lot of that in the coming period, but this time it ended in a friendly way.
At the hospital, Jason and his team are forced to improvise since there is no electricity. Flashlights guide surgeries. Jason worries that they may be "the only hospital within 100 mile radius." "Too late to be a dentist," cracks Nurse JoBeth, who never met a line she couldn't deliver without heavy acid. Jason pauses to wonder what the rest of the US cities look like now.
For information's sake (and it may be true), Jason and JoBeth see a few roaches and Jason remarks that they are "impervious to radiation." "Man's legacy," he calls them, which is a bit strange because men didn't create roaches!
Frustrated at being cooped up inside the basement for five days (including the one that would have been her wedding day, Lori starts to go stir crazy. "It's only been five days and I can't remember what [Jeff] looks like!" This is just the beginning of her harangue, and it ends with her running out of the house. Dead animals and a world covered in horrid soot seem like "a beautiful day" to her, but Steve, who has generously offered to follow her as a favor to the family for letting him stay, tells her that "it only looks that way...you can't see it, you can't feel it, and you can't taste it, but it's here, right now, all around us. It's going through you like an x-ray, right into your cells! What do you think killed all these animals?" he asks, trying to get her to understand just what has happened. He is able to chase her back inside, where she finds her wedding dress.
William is still trying to get home, wherever that may be, having to join the long lines of people wandering around the streets trying to figure out where to go and what to do. They resemble an army of the dead already.
Inside the hospital, which has ballooned into every nearby building, the situation is fast becoming untenable. "Bolt the doors!" Jason tells all of the complaining underlings who rattle off the problems. He wants to treat the sick, but medications are running low, people are stealing and rats are in danger of spreading cholera. In the morgue, Dr. Calvin is asked if he's heard about the "firing squads" shooting people who commit crimes. "Without a trial? That's crazy! Go back to work," he orders!
The movie's most important exchange comes between Jason and Amy Madigan, who feels her baby has not arrived yet because "if you had a choice, would you want to be born into a world like this?" Amy lays out the political arguments, the social realities and the grimness of possibility all in a concise speech that hammers in nearly everything the movie wants to say, in a simple and concise way. "I can't argue with you," Jason replies. "Argue with me, give me a reason, tell me about hope, tell me why you work so hard in here," she begs, asking for a dialogue on why things like "hope" would still possibly matter, and he has no argument for her.
As William wanders from camp to camp with an odd little hermit he's met, Lori keeps cracking, this time thinking Jeff is in the bunker with them and planting a big kiss on him, which takes Steve by surprise since it's really him she's kissing. John Cullum starts rattling off the farm losses and Bibi says they are "lucky to be alive." "We'll see how lucky that is," he groans.
The radiation count outside goes down to levels that are considered "safe" by the doctors, so people start leaving their hovels, bells ring to announce it. That doesn't mean it doesn't choke the lungs or hurt the eyes. John Cullum goes out to survey his farm (the first thing he sees being the American flag, which has survived). He and his family go and attend a church service in a bombed out church, where the minister can barely get the words out. The family has to leave when Erin starts to bleed. Their son is also blind, so Steve volunteers to take them to Lawrence to the hospital, but promises to bring them back. Using one of the surviving horses, Steve hitches up a carriage and off they go. The blind son ask, "what do you see?" "The usual stuff," Steve says, listing a few innocuous items, but none of the dead bodies.
On the radio, the President says that "there is a cease fire" and that the Soviets have "sustained damage which is equally catastrophic." The speech is downright bizarre. It starts off somewhat comforting, but quickly escalates into gloating that "there has been no surrender, no retreat." What the hell does any of that mean under the horrible conditions into which the idiocies of nuclear war have no plunged the world. There is nothing calming about what he says, and people barely listen as they go about doing what they need to survive. "That's it, that's all he's going to say?" a student asks. He wants details of the war from John Lithgow but another student answers correctly. "What difference does it make?" John gets philosophical, quoting Einstein in saying, "he didn't know how they would fight World War III, but he knew how they would fight World War IV, with sticks and stones."
Jason finally collapses and wakes up as merely one of hundreds of patients. JoBeth is there when he wakes up, but she has to quickly run over to William, who has lost his hair and is covered with huge slabs of infected skin. His mind is barely holding on. Outside the hospital, mass graves are being readied.
But, just when it seems people might be organizing themselves a little bit, they realize it's only a facade. John Cullum attends a meeting of other farmers where they are instructed on how to plant crops and deal with soil and such, but no one understands the government mandates and none of it makes practical sense. Forlorn, John goes home to his house to find a bunch of squatters cooking animals over a fire. He tries to talk to them, but one shoots him dead. At the hospital, Jason is well enough to get up, only to find that JoBeth has died. Unwell enough to work, and looking more sickly by the hour, Jason leaves Calvin in charge and goes to find his home, seeing all of the looting, death, firing squads and horror that he's only heard about at the hospital. Calvin's special patient had been John Cullum's blind son, but he can't cure him, so Steve takes him home. Steve himself is beginning to show serious signs of decay and he wanders into his school gymnasium, which is filled with bodies, but manages to find Ellen.
With blood-curdling screams, Amy goes into labor. The rest of the patients just stare, unmoved. The baby cries, alive.
Jason makes it back to Kansas City, which is just a pile of rubble. Having finally cracked himself, he sees a few people at what used to be the site of his home and yells, "get out of my house!" As Jason cumbles to the ground, the stranger comes to hold him. Between the baby and the togetherness, there are signs of civilization.
But the movie ends with a title card: "The catastrophic events you have just witnessed are, in all likelihood, less severe than the destruction that would actually occur in the event of a full nuclear strike against the United States. It is hoped that the images of this film will inspire the nations of this earth, their peoples and leaders, to find the means to avert that day."
There we have it, American television when it had the power to think. A decade later, the Soviet Union was gone and world leaders were dispensing with nuclear power (not that it ceased to exist). The threat of a nuclear war became distant, almost laughable. The threat of it had been enough to keep the world balanced for 40 years. When it was no longer a real possibility, we would find warmongers using far less technologically advanced methods to keep the world in a permanent state of fear.
Can you imagine anything like "The Day After" on television by 1993? 2003? 2013? Absolutely not. No one would even attempt it, and if they did, it would be telling a far different story. It would be about the stars in it, it would be about thrilling special effects, and it would end happily. There is no happy ending to "The Day After." That's exactly the point of it. "The Day After" actually mattered. It made people think.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Queenie (1987)
Based on Michael Korda's novel, "Queenie" takes the kernel of a family member's story and fictionalizes it, though there is absolutely no reason to confuse "Queenie" with "Queen," already discussed in these pages. Maybe half-Indian/maybe not actress Merle Oberon (a relative of Korda's and the flimsy basis of the story) certainly went through nothing compared to Alex Haley's family members. Moreover, in presentation, "Queen" is serious and touching, where "Queenie" is merely witless and bland. Confusion eradicated, let's move on.
Called "Queen" by her nasty schoolmates, young Kate Emma Davies is first encountered behind the bars of an exclusive British girls school in Calcutta, 1931 (not to be confused with Merle Oberon, who was from what was then Bombay--phew, now we're fully fictionalized). One of the girls wants her locket. Spunky Kate tells her, "you'll have to rip if off my dead body!" Phew, now we have full character development.
Kate goes walking through the tiny streets of the city to meet with a friend, though the police tell her to go "back to the English quarter...don't you know your bite?" "This is my bite," she scoffs. In what has to be one of the last examples of insensitive racial casting, Kate's mother is played by Claire Bloom, donning heavily darkened make-up and a passingly developed accent, to play Indian. Kate complains that the girls at school, "know I'm part black," and refuses to return. Claire comforts her daughter with wishful thinking that Kate's father in England will someday call for them. Just as bad is Claire's brother, Leigh Lawson, who does the obligatory complaining about the British Raj, though Claire keeps smiling and saying, "England is her heritage and she shall have it."
Things at school just get worse. There's a tussle in the gym where Kate's enemy gets the locket and then teacher Geoffrey Rose, who looks and sounds like he's been mothballed in the villain closet in central casting for decades asking her "what doors are open to an Anglo-Indian woman? Not many! Your coloring allows you to pass for white." "It's not lucky, it's a curse," she responds. However, he then changes tactics and offers to make her "sound like a lady," because he hears traces of an Indian accent of her which will keep her from polite society. "How much will it cost me?" "Please, don't insult me. You and I are friends. There is no cost," he replies, dripping with menace. When he puts his hand on her cheek, he's become a most lecherous Henry Higgins knock-off.
Kate goes home and her friend dolls her up like a fashionable Indian woman, but her pleasure in a sari lasts only a moment before Claire bursts into the room, rips off her clothes and bars the friend from ever returning. Uncle Leigh takes her to the movies where she announces she "wants to be in a film." Not a movie, star, just "to be in a place where it seems to happy." This may be the first time in cinematic history anyone has yearned to be an extra. On the way back, she tells him about her English lessons and he's thrilled, but there is violence on the streets. Why? "It seems to be the way of the world, man against man, religion against religion, caste against caste," he tells her. Oh, great, Indian politics. I suppose they are inevitable here, but "Queenie" is a soap opera miniseries, let's not get too heavy, folks.
Geoffrey gets closer to what he wants by telling Kate to take off her jacket so "I can see that diaphragm move." Ewwww. He makes her do breathing exercises to watch her chest heave and then finally grabs her for a kiss. He's not even finished before telling her, "it's our little secret, you must never tell...it's your black blood that makes you so exciting!" Kate has to lie to her mother, so proud she's claiming the English side of herself, saying that "the lessons are over." Kate demonstrates and Claire chirps, "you sound just like the Queen of England." That line should have come earlier, as maybe an explanation of how she got her nickname Queenie, but it's too late because she's been called that since the first scene. Talk about inept writing!
Uncle Leigh takes Kate to a British club (he plays in the orchestra), and she easily passes for white. The boys all want to dance with her and she beams with delight. However, also at the party is her nemesis, daughter of Joss Ackland and Sarah Miles. Do you need me to describe how the scene is going to play out? You do? Well, okay, if you insist. The nemesis spots Kate and her bitchy mother says, "well, well, well, I have to take my hat off to her. You'd never know she had a touch of the you-know-what." She slithers over to Joss, tells him and Joss grabs Kate, telling her to leave. The boy she's dancing with objects, so he snaps, "you know the rules, old boy, whites only." The kid is horrified, but Joss insists that she leave with proper decorum, not making a scene.
Back to embracing her Indian side, Kate goes with her grandmother to a Hindu temple where Granny gives us a quick religious lesson. There are beautiful girls swaying about. "They are now going to express their fate through dance...they ask for love and they give love," she tells Kate. Explanations of Hindu dichotomy follow, with the takeaway from Kate being that black and white will always be fighting within her. There are dire warnings from Granny about "crossroads" and whatnot.
Leaving the temple, the two walk straight into a gigantic melee of fights, fire, shooting, carnage that goes well into the evening. The rioters overturn a car at Claire's house and fire soon erupts. Kate and Granny get home just as Claire and Leigh are exiting, but marauders kill Granny just as Leigh is strangling another.
Five years pass and Queenie is now played by Mia Sara. She and her family live in reduced surroundings. Uncle Leigh is having a fling with Sarah Miles, who had been such a gorgon about his niece being part Indian. "I don't want you for your money," he assures her when she offers him some. They almost kiss when she drops him home after a night out, but think better of it since anyone could be watching. He tries to pass off the money to Claire as payment for being in the band, but she knows it's "from the lady in the car." Apparently, Sarah is not the only woman he has. "You should get paid for your services," Claire complains, noting that he spends more time with them than his family. "I'm not your husband, I'm not our father, I won't run away," he reassures her. Yikes, men have been a problem for Claire, huh?
The nemesis has grown up into Serena Gordon, still spending time with her parents at the club, dancing to old-fashioned music. She talks about her "new stud" with her father, and the conversation is a hoot. It seems a little odd that Joss asks about his nostrils, but after all, "that's the only way to tell about a good Arab." My word! That's racist even for villains. Oh, wait, they are talking about a horse. That's two minutes we'll not get back. Joss wonders why she's not more interested in young men, and Serena coos, "why would I want anyone else when I have you, Daddy?" and he can't meet her gaze. Awkward! Sarah manages to top even this when making a toast at the club so drunk she can barely put sentences together. Joss has to drag her off the stage as everyone gossips. She gets free of his clutches and runs to Leigh. Joss follows her and finds them kissing. Breathing like a dragon, he threatens, "to destroy" Leigh, but Sarah pipes in "there will be no charges" because his personal life is no cleaner than hers and she knows it, and also because it would open up her affair with an Indian man, a big deal for a society lady.
Mia pays Joss a visit, lying to the servants that his daughter is in trouble. Joss is not pleased, telling her "nobody has to engage in bad manners," when she admits the deception. What is he, the Emily Post of Calcutta? Actually, she's there to plead for her uncle's job back. Without the money for his job, "we can't survive" and Claire has had to go begging for food. He's not moved, telling her, "you don't know what it's like having your wife touched by a nigger." Right to the head of miniseries villainy he goes with that line. He then decides Mia can be his sex toy and he won't say anything about her uncle. He takes her to the bedroom, forces her to strip. After sex, she's on the floor and he tosses her dress to her, saying, "that'll do." "This is only the beginning," he adds, insisting she come back every day "until I've had satisfaction." Mia is horrified and starts screaming, so he chases her with a belt. She crouches by the staircase and when he raises his arm, he somehow (I really didn't understand just how) falls over, dropping to the floor. A vile character like this exists in nearly every American miniseries, but it usually does take longer for him to die as the heroine finds her way to success and fortune, then finding a way to humiliate him. But, Joss is done away with very quickly. I guess we should worry that multiple servants knew Mia was in the house at the time of his death. They even see her running out with his wallet. "Go find her, I'll kill her," Serena weeps when the servants tell her a purported friend of hers pushed him over (not true, but you saw that coming before he hit the ground).
With the police searching every house, Claire decides that Mia and Leigh must go to England (now that they are 200 pounds wealthier). "Make the most of yourself," Claire tells her daughter before Mia and Leigh rush out moments before the police arrive.
It takes them two months, but Leigh and Mia arrive in London, illegally. The cab driver thinks Mia is white, which will come in handy, but refuses to take them to a decent hotel because he assumes Uncle Leigh is daring to step out with a white woman. "They call us Coloreds here," Leigh tells Mia as he is refused every job for which he applies. That means it's up to Mia to support them because she passes. How very "Imitation of Life" of her (though she doesn't hide anything with as much purpose as Sarah Jane). She has no better luck and Leigh snaps that they are down to "nothing and change," though he has enough money to get hammered every night.
In desperation, Mia goes to a seedy out-of-the-way nightclub run by Topol. "I'm Jewish, came over from Hungary," he tells her, but she claims to be English. He's not convinced, saying she has a "very exotic quality." He has no waitress jobs, but he invites her to dance on the empty stage with him. Mia reveals a hidden talent, winding around like Isidora Duncan with no props. "When it feels right, just take off your top," Topol says. Yup, it's that kind of club. She refuses, but he sizes her up, seeing that she likes attention and being adored. "As a woman, you must know what kind of power you have over a man...you can have us men utterly utterly under your spell. It must be a wonderful feeling to have all those men watching you, to know you control them," he tells her and offers her a huge sum to work for him. She doesn't turn him down or disagree with anything he's said. She even gets Uncle Leigh a job in the band.
Compared to the old cows also performing in this house of burlesque, Mia is a revelation. We did "My Fair Lady" earlier, now we're onto "Gypsy." Topol gives her good hints before her first performance and promises their relationship is "business only." She thanks him for that, but he says not to as "it gives me the opportunity to exploit you without mercy." She smiles at that, about to come out of her shell thanks to this like minded man. Leigh had no idea that he signed up for burlesque and tells Mia, "you look like an English whore." She is furious, telling him, "I'm making the most of myself, don't you see?" "Suddenly, I don't know who you are," he is forced to say, in the script's worst cliche yet.
On her first try (take that Gypsy Rose Lee), she nails it, turning out to be an absolute natural and getting the men in the joint all excited, the only stripper to do so. Soon, the club is jammed with patrons, male and female, to watch Mia do her thing. Back in Calcutta, Serena is still demanding justice for her father's death.
Time passes and Mia is still packing them in. Photographer Gary Cady finds himself smitten with her from the first time he sees her act and tries to take her picture, but Topol stops him. Leigh begs Topol to fire Mia, but she's Topol's ace and besides, she loves what she's doing. Topol wants to know where Mia is really from. She says it doesn't make a difference. Ah, not so. "It could make a rather important difference between being a stripper until your body goes or something better," he notes and she admits being from Calcutta. He gives her Gary's card, as Gary needs a model. They decide she will be called "Dawn Avalon" from Tasmania. We're back to Gypsy Rose Lee, as Mia and Topol invent a backstory for her. "Do you think you can really pull this off?" he asks. "I'll do what I have to do, for my family, for myself," she insists.
The photo session does not go well. "I can't figure out what to do with you!" Gary bleats, though still bursting with passion for her. "I have better things to with my afternoons than spend them with mad artist types who don't even know their minds!" she roars. Finally, we're getting to the cheese of the piece! She's becoming a diva. He doesn't consider himself an artist as (get ready) as a photographer, "I only reveal what's already there." "The truth," Mia adds. Finally, in a casual moment, he figures out how to shoot her.
