"The Women of Brewster Place" is one of those when-bad-things-happen-to-good-people-and-happen-and-happen-and-happen sagas, but this one tops 'em all because it doesn't pick just one social inequity with which to challenge our minds; it uses them all! Racism? Check. Sexism? Check. Ageism? Check? Gender inequality? Check (both hetero- and homosexual). Impressively, it crunches them all together into a confined sense of space and time. "Centennial" has nearly all of the above as plot issues, but is spread out over 20+ hours and 100+ years!
"How, Bj," you say, "how can all of this be crunched into a two-night miniseries? It's not possible!" Oh, friends, it's possible because helming the whole thing is (trumpets blaring) Oprah Winfrey. She's one of the producers and its star, in that time when she thought herself an actress. She's a long way from "The Color Purple," where she actually proved her mettle, and thankfully a long way from "Beloved" where she destroyed that mettle. If Oprah can squeeze social injustice into one hour of chat, I suppose it's not impossible to tuck all of Gloria Naylor's book into four hours for us.
In fact, "The Women of Brewster Place" was so critically acclaimed and so wildly successful with viewers that it was turned into a weekly TV series, starring Oprah Winfrey. But, after less than half a dozen episodes, the show was canned and it's since been erased from history (as I might be now for bringing it up). Left standing is "The Women of Brewster Place," the miniseries, which is tough to actually review smoothly because it's at once outstanding and utterly grating. When the actresses are playing real and honest, the thing soars. When they dip into the pathos side of things, they all but reach through the screen and beat the tears out of the viewer. There's only so much crying I'm willing to do for one miniseries and this one would have to be 10 times as long to merit all it thinks it deserves.
The narration is, naturally, by Oprah, playing a Tennessee woman living in a cul-de-sac slum, cut off from everything by a brick wall. Oprah tells us just a tad, but then hits us with the main point of the miniseries, which will be obvious all on its own: "When we women came together, there was a power inside us we never felt before."
She arrives on the block as an old woman, taking an apartment with a lovely view of the wall. As she looks at her new digs, she remembers the past, back in the country, where she's feeding chickens and being pestered by Clark Johnson, who wants to spend some special time with her. Oprah tells him he curses too much and he says "you and your 'ain't'" knocking her Christian values in favor of easier hedonism. "All the women I know, they don't remember nothing but the good times they had with me," and that is supposed to keep them happy in more miserable times. Clark is especially turned on by Oprah telling the story of her family's last name, one that goes back to slavery. He gets what he wants (after she finishes her story).
But it only takes one time to get pregnant, and that's exacty what happens. Oprah's father, Paul Winfield, is so furious he refuses to speak at all, but her mother, Mary Alice, is more understanding. She tells her daughter that having a baby is not wrong, but "the sin is in the fornicating and I done forgave you for that a long time ago." After Mary's touching speech, Paul gets one too, lest we go 53 seconds with some preaching. He actually forgives her too, but only because he thinks a former beau is responsible, but she tells him the father is someone different and he goes ballistic. "Tell me of I'm gonna beat it out of you," which he does with fists and a broom. Mary rushes out with a shotgun and proclaims, "you touch my child again and I'll meet your soul in hell." Now it's Paul's turn to cry, saying "I had such hopes for that girl."
Goodbye country living, the unmarried pregnant girl is off on a Greyhound bus. Oprah lives in a boarding house where she gives birth with the support of her friend Jackee Harry, but that support is about to be yanked out from under her too. Jackee is moving to New York City. "They got this place called Harlem with nothing but wall to wall colored doctors and businessmen," she rambles and then invites Oprah to come with her, but the latter is skeptical and decides to stay put with her baby.
Happy for about five minutes, she awakes to find a rat in her bed, having just finished off the baby's bottle. She has to leave that boarding house, but it's hard to get new digs. Eccentric old lady Barbara Montgomery finally takes them in, offering her food and her house. As she coos over "that pretty red thing " (the baby) and tells stories of her five husbands, she manages to tell Oprah she won't charge her for living there. She's lonely, since she has only her young granddaughter for company.
The years go by and Barbara is concerned that Oprah does not have a man. "I have my hands full raising my son," she protests when Barbara asks her for the umpteenth time why she doesn't date. The argument expands to include Barbara chastizing Oprah for letting her son sleep in bed with her. Oprah claims that he's afraid of the dark. They have had this argument for years, but this is the last time because Barbara dies. Her granddaughter is taken by the girl's father, but Oprah promises her son no one will take him away, her plan being to stay in the house and give her son a good life.
Indeed he has one, becoming grown-up Eugene Lee over a cup of coffee. The child actors are now banished and the aging make-up and graying wigs are hauled out for Oprah. Having fallen asleep reading the Bible, Oprah is awoken by a phone call from Eugene saying he's in jail for having killed a man. She insists on mortgaging the paid-for house so Eugene doesn't have to sit in prison until the trial. Ever naive, Oprah tells Eugene he won't be found guilty because it was an accident and the jury will see the evidence of that, but Eugene knows better. "A jury? That jury's gonna be so white, they gonna think we just had a snowfall," Eugene reminds her, summing up Southern justice quite nicely.
You know what happens next. Let's not even waste time playing the guessing game. After a speech like that, the kid is history, cutting and running. By this point, with her hair completely gray, it's time for Oprah to put on her ratty fur coat, grab her suitcase and a little plant (this reference to "A Raisin in the Sun" is noticeable, except when Mama Younger took her houseplant, she was moving from the slum to a house, not the reverse like Oprah is doing) and dispense with the flashback.
She is pulled from remembering by Lynn Whitfield, the little girl she helped raised, now all grown up. Lynn knows Oprah is miserable in the city, now sounding like Barbara Montgomery as she clucks over Lynn's fatherless child, and tries to make Oprah as comfortable as possible. Brewster Place is filled with unique characters, and two of them argue constantly outside Oprah's door. There's blue-haired senior Olivia Cole, direct from every other miniseries, and Phyllis Stickney, a young mother of a brood of loud brats. Pre-feminism feminist rich girl Robin Givens is moving in with her boyfriend and nervous about it. Into the squalor of the neighborhood sweeps Jackee in a giant car, wearing a fur-trimmed suit and feathers in her hair, having left her man and taken his car as a method of escape. Her problem is that she's never had a "regular job," going from man to man as a kept woman, and right now, she has no prospects in that department. Oprah invites her to church to meet a nice man, though Jackee wonders why Oprah is still single with all of her church-going. "Child, I done banked those fires long ago," she snaps back.
Brewster Place is a haven for crime, with Glenn Plummer the drug-pushing mastermind of it all. The women hate him and his gang, but the police won't even listen to their complaints. Robin wants to start a tenant's association, but she doesn't get too far before spotting one of Phyllis' kids eating out of the garbage. Hauling him to his TV-loving mother, who moans, "now I'm gonna miss Rachel coming out of her coma," Robin is shocked to hear that Phyllis knows her kid is a dumpster diver and does it to find sweets that she won't allow her kids. In fact, she's indignant that Robin has even hinted that her kids aren't well-fed. "I got four books of food stamps," she says proudly! When she tells boyfriend Leon about it, he reminds her that life in the ghetto is not like anything she's known. "These people have had the life beaten out of them for years and you can't change that overnight," he tells the budding do-gooder.
The bad news just keeps piling up. Lynn finds out she's pregnant by William Allen Young, a rather ornery man, but no one is very excited. Lynn thinks it will be nice to have a sibling for her other child, but William loses his job and is afraid of how they will manage. "When I have this baby, I'll have my tubes tied," she says, but he can't see that far into the future. "I swear, with you and these two kids on my back, ain't nothing ever gonna happen," is his response before tearing out of the apartment. Cue the abortion. "I'm still young. I got plenty of time," Lynn cries to Oprah as she tries to make her understand why she had to do it.
Robin's biggest problem is her mother showing up unexpectedly. Cicely Tyson looks glamorous in a Chanel suit, refusing to call her daughter by her back-to-Africa name (this is the 1960s, FYI). Cicely keeps harping on the fact that Robin has no phone, which costs $75. Cicely wants to pay for the phone, but Robin refuses, preferring to "make it" on her own. "This is how poor people live," Robin notes, to which Cicely replies, "but we're not poor." "No, Mama, you're not poor!" Robin volleys back. Robin is easily the most annoying character in the movie because her character's plot has aged the worst. The drama of the poor in the ghetto is universal and always timely, but the once-stock character of the rich girl wanting to live among what she considers "our people" died with the 60s, when people actually did that. Robin Givens is ideal casting, I admit, but the character is given to us with no sense of humor and nothing to her that says she's anything but that stock character that even by 1989 had ceased to be realistic.
Cicely is only around briefly, but that doesn't stop her for going for the gold with this bit when Robin gets all high and mighty about her parents being wealthy, to her an affrontery on black culture: "Then know this. I am alive because of the blood of a people who never scraped or begged or apologized for what they were. They asked only one thing of this world, to be allowed TO BE! And I learned through the blood of these people that black isn't beautiful. It isn't ugly. It isn't kinky hair. It isn't straight hair. BLACK IS JUST BLACK!" As if that hissing isn't a present enough to an actress, it continues. "It broke my heart when you changed your name. I gave you my grandmother's name, a woman who bore nine children and educated them all, who held off six white men with a shotgun when they tried to drag off one them off to jail for not knowing his place. And you have to reach into an African dictionary to make a name that would make you proud! When I brought my babies home from the hospital, I swore to whatever gods would listen that I would use everything I had or could get so that my children would be prepared to meet this world on its own terms, so that no one could make them ashamed of what they were or how they looked...that's not white or red or black or purple. That's being a mother." Cicely uses every trick in the acting handbook to gnaw on the scenery. It's a hokey speech, to be sure, especially delivered by Cicely with her hand to God, but she's a total pro in a wasteland of so-so actresses and thus makes it work regally. If spoken by anyone else, it would be a laugh riot.
"There's gonne be trouble," Olivia Cole says to Jackee, both sitting on the stoop. They are referring to "two young girls living by themselves," Lonette McKee and Paula Kelly. Jackee doesn't see the harm, but Olivia has a suspicion that they are going to be throwing parties. Oh, she doesn't know the half of it!
Jumping back onto her high horse, Robin intensifies her efforts to form a tenants association, this time going after Phyllis, who has one of those moments I mentioned in the opening. Up until now, Phyllis has kind of been the comic relief, but when Robin sits in her apartment, Phyllis gets to prattle on about how much she loves her kids, something about baby dolls and Christmas wishes. It doesn't work, not coming from her mouth. What does work is the topper to the starry-eyed monologue. "And they they grow up and turn into these little dumb asses!" she roars back into action, upset that one of her kids ruined a curtain rod, while Robin is actually concerned about the kid it fell on. As if her unwarrented parental lessons aren't enough, Robin invites Phyllis and her kids to an all-black Shakespeare production. I don't care where the kids are growing up; no one that young should ever have to sit through Shakespeare, worst of all one of the comedies!
Pissed off about something, William arrives home to tell Lynn he's leaving for a job on the docks in Maine...or Newport...or somewhere he can't exactly remember. Lynn wants to go with him, but he refuses. They argue loudly while in the other room, their baby chases a cockroach into an electrical outlet with a pair of scissors. A sound effect is the only thing we need to know how that ends up. Lynn is catatonic with self-hatred while Oprah feeds the neighborhood shiva-sitters. Jackee pulls Oprah aside to ask if anyone knows where William has "taken his sorry butt" and Oprah declares, "no, but he better keep it there!" They come to the conclusion that Lynn is trying to slowly kill herself by not eating and getting very sick.
Here comes Big Bad Oprah, the one who probably practiced this scene on some employees before letting it rip before the cameras. Gulping air into her chest and standing erect, she tears into Lynn's room and announces, "I promise you, you leave this world, it's going to be over my dead body." She grabs Lynn, rocking her and shouting, "come on back" over and over as the music swells and Lynn gets the tears flowing. Oprah gives her a nice bath, which is filmed in an unfortunate style that makes it seem strangely sexual, though it's obviously anything but. Lynn finally dissolves into the expected crying fit with Oprah's meaty arms tucked around her.
It's Shakespeare time! Phyllis wraps her 15 or so kids in their finest wrapping for the outing, even gussying herself up. Olivia's eyes almost pop out of her head when she sees the well-behaved family trotting off, shocked to hear what they are doing.
Also surprised is Oprah, who goes to check in on Lynn, only to find her and her belongings gone. She's upset, but nothing stops her from going to church. There's a guest reverend, Douglas Turner Ward, and Jackee sets her sights on him. She manages to find out in 30 seconds that he's a widower, all but throwing herself at the poor man while Oprah disapproves. "If you had batten them eyelashes any faster, we would have had a dust storm in there," she growls. This time, however, Jackee doesn't take Oprah's sass and gets another of the movie's Big Moments. "No upstanding decent man could ever see in her anything but a quick good time. Well, let me tell you something...I've always traveled first class, maybe not in the way you approve of with all your fine Christian principles, but it's done all right by me. And I'm gonna keep going top drawer until the day I leave this earth. Don't you think I got me a mirror? Each year there's a new line to be covered. I lay down with this body and I get up with it every morning and every day it cries for a little more rest than the day before. Well, I'm gonna get me that rest and it's gonna be with a fine man...and all you slack-mouth gossips and roosters can just be damned. You know I've always known what they have said behind my back, but I never thought you'd be right up there with them," she bravely says to Oprah. Since Oprah insists the man only wants sex, and Jackee has finer thoughts, it's a stand-off. I have to give Jackee the credit here. Instead of delivering her Big Moment in a shrill manner, she is sedate and calm, a nice counterbalance to all the overheated Big Moments everyone else can't resist using.