The romance starts off very sweetly. Gary takes her to see "Camille," an odd first date movie. She wants to know how to become a movie star (remember, earlier, she had simply wanted to be in the movies, not a star). She realizes she needs an agent and someone to manage her, so she asks Topol and with a fifty-fifty split, he agrees. Gary wants Mia to move in with him, asking her in a London rain that demands a big kiss and a declaration of love. Unfortunately, drunken Uncle Leigh is not pro Gary or pro romance. The reason why isn't quite what one would expect: "I love you. I want you more than anything else in the world." It's jealousy, which works itself into an attempted rape until she grabs a shattered bottle. Creepy, yes, but this is the first unique moment in "Queenie," so far a paint-by-numbers story with a cliche at every turn.
Mia rushes out of the apartment and Leigh follows, only to be hit by a car and killed. She lies in a letter to her mother, telling her "he died peacefully." Free of Leigh, she goes back to Gary, who is angry at her for disappearing from him life, but when she tells him Leigh was killed, he's back to being nice. Now she's ready to move in, and they can have a big sex scene, completely with special lighting, limbs flailing, bad kissing and the rest of the works.
Gary has a showing of his work, where snobs talk about the "existential" pictures and his use of "darks and lights," no pun intended. This gets them an invitation to one of the "famous weekends" of movie producer Kirk Douglas. Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom were slumming, of course, but Kirk Douglas does it with a capital S. He "collects people like he collects art," Gary says as Mia is astounded by all the people at the mansion.
Kirk's agent, Joel Grey (the only Oscar-winning slummer here, as Kirk would not get his honorary Oscar until almost a decade after "Queenie"), is worried because Kirk wants to make the leap from producer to director. "I've directed before," Kirk says, grabbing a statuette from the desk, but Joel reminds him the new picture is a big budget one and needs an experienced hand. "You're an artist, not a traffic cop," Joel carps, but Kirk wants "the challenge."
You want cloying? Here it is. Mia is mingling, managing to bump into everyone and backs up into Gary, who sends a punch bowl hurling at Kirk. "I don't believe we've met," he says with a good sense of humor to Mia and Gary. "I'm a dancer," she tells him. "Classical?" "No, Modern." Kirk seems to think she would be a good actress and offers her a screen test. "You're not ready!" Gary pouts, though Topol is on Mia's side. Apparently, Topol and Kirk worked together, "a long time ago, making silent films." Boy, that's convenient.
Before the screen tests of various ladies, Joel reminds Kirk how nervous he is, and how investors and studios want established actors, "preferably with a few wrinkles." Kirk says the leading man is nearing 50. Joel is shocked he's that old. "Time flies when you're overacting," Kirk comments. That's a good line, no matter what, but in a miniseries, particularly apt since overacting is usually the only kind of acting that goes on. He's way more interested in Mia than he should be. "Remember, all these people are here to make you look good," he says to calm her nerves. At a screen test?
Gary has come for moral support, and Kirk asks him for help redoing the lighting to maximize Mia's features. Now we're sprinted into territory claimed by "The Red Shoes." After one flubbed take, her second stab is perfection, well, in the plot at least. "That one's a star!" Kirk beams to Joel. Actually, the only thing that even bears a resemblance to movie stars of the 1930s is the make-up.
Kirk has to haggle with Topol for Mia's services and Topol is shrewd. The negotiations over a pool table are intense, with Topol taking full advantage of their "shared past" as peasants. Kirk asks, "how does she feel about needles"" to Topol's surprise. The movie is to be shot...wait for it...wait for it...in India! And one needs her shots to travel to India. Uh oh. Worlds are about to collide.
Topol doesn't know about the murder charge hanging over Mia's head, so he can't understand why she refuses to go back to India. He think it's just about the passing, so he tells her, "keep passing...if we don't tell anyone, no one will ever know, in India or anywhere else." She decides to tell Topol all of the truth, but he reminds her she's "Dawn Avalon" from Tasmania, with "papers forged by the greatest artists in Europe."
There's another problem: Gary won't go to India with her because he's been offered a photography assignment elsewhere. "I need you," she whines and of course he gives in.
Before everyone arrives, Serena has yet another scene demanding justice, though her mother advises her to drop the investigation because she's "not prepared" for the truth about "Dear Daddy."
A huge publicity machine is rolled out when the party touches down in India. Hollywood wasn't too keen on location filming in the 1930s, but this bit of trumped-up hokum was a specialty. Gigantic crowds are there to welcome everyone as the leads are sent up on elephants in front of the cheering masses. They get a more spectacular welcome than any visiting royal could imagine.
Joel breaks the news to Mia and Gary that they can't stay in the same room because "the Indian government is really fussy about these things." Uh huh. After the display we just saw, they couldn't also arrange for two people to sleep together? They can only manage big magic tricks?
It's two days before Claire sees a newspaper about Mia's presence in India. She calls Mia and they meet in a park. "Why have you come?" Mia asks Claire. "If anyone sees us together, finds out who I really am..." she worries, but unfortunately Claire has been evicted and has nowhere to go. Mia gives her the hotel key and insists she speak to no one. However, someone has been trailing Claire, hired by whoever it was who paid more rent on Claire's hovel to get her forced out.
Just as rehearsals are about to begin, Kirk has problems of his own. A major investor has pulled out and everyone insists Kirk cut down expenses. "I'll find the money," he insists, refusing to change the picture he wants to make.
It's uh oh time. Gary goes to deliver champagne to Mia's room where Mama Claire is hiding out fondling the fabrics of her daughter's dresses. Luckily, Claire stalls and Mia is only moments behind. Claire pretends to be Mia's maid, saving the day. Her acting is better than everyone else's, maybe she should be in the movie! We're back to "Imitation of Life." Mia wants to send Claire to England so her cover won't be blown and because she thinks it's "shameful" to treat her mother like a servant. Claire launches into a speech about "shame" done very nicely (if a little influenced by tranquilizers), but since Mia is not her acting equal, the scene doesn't quite have the crackle it should.
Mia and Kirk go horse riding, which Kirk claims "is done from the thighs." Mia's horse is spooked when none other than Serena rides by. Mia is hidden behind a mesh netting. "I say, you look familiar," Serena says, and Mia is too freaked to continue the riding lesson. She's convinced Serena recognized her. Claire's advice is "act like nobody can touch you and nobody can."
Indeed, Serena has recognized Mia and goes to the police. The man who has been running the investigation all these years doesn't believe her. Serena knows it's her, "living the high life and making fools of us all." The detective is too afraid to rile the English, saying that without proof, it will be embarrassing. Serena throws money at him and demands he do something about Mia.
At a party, Kirk suggests Gary should be in the movies and Mia tells him to "get him a job" but Gary doesn't want it and an argument ensues. Mia huffs off and Kirk chases after her. "Let's make up," he suggests when he catches up to her and plants a kiss on her lips. The unfortunately lighting makes him look like a wax figure old enough to be her grandfather (which I guess he is). She dashes away, but then gets drunk and sloppy. Gary insists he be the one to take her to her room and Kirk is jealous, instructing Joel to make sure the movie shooting in Egypt hires Gary.
The next day, Mia tries to apologize to hardened Gary, who informs her of the job offer in Egypt. She keeps telling Gary she has no interest in Kirk, so Gary proposes. "You're changing all the time. You're all shadows and smoke. I am finding it harder and harder to hold onto you," he exclaims when she doesn't accept.
Serena pounces on Mia, telling her she's left a photograph for her at the front desk of a girl she went to school with who looks just like her. "You could be twins," she gloats while Mia tries to remain calm. Badness piles up because Gary takes the job in Egypt. Has she thought to call Topol? Isn't it his job to protect her? Gary accuses her of not loving him, the reason she keeps some big secret from him. They promise to write each other every day, share a kiss and then he departs.
There is a gigantic battle to remind us of the political unrest in India...oh, wait, never mind, it's part of Kirk's movie, because why else would Mia be riding into the middle of it? When it's over, Mia goes to Joel hoping for mail, but he's hidden the letters from Gary to give to Kirk. He's been keeping both sides of the correspondence.
The police inspector arrives to question Mia about Serena's accusation. He has contacted her supposed hometown in Tasmania, where no one has ever heard of her. She whips out the forged papers, pictures and everything else. "Really, Inspector, your case is beginning to sound like one of my movies, my bad ones," Kirk jokes with him, defending his star. When the inspector leaves, Kirk turns on Mia, demanding to know "what the hell is going on?" He can tell he's lying. "How do you think I got out of Budapest? Same way you crawled out of Calcutta," he notes. She does not tell him the truth, but she does crumble into his arms for a passionate kiss.
The inspector did not believe the papers, but Serena has taken the case to the British authorities anyway, and he's relieved of his duties in the investigation.
Financially, Kirk is still in trouble. Joel has been sending his wife out to beg for money. Kirk is aghast that he would do something so tacky. "Why don't we hold a bake sale?" he cracks. But, Joel's wife has connections. After all, she is the daughter of a studio head (which makes her basically Irene Mayer Selznick). However, they need $4 million more in order to finish the movie and no one is putting it up. "You're not listening to me. Maybe if you took your mind off that little tart..." Joel advises, which gets him a back-handed slap across the face from tough Kirk. "You're the parody of a general, marching off to battle while everyone is telling you you're going to lose," Joel huffs. What the hell does that mean?
Claire is upset that Mia is sleeping with Kirk. "He's only using you," she notes, but Mia says she's doing the same with him because "he's the only one who can help us." In fact, she's told him the full truth, which worries her mother. Claire also was hoping that Mia would be in love with the man she's screwing, and Mia ruefully admits that she had love and lost it.
Bouncing into the movie three-quarters of the way is the always-dependable Martin Balsam, as a powerful Hollywood player. He has seen the rushes and agrees that Mia is definitely a star. But, it's down to business. Martin hasn't an arrangement in mind. He's already seen the financial books, "both sets," which horrifies Kirk. His demands for pumping money into the movie are gigantic: distribution, equal billing and half the profits. "Half the profits for one quarter of the investment?" Kirk asks. But, he agrees to it and then Martin asks for the last condition, final say in editing. Kirk scowls, "you're garbage!" "Does that mean we have a deal?" Martin asks. Kirk stomps off with Joel complaining and nearly collapses from a heart condition. "Make the deal...but no final cut!" he tells Joel.
The movie is done and Kirk and Mia are back in London. During a night walk along the Thames, he gives her the letters from Gary. He fully admits to stashing them. "You bastard," she cries. "I am," he agrees. He did it because "I don't want to lose you," he tells her. He goes one step further and says he sent her letters to Gary to him since "I knew I couldn't keep you forever." He's a bastard, but a noble one, apparently. She takes the car to get to Gary as quickly as possible and of course Kirk's chest pains mirror those on his face. He sits on a bench and is still there in the morning, dead. That makes for a nice newspaper picture.
Naturally, Mia is distraught (and Claire is still pretending to be her maid, even back in London), but Gary arrives, having received the letters. "Post office is slow," she jokes. "I've been married and widowed," she tells him, which is news to anyone watching. Did I miss a wedding scene? "We're both very different people now," Gary notes, a line expected since the beginning of the scene. The conversation gets even dumber when she turns on him, opining that he's come back for her money, angry that he wasn't there for her when she was afraid. That's unfair, but remember, he knows they are "different people," so he doesn't have a problem walking out on her.
All of this happened and Mia's first movie hasn't even opened yet, because after a series of flashbacks, Mia and Claire drive up to the premiere, mobbed by press and fans in grand old Hollywood style. Even Topol is there and we haven't seen him since he made the deal with Kirk. Joel tells the crowed they are about to see "the most lavish and probably the most expensive film ever made." There's a shout-out to Kirk and then he introduces Mia. When Mia steps to the microphone, she gives one of those bashful, quiet and very rehearsed speeches that actresses once gave at premieres. Okay, since this is a movie about a movie, it goes on longer than say Vivien Leigh or Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Fontaine might have deemed appropriate, but that's to be expected. Mia outs her mother, who hesitantly moves through the throngs to join her daughter on the steps of the theater. Nobody seems at all upset, which kind of negatives the whole plot, doesn't it? "I'm very proud of where I came from and who I am," Mia says. Gary starts clapping and soon everyone joins in. Boy, when Hollywood decides to absolve itself of its sins, it goes all out, doesn't it? Merle Oberon died in 1979, so she didn't get to see this vindication, but then again, no one really knows her exact story. This one is pure Hollywood fantasy tripe.
Called "Queen" by her nasty schoolmates, young Kate Emma Davies is first encountered behind the bars of an exclusive British girls school in Calcutta, 1931 (not to be confused with Merle Oberon, who was from what was then Bombay--phew, now we're fully fictionalized). One of the girls wants her locket. Spunky Kate tells her, "you'll have to rip if off my dead body!" Phew, now we have full character development.
Kate goes walking through the tiny streets of the city to meet with a friend, though the police tell her to go "back to the English quarter...don't you know your bite?" "This is my bite," she scoffs. In what has to be one of the last examples of insensitive racial casting, Kate's mother is played by Claire Bloom, donning heavily darkened make-up and a passingly developed accent, to play Indian. Kate complains that the girls at school, "know I'm part black," and refuses to return. Claire comforts her daughter with wishful thinking that Kate's father in England will someday call for them. Just as bad is Claire's brother, Leigh Lawson, who does the obligatory complaining about the British Raj, though Claire keeps smiling and saying, "England is her heritage and she shall have it."
Things at school just get worse. There's a tussle in the gym where Kate's enemy gets the locket and then teacher Geoffrey Rose, who looks and sounds like he's been mothballed in the villain closet in central casting for decades asking her "what doors are open to an Anglo-Indian woman? Not many! Your coloring allows you to pass for white." "It's not lucky, it's a curse," she responds. However, he then changes tactics and offers to make her "sound like a lady," because he hears traces of an Indian accent of her which will keep her from polite society. "How much will it cost me?" "Please, don't insult me. You and I are friends. There is no cost," he replies, dripping with menace. When he puts his hand on her cheek, he's become a most lecherous Henry Higgins knock-off.
Kate goes home and her friend dolls her up like a fashionable Indian woman, but her pleasure in a sari lasts only a moment before Claire bursts into the room, rips off her clothes and bars the friend from ever returning. Uncle Leigh takes her to the movies where she announces she "wants to be in a film." Not a movie, star, just "to be in a place where it seems to happy." This may be the first time in cinematic history anyone has yearned to be an extra. On the way back, she tells him about her English lessons and he's thrilled, but there is violence on the streets. Why? "It seems to be the way of the world, man against man, religion against religion, caste against caste," he tells her. Oh, great, Indian politics. I suppose they are inevitable here, but "Queenie" is a soap opera miniseries, let's not get too heavy, folks.
Geoffrey gets closer to what he wants by telling Kate to take off her jacket so "I can see that diaphragm move." Ewwww. He makes her do breathing exercises to watch her chest heave and then finally grabs her for a kiss. He's not even finished before telling her, "it's our little secret, you must never tell...it's your black blood that makes you so exciting!" Kate has to lie to her mother, so proud she's claiming the English side of herself, saying that "the lessons are over." Kate demonstrates and Claire chirps, "you sound just like the Queen of England." That line should have come earlier, as maybe an explanation of how she got her nickname Queenie, but it's too late because she's been called that since the first scene. Talk about inept writing!
Uncle Leigh takes Kate to a British club (he plays in the orchestra), and she easily passes for white. The boys all want to dance with her and she beams with delight. However, also at the party is her nemesis, daughter of Joss Ackland and Sarah Miles. Do you need me to describe how the scene is going to play out? You do? Well, okay, if you insist. The nemesis spots Kate and her bitchy mother says, "well, well, well, I have to take my hat off to her. You'd never know she had a touch of the you-know-what." She slithers over to Joss, tells him and Joss grabs Kate, telling her to leave. The boy she's dancing with objects, so he snaps, "you know the rules, old boy, whites only." The kid is horrified, but Joss insists that she leave with proper decorum, not making a scene.
Back to embracing her Indian side, Kate goes with her grandmother to a Hindu temple where Granny gives us a quick religious lesson. There are beautiful girls swaying about. "They are now going to express their fate through dance...they ask for love and they give love," she tells Kate. Explanations of Hindu dichotomy follow, with the takeaway from Kate being that black and white will always be fighting within her. There are dire warnings from Granny about "crossroads" and whatnot.
Leaving the temple, the two walk straight into a gigantic melee of fights, fire, shooting, carnage that goes well into the evening. The rioters overturn a car at Claire's house and fire soon erupts. Kate and Granny get home just as Claire and Leigh are exiting, but marauders kill Granny just as Leigh is strangling another.
Five years pass and Queenie is now played by Mia Sara. She and her family live in reduced surroundings. Uncle Leigh is having a fling with Sarah Miles, who had been such a gorgon about his niece being part Indian. "I don't want you for your money," he assures her when she offers him some. They almost kiss when she drops him home after a night out, but think better of it since anyone could be watching. He tries to pass off the money to Claire as payment for being in the band, but she knows it's "from the lady in the car." Apparently, Sarah is not the only woman he has. "You should get paid for your services," Claire complains, noting that he spends more time with them than his family. "I'm not your husband, I'm not our father, I won't run away," he reassures her. Yikes, men have been a problem for Claire, huh?
The nemesis has grown up into Serena Gordon, still spending time with her parents at the club, dancing to old-fashioned music. She talks about her "new stud" with her father, and the conversation is a hoot. It seems a little odd that Joss asks about his nostrils, but after all, "that's the only way to tell about a good Arab." My word! That's racist even for villains. Oh, wait, they are talking about a horse. That's two minutes we'll not get back. Joss wonders why she's not more interested in young men, and Serena coos, "why would I want anyone else when I have you, Daddy?" and he can't meet her gaze. Awkward! Sarah manages to top even this when making a toast at the club so drunk she can barely put sentences together. Joss has to drag her off the stage as everyone gossips. She gets free of his clutches and runs to Leigh. Joss follows her and finds them kissing. Breathing like a dragon, he threatens, "to destroy" Leigh, but Sarah pipes in "there will be no charges" because his personal life is no cleaner than hers and she knows it, and also because it would open up her affair with an Indian man, a big deal for a society lady.
Mia pays Joss a visit, lying to the servants that his daughter is in trouble. Joss is not pleased, telling her "nobody has to engage in bad manners," when she admits the deception. What is he, the Emily Post of Calcutta? Actually, she's there to plead for her uncle's job back. Without the money for his job, "we can't survive" and Claire has had to go begging for food. He's not moved, telling her, "you don't know what it's like having your wife touched by a nigger." Right to the head of miniseries villainy he goes with that line. He then decides Mia can be his sex toy and he won't say anything about her uncle. He takes her to the bedroom, forces her to strip. After sex, she's on the floor and he tosses her dress to her, saying, "that'll do." "This is only the beginning," he adds, insisting she come back every day "until I've had satisfaction." Mia is horrified and starts screaming, so he chases her with a belt. She crouches by the staircase and when he raises his arm, he somehow (I really didn't understand just how) falls over, dropping to the floor. A vile character like this exists in nearly every American miniseries, but it usually does take longer for him to die as the heroine finds her way to success and fortune, then finding a way to humiliate him. But, Joss is done away with very quickly. I guess we should worry that multiple servants knew Mia was in the house at the time of his death. They even see her running out with his wallet. "Go find her, I'll kill her," Serena weeps when the servants tell her a purported friend of hers pushed him over (not true, but you saw that coming before he hit the ground).
With the police searching every house, Claire decides that Mia and Leigh must go to England (now that they are 200 pounds wealthier). "Make the most of yourself," Claire tells her daughter before Mia and Leigh rush out moments before the police arrive.
It takes them two months, but Leigh and Mia arrive in London, illegally. The cab driver thinks Mia is white, which will come in handy, but refuses to take them to a decent hotel because he assumes Uncle Leigh is daring to step out with a white woman. "They call us Coloreds here," Leigh tells Mia as he is refused every job for which he applies. That means it's up to Mia to support them because she passes. How very "Imitation of Life" of her (though she doesn't hide anything with as much purpose as Sarah Jane). She has no better luck and Leigh snaps that they are down to "nothing and change," though he has enough money to get hammered every night.
In desperation, Mia goes to a seedy out-of-the-way nightclub run by Topol. "I'm Jewish, came over from Hungary," he tells her, but she claims to be English. He's not convinced, saying she has a "very exotic quality." He has no waitress jobs, but he invites her to dance on the empty stage with him. Mia reveals a hidden talent, winding around like Isidora Duncan with no props. "When it feels right, just take off your top," Topol says. Yup, it's that kind of club. She refuses, but he sizes her up, seeing that she likes attention and being adored. "As a woman, you must know what kind of power you have over a man...you can have us men utterly utterly under your spell. It must be a wonderful feeling to have all those men watching you, to know you control them," he tells her and offers her a huge sum to work for him. She doesn't turn him down or disagree with anything he's said. She even gets Uncle Leigh a job in the band.
Compared to the old cows also performing in this house of burlesque, Mia is a revelation. We did "My Fair Lady" earlier, now we're onto "Gypsy." Topol gives her good hints before her first performance and promises their relationship is "business only." She thanks him for that, but he says not to as "it gives me the opportunity to exploit you without mercy." She smiles at that, about to come out of her shell thanks to this like minded man. Leigh had no idea that he signed up for burlesque and tells Mia, "you look like an English whore." She is furious, telling him, "I'm making the most of myself, don't you see?" "Suddenly, I don't know who you are," he is forced to say, in the script's worst cliche yet.
On her first try (take that Gypsy Rose Lee), she nails it, turning out to be an absolute natural and getting the men in the joint all excited, the only stripper to do so. Soon, the club is jammed with patrons, male and female, to watch Mia do her thing. Back in Calcutta, Serena is still demanding justice for her father's death.
Time passes and Mia is still packing them in. Photographer Gary Cady finds himself smitten with her from the first time he sees her act and tries to take her picture, but Topol stops him. Leigh begs Topol to fire Mia, but she's Topol's ace and besides, she loves what she's doing. Topol wants to know where Mia is really from. She says it doesn't make a difference. Ah, not so. "It could make a rather important difference between being a stripper until your body goes or something better," he notes and she admits being from Calcutta. He gives her Gary's card, as Gary needs a model. They decide she will be called "Dawn Avalon" from Tasmania. We're back to Gypsy Rose Lee, as Mia and Topol invent a backstory for her. "Do you think you can really pull this off?" he asks. "I'll do what I have to do, for my family, for myself," she insists.
The photo session does not go well. "I can't figure out what to do with you!" Gary bleats, though still bursting with passion for her. "I have better things to with my afternoons than spend them with mad artist types who don't even know their minds!" she roars. Finally, we're getting to the cheese of the piece! She's becoming a diva. He doesn't consider himself an artist as (get ready) as a photographer, "I only reveal what's already there." "The truth," Mia adds. Finally, in a casual moment, he figures out how to shoot her.
The romance starts off very sweetly. Gary takes her to see "Camille," an odd first date movie. She wants to know how to become a movie star (remember, earlier, she had simply wanted to be in the movies, not a star). She realizes she needs an agent and someone to manage her, so she asks Topol and with a fifty-fifty split, he agrees. Gary wants Mia to move in with him, asking her in a London rain that demands a big kiss and a declaration of love. Unfortunately, drunken Uncle Leigh is not pro Gary or pro romance. The reason why isn't quite what one would expect: "I love you. I want you more than anything else in the world." It's jealousy, which works itself into an attempted rape until she grabs a shattered bottle. Creepy, yes, but this is the first unique moment in "Queenie," so far a paint-by-numbers story with a cliche at every turn.
Mia rushes out of the apartment and Leigh follows, only to be hit by a car and killed. She lies in a letter to her mother, telling her "he died peacefully." Free of Leigh, she goes back to Gary, who is angry at her for disappearing from him life, but when she tells him Leigh was killed, he's back to being nice. Now she's ready to move in, and they can have a big sex scene, completely with special lighting, limbs flailing, bad kissing and the rest of the works.
Gary has a showing of his work, where snobs talk about the "existential" pictures and his use of "darks and lights," no pun intended. This gets them an invitation to one of the "famous weekends" of movie producer Kirk Douglas. Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom were slumming, of course, but Kirk Douglas does it with a capital S. He "collects people like he collects art," Gary says as Mia is astounded by all the people at the mansion.
Kirk's agent, Joel Grey (the only Oscar-winning slummer here, as Kirk would not get his honorary Oscar until almost a decade after "Queenie"), is worried because Kirk wants to make the leap from producer to director. "I've directed before," Kirk says, grabbing a statuette from the desk, but Joel reminds him the new picture is a big budget one and needs an experienced hand. "You're an artist, not a traffic cop," Joel carps, but Kirk wants "the challenge."
You want cloying? Here it is. Mia is mingling, managing to bump into everyone and backs up into Gary, who sends a punch bowl hurling at Kirk. "I don't believe we've met," he says with a good sense of humor to Mia and Gary. "I'm a dancer," she tells him. "Classical?" "No, Modern." Kirk seems to think she would be a good actress and offers her a screen test. "You're not ready!" Gary pouts, though Topol is on Mia's side. Apparently, Topol and Kirk worked together, "a long time ago, making silent films." Boy, that's convenient.
Before the screen tests of various ladies, Joel reminds Kirk how nervous he is, and how investors and studios want established actors, "preferably with a few wrinkles." Kirk says the leading man is nearing 50. Joel is shocked he's that old. "Time flies when you're overacting," Kirk comments. That's a good line, no matter what, but in a miniseries, particularly apt since overacting is usually the only kind of acting that goes on. He's way more interested in Mia than he should be. "Remember, all these people are here to make you look good," he says to calm her nerves. At a screen test?
Gary has come for moral support, and Kirk asks him for help redoing the lighting to maximize Mia's features. Now we're sprinted into territory claimed by "The Red Shoes." After one flubbed take, her second stab is perfection, well, in the plot at least. "That one's a star!" Kirk beams to Joel. Actually, the only thing that even bears a resemblance to movie stars of the 1930s is the make-up.
Kirk has to haggle with Topol for Mia's services and Topol is shrewd. The negotiations over a pool table are intense, with Topol taking full advantage of their "shared past" as peasants. Kirk asks, "how does she feel about needles"" to Topol's surprise. The movie is to be shot...wait for it...wait for it...in India! And one needs her shots to travel to India. Uh oh. Worlds are about to collide.
Topol doesn't know about the murder charge hanging over Mia's head, so he can't understand why she refuses to go back to India. He think it's just about the passing, so he tells her, "keep passing...if we don't tell anyone, no one will ever know, in India or anywhere else." She decides to tell Topol all of the truth, but he reminds her she's "Dawn Avalon" from Tasmania, with "papers forged by the greatest artists in Europe."
There's another problem: Gary won't go to India with her because he's been offered a photography assignment elsewhere. "I need you," she whines and of course he gives in.
Before everyone arrives, Serena has yet another scene demanding justice, though her mother advises her to drop the investigation because she's "not prepared" for the truth about "Dear Daddy."
A huge publicity machine is rolled out when the party touches down in India. Hollywood wasn't too keen on location filming in the 1930s, but this bit of trumped-up hokum was a specialty. Gigantic crowds are there to welcome everyone as the leads are sent up on elephants in front of the cheering masses. They get a more spectacular welcome than any visiting royal could imagine.
Joel breaks the news to Mia and Gary that they can't stay in the same room because "the Indian government is really fussy about these things." Uh huh. After the display we just saw, they couldn't also arrange for two people to sleep together? They can only manage big magic tricks?
It's two days before Claire sees a newspaper about Mia's presence in India. She calls Mia and they meet in a park. "Why have you come?" Mia asks Claire. "If anyone sees us together, finds out who I really am..." she worries, but unfortunately Claire has been evicted and has nowhere to go. Mia gives her the hotel key and insists she speak to no one. However, someone has been trailing Claire, hired by whoever it was who paid more rent on Claire's hovel to get her forced out.
Just as rehearsals are about to begin, Kirk has problems of his own. A major investor has pulled out and everyone insists Kirk cut down expenses. "I'll find the money," he insists, refusing to change the picture he wants to make.
It's uh oh time. Gary goes to deliver champagne to Mia's room where Mama Claire is hiding out fondling the fabrics of her daughter's dresses. Luckily, Claire stalls and Mia is only moments behind. Claire pretends to be Mia's maid, saving the day. Her acting is better than everyone else's, maybe she should be in the movie! We're back to "Imitation of Life." Mia wants to send Claire to England so her cover won't be blown and because she thinks it's "shameful" to treat her mother like a servant. Claire launches into a speech about "shame" done very nicely (if a little influenced by tranquilizers), but since Mia is not her acting equal, the scene doesn't quite have the crackle it should.
Mia and Kirk go horse riding, which Kirk claims "is done from the thighs." Mia's horse is spooked when none other than Serena rides by. Mia is hidden behind a mesh netting. "I say, you look familiar," Serena says, and Mia is too freaked to continue the riding lesson. She's convinced Serena recognized her. Claire's advice is "act like nobody can touch you and nobody can."
Indeed, Serena has recognized Mia and goes to the police. The man who has been running the investigation all these years doesn't believe her. Serena knows it's her, "living the high life and making fools of us all." The detective is too afraid to rile the English, saying that without proof, it will be embarrassing. Serena throws money at him and demands he do something about Mia.
At a party, Kirk suggests Gary should be in the movies and Mia tells him to "get him a job" but Gary doesn't want it and an argument ensues. Mia huffs off and Kirk chases after her. "Let's make up," he suggests when he catches up to her and plants a kiss on her lips. The unfortunately lighting makes him look like a wax figure old enough to be her grandfather (which I guess he is). She dashes away, but then gets drunk and sloppy. Gary insists he be the one to take her to her room and Kirk is jealous, instructing Joel to make sure the movie shooting in Egypt hires Gary.
The next day, Mia tries to apologize to hardened Gary, who informs her of the job offer in Egypt. She keeps telling Gary she has no interest in Kirk, so Gary proposes. "You're changing all the time. You're all shadows and smoke. I am finding it harder and harder to hold onto you," he exclaims when she doesn't accept.
Serena pounces on Mia, telling her she's left a photograph for her at the front desk of a girl she went to school with who looks just like her. "You could be twins," she gloats while Mia tries to remain calm. Badness piles up because Gary takes the job in Egypt. Has she thought to call Topol? Isn't it his job to protect her? Gary accuses her of not loving him, the reason she keeps some big secret from him. They promise to write each other every day, share a kiss and then he departs.
There is a gigantic battle to remind us of the political unrest in India...oh, wait, never mind, it's part of Kirk's movie, because why else would Mia be riding into the middle of it? When it's over, Mia goes to Joel hoping for mail, but he's hidden the letters from Gary to give to Kirk. He's been keeping both sides of the correspondence.
The police inspector arrives to question Mia about Serena's accusation. He has contacted her supposed hometown in Tasmania, where no one has ever heard of her. She whips out the forged papers, pictures and everything else. "Really, Inspector, your case is beginning to sound like one of my movies, my bad ones," Kirk jokes with him, defending his star. When the inspector leaves, Kirk turns on Mia, demanding to know "what the hell is going on?" He can tell he's lying. "How do you think I got out of Budapest? Same way you crawled out of Calcutta," he notes. She does not tell him the truth, but she does crumble into his arms for a passionate kiss.
The inspector did not believe the papers, but Serena has taken the case to the British authorities anyway, and he's relieved of his duties in the investigation.
Financially, Kirk is still in trouble. Joel has been sending his wife out to beg for money. Kirk is aghast that he would do something so tacky. "Why don't we hold a bake sale?" he cracks. But, Joel's wife has connections. After all, she is the daughter of a studio head (which makes her basically Irene Mayer Selznick). However, they need $4 million more in order to finish the movie and no one is putting it up. "You're not listening to me. Maybe if you took your mind off that little tart..." Joel advises, which gets him a back-handed slap across the face from tough Kirk. "You're the parody of a general, marching off to battle while everyone is telling you you're going to lose," Joel huffs. What the hell does that mean?
Claire is upset that Mia is sleeping with Kirk. "He's only using you," she notes, but Mia says she's doing the same with him because "he's the only one who can help us." In fact, she's told him the full truth, which worries her mother. Claire also was hoping that Mia would be in love with the man she's screwing, and Mia ruefully admits that she had love and lost it.
Bouncing into the movie three-quarters of the way is the always-dependable Martin Balsam, as a powerful Hollywood player. He has seen the rushes and agrees that Mia is definitely a star. But, it's down to business. Martin hasn't an arrangement in mind. He's already seen the financial books, "both sets," which horrifies Kirk. His demands for pumping money into the movie are gigantic: distribution, equal billing and half the profits. "Half the profits for one quarter of the investment?" Kirk asks. But, he agrees to it and then Martin asks for the last condition, final say in editing. Kirk scowls, "you're garbage!" "Does that mean we have a deal?" Martin asks. Kirk stomps off with Joel complaining and nearly collapses from a heart condition. "Make the deal...but no final cut!" he tells Joel.
The movie is done and Kirk and Mia are back in London. During a night walk along the Thames, he gives her the letters from Gary. He fully admits to stashing them. "You bastard," she cries. "I am," he agrees. He did it because "I don't want to lose you," he tells her. He goes one step further and says he sent her letters to Gary to him since "I knew I couldn't keep you forever." He's a bastard, but a noble one, apparently. She takes the car to get to Gary as quickly as possible and of course Kirk's chest pains mirror those on his face. He sits on a bench and is still there in the morning, dead. That makes for a nice newspaper picture.
Naturally, Mia is distraught (and Claire is still pretending to be her maid, even back in London), but Gary arrives, having received the letters. "Post office is slow," she jokes. "I've been married and widowed," she tells him, which is news to anyone watching. Did I miss a wedding scene? "We're both very different people now," Gary notes, a line expected since the beginning of the scene. The conversation gets even dumber when she turns on him, opining that he's come back for her money, angry that he wasn't there for her when she was afraid. That's unfair, but remember, he knows they are "different people," so he doesn't have a problem walking out on her.
All of this happened and Mia's first movie hasn't even opened yet, because after a series of flashbacks, Mia and Claire drive up to the premiere, mobbed by press and fans in grand old Hollywood style. Even Topol is there and we haven't seen him since he made the deal with Kirk. Joel tells the crowed they are about to see "the most lavish and probably the most expensive film ever made." There's a shout-out to Kirk and then he introduces Mia. When Mia steps to the microphone, she gives one of those bashful, quiet and very rehearsed speeches that actresses once gave at premieres. Okay, since this is a movie about a movie, it goes on longer than say Vivien Leigh or Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Fontaine might have deemed appropriate, but that's to be expected. Mia outs her mother, who hesitantly moves through the throngs to join her daughter on the steps of the theater. Nobody seems at all upset, which kind of negatives the whole plot, doesn't it? "I'm very proud of where I came from and who I am," Mia says. Gary starts clapping and soon everyone joins in. Boy, when Hollywood decides to absolve itself of its sins, it goes all out, doesn't it? Merle Oberon died in 1979, so she didn't get to see this vindication, but then again, no one really knows her exact story. This one is pure Hollywood fantasy tripe.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
A Woman of Substance (1984)
The first of six miniseries based on the works of Barbara Taylor Bradford (two sets of three movies), "A Woman of Substance" is actually a British production that was aired first in the US in syndication, an oddity for sure. However, it's understandable that the networks did not snatch this one up greedily as it's not only the height of British twee, but it's also decidedly unglamorous. Sure, the legendary Deborah Kerr (our resident slummer) is the headliner, though she's around only long enough to lead us into flashbacks, but this feels very much like a claustrophobic British miniseries. In actually, it's rather harmless. Yes, it's predictable, yes, it has a strong female heroine and yes, it has way too much allusion to great British literature, but it also has epic sweep and generational conflict aplenty to fit it in comfortably with what the networks were offering at the time. What it lacks is star power. The only notable American in the cast is Barry Bostwick, who doesn't enter until very late in the action, and the British actors become tiresome pretty quickly with their calculated slow performances.