And how do things end up for Jackee? She gets all kittenish in Douglas' car as he says he couldn't take his eyes off her in church, that most women don't look beautiful in church anymore, blah, blah, blah, and then it's inside for some jazz-infused sex. "God and me ain't got a lot to say to one another," Jackee confesses after the act, continuing the thread she started with Oprah, that it's time to change her life. Unfortunately, Douglas isn't there to hear the lovely lesson, as he's in the bathroom getting dressed. "Yeah, is there somewhere I can drop you off?" Oh, let's pray together that Oprah doesn't go hog wild with the "I told you so" routine. When she gets home, Oprah is in her rocking chair listening to Jackee's records, saying "I wasn't worried," but we all know she was. Friendship triumphs again.
"Those two sure do shop a lot. Where do you reckon they get all that money from?" Olivia wonders, back to her new favorite targets, Lonette and Paula. "They...you know...that way!" Olivia tells Oprah and Jackee, who don't believe it, but let Olivia spew anyway. Olivia watches the girls from her window, hoping for proof.
In her zeal to better the neighborhood, Robin paints a mural on the brick wall, but Oprah is negative about the whole concept. The drug dealers will only spray paint over it. "I don't know why it's gotta be here," she says, pouring out dirt from two dead plants, the very symbol of the wall's confinement. "Traffic control," Robin answers, because she's actually researched it. It seems that Brewster Place "got the wall" because there are no rich people in the area. Oprah has a new reason to be indignant, so Robin tells her to do something about it. "I could tear down this wall with my bare hands, they'd just send someone in the next day to put it up again," she whines. "But at least you would have done somthing," Robin says, only to be shut up by Oprah's call of "you're young, you'll see what I mean."
At home, Lonette wonders to Paula if she's noticed that "people aren't as nice as they used to be." Paula is of the opinion that neighborhood gossips don't mean anything, building up to a boil as she reminds Lonette that every time she feels "they" are judging Lonette and Paula, the girls have to move and give up what was apparently quite a good life, now living in the ghetto because it's the only place left. "Look out the window...you see that wall? It's the end of the line...and I'm not moving again!" Paula rails, but Lonette calls her on her bitchy mood and the two soon iron it out. Lonette is a teacher and worries that parents will find out about her, but Paula tells her not to fret so much.
Believe it or not, Robin puts together her tenants association and everyone gathers. Robin's aim is to present a united front against the landlord who owns all of the Brewster Place buildings, but the cast would rather pick at each other, especially Olivia, who takes this opportunity to bash the lesbians once again, before spewing at Jackee for defending them, tramp that she is. Lonette shows up while the gang is working itself into a lather. Robin wants someone to take the minutes and Lonette volunteers. "Ain't we supposed to vote who we want for secretary?" Olivia opines. Big Moment cue. As the masses harumpfh about her behavior, she stands up and starts. "Why should a decent woman get insulted while you all take the sides of the likes of THEM [the lesbians]? Pick on me! Pick on me! Like I'm the one going around in a filthy unnatural way," she snarls, holding one of Robin's African statues for protection. "You ain't welcome here!" Olivia shouts. But Lonette tries to defend herself, but Olivia isn't letting anyone steal her thunder. "You forgot to close your shades last night and I saw. I saw the both of you, you and her standing in the bathroom door dripping wet and naked as you be," before launching into a tirade that is delivered as if she is the last living snake on earth. It's a hoot, but hey, as they say in the computer world, "garbage in, garbage out." Olivia's character is simply and old-fashioned bitch, so she might as well have fun playing it. She's halted first by Moses Gunn, the sweet-natured superintendant, and then by Robin, who calls her a "self-righteous old wench." Olivia leaves, her face contorted with hatred for everyone.
Moses chases Lonette out of the meeting to make sure she's okay, even inviting her to his place for tea. "I don't get that much company," a clearly nervous Moses says. They confide in each other so Lonette can unroll her troubled back story. She was kicked out of the house at 17 and her letters home went unanswered. She even tried to call once, but her mother hung up. As she gets her shot at the big cry, Moses takes her hand and says she reminds him of his long-gone handicapped daughter. "I liked you from the first off," the kindly old man says.
Next to get up into Lonette's business are the gang members (including Mike Tyson, Mr. Robin Givens at the time), who tease Lonette. Glenn, not the most clever gang leader, offers to show Lonette what a "real man" can do, but Robin jumps in and snaps back, "from what I hear, she wouldn't even notice." Robin and Lonette do not frighten easily and the gang slinks off. Paula is anxiously awaiting her arrival when Lonette gets home because they have been invited to a club by some gay friends. Lonette refuses, claiming she's always hated the club and the men. "They're nothing but a couple of fags," she says. "So what, we're nothing but a couple of dykes," Paula retorts. "You can call yourself anything you want to, but you leave me out of it," Lonette says, causing Paula to rattle off all the names lesbians are called, asking her girlfriend why she "can't accept it." Lonette views her sexuality as nothing different, but Paula disagrees. You want to know how Lonette came to her conclusion? Well, we're gonna hear it anyway. While I agree with the speech 100%, it's too cheesy to take seriously. Apparently, the only two "constants" in her life are her "beige bra and oatmeal" because the day before she first fell in love with a woman, she had her beige bra and oatmeal and the day after she fell in love, same thing. Thus, nothing is different. Paula argues her side and frankly, I find her more convincing.
The tenants association (which means Robin) puts on a block party, turning the cul-de-sac into a fun atmosphere of good music and good food. Oprah gets Olivia to participate by sending her for ice, and Olivia grudgingly accepts. Jackee is invited to dance. "Girl, you better act your age," Oprah warns her, and Jackee says, "I am. 35," and joins the fun.
Pushing her way through the dancing is returning Lynn, looking healthy and happy in a polka dot dress and big sun hat. She explains to Oprah that she's been living in New York City and wanted to take a few days off from her new life to see Oprah and Jackee, who can tell from Lynn's sparkle that she has a boyfriend. "Oooh, I'm gonna bake your wedding cake," Oprah chants, no doubt dreaming of licking the bowl already.
Lonette gives in and gets dressed to go to the club. Now it's Paula's turn to sulk. "I'm gonna go without you," brave Lonette says, though Paula says, "you won't last there five minutes without me." The stubborn lovers stand their ground and Lonette leaves. Just as she's about to get on the bus, she decides against it, looking up to see Paula chain smoking in the window. She goes knocking on Moses' door, looking for a good shoulder and tea, but he's not home. Instead, it's Glenn she finds, still angry at the jokes she made at his expense. Pulling out a switchblade, he forces her into a corner by the brick wall and rapes her, the music from the block party drowned out by the haunting score as he beats her to the ground and bends over.
Night has long fallen, but the party is still raging. Jackee is leading all of the youngsters in dancing and Oprah is feeding everyone the special Angel Food cake she and Barbara made growing up. Oprah even mentions her son by name and admits, "it's not so bad" remembering. Oprah sends Moses to the brick wall to fetch a box for the trash and he discovers Lonette bleeding on the ground. In an altered mental state, she views him as a threat and smacks him over and over with a piece of wood. When Moses doesn't return with the box, Oprah has to go herself. She makes the grisly discovery of dead Moses and horrified Lonette.
"Come quick, some awful's done happened!" Oprah yells into the party, then running (Oprah running, which is not to be confused with Jamaican Olympians are capable of) for help. They try to get Lonette up, but she just sees Glenn and swings her piece of wood. Paula hears the police come and decides to see what is going on. An extra tells her that Moses has been beaten, by "your friend" as the woman says. Lonette insists that Paula be allowed into the ambulance with her and by now the party mood has disappeared.
And then it comes. Yup, the moment we've been waiting for. The climax, Oprah-style. As rain starts to come down, Oprah gulps air again and looks at the brick wall. "That's why I don't trust trying no more. The harder folks try, the more something comes along and smacks 'em down. It's always something standing in the way of good...and I'm tired of it!" This is the 80s, before Oprah could snap her fingers and make the wall disappear, so her character has to walk slowly through the rain drops to the wall with courage and strength, taking a rusty tool and hitting the wall, the crowd dazed momentarily. Jackee joins her, their wigs drenched as they hammer away at the wall. Then Lynn and Phyllis join. And Robin too, with her boyfriend. More and more come and they chip away at the wall, one brick at a time. The music goes into gospel overdrive as our leads take out bricks and pass them behind them, the spirit of community raging inside of everyone. The look on Oprah's face tells her character's whole story. Sirens are heard and Jackee says that "they gonna throw all our butts in jail," to which Oprah responds with the classic, "then I guess we gonna have to tear down that too!" Further dialogue is unecessary
That's the end.
Actually, 20+ years after watching "The Women of Brewster Place" for the first time, I found it more dated than I had expected. The social injustices shouldn't seem as, well, for lack of a better word, trite, as they do here. The whole thing plays like a history lesson, which is a shame because there are some great opportunities to dive into character moments here. The actresses are game, but the script just gives them speech and speech and they don't end up as lovable as they should, instead settling in as types: the cranky old lady, the middle-class slummer, the happy-go-lucky tramp, although two lesbians are definitely unexpected!
Mama Oprah is, naturally, front and center, and she gives as good a performance as anyone could in the role of den mother to the community, but frankly, she does that better when she's herself and not playing a character. Hindsight makes this movie seem incidental. Why can't Oprah just descend in a helicopter, tell someone to tear down the wall and be back home by snack time? She's friggin' Oprah, for crying out loud!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Little Gloria...Happy at Last (1982)
We've already done the "boo hoo, being rich is so difficult thing" with in "Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story." We watched her go from ignored infant to destitute old lady, dead with only few thousand dollars.
Gloria Vanderbilt's story is still going because unlike her fellow debs, she's still alive. "Little Gloria...Happy at Last" concerns a very specific episode in her childhood and does not delve into her many marriages, her many careers (yes, the jeans) or even her motherhood (one son would sadly commit suicide while the other would become Anderson Cooper). Sticking to this one episodes in her life allows for tight rendering, augmented by a wonderful script and truly outstanding performances. There are also some wildly over-the-top moments, but this is a miniseries after all.
This is an outstanding piece, which is is surprising, because it could have been so trashy.
At a party in 1922, Reggie Vanderbilt (Christopher Plummer) meets Gloria Morgan (Lucy Gutteridge). The former is, of course, a member of old society, the Vanderbilts having forced their way into society by threatening to buy it a few decades earlier. The latter is one of the Morgan sisters who are successful society figures. Gossip columnist Maury Paul (John Hillerman) has led the charges for the girls, of which Lucy is the only single one. Among the more awkward moments at the party is when Reggie's daughter dances by saying hello, the exact same age as Gloria. But, Reggie is so entranced by Gloria that he minds neither that nor Gloria's incessant and dimwitted chatter. She's as shallow as a blow-up pool.
Gloria takes a spin around the dance floor with Maury while Reggie has an attack of some sorts that is calmed by nip from his flask. "You mean he drinks a lot?" Gloria asks Maury. "Just close your eyes and dance," he tells her.
Rushing home to her mother, Gloria can't wait to talk about her meeting Reggie. Her sister has already told their mother, Laura Morgan (Glynis Johns), who sees only dollar signs. Overly-theatrical Laura has only one idea in her ever-spinning brain. "He's the wealthiest, most eligible bachelor in the whole country. Don't complain how he dances," the cautions her daughter, her own eyes wide with possibility.
Gloria and her mother are invited to the Rhode Island summer home to see Reggie's horses and to meet his mother at her own home, The Breakers, one of Newport's most famous abodes. The stately mansion is dominated by Alice Vanderbilt (Bette Davis). Unlike bubbly Laura, who is informal and grasping, Alice is regal. Also there for the party is one of Reggie's siblings, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (Angela Lansbury). "Unlike Reggie, I don't flourish under the dazzling glare of publicity," Gertrude says as a warning to Gloria that she's doesn't fully approve of his lifestyle. After all, she's just an artist with a sculpture studio in Greenwich Village. She wants to open a museum (and eventually would, The Whitney Museum).
Poor Alice gets it worse, having to listen to Laura go on and on about her South American roots and some fake ancestry, not to mention how she has pushed two daughters into impressive marriages. Bette Davis has one of her better late career moments when she is able to roll those knowing eyes at Reggie while Laura spins another yarn.
Reggie is summoned to tea by his mother. "She's not one of THE Morgans, you know," she tells Reggie, who says he wishes she were as he's apparently broke. Moving on from their differing social stations, Alice is more upset that the Morgan sisters have "been around." "How can a girl of 18 been around?" Reggie asks. Alice tries to battle Reggie a bit, but ultimately the Vanderbilt family's recently-acquired status cannot be ignored, so the only leg Alice has to stand on is Gloria's fast reputation. Gloria takes care of that one and has a doctor verify she's a virgin, causing Reggie to howl at a lunch and Alice to do the same at her mansion when a letter arrives with the results.
"When a family's divorces begin to outnumber its marriages, we must question the intelligence of its romantic choices, but in this case, there are no questions to be asked," Alice says at the head of a very long table of expensive-dressed extras. She then takes her pearls off and gives them to Gloria, as "all Vanderbilt women must have pearls," and Reggie can't afford to buy her any. In a car home, Reggie lays out his true financial status: he doesn't have one. He's living off the generosity of his mother. As long as he's alive, they are fine. But, when he dies, his wife will not get a penny, all of his trust fund going to a child from a previous marriage, unless Gloria can produce an heir, in which case, that child will get half of the fund. "I don't care about you or about the future as long as I can have you now," Gloria tells him, in one of those only-in-a-miniseries lines that dooms poor Reggie to death only 30 minutes into the movie.