Dowager Deborah Kerr, looking Margaret Thatcher's twin sister, is thinking of slowing down and turning over her empire to her granddaughter Miranda Richardson, who is awfully nervous about the prospect. "I know what you're capable of. I raised you. Don't you think I know what I created?" Granny Deborah asks? There are other family members, male family members, but they "lack the killer instinct." Worse than that, the male family members are trying to oust her, noting, "she's such a tough old warhorse, we may have to shoot her in the end," on a conversation recorded by a loyal secretary.
Luckily, the loyal secretary calls Deborah, who takes Miranda and heads for London, the seat of her empire (using Harrod's department store as the set, and even using the same lettering to spell out "Harte" everywhere). Before listening to the recordings, she is told it's her own sons who are trying to boot her. "I suppose a mother doesn't want to think her own sons could betray her," she cries. As she listens to the tape, the camera comes close up and Deborah goes into what decades of acting has taught her to do best--go for an Emmy early!
After meandering through the store, she's ready to greet coughing John Mills, her "financial advisor and constant admirer." She tells him she needs some "ready cash," but doesn't tell him why she's suddenly ready to sell "real estate, jewelry and part of my art collection," though he's clearly worried. He tries, through his hacking, to talk her out of it, but she won't back down. "It's an absolutely wonderful collection," he says of the art, to which she sasses back, "then it should fetch a wonderful price." She the plows through a ton of work, going into the evening, when she tells her secretary to have the documents sent to her lawyers. "The documents must be irreversible, irrevocable and water tight. I must be absolutely sure they could not be contested in any court of law," she says with steel and important music.
Then Deborah takes Miranda to the country mansion in Yorkshire, where the latter finds out "the others" are coming, meaning her family. Why? "It's my birthday tomorrow," Deborah chirps, not fooling anyone. As the hated family arrives, Deborah says she doesn't want to be disturbed and finds out from John that she is a lot richer having sold everything. He still wants to know why she needs it and she tells him she may want to go shopping. "That's ridiculous," he barks, "no one spends nine million pounds shopping." "It depends what you're buying," she says with a raised eyebrow.
The movie has been flirting with flashbacks like a teenager in heat so far, and it's about time to get to them. When Deborah breaks a tea cup thinking of her son's betrayal, it takes her back to when she was a kitchen made and did the same thing. Her younger self is played by Jenny Seagrove, a spunky girl who races through her chores (to the annoyance of head butler Barry Morse) so she can enjoy her one day off. Well, "enjoy" is the wrong word, what with a consumptive mother and bickering father-brother duo. She is a typical miniseries woman, determined and smart. "It's not money gets you what you want, it's books," she tells her younger brother as mother and father are "I love thee"ing upstairs and mother is about to depart this earth.
On her way back to the mansion where she works in a thick fog that is merely a cheap camera trick, Jenny meets chimney sweep Liam Neeson, also on his way to the great hall. Liam is Irish, playing a character called, what else, Blackie, who dazzles Jenny with stories of the great city of Leeds. "Mary, mother of Jesus," he says, awed by his first sight of the manse, "that's the ugliest house I've ever seen." Barry slaps Jenny for dropping shoe polish and Liam jumps up, ready to beat him. The men of the house assemble for breakfast, most notably ashen son Peter Chelsom. Mother is absent because she is confined to her room, always searching for hidden booze. Peter informs his father that he doesn't want to be part of the family business, but would rather be a lawyer and his brother, Christopher Guard, is a cocky lad who sucks up to his father and wants the business.
When Jenny isn't tending to the drunk, serving the men or mopping up, she's running across the moors to check on her mother or listening to more tales of Leeds from Liam. "Can a girl like me make a fortune in Leeds?" she asks him. In fact, the plucky lass has a plan, which she intends to show to her mistress' sister Gayle Hunnicutt, now running the house. It's an efficiency plan she's worked out to get her chores done faster. Gayle warmly approves, and leaves her room happily, only to run into the miniseries adage that when things are going well, they have to get worse, meaning grabby Christopher.
She's actually spared Christopher in favor of the much nicer Peter, whom she meets while resting on the moors. They have an awkward heart-to-heart where he wants her not to call him master and worries about his mother. Heck, they even laugh about Barry. Back at the house, the brothers argue about a wounded dog and mom stays sober long enough to yell at Christopher on Peter's behalf. "You know what they do with murderers?" she asks her crabby son, "they hang them by their neck until they are dead." Wow, talk about your parenting skills!
Jenny is such a good servant that she is able to pull her mistress together long enough to host a dinner party, though the master is angry that not only she, but also her sister, seem to be flirting with the guests. The latter is more of a concern, because the master and his sister-in-law seem to be having an affair. They are stupid enough to conduct it with doors cracked open so Jenny can see and hear everything.
Our heroine's desire to make a life for herself is made even stronger when Liam returns to the house, flush with success, going to night school and proving that their class can make something of themselves. Naturally, all of the excitement is blunted with the news that Jenny's mother is dying. For real, this time. The actual death scene is way overdone, drowning in sappiness, but I suppose that was to be expected. "If there was a God, he wouldn't have let me mum suffer all these years and he wouldn't have let her die!" Jenny exclaims when her father says, "it's God's will." She does get a quick note of sympathy from her newest pal Peter. In quick succession, Jenny finds out her boss may have been in love with her own mother and her older brother joins the Royal Navy and because of it, her younger brother has to work in her master's Dickensian factory, though his real desire is to be a journalist.
"Can we have a picnic on your first day off?" Peter asks Jenny, giving her a piece of rosemary and quoting Shakespeare. When he has a break from school, they do indeed have the picnic, though don't ask me where she gets the hot-cha-cha dress she wears (it's neck to ankles, but for her, it's spiffy). They find sort of cave, which has apparently been the trysting site of previous lovers. You only get one guess to figure out which pair of lovers. As always happens in these sorts of gooey scenes (which you saw coming light years ago), the sunny skies simply give way to the longest and most brutal storm of the century. They have to dash for the cave, where Peter coughs a lot and decides they have to "get out of these wet clothes" or risk catching pneumonia. He mentions the "wet things" coming off a few times. He even strips completely. "I'm certainly not going to catch my death because of false modesty," he chirps, taking off his underthings while wrapped in a towel. He gives her a tablecloth from the picnic basket, telling Jenny, "you will look like an Indian Maharani" if she puts it on, assuring her "I would never hurt you. You are my best friend."
A dying fire, a bottle of Elderberry wine and very little clothing lead to a huddle for warmth (I'm taking half the amount of time to describe this as it's taking them to get to the friggin' climax). "You're so beautiful," he tells her after copping a feel, then going in for a kiss with an "I love you" for good measure. "I couldn't harm the person I want most in the world," he says, making sure she swoons and the two kiss in the most chaste of British fashions before Peter shows a risque bit of buttocks and sex starts (with the reminders of previous lovers scratched on the cave walls).
"Servants and gentry don't mix. It's not right...you're steppin' out of your class, my girl," the friendly cook tells her when Jenny and Peter come in from the storm, with fake excuses as to why they were together. From there, it's secret notes, poetry readings no the moors and blooming love. Hell, she's even been visiting the library to memorize Shakespeare speeches to impress him. "One day, I need to be a lady," she tells Peter. "You're a lady now," he reminds her and presents her with a rock onto which he's carved their initials. Things are so ducky that even when her brother returns from the navy for a week's leave, he and his father reconcile.
"It's the Missus. Fell down the stairs and broke her neck," Barry tells Jenny when she sees the doctor leaving on her way into work. The poor dear had taken to drinking again when her horrible son Christopher treated her horribly and brought the affair of her husband and sister to her attention again.
And then Jenny lowers the boom we've been expecting since Jenny and Peter first saw each other: "I'm going to have a baby." Peter is not happy and snaps, "what are you going to do?" "Don't you mean we?" she asks. Peter suggests an abortion. "Yes, we could find some quack who would butcher me," she cracks, as he says, "this is a catastrophe." He won't marry her and she reacts angrily, realizing she has to leave the area. "You look like a gentleman, but you're nothing. You're less than the dirt on my feet. I won't be seeing you again...never, as long as I live," she tells him and departs, thus ending the first installment.
Jenny goes off to Leeds, the city where Liam had told her was filled with glory. Long ago, he had mentioned she only needed to stop in a specific pub and give a message to the proprietress and she would locate him. "He's gone to Ireland," Jenny is told. She goes to rent a room, and almost doesn't get it, until she lies and says her husband is in the navy and she can "pay in advance." "You do know how to do housework?" the woman who owns the house asks. "I'm sure I can learn," Jenny notes, apparently looking wealthier and higher class than she really is. Finding a job is not as easy. Doors are slammed all over town.
The first plot point that is not paint-by-numbers arrives when Jenny protects Jewish merchant Henry Landis from a gaggle of kids throwing rocks and anti-Semitic slurs. "You don't know what a Jew is, do you?" he asks Jenny. There's a brief lesson in tolerance, very brief, and them some Judaism. Jenny is convinced to stay for Sabbath dinner with Henry, his wife and two sons. Actually, it's a pleasure and a rarity to have a nice Jewish family in a miniseries that isn't about World War II. Henry has a job for Jenny and the family welcomes her so sweetly.
The wool factory that Peter's father owns catches fire and Peter tries to get in, warned by Jenny's father not to. Poor dad is horribly burnt in the fire saving Peter. Just as it seems the whole place is about to go up in smoke, another of those bizarre storms comes and saves the place. Owner Peter Egan is told that it was probably arson, caused by angry workers who resent the way his son Christopher has run things while his father has been abroad.
Jenny turns out to be a natural in Henry's garment factory, where his hunky son Joris Stuyck teachers her the trade. Then Liam shows up and Jenny lies to him that the upcoming baby's father is in the navy. Liam wants to "thrash" the man, but Jenny reminds him she wants to see the Leeds he always talked about, though the writers can't resist making her the mouthpiece of all things social circa 1907, such as when she talks about how advances in the garment industry will make it so "ordinary folk" can afford finery. "You were right about Leeds, I'm going to do well here," she tells him as they take their seats at the theater. He volunteers to marry Jenny, "so you and the baby will be safe and secure." She thanks him, but turns him down because she doesn't want to ruin his plans for success.
With Jenny growing bigger, the pressures of stairs, work and distance are taking their toll, so Liam takes her to his friend Diane Baker in a smaller village. Jenny is enchanted by the town and by Diane. She even gets a job in a factory, though at seven months pregnant, she probably should stop working. "I have to save for the future," she tells Diane, which is a cue for her to go into labor at the factory. "It's time to go into labor," she calmly tells the foreman. "Couldn't you hold off 'til six?" he asks.
Atheist Jenny wants to have the baby christened, but she know the "the vicar will want to see a birth certificate," so Liam decides he can do it himself, always a help, though he reminds her that she has to "register the baby...a name, such as it is, is better than 'father unknown,'" and insists she use his name. Jenny has to leave the baby with a cousin so she can go back to work.
Unexpectedly, Jenny pays a visit to her family and since no one knew where she went, her brothers have been unable to tell her that their father has died. She's shocked, though I'm not sure how the timing works out so neatly when brother Dominic Guard tells her it happened, "just a few days after you left." She's also exceedingly shocked to hear that he died saving Peter, actually incensed because she knows no one at the manor would "lift a finger to save another man's life." "I'll make it up to both of you, I promise," Jenny says at the graves of her parents, damning the whole manor family and hoping that they "rot in hell." Jenny volunteers to send her other brother books so he can one day get that journalism job and tells Dominic to send money, even if it means sopping up less suds at the pub.
Having saved up money by working like a fiend and creating a reputation as a terrific seamstress, Jenny sees a shop "to let" from John Duttine, a young man who doesn't want to rent to a young woman, on a Sunday no less. Her constant working starts to annoy Joris, who is clearly in love with her, and kisses her to prove it (his "frum" mother is not happy about it). He's thrilled to hear she's rented a store and she sets to business with a dry good establishment, though Joris still wants her to work less. Liam opines that she works so hard out of "hatred," but Diane and Joris don't understand, so he covers and says, "hatred of poverty, that's what drives her now." In no time, she has two shops.
Following in the pattern, John falls in love with her too, but a local crone has it out for Jenny and her success. "We all know what's going on between the two of you, your fancy woman and yourself," the crone snaps. The crone has the store between Jenny's two and finally, in full lather, agrees to quit the property so Jenny can have three. Diane asks Jenny how it feels. "Safe. I'm beginning to feel safe," she says.
Liam starts the lie that Jenny's husband died, "but I don't think she'll go into mourning." When Joris finds out, he rushes to her store, where she's become an ace at selling to people who didn't even know they wanted her products. "He's been away so long, I was starting to feel he didn't exist at all," she notes without a trace of irony and David kisses her. He proposes marriage, but she declines because she's afraid of angering his mother. "You think these things won't matter, but one day, your parents, your children, would pull us apart," she says wisely.
Out of her life, for now, and into it returns vile Christopher of the manor, who knows that Jenny has had "my brother's bastard." He confronts her in her store after David has left, when she's alone. He tells her Peter is to be married and "we can't afford a scandal," so he wants to know where the baby is. He goes after her physically and tries to rape her, until she can grab a knife and hold it to his throat. One more reason for her to hate his family. His threatens to return. "We'll have to watch out for her, you little tiger," he says and she cuts his arm before he finally leaves.
John confesses his love for her and proposes also. "I could protect you," he says, and she realizes that's something she needs, so she agrees. Liam proposes to Diane, so everyone is happy. In short order, Jenny gives birth to a son. She loves her kids, but work always seems to come first. She's well on the way to building an empire, buying factories and shops and therefore controlling the whole chain of production. "Isn't there anything you really care about other than money?" her frustrated husband asks as she grows and grows. Of course she does, listing all the people in her life, with his name at the end, almost as an afterthought.
Brother Mick Ford gets a book published. He comes to see her for the grand opening of her megastore in Leeds, but he has to return to London because talk of war is big news for all journalists. Also around for the opening is Peter, looking almost ill as he wanders through the shop and then sees Jenny. He shies away from seeing her and dashes from the store. World War I is declared and Mick is sent as a correspondent. Back at the manse, Peter Egan is now married to his dead woman's sister Gayle.
Jenny wants to buy a mill at auction and bids against her enemies, father Peter Egan and son Christopher. She takes Joris with her, who advises against it, but spends an outrageous amount of money to outbid Christopher. Neither of them have the money for it, but she wins. "Good, it'll ruin her," Christopher spits. To make the money, Jenny decides to make all who owe her money from the store pay up and if they don't pay, she will start charging interest. Lawyer Christopher Gable doesn't think it's a good idea, but she insists. John doesn't like Christopher Gable. "He's too aware of his own bloody fatal charms, if you ask me," he howls, but she is way too focused on her work to even notice.
Jenny and Joris decide to merge their companies, but they have to get Henry's approval first. He's slowing down, so he's happy to take an easier role as a director of the parent company. When she tells John, he gets snotty, telling her she only tells him anything after it's been done. Jenny has promised her daughter they will trim the Christmas tree together, but she only wants John's help and her attitude toward her mother is rather harsh. Diane assures Jenny, "it's just a stage, she'll grow out of it" and Jenny notes that "sometimes she shuts herself up in a world of her own and I can't reach her. It frightens me." She's never paid any attention to her daughter, so what is causing her sudden concern?
As the war churns on, Britain declares that "every man between 19 and 40" must enlist unless exempted. That means John and Liam have to go (Peter has already joined). Diane begs John to "watch over" Liam, especially since she's pregnant (after suffering one miscarriage). As they leave, Jenny admits her fault in their crumbling marriage. "There'll be plenty of time to talk when I get back," he tells her, which doesn't bode well for him. Long parting speeches usually mean someone has played his last scene.
When the inevitable telegram comes, Jenny's daughter grabs and reads it. Jenny and her two sons are distraught. This news brings the second installment to a much sadder close than the first.
John's will leaves all of the property to Jenny, but his money to his son. Luckily, her brother Mick survives his corresponding duties with only a broken arm, but he's assigned to do a story on her long-ago lover Peter, who has been cited for bravery. Not as lucky is poor Diane, who has given birth to a boy, but with terrible difficulties. Jenny promises to look after Diane as Diane did her when she first gave birth and has just enough time to croak the baby's name, that she wants it to be raised Catholic and reared by Jenny before dying. "Please don't cry. There's nothing to cry about," Diane whispers, but the priest is already there to give last rites. Diane is in the middle of telling Jenny where her Christmas present is when her head rolls to the side and we've lost another.
Mick suggests his sister get married again, but she doesn't want a "man getting involved in the business." He explodes at her avarice, but she's already spotted soldier Barry Bostwick across the restaurant. With his usual cockiness, he stares her down. His father, George Baker, is an old business associate of the hated manor family (and we find out when Barry and his father talk that Gayle has died). Peter Egan hasn't fared well with his second wife's death, incapacitated by a stroke.
"Do all Australians have bad manners or are you special?" Jenny asks Barry when they finally meet, although his accent is so lousy, all of Australia should be up in arms. Paging Bryan Brown! We know a miniseries rule tells us that when a man and a woman meet hate-at-first-sight, it will be love. They arrange to meet, but she breaks the appointment. He hunts her down at the train station, bellowing "coward" at her. "Who are you afraid of? Me? Or yourself?" he asks. Great, leave it to the American actor in the cast to have the worst part and the worst lines. Time, lots of flowers and jewelry wear down her resistance. "You have to love me, want me, as much as I love you," he tells her when he could easily have taken her right there with the jewels. She does want him. He plants a kiss on her the likes of which she's never had. There's a problem: he's already married. At first, she's irate, but she loves him and their torrid affair continues.
Barry is called back to the war, but assures Jenny that "nothing is going to happen to me. My time isn't up yet." He sends her poetry from the front, and we know how much of a sucker she is for poetry. But, too much goodness means badness is right around the corner...again! Brother Dominic loses a leg in the fighting, and the doctor does not think he will be able to wear a prosthetic. "My brother will wear an artificial leg if I damn well have to design one myself," the increasingly bellicose Jenny tells the doctor. He gets the leg and then has to figure out how to use it. "You learned to walk as a nipper, you can do it again," Jenny cheers him on, just as the announcement comes that the war is over!
Though the war is done, she and Barry cannot be reunited as he is "still under military orders" and is being sent back to Australia. Unfortunately, time goes by without any word for him. He promises to come back to her as soon as he can. Her old enemy Christopher needs a loan and Jenny arranges for one with some very strict terms. Naturally, Christopher can't pay back the money and will lose his mills. He seeks legal advice from his brother Peter, who tells them to let it all go and concentrate on the one mill he has left, and "cut personal expenditures." This leads to an argument between the brothers and Christopher tells his brother he tried to have sex with Jenny. That doesn't go over well.
Out of the blue, Jenny's daughter asks for her birth certificate.
Also back from the war is Joris, who wants to get a divorce and marry her. "There is no you and me," she tells him, though he doesn't know about Barry until this conversation. "I haven't heard from him for some time, but I don't think he'll come back," she says. Mick as much as confirms that, having heard that Barry and his wife have been seen on holiday, so the marriage is not ending.
Liam has prospered, finally building the mansion he always dreamed of, raising his son with love. At a party at his house, Liam and her brothers are alarmed at Jenny's new interest in Christopher Gable, not to mention her plans for opening a store in London. "How will she afford all of this?" Liam wants to know. Dominic is furious when the marriage is announced. "He's useful at dinner parties," she tells Dominic when he asks why Christopher Gable? "So is a butler," he snaps. "A woman in my position needs a husband just as she needs a butler," she replies, with no mention of love. "I'm fond of him," is as far as she will go.
As soon as she goes on her honeymoon, Barry returns. She and Liam go on a business trip to enemy territory, her first time back at the mansion since she left pregnant. "You wouldn't have found this in my day," she tells him after finding dust on the fireplace. She's there to claim her property, revealing that she is behind the company to which he has sold the house. "Please vacate the house by the end of the week," she says with hatred. She now owns everything of his. He claims she out to ruin him all along. "That was my plan, but you did it yourself. I just helped along the way," she spits at him. She orders the house "torn down, brick by brick by brick...I want it wiped off the face of the earth as if it never existed." She's not all hatred, as she intends to turn the property "into a park for the local people. A beautiful park, in memory of my mother." Her mother? Has anyone thought about her in decades?
The marriage between Jenny and Christopher Gable is a sham. She has three-year-old twins with him and "he doesn't get in my way," so she won't divorce him yet. And that's when she sees Barry again. He explains that his wife is an alcoholic and had to be committed to an asylum. He says he sent letter and cables and produces all of his to her and hers to him. "They were stolen by my secretary," he says, saying the poor cluck was in love with him. Then his father died and he had to run the company. He did come back for her, but found out she was married. But, now that he has news that her marriage is lousy too, he's returned. Since neither of them can get divorced (his wife is Catholic and she simply refuses), she brushes him off.
Her eldest daughter eventually does get a look at her birth certificate and finds out what she thinks is the truth, that Liam is her father. Jenny says that it's what a man does as the child grows up that makes him a father and John therefore was her father in spirit. "I don't want to see you again," the pissy brat says after demanding to be sent to finishing school in Switzerland.
"I can't go on just standing by and seeing you so unhappy," Barry announces before giving Jenny one of those passionate kisses that actually melt her. He's just met her husband and was not impressed. "I've always loved you," she coos as they are disrobing at his place. "I'm not going to leave you, every again," he counters. "We'll be together for good." "I know." "We're going to make up for all of those lost year."
Jenny, sporting an outfit she's worn before (and it's not the first time she's done that--which is a sure sign of this not being made in America) and calmly tells her husband she's pregnant. "Ah, the second immaculate conception," he jokes. He wants a divorce, but she will only do it on her terms. Basically, she's blackmailing him with not only drink and women, but also "young men" and Christopher Gable's wealthy father will not look kindly on that fact. "The twins will come with me. You can keep the house. I'll be in touch after the baby comes," she declares.
The baby is born and Jenny wants this child to be legitimate. He's still married.
The child turns 11 year old, but her half-siblings are not so happy, feeling they never got so much of mother's attention. "It's going to be years and years of just us," Barry tells her, though one of her sons overhears and is despondent. Yet again, things are too happy to last, and Barry has to return to Australia to force his wive to finally give him a divorce. Furious that she still refuses, he drives recklessly and is in a car accident. "The surgeon says I'm lucky to be alive," Barry tells his lawyer from a wheelchair and with his face horribly disfigured. He hasn't told her about the extent of his injuries because war is inevitable and he doesn't her traveling to Australia. Also, his kidneys are failing and "the prognosis is bad."
Brother Mick finds out about Barry's death from a news wire, but before he can tell her, she hears it on the radio. "He was my life. I loved him. There's nothing left," she cries, apparently forgetting her brood of kids. A touching letter, ready in voice over with Barry's horrendous accent, is both sad and comforting to her.
It's goodbye Jenny as Deborah Kerr awakens from her sleep full of memories. Deborah wants to talk to Miranda about her paramour, who happens to be the grandson of her one-time love Peter. It's not incest, because Miranda is her granddaughter through Barry's child with her. She announces "it's time I stop playing God too" and tells Miranda to invite the man to dinner, bestowing her approval on their union. Liam is still alive and also comes to the country house where the family members are gathered.
Miranda's boyfriend actually works on Deborah's newspaper, and she's so giddy, she promotes him. In return, he gives her the rock on which Peter had carved their initials. "He told me the whole story," he tells Deborah, and also informs him that the child her mother had with the big boss died. "So much bitterness. Well, that's all in the past," she says, wiping away decades with such ease.
At dinner, the whole family stands in toast at Deborah's birthday. "Reversing the usual procedure, I'd like to give some birthday presents" and reads her new will. The grandchildren get two million pounds each, the houses, except the country house and all the art, except for a Van Gogh that Liam gets. Her daughter with Barry gets the country house and jewels her father lavished on her many years ago. She gives 52% of the company to other grandchildren. As for the department store chain, the nugget of the empire, she gives it completely to Miranda, who is as surprised as everyone else. Deborah's remaining four children are incensed and she attacks them back with the proof of what they were trying to do to her. She gives them one million pounds each. "These are not gifts, by the way. I'm buying you," informing them that if they accept the money, they will receive nothing else and cannot contest the will. Her daughters agree and take the cash and then the sons cave.
"I wish it hadn't been necessary," Deborah tells Liam, "perhaps it was my fault." He disagrees and then they catalogue all of the people she's outlived. She's actually excited to have great-grandchildren from the hated family to "bounce off my knee." He has one last gift for her, a sapphire brooch that replaces the ribbon he had given her so many years earlier when he could only promise gems. "Here's to the next generation and may they find the secret of life," she says. "Which is?" "To endure!"
The "Dynasty"-esque quality to the final scenes here is delicious, giving "A Woman of Substance" the spunk it needs after six hours of mopey behavior and overwhelming gloom. A lot more bite is needed to give this saga any heft, and the movie's efficiency and speed are its ultimate downfall, since no characters except the lead is given any time to develop.
Dowager Deborah Kerr, looking Margaret Thatcher's twin sister, is thinking of slowing down and turning over her empire to her granddaughter Miranda Richardson, who is awfully nervous about the prospect. "I know what you're capable of. I raised you. Don't you think I know what I created?" Granny Deborah asks? There are other family members, male family members, but they "lack the killer instinct." Worse than that, the male family members are trying to oust her, noting, "she's such a tough old warhorse, we may have to shoot her in the end," on a conversation recorded by a loyal secretary.
Luckily, the loyal secretary calls Deborah, who takes Miranda and heads for London, the seat of her empire (using Harrod's department store as the set, and even using the same lettering to spell out "Harte" everywhere). Before listening to the recordings, she is told it's her own sons who are trying to boot her. "I suppose a mother doesn't want to think her own sons could betray her," she cries. As she listens to the tape, the camera comes close up and Deborah goes into what decades of acting has taught her to do best--go for an Emmy early!
After meandering through the store, she's ready to greet coughing John Mills, her "financial advisor and constant admirer." She tells him she needs some "ready cash," but doesn't tell him why she's suddenly ready to sell "real estate, jewelry and part of my art collection," though he's clearly worried. He tries, through his hacking, to talk her out of it, but she won't back down. "It's an absolutely wonderful collection," he says of the art, to which she sasses back, "then it should fetch a wonderful price." She the plows through a ton of work, going into the evening, when she tells her secretary to have the documents sent to her lawyers. "The documents must be irreversible, irrevocable and water tight. I must be absolutely sure they could not be contested in any court of law," she says with steel and important music.
Then Deborah takes Miranda to the country mansion in Yorkshire, where the latter finds out "the others" are coming, meaning her family. Why? "It's my birthday tomorrow," Deborah chirps, not fooling anyone. As the hated family arrives, Deborah says she doesn't want to be disturbed and finds out from John that she is a lot richer having sold everything. He still wants to know why she needs it and she tells him she may want to go shopping. "That's ridiculous," he barks, "no one spends nine million pounds shopping." "It depends what you're buying," she says with a raised eyebrow.
The movie has been flirting with flashbacks like a teenager in heat so far, and it's about time to get to them. When Deborah breaks a tea cup thinking of her son's betrayal, it takes her back to when she was a kitchen made and did the same thing. Her younger self is played by Jenny Seagrove, a spunky girl who races through her chores (to the annoyance of head butler Barry Morse) so she can enjoy her one day off. Well, "enjoy" is the wrong word, what with a consumptive mother and bickering father-brother duo. She is a typical miniseries woman, determined and smart. "It's not money gets you what you want, it's books," she tells her younger brother as mother and father are "I love thee"ing upstairs and mother is about to depart this earth.
On her way back to the mansion where she works in a thick fog that is merely a cheap camera trick, Jenny meets chimney sweep Liam Neeson, also on his way to the great hall. Liam is Irish, playing a character called, what else, Blackie, who dazzles Jenny with stories of the great city of Leeds. "Mary, mother of Jesus," he says, awed by his first sight of the manse, "that's the ugliest house I've ever seen." Barry slaps Jenny for dropping shoe polish and Liam jumps up, ready to beat him. The men of the house assemble for breakfast, most notably ashen son Peter Chelsom. Mother is absent because she is confined to her room, always searching for hidden booze. Peter informs his father that he doesn't want to be part of the family business, but would rather be a lawyer and his brother, Christopher Guard, is a cocky lad who sucks up to his father and wants the business.
When Jenny isn't tending to the drunk, serving the men or mopping up, she's running across the moors to check on her mother or listening to more tales of Leeds from Liam. "Can a girl like me make a fortune in Leeds?" she asks him. In fact, the plucky lass has a plan, which she intends to show to her mistress' sister Gayle Hunnicutt, now running the house. It's an efficiency plan she's worked out to get her chores done faster. Gayle warmly approves, and leaves her room happily, only to run into the miniseries adage that when things are going well, they have to get worse, meaning grabby Christopher.
She's actually spared Christopher in favor of the much nicer Peter, whom she meets while resting on the moors. They have an awkward heart-to-heart where he wants her not to call him master and worries about his mother. Heck, they even laugh about Barry. Back at the house, the brothers argue about a wounded dog and mom stays sober long enough to yell at Christopher on Peter's behalf. "You know what they do with murderers?" she asks her crabby son, "they hang them by their neck until they are dead." Wow, talk about your parenting skills!
Jenny is such a good servant that she is able to pull her mistress together long enough to host a dinner party, though the master is angry that not only she, but also her sister, seem to be flirting with the guests. The latter is more of a concern, because the master and his sister-in-law seem to be having an affair. They are stupid enough to conduct it with doors cracked open so Jenny can see and hear everything.
Our heroine's desire to make a life for herself is made even stronger when Liam returns to the house, flush with success, going to night school and proving that their class can make something of themselves. Naturally, all of the excitement is blunted with the news that Jenny's mother is dying. For real, this time. The actual death scene is way overdone, drowning in sappiness, but I suppose that was to be expected. "If there was a God, he wouldn't have let me mum suffer all these years and he wouldn't have let her die!" Jenny exclaims when her father says, "it's God's will." She does get a quick note of sympathy from her newest pal Peter. In quick succession, Jenny finds out her boss may have been in love with her own mother and her older brother joins the Royal Navy and because of it, her younger brother has to work in her master's Dickensian factory, though his real desire is to be a journalist.
"Can we have a picnic on your first day off?" Peter asks Jenny, giving her a piece of rosemary and quoting Shakespeare. When he has a break from school, they do indeed have the picnic, though don't ask me where she gets the hot-cha-cha dress she wears (it's neck to ankles, but for her, it's spiffy). They find sort of cave, which has apparently been the trysting site of previous lovers. You only get one guess to figure out which pair of lovers. As always happens in these sorts of gooey scenes (which you saw coming light years ago), the sunny skies simply give way to the longest and most brutal storm of the century. They have to dash for the cave, where Peter coughs a lot and decides they have to "get out of these wet clothes" or risk catching pneumonia. He mentions the "wet things" coming off a few times. He even strips completely. "I'm certainly not going to catch my death because of false modesty," he chirps, taking off his underthings while wrapped in a towel. He gives her a tablecloth from the picnic basket, telling Jenny, "you will look like an Indian Maharani" if she puts it on, assuring her "I would never hurt you. You are my best friend."
A dying fire, a bottle of Elderberry wine and very little clothing lead to a huddle for warmth (I'm taking half the amount of time to describe this as it's taking them to get to the friggin' climax). "You're so beautiful," he tells her after copping a feel, then going in for a kiss with an "I love you" for good measure. "I couldn't harm the person I want most in the world," he says, making sure she swoons and the two kiss in the most chaste of British fashions before Peter shows a risque bit of buttocks and sex starts (with the reminders of previous lovers scratched on the cave walls).
"Servants and gentry don't mix. It's not right...you're steppin' out of your class, my girl," the friendly cook tells her when Jenny and Peter come in from the storm, with fake excuses as to why they were together. From there, it's secret notes, poetry readings no the moors and blooming love. Hell, she's even been visiting the library to memorize Shakespeare speeches to impress him. "One day, I need to be a lady," she tells Peter. "You're a lady now," he reminds her and presents her with a rock onto which he's carved their initials. Things are so ducky that even when her brother returns from the navy for a week's leave, he and his father reconcile.
"It's the Missus. Fell down the stairs and broke her neck," Barry tells Jenny when she sees the doctor leaving on her way into work. The poor dear had taken to drinking again when her horrible son Christopher treated her horribly and brought the affair of her husband and sister to her attention again.
And then Jenny lowers the boom we've been expecting since Jenny and Peter first saw each other: "I'm going to have a baby." Peter is not happy and snaps, "what are you going to do?" "Don't you mean we?" she asks. Peter suggests an abortion. "Yes, we could find some quack who would butcher me," she cracks, as he says, "this is a catastrophe." He won't marry her and she reacts angrily, realizing she has to leave the area. "You look like a gentleman, but you're nothing. You're less than the dirt on my feet. I won't be seeing you again...never, as long as I live," she tells him and departs, thus ending the first installment.
Jenny goes off to Leeds, the city where Liam had told her was filled with glory. Long ago, he had mentioned she only needed to stop in a specific pub and give a message to the proprietress and she would locate him. "He's gone to Ireland," Jenny is told. She goes to rent a room, and almost doesn't get it, until she lies and says her husband is in the navy and she can "pay in advance." "You do know how to do housework?" the woman who owns the house asks. "I'm sure I can learn," Jenny notes, apparently looking wealthier and higher class than she really is. Finding a job is not as easy. Doors are slammed all over town.
The first plot point that is not paint-by-numbers arrives when Jenny protects Jewish merchant Henry Landis from a gaggle of kids throwing rocks and anti-Semitic slurs. "You don't know what a Jew is, do you?" he asks Jenny. There's a brief lesson in tolerance, very brief, and them some Judaism. Jenny is convinced to stay for Sabbath dinner with Henry, his wife and two sons. Actually, it's a pleasure and a rarity to have a nice Jewish family in a miniseries that isn't about World War II. Henry has a job for Jenny and the family welcomes her so sweetly.
The wool factory that Peter's father owns catches fire and Peter tries to get in, warned by Jenny's father not to. Poor dad is horribly burnt in the fire saving Peter. Just as it seems the whole place is about to go up in smoke, another of those bizarre storms comes and saves the place. Owner Peter Egan is told that it was probably arson, caused by angry workers who resent the way his son Christopher has run things while his father has been abroad.