Gloria's sisters and mother discuss the upcoming nuptials. All three have had lousy marriages, both daughters on the verge of divorce and Laura living a separate life from her husband. In one breath, Laura is deluded about who wins with this marriage (she feels the Vanderbilts are lucky to be marrying into a family of bogus Spanish nobility), but then understands practicality and hopes that Gloria produces an air before Reggie dies.
In the next scene, said daughter is born. Laura takes control in the hospital room, launching into one of her long-winded monologues about how difficult the birth was. "Out Little Gloria," she notes as the nurse takes the baby away to be fed. Laura, rushing up the stairs at top volume, has found a nanny for Little Gloria, Nurse Emma Kieslich (Maureen Stapleton). They need someone, because Reggie uses the twinkling of ice in his glass as a sort of rattle. With Gertrude as godmother, Little Gloria is christened, which does not meet the approval of arch-Catholic Nurse Emma. She and Laura sit in the car on the way back and rip into the Vanderbilts for allowing a Episcopalian service. Nurse Emma intends to pray for her soul.
At 18 months old, Little Gloria still has Nurse Emma living in the same bedroom with her. Gloria thinks it's odd, but apparently she hasn't yet figured out that Nurse Emma is a certified loon. Reggie stumbles home drunk early in the morning, coughing uncontrollably, but pays a visit to the child, blowing out the candle that Nurse Emma has put near Little Gloria for religious protection. With Reggie dying on the sofa, Gloria is summoned by Laura to go with her and visit Laura's own dying mother in Chile. "I wish I were going with you. I've never been to Chile," he ruefully says. Reggie has never been, and he knows he'll never go.
The dying husband takes precedence over the dying grandmother (whom she's never met anyway), but Gloria does not make it in time before he dies. "He's gone, my dear," Alice says simply (she had to deliver a similar line in "Where Love Has Gone," and has lost none of her I'm-slumming-so-badly attitude about it). Gloria faints upon hearing it, but Alice nods a servant over to take care of Gloria.
The family and friends gather at Alice's home, where she and Gertrude discuss funeral plans. "All local social functions will be canceled, of course," Alice notes. "The casino lowered its flag to half mast," is Gloria's only addition.
Lawyer Gilchrist (Michael Gross) comes to the Morgan family with the details of the will, which are not pleasant. As Reggie noted, there is a $5 million trust to be split between Reggie's two children, and Gilchrist notes that Little Gloria and the trust fund need a guardian. Laura has another of her outbursts (Glynis Johns is having the time of her life in this role), arguing with everyone in the room and topping it all with this chuckle of a line: "What is going on here is a little infant baby with a fortune of money and a mother who does not have a red cent!" Her daughters and poor Gilchrist can only listen to this hilarious harangue.
Maury notes in his column that Gloria and her lawyers have decided to fight the will, saying that Gloria needs money to take care of the child. The judge agrees to $1000 a month, an amazing sum in those days.
By 1931, Gloria is primarily living abroad, using the $1000 on herself. Gilchrist comes to visit her on the Riviera, discussing sister Thelma's new affair with the Prince of Wales (Lucy Gutteridge had played Thelma in "The Woman He Loved," which we've already discussed. Gloria herself has a gigolo lover, but Cilchrist is actually there to deliver bad news that Gloria has to move Little Gloria back to New York City because it's not considered correct for an American heiress to be living anywhere but America. Having learned histrionics from her own mother, Gloria snaps, "it's a pretty awful state of affairs when a person's child becomes a rope around her neck and has to be dragged wherever she wants to go...it's all Gloria's fault!" Gloria loves the society life and refuses to give it up for her child, so she dumps Little Gloria at Aunt Thelma's in England. Now it's Nurse Emma's turn to get all huffy, filling Little Gloria's head with only bad things about her own mother. Nurse Emma reports all of the child's mother's antics to Laura. She is also the obvious hand behind Little Gloria's letters to Laura, for her own phrases creep into them. "Read them and weep, Mr. Gilchrist. READ THEM AND WEEP!" Laura bellows, digging down to the deepest register of her voice to come off like an overzealous Medea. She's there to have Gloria and Little Gloria brought back to New York City (Laura is fighting with Gloria, which is her own selfish reason for wanting Gloria's wings clipped).
A fleet of cars drive past bread lines in a heavy-handed touch that is a bit too much for this movie as mother and daughter arrive back in New York City so Little Gloria can have her tonsils removed. Gloria buys her daughter a car and driver of her own as Little Gloria sees newspaper clippings about the Lindbergh baby and begins to worry about herself. Aunt Gertrude is in the middle of one of her Bohemian parties (the kind that Lansbury's Mame would have approved of) when the Gloria stop by. She hammers in the idea of protection and advises Gloria to hire a bodyguard. They hire one, but they hardly need one because Nurse Emma "has never taken a day off" and still sleeps in the same bedroom as her charge. Good luck getting by Nurse Emma! Laura makes it worse, by storming in one day and throwing down the newspaper article about the Lindbergh baby's murder. She reads the entire gruesome article, which gives Little Gloria horrible nightmares.
Gloria is only somewhat concerned about Little Gloria's mental state, rushing off to Europe again. Aunt Gertrude asks to take Little Gloria to her home on Long Island, where she brings a gaggle of doctors to discuss Little Gloria's condition. There are apparently no physical issues, but a whole lot of mental ones. One doctor blames Nurse Emma's poisoning thoughts, but that is brushed aside because Gertrude says the child is utterly devoted to her and, after all, her own children were raised by nannies. One of the doctors is Gertrude's lover and she dashes over to Europe for a tryst with him, little better than Gloria. Upon returning, Gertrude is a little put out by all of the money Nurse Emma has been spending on doctors. Gertrude decides to take Gloria to see the doctor with her and he does indeed feel that Little Gloria's physical issues are the result of emotional distress and that Little Gloria should stay in the country and be pampered by Gertrude.
A year goes by and Gertrude assembles all the lawyers to her mansion to lower the boom. She starts off by reminding everyone that Little Gloria has flourished under her care, her own mother absent and in the papers for bad behavior, tucking in a apology to Laura, who is seated next to her. "I'm behind you 1000%!" Laura wails. Gertrude feels the child should live up to her Vanderbilt name, with her. She also has Gilchrist wire Gloria in Europe to say that the trust administrator is threatening to cut off the money to Gloria since Little Gloria's bills are being paid by Gertrude. When Gloria returns home, she wants to bring Little Gloria back to the city, but she's "so happy" in the country, as noted by Gertrude and Gilchrist. The plan is coming together nicely. They petition the trust administrator to agree to lower Gloria's monthly settlement from $4000 to $750. "Can't something be done for me to get my baby back?" Gloria wonders, just now starting to catch on to all that has already been done to undermine her status as mother.
So, off she goes to another lawyer, Nathan Burkan (Martin Balsam), and a family friend and tells him the whole story. Nathan admits that Gertrude believes herself "beyond the laws of man and nature," and the first step in fighting her is to have Gloria appointed guardian now that she is of age (she was only 18 when a surrogate was appointed). At a court hearing, a lawyer brings a complaint against the petition to have Gloria named guardian, standing up in the balcony of the court room to do so, as dramatically as possible. So, who should be behind this theatrical display? "Mrs. Laura Morgan, Mrs. Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt's own mother," she says, with the press rushing out the door to go file their stories.
The war for Little Gloria is on.
Gloria's sisters go to Laura to tell her she's being ridiculous and that no mother would do this to her child. Laura argues that Little Gloria has been neglected. "You'd think she was Little Orphan Annie," one sister chirps. Plus, Laura traveled around the world and left her own daughters. The sisters are wise to Laura's reasons, that she's never gotten over the fact that Gloria refused to let her live with her. "She threw me out on the street, her own Mama!" Oh, and as for the money her daughters send her every month, she is fine losing that because she has a benefactor. "I could not face my God if I did not do this," she rants to her daughters.
Dying Alice Vanderbilt is filled in on all that's been going on by Gertrude, who is only too happy to run down the list of Gloria's faults (she's dating a man "of the Hebrew persuasion"), though Alice reminds her Gertrude's only life has not been scandal-free. The difference, according to Gertrude, is that she's always kept her life private, not "lived in front of the news reels." Alice still intends to leave Gloria money in her will.
"I'm not happy with my mother," poor Little Gloria tells Aunt Gertrude, who tells her indeed she does have to pay her mother a visit. Between Nurse Emma, Laura and Gertrude, they have made Gloria out to be a an uncaring mother. Even Nathan agrees that Gloria has botched motherhood, so Gloria is determined to change all of that. A montage shows Little Gloria having fun her with mother, trying on all of her jewels an learning to balance a checkbook. Gloria takes a further step in renting a house in the country to combat Gertrude's notion that Little Gloria is better off there. For all of her faults, Gloria may be genuinely sorry for them and intends to right the wrongs.
Little Gloria is horrified at the prospect at having to live with her mother, fearing she's being kidnapped away from her current life. Gloria fires Nurse Emma, saying Little Gloria doesn't need a nurse, so Nurse Emma puts in a call to Gertrude (busy making a statue of a nude man). The next thing we know, Nurse Emma is sprinting down the steps with Little Gloria, almost making it to the door when Gloria discovers them. Nurse Emma lies her way out of it and takes the child to Gertrude's studio. Gertrude is meeting with the lawyers when Little Gloria bursts in, screaming that she doesn't want to be with her mother, an event no doubt staged for maximum effect by Gertrude and Nurse Emma so the lawyers can see just how horrified Little Gloria is by her mother. Actually, she's been further poisoned. "I hate my mother," she tells the doctor. When Gloria and her sister show up at Gertrude's, Little Gloria flies into a rage and now battle lines are more like trenches.
Gloria leaves without her daughter (a mistake) and rushes to Nathan, who tells her she's being followed. He wants her to come clean with everything about her life so they are not surprised by anything in court. Nathan decides to serve Gertrude with a writ of habeas corpus. The press is delighted to see Gloria arrive and then Gertrude with Little Gloria. Laura is there in court with Nurse Emma, who has gone through a complete makeover and is now sporting jewels and furs. Judge Carew (Barnard Hughes) gets the court case going, noting from the beginning that the whole case comes down to Gloria's fitness to be a mother. In fact, the circumstances will have to be "extraordinary" to get to the point where Gloria would be sent to anyone but her mother.
Up to now, "Little Gloria...Happy at Last" has been relatively free of miniseries goofiness, but now we're about to dive into the udder of the cow that creates it. It's not that the movie is jumping off track, because it will remain a thrilling tale, but with all the acting talent assembled here, no one is going to pass up the chance to give up courtroom melodrama.
Nurse Emma is the first witness, listing all of the people who lived in the house, "all supported by the child, the child's money." Because Nurse Emma starts going with both guns loaded, Judge Carew gives her a speech about using her deep to "clamp down on her tongue." Nathan objects to every single question and answer, understandably, since Nurse Emma makes sure it all sounds juicy: bankrupt princes, dirty books and, most of all, that Gloria has never taken her daughter to church! When Nathan questions Nurse Emma, he suggests that she was the one who made Little Gloria write them. The testimony is so battering that Maury tells his readers that "it was a blistering tale no skin lotion could sooth."
Gertrude and Gloria each hold press conferences. Gertrude does it in a large expensive room, calm and choosing every word carefully. Gertrude admits the case is about Gloria's fitness as a mother, but Gloria has a different take, that it's about money. "$80 million couldn't possibly be wrong," she tells the reporters. With a smile, Gertrude purrs that "money has never been an issue in this case" pronouncing it as iss-you, rather than ish-oo.
Gloria's French personal maid is next up on the stand, re-iterating a lot of Nurse Emma's testimony, though Judge Carew gets in some good comedy moments when he says the sex of the people in the dirty books doesn't matter. "Homosexual, bisexual, trisexual," he notes to the delight of the court, is still dirty. The maid takes it one enormous step further, saying she saw Gloria kissing another woman. The reporters literally jump over each other to file that one! Judge Carew decrees that "future testimony will be given in private." He then tells everyone that he's decided to issue his own summaries of each day's events to the press, which Nathan doesn't like.
In a cast that includes winners of every major award ever given out, Tony winner Glynis Johns does the most to grab the miniseries and make it her own. We've seen her wild antics before, but nothing compares one for her testimony, a marvel of hysterical scenery chewing that could only come from a great actress. She takes the stand all in black, a cross around her neck with simple pears, clutching yet another cross to her bosom. "It is not her fault, but my daughter was not born with a maternal instinct. She was indifferent to the child," she starts off rather slowly. She builds momentum when she claims to have told Gloria to spend time in the US to avoid the "entanglements" of Europe. "I love my daughter. It's for my baby's sake that I'm doing this, your honor. It's the sacrifice of my life I'm making. I'm going to remain alone in this world, without anybody. If she had committed murder, I would have taken it on my own shoulders for her. It's not for the baby, not if she had murdered the baby! But I did not know I would be called to go through the Calvary on earth that I have to go through. How did it come to this?" she spits out, with the crying, the chest beating and then, finally, the raise of the cross to heaven. How does one not stand up and applaud?
Oh, man, Glynis Johns nails it. She's playing a woman even more shallow than her daughter, a woman who has to play both sides, and she does it. It wild, it's hokey and it's everything a good acting teacher would cringe at, but it sure as hell lands perfectly at the center of a courtroom section. Even the judge can't follow that act and declares the court in recess until Monday.