Jenny turns out to be a natural in Henry's garment factory, where his hunky son Joris Stuyck teachers her the trade. Then Liam shows up and Jenny lies to him that the upcoming baby's father is in the navy. Liam wants to "thrash" the man, but Jenny reminds him she wants to see the Leeds he always talked about, though the writers can't resist making her the mouthpiece of all things social circa 1907, such as when she talks about how advances in the garment industry will make it so "ordinary folk" can afford finery. "You were right about Leeds, I'm going to do well here," she tells him as they take their seats at the theater. He volunteers to marry Jenny, "so you and the baby will be safe and secure." She thanks him, but turns him down because she doesn't want to ruin his plans for success.
With Jenny growing bigger, the pressures of stairs, work and distance are taking their toll, so Liam takes her to his friend Diane Baker in a smaller village. Jenny is enchanted by the town and by Diane. She even gets a job in a factory, though at seven months pregnant, she probably should stop working. "I have to save for the future," she tells Diane, which is a cue for her to go into labor at the factory. "It's time to go into labor," she calmly tells the foreman. "Couldn't you hold off 'til six?" he asks.
Atheist Jenny wants to have the baby christened, but she know the "the vicar will want to see a birth certificate," so Liam decides he can do it himself, always a help, though he reminds her that she has to "register the baby...a name, such as it is, is better than 'father unknown,'" and insists she use his name. Jenny has to leave the baby with a cousin so she can go back to work.
Unexpectedly, Jenny pays a visit to her family and since no one knew where she went, her brothers have been unable to tell her that their father has died. She's shocked, though I'm not sure how the timing works out so neatly when brother Dominic Guard tells her it happened, "just a few days after you left." She's also exceedingly shocked to hear that he died saving Peter, actually incensed because she knows no one at the manor would "lift a finger to save another man's life." "I'll make it up to both of you, I promise," Jenny says at the graves of her parents, damning the whole manor family and hoping that they "rot in hell." Jenny volunteers to send her other brother books so he can one day get that journalism job and tells Dominic to send money, even if it means sopping up less suds at the pub.
Having saved up money by working like a fiend and creating a reputation as a terrific seamstress, Jenny sees a shop "to let" from John Duttine, a young man who doesn't want to rent to a young woman, on a Sunday no less. Her constant working starts to annoy Joris, who is clearly in love with her, and kisses her to prove it (his "frum" mother is not happy about it). He's thrilled to hear she's rented a store and she sets to business with a dry good establishment, though Joris still wants her to work less. Liam opines that she works so hard out of "hatred," but Diane and Joris don't understand, so he covers and says, "hatred of poverty, that's what drives her now." In no time, she has two shops.
Following in the pattern, John falls in love with her too, but a local crone has it out for Jenny and her success. "We all know what's going on between the two of you, your fancy woman and yourself," the crone snaps. The crone has the store between Jenny's two and finally, in full lather, agrees to quit the property so Jenny can have three. Diane asks Jenny how it feels. "Safe. I'm beginning to feel safe," she says.
Liam starts the lie that Jenny's husband died, "but I don't think she'll go into mourning." When Joris finds out, he rushes to her store, where she's become an ace at selling to people who didn't even know they wanted her products. "He's been away so long, I was starting to feel he didn't exist at all," she notes without a trace of irony and David kisses her. He proposes marriage, but she declines because she's afraid of angering his mother. "You think these things won't matter, but one day, your parents, your children, would pull us apart," she says wisely.
Out of her life, for now, and into it returns vile Christopher of the manor, who knows that Jenny has had "my brother's bastard." He confronts her in her store after David has left, when she's alone. He tells her Peter is to be married and "we can't afford a scandal," so he wants to know where the baby is. He goes after her physically and tries to rape her, until she can grab a knife and hold it to his throat. One more reason for her to hate his family. His threatens to return. "We'll have to watch out for her, you little tiger," he says and she cuts his arm before he finally leaves.
John confesses his love for her and proposes also. "I could protect you," he says, and she realizes that's something she needs, so she agrees. Liam proposes to Diane, so everyone is happy. In short order, Jenny gives birth to a son. She loves her kids, but work always seems to come first. She's well on the way to building an empire, buying factories and shops and therefore controlling the whole chain of production. "Isn't there anything you really care about other than money?" her frustrated husband asks as she grows and grows. Of course she does, listing all the people in her life, with his name at the end, almost as an afterthought.
Brother Mick Ford gets a book published. He comes to see her for the grand opening of her megastore in Leeds, but he has to return to London because talk of war is big news for all journalists. Also around for the opening is Peter, looking almost ill as he wanders through the shop and then sees Jenny. He shies away from seeing her and dashes from the store. World War I is declared and Mick is sent as a correspondent. Back at the manse, Peter Egan is now married to his dead woman's sister Gayle.
Jenny wants to buy a mill at auction and bids against her enemies, father Peter Egan and son Christopher. She takes Joris with her, who advises against it, but spends an outrageous amount of money to outbid Christopher. Neither of them have the money for it, but she wins. "Good, it'll ruin her," Christopher spits. To make the money, Jenny decides to make all who owe her money from the store pay up and if they don't pay, she will start charging interest. Lawyer Christopher Gable doesn't think it's a good idea, but she insists. John doesn't like Christopher Gable. "He's too aware of his own bloody fatal charms, if you ask me," he howls, but she is way too focused on her work to even notice.
Jenny and Joris decide to merge their companies, but they have to get Henry's approval first. He's slowing down, so he's happy to take an easier role as a director of the parent company. When she tells John, he gets snotty, telling her she only tells him anything after it's been done. Jenny has promised her daughter they will trim the Christmas tree together, but she only wants John's help and her attitude toward her mother is rather harsh. Diane assures Jenny, "it's just a stage, she'll grow out of it" and Jenny notes that "sometimes she shuts herself up in a world of her own and I can't reach her. It frightens me." She's never paid any attention to her daughter, so what is causing her sudden concern?
As the war churns on, Britain declares that "every man between 19 and 40" must enlist unless exempted. That means John and Liam have to go (Peter has already joined). Diane begs John to "watch over" Liam, especially since she's pregnant (after suffering one miscarriage). As they leave, Jenny admits her fault in their crumbling marriage. "There'll be plenty of time to talk when I get back," he tells her, which doesn't bode well for him. Long parting speeches usually mean someone has played his last scene.
When the inevitable telegram comes, Jenny's daughter grabs and reads it. Jenny and her two sons are distraught. This news brings the second installment to a much sadder close than the first.
John's will leaves all of the property to Jenny, but his money to his son. Luckily, her brother Mick survives his corresponding duties with only a broken arm, but he's assigned to do a story on her long-ago lover Peter, who has been cited for bravery. Not as lucky is poor Diane, who has given birth to a boy, but with terrible difficulties. Jenny promises to look after Diane as Diane did her when she first gave birth and has just enough time to croak the baby's name, that she wants it to be raised Catholic and reared by Jenny before dying. "Please don't cry. There's nothing to cry about," Diane whispers, but the priest is already there to give last rites. Diane is in the middle of telling Jenny where her Christmas present is when her head rolls to the side and we've lost another.
Mick suggests his sister get married again, but she doesn't want a "man getting involved in the business." He explodes at her avarice, but she's already spotted soldier Barry Bostwick across the restaurant. With his usual cockiness, he stares her down. His father, George Baker, is an old business associate of the hated manor family (and we find out when Barry and his father talk that Gayle has died). Peter Egan hasn't fared well with his second wife's death, incapacitated by a stroke.
"Do all Australians have bad manners or are you special?" Jenny asks Barry when they finally meet, although his accent is so lousy, all of Australia should be up in arms. Paging Bryan Brown! We know a miniseries rule tells us that when a man and a woman meet hate-at-first-sight, it will be love. They arrange to meet, but she breaks the appointment. He hunts her down at the train station, bellowing "coward" at her. "Who are you afraid of? Me? Or yourself?" he asks. Great, leave it to the American actor in the cast to have the worst part and the worst lines. Time, lots of flowers and jewelry wear down her resistance. "You have to love me, want me, as much as I love you," he tells her when he could easily have taken her right there with the jewels. She does want him. He plants a kiss on her the likes of which she's never had. There's a problem: he's already married. At first, she's irate, but she loves him and their torrid affair continues.
Barry is called back to the war, but assures Jenny that "nothing is going to happen to me. My time isn't up yet." He sends her poetry from the front, and we know how much of a sucker she is for poetry. But, too much goodness means badness is right around the corner...again! Brother Dominic loses a leg in the fighting, and the doctor does not think he will be able to wear a prosthetic. "My brother will wear an artificial leg if I damn well have to design one myself," the increasingly bellicose Jenny tells the doctor. He gets the leg and then has to figure out how to use it. "You learned to walk as a nipper, you can do it again," Jenny cheers him on, just as the announcement comes that the war is over!
Though the war is done, she and Barry cannot be reunited as he is "still under military orders" and is being sent back to Australia. Unfortunately, time goes by without any word for him. He promises to come back to her as soon as he can. Her old enemy Christopher needs a loan and Jenny arranges for one with some very strict terms. Naturally, Christopher can't pay back the money and will lose his mills. He seeks legal advice from his brother Peter, who tells them to let it all go and concentrate on the one mill he has left, and "cut personal expenditures." This leads to an argument between the brothers and Christopher tells his brother he tried to have sex with Jenny. That doesn't go over well.
Out of the blue, Jenny's daughter asks for her birth certificate.
Also back from the war is Joris, who wants to get a divorce and marry her. "There is no you and me," she tells him, though he doesn't know about Barry until this conversation. "I haven't heard from him for some time, but I don't think he'll come back," she says. Mick as much as confirms that, having heard that Barry and his wife have been seen on holiday, so the marriage is not ending.
Liam has prospered, finally building the mansion he always dreamed of, raising his son with love. At a party at his house, Liam and her brothers are alarmed at Jenny's new interest in Christopher Gable, not to mention her plans for opening a store in London. "How will she afford all of this?" Liam wants to know. Dominic is furious when the marriage is announced. "He's useful at dinner parties," she tells Dominic when he asks why Christopher Gable? "So is a butler," he snaps. "A woman in my position needs a husband just as she needs a butler," she replies, with no mention of love. "I'm fond of him," is as far as she will go.
As soon as she goes on her honeymoon, Barry returns. She and Liam go on a business trip to enemy territory, her first time back at the mansion since she left pregnant. "You wouldn't have found this in my day," she tells him after finding dust on the fireplace. She's there to claim her property, revealing that she is behind the company to which he has sold the house. "Please vacate the house by the end of the week," she says with hatred. She now owns everything of his. He claims she out to ruin him all along. "That was my plan, but you did it yourself. I just helped along the way," she spits at him. She orders the house "torn down, brick by brick by brick...I want it wiped off the face of the earth as if it never existed." She's not all hatred, as she intends to turn the property "into a park for the local people. A beautiful park, in memory of my mother." Her mother? Has anyone thought about her in decades?
The marriage between Jenny and Christopher Gable is a sham. She has three-year-old twins with him and "he doesn't get in my way," so she won't divorce him yet. And that's when she sees Barry again. He explains that his wife is an alcoholic and had to be committed to an asylum. He says he sent letter and cables and produces all of his to her and hers to him. "They were stolen by my secretary," he says, saying the poor cluck was in love with him. Then his father died and he had to run the company. He did come back for her, but found out she was married. But, now that he has news that her marriage is lousy too, he's returned. Since neither of them can get divorced (his wife is Catholic and she simply refuses), she brushes him off.
Her eldest daughter eventually does get a look at her birth certificate and finds out what she thinks is the truth, that Liam is her father. Jenny says that it's what a man does as the child grows up that makes him a father and John therefore was her father in spirit. "I don't want to see you again," the pissy brat says after demanding to be sent to finishing school in Switzerland.
"I can't go on just standing by and seeing you so unhappy," Barry announces before giving Jenny one of those passionate kisses that actually melt her. He's just met her husband and was not impressed. "I've always loved you," she coos as they are disrobing at his place. "I'm not going to leave you, every again," he counters. "We'll be together for good." "I know." "We're going to make up for all of those lost year."
Jenny, sporting an outfit she's worn before (and it's not the first time she's done that--which is a sure sign of this not being made in America) and calmly tells her husband she's pregnant. "Ah, the second immaculate conception," he jokes. He wants a divorce, but she will only do it on her terms. Basically, she's blackmailing him with not only drink and women, but also "young men" and Christopher Gable's wealthy father will not look kindly on that fact. "The twins will come with me. You can keep the house. I'll be in touch after the baby comes," she declares.
The baby is born and Jenny wants this child to be legitimate. He's still married.
The child turns 11 year old, but her half-siblings are not so happy, feeling they never got so much of mother's attention. "It's going to be years and years of just us," Barry tells her, though one of her sons overhears and is despondent. Yet again, things are too happy to last, and Barry has to return to Australia to force his wive to finally give him a divorce. Furious that she still refuses, he drives recklessly and is in a car accident. "The surgeon says I'm lucky to be alive," Barry tells his lawyer from a wheelchair and with his face horribly disfigured. He hasn't told her about the extent of his injuries because war is inevitable and he doesn't her traveling to Australia. Also, his kidneys are failing and "the prognosis is bad."
Brother Mick finds out about Barry's death from a news wire, but before he can tell her, she hears it on the radio. "He was my life. I loved him. There's nothing left," she cries, apparently forgetting her brood of kids. A touching letter, ready in voice over with Barry's horrendous accent, is both sad and comforting to her.
It's goodbye Jenny as Deborah Kerr awakens from her sleep full of memories. Deborah wants to talk to Miranda about her paramour, who happens to be the grandson of her one-time love Peter. It's not incest, because Miranda is her granddaughter through Barry's child with her. She announces "it's time I stop playing God too" and tells Miranda to invite the man to dinner, bestowing her approval on their union. Liam is still alive and also comes to the country house where the family members are gathered.
Miranda's boyfriend actually works on Deborah's newspaper, and she's so giddy, she promotes him. In return, he gives her the rock on which Peter had carved their initials. "He told me the whole story," he tells Deborah, and also informs him that the child her mother had with the big boss died. "So much bitterness. Well, that's all in the past," she says, wiping away decades with such ease.
At dinner, the whole family stands in toast at Deborah's birthday. "Reversing the usual procedure, I'd like to give some birthday presents" and reads her new will. The grandchildren get two million pounds each, the houses, except the country house and all the art, except for a Van Gogh that Liam gets. Her daughter with Barry gets the country house and jewels her father lavished on her many years ago. She gives 52% of the company to other grandchildren. As for the department store chain, the nugget of the empire, she gives it completely to Miranda, who is as surprised as everyone else. Deborah's remaining four children are incensed and she attacks them back with the proof of what they were trying to do to her. She gives them one million pounds each. "These are not gifts, by the way. I'm buying you," informing them that if they accept the money, they will receive nothing else and cannot contest the will. Her daughters agree and take the cash and then the sons cave.
"I wish it hadn't been necessary," Deborah tells Liam, "perhaps it was my fault." He disagrees and then they catalogue all of the people she's outlived. She's actually excited to have great-grandchildren from the hated family to "bounce off my knee." He has one last gift for her, a sapphire brooch that replaces the ribbon he had given her so many years earlier when he could only promise gems. "Here's to the next generation and may they find the secret of life," she says. "Which is?" "To endure!"
The "Dynasty"-esque quality to the final scenes here is delicious, giving "A Woman of Substance" the spunk it needs after six hours of mopey behavior and overwhelming gloom. A lot more bite is needed to give this saga any heft, and the movie's efficiency and speed are its ultimate downfall, since no characters except the lead is given any time to develop.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Lincoln (1988)
Second only to World War II, we know how much the American miniseries adored The Civil War. So, it was inevitable that it would get around to Abraham Lincoln, the man, not the guest star. We've seen him in a few miniseries already, but only fleetingly. This time, the story is all about him. However, this is Gore Vidal's "Lincoln," which gives it extra heft. Though the miniseries is nowhere near as riveting as Vidal's historical novel (one of his best, and I love them all), but the casting of Sam Waterston (a role he has played a few times) as Lincoln assures quality. The wild card here is Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Todd Lincoln. That's not exactly apt casting physically, and our beloved TV Mary, even in her dramatic roles, has always been a model of steely excellence, so playing the lunatic Mary Todd Lincoln is a stretch...but she nails it!
What also makes this piece particularly interesting is that it sticks to the private life of the Lincolns, for the most part. The Civil War and ensuing politics cannot be ignored or separated from that, but "Lincoln" spends more time on situations like Mary's spending habits than battles one by one. This is a small story, not the nationwide story usually told of Abraham Lincoln.
Getting off the Baltimore train to be met by Congressman Elihu Washburne (Jerome Dempsey) is the newly-elected Abraham Lincoln, hiding in disguise with only Allan Pinkerton (Bill Chorney) and one other detective. But, his coat covers his face and no one seems to notice him. Abe jokes with everyone that getting shot wouldn't be the worst thing after 12 days of a boring train ride, where he's grown a beard as an activity. The proprietor of Willard's Hotel mistakes the rotund Washburne for the President-elect, which is how unknown Lincoln is; they haven't even bothered to make sure his room is cleared.
So, he sits down to a meal with Secretary of State William Seward (Richard Mulligan), who isn't unhappy to be rid of the "cotton republics" as he feels "expansion is our destiny." Lincoln says "our union is not like a marriage. We cannot simply give it a divorce." Seward chortles that he's "not used to your typical western rail-splitting president," but Washburne cuts him off saying, "oh that? That was all made up for the campaign." That's Vidal's voice coming through very clearly.
They head off to the War Department, which is caked in mud and geese (and where a boy pretends to shoot Lincoln, the second shooting reference in under 10 minutes) to pay a call on General Scott (John Houseman, doing nothing to hide his British accent). General Scott's opinion of what to do about the South is to pull the troops out and be done. But Lincoln does not believe the Confederacy actually exists, since secession itself is illegal.
And then the rest of the family arrives, all of those poorly behaved boys and their harried mother. Mary is furious that some expensive jewelry might be missing (she was always worried about money), thinking that Lincoln's secretary, John Hay (Steven Culp) has nothing better to do than tend to her luggage or keep her boys in check. According to chatterbox Mary, Lincoln is not in favor of abolition, merely against allowing slavery in the new territories.
The only Lincoln child not causing problems is stalwart Robert (Gregory Cooke), a fascinating man in his own right, but not yet in life. He's off to Harvard to put a thousand miles between him and his family, annoyed to be called "The Prince of Rails." After another shooting reference, an old fraternity brother friend of John, who is in a bar with incognito Robert, gives John a list of "Washington's most prominent whorehouses."
When Salmon Chase (John McMartin) shows up for a meeting with a gaggle of pushy politicians, Mary is a bit perplexed, but Abe explains that he wants to keep his fellow Republicans "where I can see them, in the Cabinet" because he knows "they all want to be President." He tells them he still believes "abolishing slavery in the Southern states...is beyond my power, or desire." Chase finds Lincoln a "weak and indecisive man," but though he considers Lincoln a consummate politician, his daughter Kate (Deborah Adair) is every bit as conniving, her only dream in life to have her father be elected president.
Lincoln is inaugurated, with hoards of people watching, even from the trees, and his speech reflects his current stance. Then it's party time. Mary makes a triumphant entrance on the arm of Stephen Douglas (Robin Gammell), her one-time beau and Lincoln's famous adversary. As the First Couple enjoys the party, the politicians do nothing but grumble about the inauguration speech and Lincoln's positions. John seems to have taken a shine to Kate Chase.
Mary doesn't take well to living in the Executive Mansion. Back then, the doors were open to the public at all times, but Mary is furious when they violate her "private sitting room." Elizabeth Keckley (Ruby Dee) arrives, a freewoman who is a dressmaker. After Mary fills her in on the difference between her levels of headaches, she tells her she has as dress that needs to be done in three days. Looking at Elizabeth's references, she notes "you worked for Mrs. Jefferson Davis? I've known Mr. Davis for a very long time," yet another of her memories that are completely inappropriate for any public consumption, given her husband's position. But she doesn't stop there. In fact, she gives Elizabeth a complete rundown of her political views, her hatred of the press, Lincoln's views, just about anything that comes to her mind. She launches into a particularly vivid memory of slave beatings are particularly uncomfortable for Elizabeth. "We are from the outlandish West and we are very poor," she reminds Elizabeth, before also telling her, "I'm the one who wants slavery destroyed."
On the night of the first official dinner, Abe follows it with a cabinet meeting where he tries to figure out what to do about Fort Sumter. Seward wants to provoke a war with another country to get the South back in line, but Lincoln decides to fortify the fort, much to every one's dismay. After the meeting, Seward and Chase meet and Seward tells Chase that he has decided they will run the country and Lincoln will merely be a figurehead. "No more funny backwoods stories, no more Hamlet-like vacillation," he notes.
Fort Sumter falls and war is inevitable. He's no dumb politician. While issuing a proclamation for volunteers, he refuses to call Congress until he knows every one's opinion. He seeks advice from his old foe Stephen Douglas, who is always honest with him. "Now you have the power to free the slaves or enslave us all," he tells Lincoln, using his words he remembered from a speech of Lincoln's. He then turns to Seward, wondering how exactly they are supposed to go to war against Spain or France considering they can't defend one of their own forts and then slowly getting around to Seward's suggestion that someone from the cabinet run the country. Things get heated, but Lincoln makes his point and Seward offers to resign. "We have more than enough work for two men," Lincoln says, brushing aside Seward's disloyalty and greed.
"Lincoln" is a smart miniseries that does not shy from long stretches of history. They may lack color and fun, but these sections are very important. Lincoln's actions stretch the Constitution (Seward is only the first to note the suspension of habeas corpus), but he has his arguments ready for anyone who notices. His most pressing problem is to keep Maryland in the Union to protect Washington DC. Seward asks what happens if Maryland doesn't fall in line? "We burn Baltimore to the ground," Lincoln responds. This is not the Lincoln of history books. This is the practical Lincoln, the realistic Lincoln. The legendary Lincoln would not appear until after his death. During his time in office, he wore no halo.
At the funeral ceremony for a loyal friend of the Lincoln family, Mary has one of her top level headaches and passes out for two days. When she wakes up, Elizabeth assures her only Abe and she have been in the room, so no trouble was caused. The sounds of war can be heard from her bedroom, but Elizabeth brushes it off, saying, "some of the quality folks have taken picnic baskets to watch the fighting." The Civil War is raging and Mary is just as schizophrenic as the country. The Battle of Bull Run is a success for the Confederacy, to every one's surprise. Lincoln calls General McClellan (David Leary), who immediately realizes the shabby shape of the Union forces.
Poor John Hay has to follow Mary around the city while she goes on one spending spree after another, both for herself and the "Presidential Palace." "For a year, they were so accommodating, now they claw at me for money," Mary whines when the bills come in. It's a terrible dance Mary has to do to spend like she wants and then hide the bills from everyone. That was a lifelong problem. An opportunity may have dropped into her lap when John comes looking for the State of the Union address and notes it would be worth a lot to the newspapers. The scene ends before we see that Mary did with it, but gossip around Washington is that she did sell it to pay bills.
Lincoln is so desperate to meet with McClellan that he and Seward go to his house to wait, but McClellan ignores them and they are forced to wait in the parlor. Seward is furious, but Lincoln knows how popular McClellan is with the troops and waits, though McClellan goes to bed without ever seeing the men. However, at a Christmas party given by Kate, John takes the opportunity to publicly shame McClellan for avoiding Lincoln. "There was a misunderstanding, the President comes to see me so often," McClellan fumbles for an excuse. "I don't think he will again," John Hay notes, a threat McClellan and the assembled crowd understands.
The Congressman who gave the State of the Union address to the press is in serious trouble, and Mary wants to save herself from being mentioned. Lincoln has no idea, and she keeps him on topic by telling him to fire McClellan and replace him with "anybody." "That's the trouble. I can't find anybody," he notes. But she's so nervous that they do have to discuss the speech. Actually, he's not angry at her, because he's finally seen the bills and is furious. "I can't find enough money to pay the soldiers and here you go spending more than $10 thousand for a carpet!" he rails. Thankfully, a visit from William Herndon (Jeffrey DeMunn) interrupts this violent argument. Lincoln's former law partner has come begging for a job for his potential brother-in-law. He's happy to break his rule on office seekers for Herndon. Mary is exceedingly frosty to him because "Lincoln came from ordinary folks like me."
The matter of the speech keeps going. A groundskeeper who had "been stealing for years" agreed to take the blame, but a Congressional committee doesn't buy it. Lincoln goes to the Capitol to testify, certainly a first. Bringing Seward with him, Lincoln starts off by reminding the committee that he's the "head of the Republican Party" and wants them to believe the story. "I believe John Watts' story and I want you to believe it too. Otherwise, in the middle of this terrible war, it will embarrass me personally. It will damage our brand new party, and of course you would be giving great comfort to the rebels in the South," he tells them with a light tone, but heavy hand, and then reminds them that election time is also nearing.
All of that seems like nothing when Willie Lincoln dies. "It is hard to have him die," Lincoln tells his son Robert with Mary screaming and howling in the background. Someone has to tend to her, but Robert can't and Abe won't. The funeral is particularly grim, as the soundtrack plays the noises of war behind the personal grief. Abe can't avoid Mary any longer once she locks herself in a room, and he apologizes. He apologizes for letting her mourn alone, but that doesn't work, so he drags her to the window and shows her the new insane asylum being build. "If you do not get a hold of yourself, we will have to send you there," he shouts and the first part ends.
Lincoln visits the war front, where Union bodies are piled high after yet another loss. McClellan has proven to be a terrible disappointment and in the upcoming elections, his party may lose control of key states. He has written the Emancipation Proclamation, but not the one we know. It frees only the slaves in the rebel states. Chase is outraged. "This is a half measure," he complains. Seward wants to avoid publishing it until the tide of the war turns. Lincoln agrees to that and has John Hay lock up the decree.
Edwin Stanton (Jon DeVries) is the new Secretary of War, just in time for the Battle of Antietam. He realizes immediately that McClellan is not an ideal general (and the rest of the cabinet find Grant a joke, so it's not his time for promotion yet). A telegram comes informing them that "Lee's army has retreated into Virginia," betting Lincoln's hopes up, but "McClellan does not pursue them," which has him throwing his hat on the ground in disgust. Lincoln refers to McClellan as "the great American tortoise" and says they will have to make Antietam out to be a huge success and order Hay to fetch the Emancipation Proclamation from the strong box.
The Commander-in-Chief runs the document by Frederick Douglass (Cleavon Little), who is disappointed that it does not free all slaves. Lincoln explains that "I do not have the authority to abolish slavery in the Union." He has to wait until the war is over to get a Constitutional Amendment to do that. He offers Douglass and his cohorts Grenada, noting honestly that "even when you cease to be slaves, you are still a long way from being placed on equality with the whites. On this broad continent, not a single member of your race has been made the equal of one of ours. It is better for us both to be separate." Douglass doesn't go for it. "This is our country too," he reminds Lincoln. Lincoln and Hay have a beautifully written short exchange about their feelings on races, one that smacks of Gore (that's a good thing) because it's so honest.
As for Mary, she's not exactly the picture of mental stability. She has a session with a psychic whose "control" is the Emperor Constantine and who plays on her feelings for her dead son. "Beware of a small man with a large nose," the Emperor Constantine hisses. Lincoln has his own plans, and they are not based on the spirit world. Admittedly, his theory isn't particularly brilliant: "sooner or later, they will run out of soldiers, and we won't." His view of the war's conclusion is merely that the Confederacy gives up when the population of soldiers runs out, because the Union has far more men at its disposal. It's an awfully grim and pessimistic world view, but it's honest.
If Lincoln the human does not quite understand the racial issues or grasp military maneuvers, Lincoln the politician is far more down-to-earth. After a visit to McClellan who is still refusing to advance with a larger army than Lee's, Lincoln knows that if there is no decisive battle victory in the next few weeks, his party will lose control in Congress. He and Washburne discuss it and Washburne says there is talk of McClellan taking over the presidency as a "dictator." "He would be the first general to overthrow a government without having ever won a battle," Lincoln jokes, adding, "of course, if he had a few victories, I might have him chase us all out of town."
Just when things were going so well, Hollywood intervenes in a scene where Lincoln insists on going to see Confederate prisoners and offers his hand in friendship, saying he hopes they have no malice towards him. Cue the one-legged soldier with the outstretched hand.
Mary hasn't learned when it comes to spending money. She has a new scheme. One of the White House staff is leaving and she asks John Hay to see to it that a paycheck is still issued in his name, and she can take the money for yet more improvements to the mansion. She says it's been going on since Washington. "The first occupant of the White House was not Washington, but Adams." "Don't be tiresome," she clucks, "it was certainly done during Mr. Buchanan's administration." John wonders aloud what Congress will think of it, so Mary knocks him off his perch by reminding him that Congress only pays the salary of one secretary for Lincoln and he technically is an employee of the Interior Department collecting a salary in the White House. In her mind, the two are the same.
The midterm elections do not go well. Important Republicans states fall with opposition to the war and because soldiers are unable to vote (Mary was packed off and shipped from DC so she couldn't cause any trouble, so it's not her fault). When Hay does the final tally, the Republicans remain in control of the Senate, but the House? Well, they keep it, but by only 18 seats. Oh, but Lincoln is thrilled with the outcome because now politics are out of the way for another few years. Lincoln tells Stanton, "tomorrow you will relieve General McClellan as Commanding General of the Army of the Potomac," which he has been waiting to do for ages.
With the midterms elections over, we can get back to the Lincolns themselves. Robert wants to go into the army, but his parents refuse. Mary refuses to lose another child, and petulant Robert hurls insults at both Mary and Abe, threatening to enlist on his own, though he surmises his father would pass a law that brings him back. Robert stamps and says, "the war will be over" soon enough, but Lincoln stops him there. "No, there will be war enough to go around." Indeed. It's only December 1862. Robert trusts Hay with the family secrets, or the way he sees them: Lincoln is a cold father to him, hates "the rail splitter stuff" and is trying to bury his past. Historically, Robert wasn't exactly wrong, but he and his father were such vastly different men, and Robert's career after his father's death would have been quite a shock to his humble (faux or not) papa.
Oh, and for anyone interested, Kate Chase gets engaged to Governor Sprague (Thomas Gibson), which is a crushing blow to John Hay. This miniseries has so many rich characters on its plate that it tends to use Hay merely as a listening tool for them all, but in Gore's book, he's actually the main character. So, in the miniseries, Hay's love life is really not at all important. Sorry, Steven Culp, you got the short end here, and Vidal would not have wanted it that way. "Desperate Housewives" is waaaay in the future, but keep going, you'll get there. Hay thinks it's awfully convenient for Sprague and Chase because their power and money put together could mean Chase for President in 1864.
Mary is thrown from a carriage that had been tinkered with and ends up in the hospital. Lincoln remains at her bedside day and night, relieved only by faithful Elizabeth.
The Battle of Gettysburg, 1863. Lincoln tests it out on his aides. Without the harangue, the words are very moving. He keeps stopping to realize he may have to make changes for this specific crowd. Worn out and tired, he then has to confront more of Mary's schemes for money. He takes the blame for her problems, saying, "I'm a very difficult man to life with." No one wants to admit she's plain nuts.
General Grant (James Gammon) arrives and Washburne informs him he will be the highest general of the armed services. He wants to be in the field with his men, rather than with politics. His only ambition is to be mayor of his town so he can fix a sidewalk.
"":
Lincoln tells Mary, "there is nothing quite as useless in a war than a general running for president. On that subject I am the world's greatest and saddest authority" as they go to the war front. A man in injured from an explosion feet away from her, but she initially refuses to leave, going on and on about how she could have been a great soldier.
Politics are important again. McClellan is sure to get nominated from the Democrats and Chase from the Republicans, but there is also General Grant who may want it. A strategy is needed for Lincoln's re-election, though he's somewhat weary of being president. On Election Day, Lincoln tells Hay, "I've made every shady bargain and maneuver I can. I've dangled the recent corpse of Chief Justice Tanney at Mr. Chase...I have even offered the Ministry of France to Mr. Bennett of The Herald which may provoke a crisis with the Emperor Napoleon. I can do no more. I can do no more!" Rather unexpectedly, Lincoln wins his re-election.
Kate is furious when she finds out her husband and been bringing cotton to be sold, a act of treason. This comes at a bad time, just days before Chase is to be sworn in Chief Justice.
Mary Lincoln and Julia Grant (Karen Hutcheson) go out to the front where they find Robert in the army. Lincoln had allowed it as long as he is in Grant's home base with no chance of getting hurt. "Sometimes, Father, I wish to God I wasn't Abraham Lincoln's son!" Robert bellows. Mary insults a military wife by calling her all sorts of names and then has one of her "big head aches."
"Our work is done," Lincoln quietly says when given Lee's note from Appomattox.
That should make Abe feel better, but he has a dream that he will be assassinated.
Off to the play, and though Mary waves blankly to the crowd, she's angry at the Grants for not showing up to tag along. They discuss what to do after the second term is done. Mary wants to travel and decorate houses, Abe just wants a job. The carriage ride over to Ford's Theater is quite sweet as both apologize to the other for not being the perfect partner, but their love is very obvious.
Laura Keene's "Our American Cousin" has the audience laughing as John Wilkes Booth (Glenn Faigen) creeps up the steps to the Presidential Box. He is taken across the street where Mary howls and howls, though managing to toss in some instructions. The doctors demand she be removed and not allowed back in.
Tad wonders why this all happened, and Robert tries to explain it to him, but Mary blames everything else in the world for conspiring against him. "I think in some way, he willed his own murder as a form of atonement for the great and terrible thing he in giving so bloody and absolute a rebirth to this nation," is her other take on it.
After Lincoln was killed, a series of bumbling leaders (Johnson, Grant, Hayes and nearly everyone until Teddy Roosevelt) made what Lincoln did seem utterly out of their reach. He united the country after being the one to split it. He reigned over the entire Civil War and remained strong. However, at the time, his actions were not seen as anything terribly special. Lincoln-as-icon took some time to perfect.
Mary moved around, obsessed with money and wearing it in a money belt, most of the time. She was supposedly crazy, with Robert, ultimately the only son to live, having to bail her out of so many scrapes. She did not go quietly into post-First Lady boredom.
I would say that one learns something about the Lincolns here. The dialogue is based on their feelings, or people's interpretations of their feelings, so we can look at them as the historical part of historical fiction. History scholars will find little of worth here, but that's not the point. The point is that is an American miniseries about one of the two five all-time American heroes and he and his wife are drawn as honest folks in extraordinary times.
What also makes this piece particularly interesting is that it sticks to the private life of the Lincolns, for the most part. The Civil War and ensuing politics cannot be ignored or separated from that, but "Lincoln" spends more time on situations like Mary's spending habits than battles one by one. This is a small story, not the nationwide story usually told of Abraham Lincoln.
Getting off the Baltimore train to be met by Congressman Elihu Washburne (Jerome Dempsey) is the newly-elected Abraham Lincoln, hiding in disguise with only Allan Pinkerton (Bill Chorney) and one other detective. But, his coat covers his face and no one seems to notice him. Abe jokes with everyone that getting shot wouldn't be the worst thing after 12 days of a boring train ride, where he's grown a beard as an activity. The proprietor of Willard's Hotel mistakes the rotund Washburne for the President-elect, which is how unknown Lincoln is; they haven't even bothered to make sure his room is cleared.