Gloria and her sisters go to Gertrude's house to see Little Gloria, who shrieks in protest upon just hearing they will be arriving. Shouting, "don't kill me" from the other side of the locked door, Little Gloria tries to avoid the visit by stealing the key to the door from a servant and throwing it in the fireplace. When they get in, Aunt Thelma tries a sweet approach, but Aunt Consuela goes for guilt, telling Little Gloria that she's hurting her mother by acting so badly. Finally, Little Gloria goes to see her mother and they hug.
Things get worse for Gloria as the butler's testimony is leaked to the papers. "Somebody has betrayed my confidence," the judge yells at those in the court. Next up on the stand is the doctor, who doesn't even try to top the performances of the leading ladies.
Speaking of, it's Aunt Gertrude's turn on the stand. Playing the dowager Vanderbilt, she certainly can't do what Glynis did, but she can deliver the testimony in a different way, going for full seriousness and gravity to steal some thunder.
It's decided that Little Gloria has to testify, but only in the judge's chambers with the two lawyers present. "Couldn't you learn to love your mother?" Judge Carew asks. Gloria resolutely says she could not. She says she wrote nice letter with pictures and such because "I'm afraid of her." The judge asks Gloria to say her prayers and she can't, causing consternation from the judge. "Girlie, how old were you when you began to hate your mother?" an exasperated judge asks, and Gloria isn't sure, but remembers people telling her bad things about Gloria.
When Aunt Thelma takes the stand, Judge Carew goes into a religious speech about the sign of the cross, complaining about the "sad state of affairs" regarding religion. It's a blowsy speech, one that could question his actual sanity. But, those around him are all nuts, so he fits right in.
Finally, Gloria takes the stand in a rather simple black ensemble, starting her testimony with a year-by-year description of her upbringing, split between America and Europe. It's a lovely travelogue. Nathan is proud to have scored some points showing that to her, that life seems normal. Then Gloria says she only physically assault her child once, over unwashed money, and it was only a grab on the shoulders before "sending her off to Nanny." Nathan brings up the lesbian affair, which Gloria denies. Crying buckets, Gloria swears she never noticed that her child hated her and tops it off with a faint. "A child belongs with its mother," a sign outside reads as Gloria and her sisters exit the courtroom. To further drum up public support, Maury even loads hid column with praise for Gloria.
Gloria's testimony resumes with a cross examination. Lawyer Smythe (Joseph Maher) shows Little Gloria's letters to her grandmother, which are full of fear and hatred for her mother. But, Gloria wins the argument with the lawyer by saying that if the letters Little Gloria wrote to her were forced, maybe these were too. Aunts Thelma and Consuelo like that one! Smythe asks Gloria why she thinks her own mother has taken Gertrude's side over hers. "She wants the guardianship of the child, so she can have the money," Gloria says of her mother. Gloria dissolves into tears when Smythe goes back to Gloria's constant absences. "What are you trying to do, break my heart?" she cries.
With testimony over, all everyone can do is wait until the decision is handed down. Barbard Hughes gets another chance to ham it up in delivering his decision. He says that he hopes Gloria can have a part in her daughter's life, but without disrupting the way it is working now. "Mr. Justice Carew has decied that the child, Gloria Vanderbilt, will not have for the future the life it has had from the death of its father until June, 1932." Gertrude has won custody, it seems, but Judge Carew, in talking to the press, seems completely bonkers, so we will have to wait until the final written decision.
When that comes, it is decreed that Gertrude has won custody, must be taught religion properly, that Nurse Emma has been fired and that Gloria has visitation rights on weekends, for July and at Christmas. Little Gloria has a fit when Nurse Emma is "given her walking papers," as Nathan so succinctly puts it.
ly
"To Little Gloria...happy at last," Laura toasts with Gertrude. However, Maury decides to blame the judge in his column with some colorful language and a great deal of moralizing, though he does note the sad truth of the whole case, "that the victim is the little rich girl herself, Gloria Laura Vanderbilt."
There could be twenty sequels to this movie, as Gloria Vanderbilt lead a particularly notable life (and is still living it as an author of the kind of erotic books her mother was castigated for supposedly posessing), but anything more than this case would be pure Dominick Dunne-like crap. It would be an exploitation. In having to revolve this story around the feelings of a tiny little girl, "Little Gloria...Happy at Last," by necessity, has to play it straight and not take sides. Sure, her mother is shown to be a flighty society doll, but also a victim of her time and no worse than any others of her generation. Solid Aunt Gertrude certainly provided stability, but was hardly a paragon of perfection. Each person in the story had a motive for wanting Little Gloria: money, power, social position, etc. The movie is fair to all of them in presenting both sides.
However, it's the acting that really cements this movie as miniseries perfection. It is crammed with stars and instead of going for the goofy, they really play their roles as written. Angela Lansbury is a model of matriarchal decorum, constant and serene. Glynis Johns has the best role in the film, essentially the comic relief, and though she's a gorgon, at least there is a reasoning behind it. Bette Davis and Christopher Plummer excel in small roles and Lucy Gutteridge does her best stacked up against all the pros.
Gloria Vanderbilt's story is still going because unlike her fellow debs, she's still alive. "Little Gloria...Happy at Last" concerns a very specific episode in her childhood and does not delve into her many marriages, her many careers (yes, the jeans) or even her motherhood (one son would sadly commit suicide while the other would become Anderson Cooper). Sticking to this one episodes in her life allows for tight rendering, augmented by a wonderful script and truly outstanding performances. There are also some wildly over-the-top moments, but this is a miniseries after all.
This is an outstanding piece, which is is surprising, because it could have been so trashy.
At a party in 1922, Reggie Vanderbilt (Christopher Plummer) meets Gloria Morgan (Lucy Gutteridge). The former is, of course, a member of old society, the Vanderbilts having forced their way into society by threatening to buy it a few decades earlier. The latter is one of the Morgan sisters who are successful society figures. Gossip columnist Maury Paul (John Hillerman) has led the charges for the girls, of which Lucy is the only single one. Among the more awkward moments at the party is when Reggie's daughter dances by saying hello, the exact same age as Gloria. But, Reggie is so entranced by Gloria that he minds neither that nor Gloria's incessant and dimwitted chatter. She's as shallow as a blow-up pool.
Gloria takes a spin around the dance floor with Maury while Reggie has an attack of some sorts that is calmed by nip from his flask. "You mean he drinks a lot?" Gloria asks Maury. "Just close your eyes and dance," he tells her.
Rushing home to her mother, Gloria can't wait to talk about her meeting Reggie. Her sister has already told their mother, Laura Morgan (Glynis Johns), who sees only dollar signs. Overly-theatrical Laura has only one idea in her ever-spinning brain. "He's the wealthiest, most eligible bachelor in the whole country. Don't complain how he dances," the cautions her daughter, her own eyes wide with possibility.
Gloria and her mother are invited to the Rhode Island summer home to see Reggie's horses and to meet his mother at her own home, The Breakers, one of Newport's most famous abodes. The stately mansion is dominated by Alice Vanderbilt (Bette Davis). Unlike bubbly Laura, who is informal and grasping, Alice is regal. Also there for the party is one of Reggie's siblings, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (Angela Lansbury). "Unlike Reggie, I don't flourish under the dazzling glare of publicity," Gertrude says as a warning to Gloria that she's doesn't fully approve of his lifestyle. After all, she's just an artist with a sculpture studio in Greenwich Village. She wants to open a museum (and eventually would, The Whitney Museum).
Poor Alice gets it worse, having to listen to Laura go on and on about her South American roots and some fake ancestry, not to mention how she has pushed two daughters into impressive marriages. Bette Davis has one of her better late career moments when she is able to roll those knowing eyes at Reggie while Laura spins another yarn.
Reggie is summoned to tea by his mother. "She's not one of THE Morgans, you know," she tells Reggie, who says he wishes she were as he's apparently broke. Moving on from their differing social stations, Alice is more upset that the Morgan sisters have "been around." "How can a girl of 18 been around?" Reggie asks. Alice tries to battle Reggie a bit, but ultimately the Vanderbilt family's recently-acquired status cannot be ignored, so the only leg Alice has to stand on is Gloria's fast reputation. Gloria takes care of that one and has a doctor verify she's a virgin, causing Reggie to howl at a lunch and Alice to do the same at her mansion when a letter arrives with the results.
"When a family's divorces begin to outnumber its marriages, we must question the intelligence of its romantic choices, but in this case, there are no questions to be asked," Alice says at the head of a very long table of expensive-dressed extras. She then takes her pearls off and gives them to Gloria, as "all Vanderbilt women must have pearls," and Reggie can't afford to buy her any. In a car home, Reggie lays out his true financial status: he doesn't have one. He's living off the generosity of his mother. As long as he's alive, they are fine. But, when he dies, his wife will not get a penny, all of his trust fund going to a child from a previous marriage, unless Gloria can produce an heir, in which case, that child will get half of the fund. "I don't care about you or about the future as long as I can have you now," Gloria tells him, in one of those only-in-a-miniseries lines that dooms poor Reggie to death only 30 minutes into the movie.
Gloria's sisters and mother discuss the upcoming nuptials. All three have had lousy marriages, both daughters on the verge of divorce and Laura living a separate life from her husband. In one breath, Laura is deluded about who wins with this marriage (she feels the Vanderbilts are lucky to be marrying into a family of bogus Spanish nobility), but then understands practicality and hopes that Gloria produces an air before Reggie dies.
In the next scene, said daughter is born. Laura takes control in the hospital room, launching into one of her long-winded monologues about how difficult the birth was. "Out Little Gloria," she notes as the nurse takes the baby away to be fed. Laura, rushing up the stairs at top volume, has found a nanny for Little Gloria, Nurse Emma Kieslich (Maureen Stapleton). They need someone, because Reggie uses the twinkling of ice in his glass as a sort of rattle. With Gertrude as godmother, Little Gloria is christened, which does not meet the approval of arch-Catholic Nurse Emma. She and Laura sit in the car on the way back and rip into the Vanderbilts for allowing a Episcopalian service. Nurse Emma intends to pray for her soul.
At 18 months old, Little Gloria still has Nurse Emma living in the same bedroom with her. Gloria thinks it's odd, but apparently she hasn't yet figured out that Nurse Emma is a certified loon. Reggie stumbles home drunk early in the morning, coughing uncontrollably, but pays a visit to the child, blowing out the candle that Nurse Emma has put near Little Gloria for religious protection. With Reggie dying on the sofa, Gloria is summoned by Laura to go with her and visit Laura's own dying mother in Chile. "I wish I were going with you. I've never been to Chile," he ruefully says. Reggie has never been, and he knows he'll never go.
The dying husband takes precedence over the dying grandmother (whom she's never met anyway), but Gloria does not make it in time before he dies. "He's gone, my dear," Alice says simply (she had to deliver a similar line in "Where Love Has Gone," and has lost none of her I'm-slumming-so-badly attitude about it). Gloria faints upon hearing it, but Alice nods a servant over to take care of Gloria.
The family and friends gather at Alice's home, where she and Gertrude discuss funeral plans. "All local social functions will be canceled, of course," Alice notes. "The casino lowered its flag to half mast," is Gloria's only addition.
Lawyer Gilchrist (Michael Gross) comes to the Morgan family with the details of the will, which are not pleasant. As Reggie noted, there is a $5 million trust to be split between Reggie's two children, and Gilchrist notes that Little Gloria and the trust fund need a guardian. Laura has another of her outbursts (Glynis Johns is having the time of her life in this role), arguing with everyone in the room and topping it all with this chuckle of a line: "What is going on here is a little infant baby with a fortune of money and a mother who does not have a red cent!" Her daughters and poor Gilchrist can only listen to this hilarious harangue.
Maury notes in his column that Gloria and her lawyers have decided to fight the will, saying that Gloria needs money to take care of the child. The judge agrees to $1000 a month, an amazing sum in those days.
By 1931, Gloria is primarily living abroad, using the $1000 on herself. Gilchrist comes to visit her on the Riviera, discussing sister Thelma's new affair with the Prince of Wales (Lucy Gutteridge had played Thelma in "The Woman He Loved," which we've already discussed. Gloria herself has a gigolo lover, but Cilchrist is actually there to deliver bad news that Gloria has to move Little Gloria back to New York City because it's not considered correct for an American heiress to be living anywhere but America. Having learned histrionics from her own mother, Gloria snaps, "it's a pretty awful state of affairs when a person's child becomes a rope around her neck and has to be dragged wherever she wants to go...it's all Gloria's fault!" Gloria loves the society life and refuses to give it up for her child, so she dumps Little Gloria at Aunt Thelma's in England. Now it's Nurse Emma's turn to get all huffy, filling Little Gloria's head with only bad things about her own mother. Nurse Emma reports all of the child's mother's antics to Laura. She is also the obvious hand behind Little Gloria's letters to Laura, for her own phrases creep into them. "Read them and weep, Mr. Gilchrist. READ THEM AND WEEP!" Laura bellows, digging down to the deepest register of her voice to come off like an overzealous Medea. She's there to have Gloria and Little Gloria brought back to New York City (Laura is fighting with Gloria, which is her own selfish reason for wanting Gloria's wings clipped).
A fleet of cars drive past bread lines in a heavy-handed touch that is a bit too much for this movie as mother and daughter arrive back in New York City so Little Gloria can have her tonsils removed. Gloria buys her daughter a car and driver of her own as Little Gloria sees newspaper clippings about the Lindbergh baby and begins to worry about herself. Aunt Gertrude is in the middle of one of her Bohemian parties (the kind that Lansbury's Mame would have approved of) when the Gloria stop by. She hammers in the idea of protection and advises Gloria to hire a bodyguard. They hire one, but they hardly need one because Nurse Emma "has never taken a day off" and still sleeps in the same bedroom as her charge. Good luck getting by Nurse Emma! Laura makes it worse, by storming in one day and throwing down the newspaper article about the Lindbergh baby's murder. She reads the entire gruesome article, which gives Little Gloria horrible nightmares.