So, he sits down to a meal with Secretary of State William Seward (Richard Mulligan), who isn't unhappy to be rid of the "cotton republics" as he feels "expansion is our destiny." Lincoln says "our union is not like a marriage. We cannot simply give it a divorce." Seward chortles that he's "not used to your typical western rail-splitting president," but Washburne cuts him off saying, "oh that? That was all made up for the campaign." That's Vidal's voice coming through very clearly.
They head off to the War Department, which is caked in mud and geese (and where a boy pretends to shoot Lincoln, the second shooting reference in under 10 minutes) to pay a call on General Scott (John Houseman, doing nothing to hide his British accent). General Scott's opinion of what to do about the South is to pull the troops out and be done. But Lincoln does not believe the Confederacy actually exists, since secession itself is illegal.
And then the rest of the family arrives, all of those poorly behaved boys and their harried mother. Mary is furious that some expensive jewelry might be missing (she was always worried about money), thinking that Lincoln's secretary, John Hay (Steven Culp) has nothing better to do than tend to her luggage or keep her boys in check. According to chatterbox Mary, Lincoln is not in favor of abolition, merely against allowing slavery in the new territories.
The only Lincoln child not causing problems is stalwart Robert (Gregory Cooke), a fascinating man in his own right, but not yet in life. He's off to Harvard to put a thousand miles between him and his family, annoyed to be called "The Prince of Rails." After another shooting reference, an old fraternity brother friend of John, who is in a bar with incognito Robert, gives John a list of "Washington's most prominent whorehouses."
When Salmon Chase (John McMartin) shows up for a meeting with a gaggle of pushy politicians, Mary is a bit perplexed, but Abe explains that he wants to keep his fellow Republicans "where I can see them, in the Cabinet" because he knows "they all want to be President." He tells them he still believes "abolishing slavery in the Southern states...is beyond my power, or desire." Chase finds Lincoln a "weak and indecisive man," but though he considers Lincoln a consummate politician, his daughter Kate (Deborah Adair) is every bit as conniving, her only dream in life to have her father be elected president.
Lincoln is inaugurated, with hoards of people watching, even from the trees, and his speech reflects his current stance. Then it's party time. Mary makes a triumphant entrance on the arm of Stephen Douglas (Robin Gammell), her one-time beau and Lincoln's famous adversary. As the First Couple enjoys the party, the politicians do nothing but grumble about the inauguration speech and Lincoln's positions. John seems to have taken a shine to Kate Chase.
Mary doesn't take well to living in the Executive Mansion. Back then, the doors were open to the public at all times, but Mary is furious when they violate her "private sitting room." Elizabeth Keckley (Ruby Dee) arrives, a freewoman who is a dressmaker. After Mary fills her in on the difference between her levels of headaches, she tells her she has as dress that needs to be done in three days. Looking at Elizabeth's references, she notes "you worked for Mrs. Jefferson Davis? I've known Mr. Davis for a very long time," yet another of her memories that are completely inappropriate for any public consumption, given her husband's position. But she doesn't stop there. In fact, she gives Elizabeth a complete rundown of her political views, her hatred of the press, Lincoln's views, just about anything that comes to her mind. She launches into a particularly vivid memory of slave beatings are particularly uncomfortable for Elizabeth. "We are from the outlandish West and we are very poor," she reminds Elizabeth, before also telling her, "I'm the one who wants slavery destroyed."
On the night of the first official dinner, Abe follows it with a cabinet meeting where he tries to figure out what to do about Fort Sumter. Seward wants to provoke a war with another country to get the South back in line, but Lincoln decides to fortify the fort, much to every one's dismay. After the meeting, Seward and Chase meet and Seward tells Chase that he has decided they will run the country and Lincoln will merely be a figurehead. "No more funny backwoods stories, no more Hamlet-like vacillation," he notes.
Fort Sumter falls and war is inevitable. He's no dumb politician. While issuing a proclamation for volunteers, he refuses to call Congress until he knows every one's opinion. He seeks advice from his old foe Stephen Douglas, who is always honest with him. "Now you have the power to free the slaves or enslave us all," he tells Lincoln, using his words he remembered from a speech of Lincoln's. He then turns to Seward, wondering how exactly they are supposed to go to war against Spain or France considering they can't defend one of their own forts and then slowly getting around to Seward's suggestion that someone from the cabinet run the country. Things get heated, but Lincoln makes his point and Seward offers to resign. "We have more than enough work for two men," Lincoln says, brushing aside Seward's disloyalty and greed.
"Lincoln" is a smart miniseries that does not shy from long stretches of history. They may lack color and fun, but these sections are very important. Lincoln's actions stretch the Constitution (Seward is only the first to note the suspension of habeas corpus), but he has his arguments ready for anyone who notices. His most pressing problem is to keep Maryland in the Union to protect Washington DC. Seward asks what happens if Maryland doesn't fall in line? "We burn Baltimore to the ground," Lincoln responds. This is not the Lincoln of history books. This is the practical Lincoln, the realistic Lincoln. The legendary Lincoln would not appear until after his death. During his time in office, he wore no halo.
At the funeral ceremony for a loyal friend of the Lincoln family, Mary has one of her top level headaches and passes out for two days. When she wakes up, Elizabeth assures her only Abe and she have been in the room, so no trouble was caused. The sounds of war can be heard from her bedroom, but Elizabeth brushes it off, saying, "some of the quality folks have taken picnic baskets to watch the fighting." The Civil War is raging and Mary is just as schizophrenic as the country. The Battle of Bull Run is a success for the Confederacy, to every one's surprise. Lincoln calls General McClellan (David Leary), who immediately realizes the shabby shape of the Union forces.
Poor John Hay has to follow Mary around the city while she goes on one spending spree after another, both for herself and the "Presidential Palace." "For a year, they were so accommodating, now they claw at me for money," Mary whines when the bills come in. It's a terrible dance Mary has to do to spend like she wants and then hide the bills from everyone. That was a lifelong problem. An opportunity may have dropped into her lap when John comes looking for the State of the Union address and notes it would be worth a lot to the newspapers. The scene ends before we see that Mary did with it, but gossip around Washington is that she did sell it to pay bills.
Lincoln is so desperate to meet with McClellan that he and Seward go to his house to wait, but McClellan ignores them and they are forced to wait in the parlor. Seward is furious, but Lincoln knows how popular McClellan is with the troops and waits, though McClellan goes to bed without ever seeing the men. However, at a Christmas party given by Kate, John takes the opportunity to publicly shame McClellan for avoiding Lincoln. "There was a misunderstanding, the President comes to see me so often," McClellan fumbles for an excuse. "I don't think he will again," John Hay notes, a threat McClellan and the assembled crowd understands.
The Congressman who gave the State of the Union address to the press is in serious trouble, and Mary wants to save herself from being mentioned. Lincoln has no idea, and she keeps him on topic by telling him to fire McClellan and replace him with "anybody." "That's the trouble. I can't find anybody," he notes. But she's so nervous that they do have to discuss the speech. Actually, he's not angry at her, because he's finally seen the bills and is furious. "I can't find enough money to pay the soldiers and here you go spending more than $10 thousand for a carpet!" he rails. Thankfully, a visit from William Herndon (Jeffrey DeMunn) interrupts this violent argument. Lincoln's former law partner has come begging for a job for his potential brother-in-law. He's happy to break his rule on office seekers for Herndon. Mary is exceedingly frosty to him because "Lincoln came from ordinary folks like me."
The matter of the speech keeps going. A groundskeeper who had "been stealing for years" agreed to take the blame, but a Congressional committee doesn't buy it. Lincoln goes to the Capitol to testify, certainly a first. Bringing Seward with him, Lincoln starts off by reminding the committee that he's the "head of the Republican Party" and wants them to believe the story. "I believe John Watts' story and I want you to believe it too. Otherwise, in the middle of this terrible war, it will embarrass me personally. It will damage our brand new party, and of course you would be giving great comfort to the rebels in the South," he tells them with a light tone, but heavy hand, and then reminds them that election time is also nearing.
All of that seems like nothing when Willie Lincoln dies. "It is hard to have him die," Lincoln tells his son Robert with Mary screaming and howling in the background. Someone has to tend to her, but Robert can't and Abe won't. The funeral is particularly grim, as the soundtrack plays the noises of war behind the personal grief. Abe can't avoid Mary any longer once she locks herself in a room, and he apologizes. He apologizes for letting her mourn alone, but that doesn't work, so he drags her to the window and shows her the new insane asylum being build. "If you do not get a hold of yourself, we will have to send you there," he shouts and the first part ends.
Lincoln visits the war front, where Union bodies are piled high after yet another loss. McClellan has proven to be a terrible disappointment and in the upcoming elections, his party may lose control of key states. He has written the Emancipation Proclamation, but not the one we know. It frees only the slaves in the rebel states. Chase is outraged. "This is a half measure," he complains. Seward wants to avoid publishing it until the tide of the war turns. Lincoln agrees to that and has John Hay lock up the decree.
Edwin Stanton (Jon DeVries) is the new Secretary of War, just in time for the Battle of Antietam. He realizes immediately that McClellan is not an ideal general (and the rest of the cabinet find Grant a joke, so it's not his time for promotion yet). A telegram comes informing them that "Lee's army has retreated into Virginia," betting Lincoln's hopes up, but "McClellan does not pursue them," which has him throwing his hat on the ground in disgust. Lincoln refers to McClellan as "the great American tortoise" and says they will have to make Antietam out to be a huge success and order Hay to fetch the Emancipation Proclamation from the strong box.
The Commander-in-Chief runs the document by Frederick Douglass (Cleavon Little), who is disappointed that it does not free all slaves. Lincoln explains that "I do not have the authority to abolish slavery in the Union." He has to wait until the war is over to get a Constitutional Amendment to do that. He offers Douglass and his cohorts Grenada, noting honestly that "even when you cease to be slaves, you are still a long way from being placed on equality with the whites. On this broad continent, not a single member of your race has been made the equal of one of ours. It is better for us both to be separate." Douglass doesn't go for it. "This is our country too," he reminds Lincoln. Lincoln and Hay have a beautifully written short exchange about their feelings on races, one that smacks of Gore (that's a good thing) because it's so honest.
As for Mary, she's not exactly the picture of mental stability. She has a session with a psychic whose "control" is the Emperor Constantine and who plays on her feelings for her dead son. "Beware of a small man with a large nose," the Emperor Constantine hisses. Lincoln has his own plans, and they are not based on the spirit world. Admittedly, his theory isn't particularly brilliant: "sooner or later, they will run out of soldiers, and we won't." His view of the war's conclusion is merely that the Confederacy gives up when the population of soldiers runs out, because the Union has far more men at its disposal. It's an awfully grim and pessimistic world view, but it's honest.
If Lincoln the human does not quite understand the racial issues or grasp military maneuvers, Lincoln the politician is far more down-to-earth. After a visit to McClellan who is still refusing to advance with a larger army than Lee's, Lincoln knows that if there is no decisive battle victory in the next few weeks, his party will lose control in Congress. He and Washburne discuss it and Washburne says there is talk of McClellan taking over the presidency as a "dictator." "He would be the first general to overthrow a government without having ever won a battle," Lincoln jokes, adding, "of course, if he had a few victories, I might have him chase us all out of town."
Just when things were going so well, Hollywood intervenes in a scene where Lincoln insists on going to see Confederate prisoners and offers his hand in friendship, saying he hopes they have no malice towards him. Cue the one-legged soldier with the outstretched hand.
Mary hasn't learned when it comes to spending money. She has a new scheme. One of the White House staff is leaving and she asks John Hay to see to it that a paycheck is still issued in his name, and she can take the money for yet more improvements to the mansion. She says it's been going on since Washington. "The first occupant of the White House was not Washington, but Adams." "Don't be tiresome," she clucks, "it was certainly done during Mr. Buchanan's administration." John wonders aloud what Congress will think of it, so Mary knocks him off his perch by reminding him that Congress only pays the salary of one secretary for Lincoln and he technically is an employee of the Interior Department collecting a salary in the White House. In her mind, the two are the same.
The midterm elections do not go well. Important Republicans states fall with opposition to the war and because soldiers are unable to vote (Mary was packed off and shipped from DC so she couldn't cause any trouble, so it's not her fault). When Hay does the final tally, the Republicans remain in control of the Senate, but the House? Well, they keep it, but by only 18 seats. Oh, but Lincoln is thrilled with the outcome because now politics are out of the way for another few years. Lincoln tells Stanton, "tomorrow you will relieve General McClellan as Commanding General of the Army of the Potomac," which he has been waiting to do for ages.
With the midterms elections over, we can get back to the Lincolns themselves. Robert wants to go into the army, but his parents refuse. Mary refuses to lose another child, and petulant Robert hurls insults at both Mary and Abe, threatening to enlist on his own, though he surmises his father would pass a law that brings him back. Robert stamps and says, "the war will be over" soon enough, but Lincoln stops him there. "No, there will be war enough to go around." Indeed. It's only December 1862. Robert trusts Hay with the family secrets, or the way he sees them: Lincoln is a cold father to him, hates "the rail splitter stuff" and is trying to bury his past. Historically, Robert wasn't exactly wrong, but he and his father were such vastly different men, and Robert's career after his father's death would have been quite a shock to his humble (faux or not) papa.
Oh, and for anyone interested, Kate Chase gets engaged to Governor Sprague (Thomas Gibson), which is a crushing blow to John Hay. This miniseries has so many rich characters on its plate that it tends to use Hay merely as a listening tool for them all, but in Gore's book, he's actually the main character. So, in the miniseries, Hay's love life is really not at all important. Sorry, Steven Culp, you got the short end here, and Vidal would not have wanted it that way. "Desperate Housewives" is waaaay in the future, but keep going, you'll get there. Hay thinks it's awfully convenient for Sprague and Chase because their power and money put together could mean Chase for President in 1864.
Mary is thrown from a carriage that had been tinkered with and ends up in the hospital. Lincoln remains at her bedside day and night, relieved only by faithful Elizabeth.
The Battle of Gettysburg, 1863. Lincoln tests it out on his aides. Without the harangue, the words are very moving. He keeps stopping to realize he may have to make changes for this specific crowd. Worn out and tired, he then has to confront more of Mary's schemes for money. He takes the blame for her problems, saying, "I'm a very difficult man to life with." No one wants to admit she's plain nuts.
General Grant (James Gammon) arrives and Washburne informs him he will be the highest general of the armed services. He wants to be in the field with his men, rather than with politics. His only ambition is to be mayor of his town so he can fix a sidewalk.
"":
Lincoln tells Mary, "there is nothing quite as useless in a war than a general running for president. On that subject I am the world's greatest and saddest authority" as they go to the war front. A man in injured from an explosion feet away from her, but she initially refuses to leave, going on and on about how she could have been a great soldier.
Politics are important again. McClellan is sure to get nominated from the Democrats and Chase from the Republicans, but there is also General Grant who may want it. A strategy is needed for Lincoln's re-election, though he's somewhat weary of being president. On Election Day, Lincoln tells Hay, "I've made every shady bargain and maneuver I can. I've dangled the recent corpse of Chief Justice Tanney at Mr. Chase...I have even offered the Ministry of France to Mr. Bennett of The Herald which may provoke a crisis with the Emperor Napoleon. I can do no more. I can do no more!" Rather unexpectedly, Lincoln wins his re-election.
Kate is furious when she finds out her husband and been bringing cotton to be sold, a act of treason. This comes at a bad time, just days before Chase is to be sworn in Chief Justice.
Mary Lincoln and Julia Grant (Karen Hutcheson) go out to the front where they find Robert in the army. Lincoln had allowed it as long as he is in Grant's home base with no chance of getting hurt. "Sometimes, Father, I wish to God I wasn't Abraham Lincoln's son!" Robert bellows. Mary insults a military wife by calling her all sorts of names and then has one of her "big head aches."
"Our work is done," Lincoln quietly says when given Lee's note from Appomattox.
That should make Abe feel better, but he has a dream that he will be assassinated.
Off to the play, and though Mary waves blankly to the crowd, she's angry at the Grants for not showing up to tag along. They discuss what to do after the second term is done. Mary wants to travel and decorate houses, Abe just wants a job. The carriage ride over to Ford's Theater is quite sweet as both apologize to the other for not being the perfect partner, but their love is very obvious.
Laura Keene's "Our American Cousin" has the audience laughing as John Wilkes Booth (Glenn Faigen) creeps up the steps to the Presidential Box. He is taken across the street where Mary howls and howls, though managing to toss in some instructions. The doctors demand she be removed and not allowed back in.
Tad wonders why this all happened, and Robert tries to explain it to him, but Mary blames everything else in the world for conspiring against him. "I think in some way, he willed his own murder as a form of atonement for the great and terrible thing he in giving so bloody and absolute a rebirth to this nation," is her other take on it.
After Lincoln was killed, a series of bumbling leaders (Johnson, Grant, Hayes and nearly everyone until Teddy Roosevelt) made what Lincoln did seem utterly out of their reach. He united the country after being the one to split it. He reigned over the entire Civil War and remained strong. However, at the time, his actions were not seen as anything terribly special. Lincoln-as-icon took some time to perfect.
Mary moved around, obsessed with money and wearing it in a money belt, most of the time. She was supposedly crazy, with Robert, ultimately the only son to live, having to bail her out of so many scrapes. She did not go quietly into post-First Lady boredom.
I would say that one learns something about the Lincolns here. The dialogue is based on their feelings, or people's interpretations of their feelings, so we can look at them as the historical part of historical fiction. History scholars will find little of worth here, but that's not the point. The point is that is an American miniseries about one of the two five all-time American heroes and he and his wife are drawn as honest folks in extraordinary times.
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