Gloria is only somewhat concerned about Little Gloria's mental state, rushing off to Europe again. Aunt Gertrude asks to take Little Gloria to her home on Long Island, where she brings a gaggle of doctors to discuss Little Gloria's condition. There are apparently no physical issues, but a whole lot of mental ones. One doctor blames Nurse Emma's poisoning thoughts, but that is brushed aside because Gertrude says the child is utterly devoted to her and, after all, her own children were raised by nannies. One of the doctors is Gertrude's lover and she dashes over to Europe for a tryst with him, little better than Gloria. Upon returning, Gertrude is a little put out by all of the money Nurse Emma has been spending on doctors. Gertrude decides to take Gloria to see the doctor with her and he does indeed feel that Little Gloria's physical issues are the result of emotional distress and that Little Gloria should stay in the country and be pampered by Gertrude.
A year goes by and Gertrude assembles all the lawyers to her mansion to lower the boom. She starts off by reminding everyone that Little Gloria has flourished under her care, her own mother absent and in the papers for bad behavior, tucking in a apology to Laura, who is seated next to her. "I'm behind you 1000%!" Laura wails. Gertrude feels the child should live up to her Vanderbilt name, with her. She also has Gilchrist wire Gloria in Europe to say that the trust administrator is threatening to cut off the money to Gloria since Little Gloria's bills are being paid by Gertrude. When Gloria returns home, she wants to bring Little Gloria back to the city, but she's "so happy" in the country, as noted by Gertrude and Gilchrist. The plan is coming together nicely. They petition the trust administrator to agree to lower Gloria's monthly settlement from $4000 to $750. "Can't something be done for me to get my baby back?" Gloria wonders, just now starting to catch on to all that has already been done to undermine her status as mother.
So, off she goes to another lawyer, Nathan Burkan (Martin Balsam), and a family friend and tells him the whole story. Nathan admits that Gertrude believes herself "beyond the laws of man and nature," and the first step in fighting her is to have Gloria appointed guardian now that she is of age (she was only 18 when a surrogate was appointed). At a court hearing, a lawyer brings a complaint against the petition to have Gloria named guardian, standing up in the balcony of the court room to do so, as dramatically as possible. So, who should be behind this theatrical display? "Mrs. Laura Morgan, Mrs. Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt's own mother," she says, with the press rushing out the door to go file their stories.
The war for Little Gloria is on.
Gloria's sisters go to Laura to tell her she's being ridiculous and that no mother would do this to her child. Laura argues that Little Gloria has been neglected. "You'd think she was Little Orphan Annie," one sister chirps. Plus, Laura traveled around the world and left her own daughters. The sisters are wise to Laura's reasons, that she's never gotten over the fact that Gloria refused to let her live with her. "She threw me out on the street, her own Mama!" Oh, and as for the money her daughters send her every month, she is fine losing that because she has a benefactor. "I could not face my God if I did not do this," she rants to her daughters.
Dying Alice Vanderbilt is filled in on all that's been going on by Gertrude, who is only too happy to run down the list of Gloria's faults (she's dating a man "of the Hebrew persuasion"), though Alice reminds her Gertrude's only life has not been scandal-free. The difference, according to Gertrude, is that she's always kept her life private, not "lived in front of the news reels." Alice still intends to leave Gloria money in her will.
"I'm not happy with my mother," poor Little Gloria tells Aunt Gertrude, who tells her indeed she does have to pay her mother a visit. Between Nurse Emma, Laura and Gertrude, they have made Gloria out to be a an uncaring mother. Even Nathan agrees that Gloria has botched motherhood, so Gloria is determined to change all of that. A montage shows Little Gloria having fun her with mother, trying on all of her jewels an learning to balance a checkbook. Gloria takes a further step in renting a house in the country to combat Gertrude's notion that Little Gloria is better off there. For all of her faults, Gloria may be genuinely sorry for them and intends to right the wrongs.
Little Gloria is horrified at the prospect at having to live with her mother, fearing she's being kidnapped away from her current life. Gloria fires Nurse Emma, saying Little Gloria doesn't need a nurse, so Nurse Emma puts in a call to Gertrude (busy making a statue of a nude man). The next thing we know, Nurse Emma is sprinting down the steps with Little Gloria, almost making it to the door when Gloria discovers them. Nurse Emma lies her way out of it and takes the child to Gertrude's studio. Gertrude is meeting with the lawyers when Little Gloria bursts in, screaming that she doesn't want to be with her mother, an event no doubt staged for maximum effect by Gertrude and Nurse Emma so the lawyers can see just how horrified Little Gloria is by her mother. Actually, she's been further poisoned. "I hate my mother," she tells the doctor. When Gloria and her sister show up at Gertrude's, Little Gloria flies into a rage and now battle lines are more like trenches.
Gloria leaves without her daughter (a mistake) and rushes to Nathan, who tells her she's being followed. He wants her to come clean with everything about her life so they are not surprised by anything in court. Nathan decides to serve Gertrude with a writ of habeas corpus. The press is delighted to see Gloria arrive and then Gertrude with Little Gloria. Laura is there in court with Nurse Emma, who has gone through a complete makeover and is now sporting jewels and furs. Judge Carew (Barnard Hughes) gets the court case going, noting from the beginning that the whole case comes down to Gloria's fitness to be a mother. In fact, the circumstances will have to be "extraordinary" to get to the point where Gloria would be sent to anyone but her mother.
Up to now, "Little Gloria...Happy at Last" has been relatively free of miniseries goofiness, but now we're about to dive into the udder of the cow that creates it. It's not that the movie is jumping off track, because it will remain a thrilling tale, but with all the acting talent assembled here, no one is going to pass up the chance to give up courtroom melodrama.
Nurse Emma is the first witness, listing all of the people who lived in the house, "all supported by the child, the child's money." Because Nurse Emma starts going with both guns loaded, Judge Carew gives her a speech about using her deep to "clamp down on her tongue." Nathan objects to every single question and answer, understandably, since Nurse Emma makes sure it all sounds juicy: bankrupt princes, dirty books and, most of all, that Gloria has never taken her daughter to church! When Nathan questions Nurse Emma, he suggests that she was the one who made Little Gloria write them. The testimony is so battering that Maury tells his readers that "it was a blistering tale no skin lotion could sooth."
Gertrude and Gloria each hold press conferences. Gertrude does it in a large expensive room, calm and choosing every word carefully. Gertrude admits the case is about Gloria's fitness as a mother, but Gloria has a different take, that it's about money. "$80 million couldn't possibly be wrong," she tells the reporters. With a smile, Gertrude purrs that "money has never been an issue in this case" pronouncing it as iss-you, rather than ish-oo.
Gloria's French personal maid is next up on the stand, re-iterating a lot of Nurse Emma's testimony, though Judge Carew gets in some good comedy moments when he says the sex of the people in the dirty books doesn't matter. "Homosexual, bisexual, trisexual," he notes to the delight of the court, is still dirty. The maid takes it one enormous step further, saying she saw Gloria kissing another woman. The reporters literally jump over each other to file that one! Judge Carew decrees that "future testimony will be given in private." He then tells everyone that he's decided to issue his own summaries of each day's events to the press, which Nathan doesn't like.
In a cast that includes winners of every major award ever given out, Tony winner Glynis Johns does the most to grab the miniseries and make it her own. We've seen her wild antics before, but nothing compares one for her testimony, a marvel of hysterical scenery chewing that could only come from a great actress. She takes the stand all in black, a cross around her neck with simple pears, clutching yet another cross to her bosom. "It is not her fault, but my daughter was not born with a maternal instinct. She was indifferent to the child," she starts off rather slowly. She builds momentum when she claims to have told Gloria to spend time in the US to avoid the "entanglements" of Europe. "I love my daughter. It's for my baby's sake that I'm doing this, your honor. It's the sacrifice of my life I'm making. I'm going to remain alone in this world, without anybody. If she had committed murder, I would have taken it on my own shoulders for her. It's not for the baby, not if she had murdered the baby! But I did not know I would be called to go through the Calvary on earth that I have to go through. How did it come to this?" she spits out, with the crying, the chest beating and then, finally, the raise of the cross to heaven. How does one not stand up and applaud?
Oh, man, Glynis Johns nails it. She's playing a woman even more shallow than her daughter, a woman who has to play both sides, and she does it. It wild, it's hokey and it's everything a good acting teacher would cringe at, but it sure as hell lands perfectly at the center of a courtroom section. Even the judge can't follow that act and declares the court in recess until Monday.
Gloria and her sisters go to Gertrude's house to see Little Gloria, who shrieks in protest upon just hearing they will be arriving. Shouting, "don't kill me" from the other side of the locked door, Little Gloria tries to avoid the visit by stealing the key to the door from a servant and throwing it in the fireplace. When they get in, Aunt Thelma tries a sweet approach, but Aunt Consuela goes for guilt, telling Little Gloria that she's hurting her mother by acting so badly. Finally, Little Gloria goes to see her mother and they hug.
Things get worse for Gloria as the butler's testimony is leaked to the papers. "Somebody has betrayed my confidence," the judge yells at those in the court. Next up on the stand is the doctor, who doesn't even try to top the performances of the leading ladies.
Speaking of, it's Aunt Gertrude's turn on the stand. Playing the dowager Vanderbilt, she certainly can't do what Glynis did, but she can deliver the testimony in a different way, going for full seriousness and gravity to steal some thunder.
It's decided that Little Gloria has to testify, but only in the judge's chambers with the two lawyers present. "Couldn't you learn to love your mother?" Judge Carew asks. Gloria resolutely says she could not. She says she wrote nice letter with pictures and such because "I'm afraid of her." The judge asks Gloria to say her prayers and she can't, causing consternation from the judge. "Girlie, how old were you when you began to hate your mother?" an exasperated judge asks, and Gloria isn't sure, but remembers people telling her bad things about Gloria.
When Aunt Thelma takes the stand, Judge Carew goes into a religious speech about the sign of the cross, complaining about the "sad state of affairs" regarding religion. It's a blowsy speech, one that could question his actual sanity. But, those around him are all nuts, so he fits right in.
Finally, Gloria takes the stand in a rather simple black ensemble, starting her testimony with a year-by-year description of her upbringing, split between America and Europe. It's a lovely travelogue. Nathan is proud to have scored some points showing that to her, that life seems normal. Then Gloria says she only physically assault her child once, over unwashed money, and it was only a grab on the shoulders before "sending her off to Nanny." Nathan brings up the lesbian affair, which Gloria denies. Crying buckets, Gloria swears she never noticed that her child hated her and tops it off with a faint. "A child belongs with its mother," a sign outside reads as Gloria and her sisters exit the courtroom. To further drum up public support, Maury even loads hid column with praise for Gloria.
Gloria's testimony resumes with a cross examination. Lawyer Smythe (Joseph Maher) shows Little Gloria's letters to her grandmother, which are full of fear and hatred for her mother. But, Gloria wins the argument with the lawyer by saying that if the letters Little Gloria wrote to her were forced, maybe these were too. Aunts Thelma and Consuelo like that one! Smythe asks Gloria why she thinks her own mother has taken Gertrude's side over hers. "She wants the guardianship of the child, so she can have the money," Gloria says of her mother. Gloria dissolves into tears when Smythe goes back to Gloria's constant absences. "What are you trying to do, break my heart?" she cries.
With testimony over, all everyone can do is wait until the decision is handed down. Barbard Hughes gets another chance to ham it up in delivering his decision. He says that he hopes Gloria can have a part in her daughter's life, but without disrupting the way it is working now. "Mr. Justice Carew has decied that the child, Gloria Vanderbilt, will not have for the future the life it has had from the death of its father until June, 1932." Gertrude has won custody, it seems, but Judge Carew, in talking to the press, seems completely bonkers, so we will have to wait until the final written decision.
When that comes, it is decreed that Gertrude has won custody, must be taught religion properly, that Nurse Emma has been fired and that Gloria has visitation rights on weekends, for July and at Christmas. Little Gloria has a fit when Nurse Emma is "given her walking papers," as Nathan so succinctly puts it.
ly
"To Little Gloria...happy at last," Laura toasts with Gertrude. However, Maury decides to blame the judge in his column with some colorful language and a great deal of moralizing, though he does note the sad truth of the whole case, "that the victim is the little rich girl herself, Gloria Laura Vanderbilt."
There could be twenty sequels to this movie, as Gloria Vanderbilt lead a particularly notable life (and is still living it as an author of the kind of erotic books her mother was castigated for supposedly posessing), but anything more than this case would be pure Dominick Dunne-like crap. It would be an exploitation. In having to revolve this story around the feelings of a tiny little girl, "Little Gloria...Happy at Last," by necessity, has to play it straight and not take sides. Sure, her mother is shown to be a flighty society doll, but also a victim of her time and no worse than any others of her generation. Solid Aunt Gertrude certainly provided stability, but was hardly a paragon of perfection. Each person in the story had a motive for wanting Little Gloria: money, power, social position, etc. The movie is fair to all of them in presenting both sides.
However, it's the acting that really cements this movie as miniseries perfection. It is crammed with stars and instead of going for the goofy, they really play their roles as written. Angela Lansbury is a model of matriarchal decorum, constant and serene. Glynis Johns has the best role in the film, essentially the comic relief, and though she's a gorgon, at least there is a reasoning behind it. Bette Davis and Christopher Plummer excel in small roles and Lucy Gutteridge does her best stacked up against all the pros.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
An Inconvenient Woman (1991)
The master of the roman a clef, Dominick Dunne, was not always well-represented via the miniseries. "People Like Us" is an awful chore, but "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles" is spot-on perfect.
"An Inconvenient Woman" is in the middle. It has some of the latter's class and the former's trash. The story, roughly based on Reagan pals Arthur and Betsy Bloomingdale, boasts an extremely impressive cast and the vets have a grand time sinking their dentures into the goo. They guarantee we will have a great time: Roddy McDowell, Alex Rocco, Elaine Stritch, Jo Bologna. But, in order to get some serious work done: Jason Robards, Jill Eikenberry, Rebecca DeMornay.
"When people talk about destiny," narrator Peter Gallagher tells us over the credits, "they usually mean something bad...For Jules Mendelson (the Jason Robards character) it was connected, by circumstance, to a head of yellow hair." That's the opening line of the whole movie! Delicious!
The yellow hair belongs to waitress Rebecca DeMornay who serves billionaire Jason Robards. His way of flirting with her is to tell her to change her name to something that has the ring of waitressness to it, so naturally, she goes with Flo. Just don't tell Alice Flo once again stole her thunder.
Rebecca's diner is apparently THE in place for the elite to eat, as if the elite eat in diners. Gossip columnist Roddy McDowell eats there, snapping that Jason's wife Jill Eikenberry, "that bitch," as he calls her, never invites him to her parties. All of this is told to us via a recording Rebecca has left for writer Peter Gallagher to use in his writing (more on that later).
You see, Rebecca isn't actually a waitress. Unlike other Flo-named food service representatives, she has aspirations. "Stardom," Jason wonders, hanging around for another cup of java. "I'd settle for less. Second lead in a TV series. The best friend of the star so the whole show wouldn't rest on my shoulders and when the series gets canceled after 13 weeks, I wouldn't be blamed, I could just go onto other series," she says, her surface white trashiness shining through.
As noted, Jason is married to socialite Jill Eikenberry, 23 years and introduced by the Van Degans (I mention that reference only because Babette Van Degan is a major character in Dunne's "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles," where she was played with miniseries relish by Elizabeth Ashley). Peter Gallagher narrates to us that they no longer sleep together. She's frigid and he's old, so that's news?
Jason and Rebecca take their diner flirting to a new level when he offers her a ride in his Bentley. It's there that he stares at her legs as she's telling him that her mother died in a hospital wing named for him. Rebecca realizes that means he's married and she's not that kind of girl!
Completing the rich family is Chad Lowe, playing Jill's son from a previous marriage, who is sent with a boatload of cash out of the country to avoid a drug rap (I was hoping it was to get the pony tail chopped off, but whatever). Jason doesn't like his stepson, but he does like Rebecca. He buys her a piece of jewelry, which she gives back to him, telling him to take "it back to the discount counter and shove it." She really isn't very bright. Do you think he's ever been to a discount counter? Even his hired lackey wouldn't be caught dead at a discount counter. Those are real jewels, you yutz! He doesn't give up on trying to impress her, so he sends her a gorgeous fur that actually matches her moussed hair. Jason takes her to Paris, but "we stayed at different hotels so no one would suspect." Paris is just the gift she needs to finally give up the goods and right as they are in the middle of the goods, a fire breaks out in the hotel. Jason grabs his raincoat and Rebecca her fur...only to be snapped by photographers outside the hotel.
Well, this is TOO juicy for Roddy to resist. With relish, he calls pal Paxton Whitehead, and then sends Jill the article, in an anonymous envelope. They are all such good friends!
Rebecca even gets a house of her own where Jason can make love to her and correct her grammar whenever he wants ("samich," she calls the things with meat and cheese between two pieces of bread). To make him proud, she wants to be "classy and elegant" just like his wife. She hires a decorator, reads books, wears power suites and "the famous Pookie did my hair."
So, just who is Peter Gallagher? He tells us he's something of a shady character, who would have been played by Allan Ladd in the movies (there's a reference folks in 1991 are going to relate to), but his "past isn't mysterious, just dirty." He shows up at a party to celebrate Jason's appointment as Ambassador to Belgium. Lucky for us, Peter is seated next to Elaine Stritch (Emmy-nominated for this), who whines, "live by the place card, die by the place card" very loud so that everyone will know she was supposed to have a better seat. Peter asks the lady on the other side of him who the hell this broad is. An old friend of Jill's who "had an affair with Jack Kennedy in the Lincoln bedroom." Why not just ask Elaine? She would have proudly told that story! The lovely lady is Chelsea Field, who has read one of Peter's books and belongs to Jill's club of exclusive people who are too rich and famous even to make the newspapers. They seem to get along--she's a widow and he loves the ladies. "Looking at her, I just had to cross my legs," he narrates. Wow, that's class.
Without the pony tail, but hair still long enough for it, Chad is nabbed at the airport for drugs and he goes to dealer Joseph Bologna for help. Joe isn't subtle. He discusses matters with Chad while cleaning a gun. Joe will help him if he can get a dinner invite to one of Jill's party. Joe is not the type who would ever be invited, so this will be good!
During the dinner, Peter wanders into a room to admire a Van Gogh where Jill is on the phone with Chad, denying him the money he needs to get out of his current situation. "We don't see many of the movie people," Jill tells him when he says he's in LA to write a screenplay. Peter and Chelsea leave the party to have sex. "There was an innocence somewhere underneath all that money that I found pretty hard to resist," Peter narrates, as if it's her innocence he's after. He also learns that she's Paxton's niece and that she always wears pearls during sex as a tribute to him, since he wears them under his outfits.
Paxton himself leaves the party for a gay bar to meet a man named "Lonny Who-the-hell-should-I-know," as his pimp tells him. He asks cattily if the woman singing is a real woman or a drag queen. Paxton is particularly unlucky with his trick that night, because he might be the man who shot him to death. Whoever it is, the killer also kicked Paxton's little dog! Shooting a rich old man is one thing, but kicking a dog? When Paxton's body is discovered, the note he's written with the name of the killer is carefully hidden. Peter is with Chelsea when Jason calls her to with news of Uncle Paxton is dead. The writer in Peter wants to know how Jason found out before Chelsea, Uncle Paxton's only living relative.
The next day, Peter is at an AA meeting where he meets Rebecca, who sees that he's reading about Paxton's death, and notes that there is something weird about the whole death. She has a theory that Paxton left the big party and when to a gay bar.
The funeral is held at "Our Lady of the Cadillacs because the only poor people are the rich people's maids," Peter tells us, an event color-coordinated by Elaine and held with the approval of Jill, who was Paxton's best friend. Paxton's gay friends are there and Peter hears a snippet of their gossip, but before he can process that, he hears that the eulogy that Paxton committed suicide, the story that has been invented to keep the truth hidden. Jason and Rebecca meet at the funeral, much to the interest of Peter and Roddy and Elaine and everyone else.
Peter's director is Alex Rocco, doing a great stereotype as the ridiculous Hollywood director, gaudy, with a toupee and a nice healthy cocaine problem. He's been through a rough patch lately and needs a hit movie. Alex's major domo is Jeffrey Alan Chandler, who was at the funeral with the gay guys. Peter runs the suicide-as-a-fake story by him and Jeffrey gives him some hints. Paxton's death makes Jason extra horny, "like a prize fighter punching his way to the mat," Rebecca says, which would make most lose their lunch. That sounds horny and then some! Of course, Rebecca feeds it by telling him she likes his fat stomach because "there's more of you to love," the kind of thing only a mistress can say without laughing. Peter and Rebecca meet again at AA and he wants to take her to the gay bar where he thinks something happened. She says "women are not welcome there...but you better be careful...you'll get swept off your feet."
The looks on Jason and Jill's faces when Chad tells them are invited to Alex's party and Joe will be there and worse, that they have to go.
Peter is pretty inept at the gay bar, seeking out the bar's owner, the guy "with hair like Ann Miller," the man who found Lonny for Paxton. He not only denies knowing Paxton well, but that Paxton never came in that night. The bartender gives him the hooker's address. Grant Cramer (Lonny) "make more in an hour" than he can ever dream of, and surprises Grant coming out of the shower. Buff Grant, sporting a Fabio hairdo, thinks Peter is a client, and isn't thrilled to answer his questions once he finds out he's not. Peter leaves because Grant's next client, Roddy, bearing cupcakes, arrives.
The next we see of Rebecca, she's backing her car into Jill's. Jill sneers, "it was only an accident," and remembers she saw Rebecca at Paxton's funeral. Lucky for Jill, Peter is at Alex's party, where she's not at all happy. She hates movie people. Alex thinks there's a "terrific movie" in the whole idea of the European Union, "one big happy family coming together" and then sneezes all over him. Roddy is there as well, following Jill everywhere she goes. Finally, Jason and Joe have a private meeting, the whole reason they were invited. Joe rattles off a list of Jason's past deeds, which are basically a list of every society faux pas of the last few decades (bootlegger's relative, woman falling out of a hotel window, etc.). He even knows about Rebecca. That detail causes Jason to ask what the hell Joe really wants. Joe barely gets Chad's name out when Jill insists on leaving, having had enough of Alex's ridiculous antics.
"I will do anything to keep from losing you," Jason tells Jill, who has put the pieces together about Rebecca. "I've smelled her on you," she hisses, as if that were the detail that did it. The newspaper clipping? The funeral? A thousand other things, but Jill is only bright when she wants to be. The threat of divorce lingers over the conversation, so Jill decides to take Chad and go visit her father (who must be 174 years old). Divorce would mean losing everything, and Jason can't risk it.
The next time Jason comes to visit Rebecca, he tells her about his life, as a storm rages outside (of course it does). He tells her about the woman who fell out of the window, all sorts of things he would never have told his wife. "I had started to fall in love with him," Rebecca coos on tape. Wait, spilling secrets did that. It wasn't the fur, the house, the books? Remember that the next time you're trying to bag a hottie.
He takes her to dinner, in "the Valley, no one will recognize us." Over a discussion of Marilyn Monroe's death, she hints that she thinks there is a conspiracy afoot and that pisses off Jason. That Valley restaurant isn't so secret, because Elaine Stritch shows up, in a fur on crutches. Jason pretends he's there with his lawyer, but Elaine knows exactly what's going on, making sure that she gets a ton of close-ups so her prune face can brilliantly overact each reaction.
Infuriated that Jason introduces her as his lawyer's secretary, Rebecca takes a cab to go visit Peter. "We're in the same jalopy," she says, meaning that they are both outsiders to the powerful people around them. Well, I assume that's what she means, because she never really explains it before he goes into a rant about his alcoholic mother that adds nothing to the story. What does is when they start to kiss like heated teens. A very worried Jason hurries to Rebecca's house and of course doesn't find her, only Paxton's dog, who always hates when Jason stops by (hmmmm, a clue?). Jason, using all of that fine O'Neill acting he's amassed over the years, one of America's greatest actors ever, loses his mind and trashes the place in a hissy fit worthy of nothing more than a daytime soap opera. Catching his breath, he notices a blood-stain on a pillow and calls someone to rage that there were supposed to be nothing left of "certain events" (hmmmm, a clue?).
When Rebecca returns, a clearly overcome Jason slaps her to the floor. "Is that what happened to the girl who fell out the window?" she snaps. He's now apologetic (or apoplectic, I can't figure it out). In bed, Rebecca asks to see his house. "I just want to walk through the rooms...I could be a business meeting," she tells Jason during afterglow. She has a whole fantasy worked out and they play the game. In a business suit, Rebecca actually looks like a...well...a mistress in a business suit. She ain't foolin' anyone, but remember, Jill is with her father and son, so it's safe enough for Rebecca to sneak around. "I gotta give it to Mrs. M, she was right up there when it came to putting a house together," Rebecca remarks on tape as we see her wandering through the rooms like it's a museum opened for one person's visit. Guess who calls while Rebecca is dancing through the rooms? Jill, of course, who knows there is someone there, and thus raises her eyebrow three inches higher.
Speaking of eyebrows, though thick, not raised, Peter is fired from writing the movie because he's on a list of known associates of Rebecca's and Jason cannot bear that. As if that's not enough stress, Joe keeps trying to make time with Jason, who puts him off. Joe makes good on his threats and evidence of past misdeeds is sent to the people who are in charge of making big decisions. He can't head the Delegation to the This of That in Such a Country. The only person not pecking at hime is Rebecca, who, and folks, you need to watch this scene twice, dresses up in all black, gloves and all, and does a Marilyn Monroe striptease, down to frilly negligee. This has to be one of the most unappealing scenes in miniseries history, watching Jason get all hot for Rebecca-as-Marilyn.
The striptease makes me a little queasy, but it gives Jason a big old heart attack. The EMT who picks him up calls Roddy before the ambulance even leaves! Of course Rebecca can't ride in the ambulance, so she takes Jason's car, dressed in an overcoat to hide her naughty negligee, and runs over poor Astrid, the dog that had survived Paxton's death. Wait until you see Rebecca cradling a dead dog in her arms begging it not to die. It explainsn why the 90s weren't kinder to her. Limping from a fall, in her outfit, she rushes to the hospital, going through red lights and hospital barriers in his Bentley. She delivers another hysterically awful crying scene at the hospital, where she pretends to be Jason's daughter in order to get to his room. Roddy overhears this and a media frenzy is awaiting Jill when she arrives at the hospital. All Jill does is shoot a withering look at Roddy when he expresses sympathy. When Jill gets to Jason's room, Rebecca is there. "I would like to be alone with my husband," she says tartly. "The plane was hours late. Father says hello," is the way Jill greets her machine-infused husband. Not touching, nothing. It's a hoot! When Jill finds out Rebecca is passing herself off as her daughter, she has harsh words, so Rebecca, and I can't believe I'm going to write this, has to dress up as a nurse to get to his room!
Now really, no one but Dominick Dunne could have come up with caviar-coated crap like this! Rebecca, dressed as a nurse, kissing Jason-in-a-coma and telling him about her relationship with her father. It's yet another irrelevant conversation, but meant to show how much Rebecca loves him. Jill is so furious about Rebecca's insistent presence at the hospital that she has him brought home, against medical advice, and with a fortune in bills to keep him away from Rebecca.
With Jason not able to make any decisions, he's also not able to pay any of her bills. She brazenly shows up at Jason's office, but is dismissed by his efficient secretary. The ringing of the phone causes Rebecca to break into heaving tears, but luckily the maid from next door, who has become Rebecca's friend, knows the guy who shaves Jason every morning and they pass a note to him that way. Rebecca to maid to barber to Jason. If only there were text messaging! They could have burn phones and no one would know.
Ailing, Jason is literally scooped up by a male nurse and deposited at Rebecca's house with his lawyer, Roy Thinnes. "I wasn't sure you would be friendly," she says when introduced to Roy. Bubbling innocent charm, Rebecca couldn't be more innocent. Roy and Jason have drawn up a contract that makes her "an heiress," giving her the house and a monthly allowance. While Rebecca goes to retrieve a burning soufle, Jason has another heart attack. Rebecca wants to call the hospital, but Roy nixes that. "She'll have a fit if she knows he had an attack at this place," Roy cautions. So, into the Bentley he's put and off to home, where he can safely have a heart attack without his wife pitching a fit. It's nice to have options.
Jill throws one of her brilliant dinner parties. Peter is there with Chelsea, with whom he has been fighting. Jason is not allowed out of bed, but some European prince and Elaine Stritch are there. The nurse summons Jill from the party, pissed as hell, to tell her "I don't think he has long." Unmoved, Jill asks to be alone with Jason and then goes into her clipped bitchy mode. "I'm dyin'...no tears, I see," he says to her. Jill picks up the phone to call the nurse and hears Roy on the line talking about Rebecca, but there's a bigger secret Jason has to share with Jill: it was her son Chad who killed Paxton because he needed money and his family wouldn't give it to him. He has the proof in his safe, the note in Paxton's blood. "You did this for me," Jill says, finally crying for once. He dies and she recites an Our Father. Wait, this WASP queen is a Catholic? Why does that seem soooooo unlikely? Dispensing with tears, she goes to the safe, finds the note and promptly burns it.
She would be going right back to her dinner party, but Peter finds her in the library. She says Jason is only sleeping and Peter tells her he knows Paxton did not commit suicide. Peter says he doesn't want her to get hurt, and Jill snaps that if there's one thing her husband taught her, "it's not to get hurt." Then she finally goes back to the party.
When Chad gets home and hugs his mother, who probably doesn't do hugs on a good day, let alone after her cheating dead husband named her son as her friend's murderer, and therefore acts like a wall when Chad even tries, tells Chad she knows the truth and he says, "and you just forgot it."
The funeral is a small affair, attending just by Jill, Chad, Roy, Elaine, Peter, Chelsea...and Rebecca arriving late. Jill storms up the aisle and rages at full voice for Rebecca to leave. Rebecca tries to argue, but there's no arguing with Jill when she's in a mood. Jill makes life even worse for Rebecca by contesting the supposedly iron-clad will he made the day he died, saying it was written with "undue pressure." When Roy breaks the news to her, he does in the most curious way...by offering himself as a replacement sugar daddy. You know, in real life, that might actually work for a dame as desperate as this, but since Rebecca is our heroine, instead of agreeing, she merely has a drink, breaking her sobriety. A far better choice! Peter comes to comfort her and she tells him, "don't blow my load." I think that means something like "don't be a buzz kill," but I've lost my "Inconvenient Woman" dictionary and haven't been able to figure out half of what the hell she's been saying.
Going to buy more wine, Rebecca runs into Grant at the convenience store. Grant has just been reading about her in Roddy's column and he tells her that he knows Chad killed Paxton, because he showed up when the session was over. "That's when it all made sense to me."
But it doens't make any sense to anyone watching.
We find out that on the night of the murder, Jason brought Chad to Rebecca's house, his finger bitten by a dog and his blood the blood on pillow that Jason so angrily found when he was having his trash-the-house scene.
Now it makes sense to anyone watching.
Rebecca insists on having a meeting with Jill to insist she get the money that was promised to her, because she knows the truth of Paxton's murder. That shuts Jill and Roy up. "I'm not asking for much...you can afford it," Rebecca says, about to fall into another crying fit. Jill refuses and Rebecca goes to her old coffee shop for some comfort. That's when Roddy accosts her. He proposes that she dictate a book about the whole sordid affair and he will write it. It will solve her financial problems. Once she finishes the tapes, he has her put them in a safety deposit box to which only she and he have keys to.
An excited Roddy puts something in his column daily about the impending book, but someone high up and made it impossible, so the book and movie deal die. Roddy has another idea when he and Rebecca are watching Oprah. Yup, Oprah. Obviously, she doesn't remember she gave a clip to this movie or the whole existence of this movie would have long died (and because I have a copy, I would die too, so if I die...someone call my mother...oh, and Gayle). They book Rebecca for a talk show appearance, but just after having her make-up done, the segment is canceled. "Somebody made a call. Somebody made a call," she whispers to Roddy.
When she gets home, there's a typed note in a gift box that says "put it in your mouth before we do." Further unwrapping reveals a gun (what, did you think it was an expensive spoon from Jill? Or a wire retainer with a threatening note from the Orthodondist?), which she fires at the window. She places the tapes in the safety deposit box.
Roddy finally gets to see Jill's house, though not from the inside because "you are not welcome in my home," so they have to talk in the garden. Roddy, playing both sides, wants Jill to know that "for a price, I could turn the tapes over to you," the tapes that Rebecca has been recording. He reminds her the tapes include a lot of details, which fill up about three minutes of screen time when it's taken us nearly two hours to get through it. Just as Roddy is telling the story of what went on the night Chad was at Paxton's, a bee flies into his mouth and stings him.
You read that correctly.
Just as Roddy is telling the story of what went on that night Chad was at Paxton's, a bee flies into his mouth and stings him.
You read that correctly again.
As Roddy is dying in the garden from his "wasp allergy," Jill talks of roses and then, just as he breathes his lasat, says, "I hope it hurts" as she snaps the head off a rose. Jill calls Roy, asking him to call Joe and have him sack Rebecca's house for the tapes because "he's on them too." Seems like a good idea, I suppose. As someone is breaking into her house, she calls Grant to come stay with her. "I have a customer right now," he says, but promises to come over afterwards. He does, but he's not much help, falling asleep on the couch. So, Rebecca finds Peter outside an AA meeting as she informs him she's leaving town. "Can't tell you where I'm going," she says. She hands him a box (the tapes) but he is not allowed to open them until Christmas. "You don't have to worry about me anymore," she says, but he does worry about her. "You are the most fragile tough girl I ever knew."
Our friend Grant is out jogging in very short shorts, with a Walkman, when Joe pulls him into his limousine. Grant thinks he's a client, but Joe reveals he wants Grant to leave the door unlocked and take the gun from Rebecca's house so a goon can go in and get the tapes everyone thinks are there. For cash, Grant sells out his friend. But, it's Rebecca's bad luck to want to stay in that night. Grant tries to urge her to go out with him, knowing bad men are on the way, but she wants to stay in, at least for a few hours.
Asleep on the couch that night, she's awoken by the noise of someone rifling ther her packed boxes. The guy has a mask on and she knows he's about to kill her with a piece of bric-a-brac. "It's Ming, one of the dynasties," she says, as if that's going to stop a crook from killing her? She's beaten dead with the Ming artifact, and right in the middle of Hail Mary (she's Catholic too!).
"It's over," Roy calls and reports to Jill. Jill marries the German Prince and moves to London. Poor Grant went into another limo and then disappeared. Peter, "long before Chrstimas," found out Rebecca had given him the tapes. He listens to them and somehow becomes close with Chelsea again.
Now that's how you do roman a clef! You bring rich people together, make them ultra ridiculous and then toss in people who don't match. The non-matching people make the rich people look insane, and then someone has to die. Granted, guns and poison should be fine, but hey, but death-by-wasp can't be traced back to anyone, so it's pretty safe. I'm just saying...
"An Inconvenient Woman" is in the middle. It has some of the latter's class and the former's trash. The story, roughly based on Reagan pals Arthur and Betsy Bloomingdale, boasts an extremely impressive cast and the vets have a grand time sinking their dentures into the goo. They guarantee we will have a great time: Roddy McDowell, Alex Rocco, Elaine Stritch, Jo Bologna. But, in order to get some serious work done: Jason Robards, Jill Eikenberry, Rebecca DeMornay.
"When people talk about destiny," narrator Peter Gallagher tells us over the credits, "they usually mean something bad...For Jules Mendelson (the Jason Robards character) it was connected, by circumstance, to a head of yellow hair." That's the opening line of the whole movie! Delicious!
The yellow hair belongs to waitress Rebecca DeMornay who serves billionaire Jason Robards. His way of flirting with her is to tell her to change her name to something that has the ring of waitressness to it, so naturally, she goes with Flo. Just don't tell Alice Flo once again stole her thunder.
Rebecca's diner is apparently THE in place for the elite to eat, as if the elite eat in diners. Gossip columnist Roddy McDowell eats there, snapping that Jason's wife Jill Eikenberry, "that bitch," as he calls her, never invites him to her parties. All of this is told to us via a recording Rebecca has left for writer Peter Gallagher to use in his writing (more on that later).
You see, Rebecca isn't actually a waitress. Unlike other Flo-named food service representatives, she has aspirations. "Stardom," Jason wonders, hanging around for another cup of java. "I'd settle for less. Second lead in a TV series. The best friend of the star so the whole show wouldn't rest on my shoulders and when the series gets canceled after 13 weeks, I wouldn't be blamed, I could just go onto other series," she says, her surface white trashiness shining through.
As noted, Jason is married to socialite Jill Eikenberry, 23 years and introduced by the Van Degans (I mention that reference only because Babette Van Degan is a major character in Dunne's "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles," where she was played with miniseries relish by Elizabeth Ashley). Peter Gallagher narrates to us that they no longer sleep together. She's frigid and he's old, so that's news?
Jason and Rebecca take their diner flirting to a new level when he offers her a ride in his Bentley. It's there that he stares at her legs as she's telling him that her mother died in a hospital wing named for him. Rebecca realizes that means he's married and she's not that kind of girl!
Completing the rich family is Chad Lowe, playing Jill's son from a previous marriage, who is sent with a boatload of cash out of the country to avoid a drug rap (I was hoping it was to get the pony tail chopped off, but whatever). Jason doesn't like his stepson, but he does like Rebecca. He buys her a piece of jewelry, which she gives back to him, telling him to take "it back to the discount counter and shove it." She really isn't very bright. Do you think he's ever been to a discount counter? Even his hired lackey wouldn't be caught dead at a discount counter. Those are real jewels, you yutz! He doesn't give up on trying to impress her, so he sends her a gorgeous fur that actually matches her moussed hair. Jason takes her to Paris, but "we stayed at different hotels so no one would suspect." Paris is just the gift she needs to finally give up the goods and right as they are in the middle of the goods, a fire breaks out in the hotel. Jason grabs his raincoat and Rebecca her fur...only to be snapped by photographers outside the hotel.
Well, this is TOO juicy for Roddy to resist. With relish, he calls pal Paxton Whitehead, and then sends Jill the article, in an anonymous envelope. They are all such good friends!
Rebecca even gets a house of her own where Jason can make love to her and correct her grammar whenever he wants ("samich," she calls the things with meat and cheese between two pieces of bread). To make him proud, she wants to be "classy and elegant" just like his wife. She hires a decorator, reads books, wears power suites and "the famous Pookie did my hair."
So, just who is Peter Gallagher? He tells us he's something of a shady character, who would have been played by Allan Ladd in the movies (there's a reference folks in 1991 are going to relate to), but his "past isn't mysterious, just dirty." He shows up at a party to celebrate Jason's appointment as Ambassador to Belgium. Lucky for us, Peter is seated next to Elaine Stritch (Emmy-nominated for this), who whines, "live by the place card, die by the place card" very loud so that everyone will know she was supposed to have a better seat. Peter asks the lady on the other side of him who the hell this broad is. An old friend of Jill's who "had an affair with Jack Kennedy in the Lincoln bedroom." Why not just ask Elaine? She would have proudly told that story! The lovely lady is Chelsea Field, who has read one of Peter's books and belongs to Jill's club of exclusive people who are too rich and famous even to make the newspapers. They seem to get along--she's a widow and he loves the ladies. "Looking at her, I just had to cross my legs," he narrates. Wow, that's class.
Without the pony tail, but hair still long enough for it, Chad is nabbed at the airport for drugs and he goes to dealer Joseph Bologna for help. Joe isn't subtle. He discusses matters with Chad while cleaning a gun. Joe will help him if he can get a dinner invite to one of Jill's party. Joe is not the type who would ever be invited, so this will be good!
During the dinner, Peter wanders into a room to admire a Van Gogh where Jill is on the phone with Chad, denying him the money he needs to get out of his current situation. "We don't see many of the movie people," Jill tells him when he says he's in LA to write a screenplay. Peter and Chelsea leave the party to have sex. "There was an innocence somewhere underneath all that money that I found pretty hard to resist," Peter narrates, as if it's her innocence he's after. He also learns that she's Paxton's niece and that she always wears pearls during sex as a tribute to him, since he wears them under his outfits.
Paxton himself leaves the party for a gay bar to meet a man named "Lonny Who-the-hell-should-I-know," as his pimp tells him. He asks cattily if the woman singing is a real woman or a drag queen. Paxton is particularly unlucky with his trick that night, because he might be the man who shot him to death. Whoever it is, the killer also kicked Paxton's little dog! Shooting a rich old man is one thing, but kicking a dog? When Paxton's body is discovered, the note he's written with the name of the killer is carefully hidden. Peter is with Chelsea when Jason calls her to with news of Uncle Paxton is dead. The writer in Peter wants to know how Jason found out before Chelsea, Uncle Paxton's only living relative.
The next day, Peter is at an AA meeting where he meets Rebecca, who sees that he's reading about Paxton's death, and notes that there is something weird about the whole death. She has a theory that Paxton left the big party and when to a gay bar.
The funeral is held at "Our Lady of the Cadillacs because the only poor people are the rich people's maids," Peter tells us, an event color-coordinated by Elaine and held with the approval of Jill, who was Paxton's best friend. Paxton's gay friends are there and Peter hears a snippet of their gossip, but before he can process that, he hears that the eulogy that Paxton committed suicide, the story that has been invented to keep the truth hidden. Jason and Rebecca meet at the funeral, much to the interest of Peter and Roddy and Elaine and everyone else.
Peter's director is Alex Rocco, doing a great stereotype as the ridiculous Hollywood director, gaudy, with a toupee and a nice healthy cocaine problem. He's been through a rough patch lately and needs a hit movie. Alex's major domo is Jeffrey Alan Chandler, who was at the funeral with the gay guys. Peter runs the suicide-as-a-fake story by him and Jeffrey gives him some hints. Paxton's death makes Jason extra horny, "like a prize fighter punching his way to the mat," Rebecca says, which would make most lose their lunch. That sounds horny and then some! Of course, Rebecca feeds it by telling him she likes his fat stomach because "there's more of you to love," the kind of thing only a mistress can say without laughing. Peter and Rebecca meet again at AA and he wants to take her to the gay bar where he thinks something happened. She says "women are not welcome there...but you better be careful...you'll get swept off your feet."
The looks on Jason and Jill's faces when Chad tells them are invited to Alex's party and Joe will be there and worse, that they have to go.
Peter is pretty inept at the gay bar, seeking out the bar's owner, the guy "with hair like Ann Miller," the man who found Lonny for Paxton. He not only denies knowing Paxton well, but that Paxton never came in that night. The bartender gives him the hooker's address. Grant Cramer (Lonny) "make more in an hour" than he can ever dream of, and surprises Grant coming out of the shower. Buff Grant, sporting a Fabio hairdo, thinks Peter is a client, and isn't thrilled to answer his questions once he finds out he's not. Peter leaves because Grant's next client, Roddy, bearing cupcakes, arrives.
The next we see of Rebecca, she's backing her car into Jill's. Jill sneers, "it was only an accident," and remembers she saw Rebecca at Paxton's funeral. Lucky for Jill, Peter is at Alex's party, where she's not at all happy. She hates movie people. Alex thinks there's a "terrific movie" in the whole idea of the European Union, "one big happy family coming together" and then sneezes all over him. Roddy is there as well, following Jill everywhere she goes. Finally, Jason and Joe have a private meeting, the whole reason they were invited. Joe rattles off a list of Jason's past deeds, which are basically a list of every society faux pas of the last few decades (bootlegger's relative, woman falling out of a hotel window, etc.). He even knows about Rebecca. That detail causes Jason to ask what the hell Joe really wants. Joe barely gets Chad's name out when Jill insists on leaving, having had enough of Alex's ridiculous antics.
"I will do anything to keep from losing you," Jason tells Jill, who has put the pieces together about Rebecca. "I've smelled her on you," she hisses, as if that were the detail that did it. The newspaper clipping? The funeral? A thousand other things, but Jill is only bright when she wants to be. The threat of divorce lingers over the conversation, so Jill decides to take Chad and go visit her father (who must be 174 years old). Divorce would mean losing everything, and Jason can't risk it.
The next time Jason comes to visit Rebecca, he tells her about his life, as a storm rages outside (of course it does). He tells her about the woman who fell out of the window, all sorts of things he would never have told his wife. "I had started to fall in love with him," Rebecca coos on tape. Wait, spilling secrets did that. It wasn't the fur, the house, the books? Remember that the next time you're trying to bag a hottie.
He takes her to dinner, in "the Valley, no one will recognize us." Over a discussion of Marilyn Monroe's death, she hints that she thinks there is a conspiracy afoot and that pisses off Jason. That Valley restaurant isn't so secret, because Elaine Stritch shows up, in a fur on crutches. Jason pretends he's there with his lawyer, but Elaine knows exactly what's going on, making sure that she gets a ton of close-ups so her prune face can brilliantly overact each reaction.
Infuriated that Jason introduces her as his lawyer's secretary, Rebecca takes a cab to go visit Peter. "We're in the same jalopy," she says, meaning that they are both outsiders to the powerful people around them. Well, I assume that's what she means, because she never really explains it before he goes into a rant about his alcoholic mother that adds nothing to the story. What does is when they start to kiss like heated teens. A very worried Jason hurries to Rebecca's house and of course doesn't find her, only Paxton's dog, who always hates when Jason stops by (hmmmm, a clue?). Jason, using all of that fine O'Neill acting he's amassed over the years, one of America's greatest actors ever, loses his mind and trashes the place in a hissy fit worthy of nothing more than a daytime soap opera. Catching his breath, he notices a blood-stain on a pillow and calls someone to rage that there were supposed to be nothing left of "certain events" (hmmmm, a clue?).
When Rebecca returns, a clearly overcome Jason slaps her to the floor. "Is that what happened to the girl who fell out the window?" she snaps. He's now apologetic (or apoplectic, I can't figure it out). In bed, Rebecca asks to see his house. "I just want to walk through the rooms...I could be a business meeting," she tells Jason during afterglow. She has a whole fantasy worked out and they play the game. In a business suit, Rebecca actually looks like a...well...a mistress in a business suit. She ain't foolin' anyone, but remember, Jill is with her father and son, so it's safe enough for Rebecca to sneak around. "I gotta give it to Mrs. M, she was right up there when it came to putting a house together," Rebecca remarks on tape as we see her wandering through the rooms like it's a museum opened for one person's visit. Guess who calls while Rebecca is dancing through the rooms? Jill, of course, who knows there is someone there, and thus raises her eyebrow three inches higher.
Speaking of eyebrows, though thick, not raised, Peter is fired from writing the movie because he's on a list of known associates of Rebecca's and Jason cannot bear that. As if that's not enough stress, Joe keeps trying to make time with Jason, who puts him off. Joe makes good on his threats and evidence of past misdeeds is sent to the people who are in charge of making big decisions. He can't head the Delegation to the This of That in Such a Country. The only person not pecking at hime is Rebecca, who, and folks, you need to watch this scene twice, dresses up in all black, gloves and all, and does a Marilyn Monroe striptease, down to frilly negligee. This has to be one of the most unappealing scenes in miniseries history, watching Jason get all hot for Rebecca-as-Marilyn.
The striptease makes me a little queasy, but it gives Jason a big old heart attack. The EMT who picks him up calls Roddy before the ambulance even leaves! Of course Rebecca can't ride in the ambulance, so she takes Jason's car, dressed in an overcoat to hide her naughty negligee, and runs over poor Astrid, the dog that had survived Paxton's death. Wait until you see Rebecca cradling a dead dog in her arms begging it not to die. It explainsn why the 90s weren't kinder to her. Limping from a fall, in her outfit, she rushes to the hospital, going through red lights and hospital barriers in his Bentley. She delivers another hysterically awful crying scene at the hospital, where she pretends to be Jason's daughter in order to get to his room. Roddy overhears this and a media frenzy is awaiting Jill when she arrives at the hospital. All Jill does is shoot a withering look at Roddy when he expresses sympathy. When Jill gets to Jason's room, Rebecca is there. "I would like to be alone with my husband," she says tartly. "The plane was hours late. Father says hello," is the way Jill greets her machine-infused husband. Not touching, nothing. It's a hoot! When Jill finds out Rebecca is passing herself off as her daughter, she has harsh words, so Rebecca, and I can't believe I'm going to write this, has to dress up as a nurse to get to his room!
Now really, no one but Dominick Dunne could have come up with caviar-coated crap like this! Rebecca, dressed as a nurse, kissing Jason-in-a-coma and telling him about her relationship with her father. It's yet another irrelevant conversation, but meant to show how much Rebecca loves him. Jill is so furious about Rebecca's insistent presence at the hospital that she has him brought home, against medical advice, and with a fortune in bills to keep him away from Rebecca.
With Jason not able to make any decisions, he's also not able to pay any of her bills. She brazenly shows up at Jason's office, but is dismissed by his efficient secretary. The ringing of the phone causes Rebecca to break into heaving tears, but luckily the maid from next door, who has become Rebecca's friend, knows the guy who shaves Jason every morning and they pass a note to him that way. Rebecca to maid to barber to Jason. If only there were text messaging! They could have burn phones and no one would know.
Ailing, Jason is literally scooped up by a male nurse and deposited at Rebecca's house with his lawyer, Roy Thinnes. "I wasn't sure you would be friendly," she says when introduced to Roy. Bubbling innocent charm, Rebecca couldn't be more innocent. Roy and Jason have drawn up a contract that makes her "an heiress," giving her the house and a monthly allowance. While Rebecca goes to retrieve a burning soufle, Jason has another heart attack. Rebecca wants to call the hospital, but Roy nixes that. "She'll have a fit if she knows he had an attack at this place," Roy cautions. So, into the Bentley he's put and off to home, where he can safely have a heart attack without his wife pitching a fit. It's nice to have options.
Jill throws one of her brilliant dinner parties. Peter is there with Chelsea, with whom he has been fighting. Jason is not allowed out of bed, but some European prince and Elaine Stritch are there. The nurse summons Jill from the party, pissed as hell, to tell her "I don't think he has long." Unmoved, Jill asks to be alone with Jason and then goes into her clipped bitchy mode. "I'm dyin'...no tears, I see," he says to her. Jill picks up the phone to call the nurse and hears Roy on the line talking about Rebecca, but there's a bigger secret Jason has to share with Jill: it was her son Chad who killed Paxton because he needed money and his family wouldn't give it to him. He has the proof in his safe, the note in Paxton's blood. "You did this for me," Jill says, finally crying for once. He dies and she recites an Our Father. Wait, this WASP queen is a Catholic? Why does that seem soooooo unlikely? Dispensing with tears, she goes to the safe, finds the note and promptly burns it.
She would be going right back to her dinner party, but Peter finds her in the library. She says Jason is only sleeping and Peter tells her he knows Paxton did not commit suicide. Peter says he doesn't want her to get hurt, and Jill snaps that if there's one thing her husband taught her, "it's not to get hurt." Then she finally goes back to the party.
When Chad gets home and hugs his mother, who probably doesn't do hugs on a good day, let alone after her cheating dead husband named her son as her friend's murderer, and therefore acts like a wall when Chad even tries, tells Chad she knows the truth and he says, "and you just forgot it."
The funeral is a small affair, attending just by Jill, Chad, Roy, Elaine, Peter, Chelsea...and Rebecca arriving late. Jill storms up the aisle and rages at full voice for Rebecca to leave. Rebecca tries to argue, but there's no arguing with Jill when she's in a mood. Jill makes life even worse for Rebecca by contesting the supposedly iron-clad will he made the day he died, saying it was written with "undue pressure." When Roy breaks the news to her, he does in the most curious way...by offering himself as a replacement sugar daddy. You know, in real life, that might actually work for a dame as desperate as this, but since Rebecca is our heroine, instead of agreeing, she merely has a drink, breaking her sobriety. A far better choice! Peter comes to comfort her and she tells him, "don't blow my load." I think that means something like "don't be a buzz kill," but I've lost my "Inconvenient Woman" dictionary and haven't been able to figure out half of what the hell she's been saying.
Going to buy more wine, Rebecca runs into Grant at the convenience store. Grant has just been reading about her in Roddy's column and he tells her that he knows Chad killed Paxton, because he showed up when the session was over. "That's when it all made sense to me."
But it doens't make any sense to anyone watching.
We find out that on the night of the murder, Jason brought Chad to Rebecca's house, his finger bitten by a dog and his blood the blood on pillow that Jason so angrily found when he was having his trash-the-house scene.
Now it makes sense to anyone watching.
Rebecca insists on having a meeting with Jill to insist she get the money that was promised to her, because she knows the truth of Paxton's murder. That shuts Jill and Roy up. "I'm not asking for much...you can afford it," Rebecca says, about to fall into another crying fit. Jill refuses and Rebecca goes to her old coffee shop for some comfort. That's when Roddy accosts her. He proposes that she dictate a book about the whole sordid affair and he will write it. It will solve her financial problems. Once she finishes the tapes, he has her put them in a safety deposit box to which only she and he have keys to.
An excited Roddy puts something in his column daily about the impending book, but someone high up and made it impossible, so the book and movie deal die. Roddy has another idea when he and Rebecca are watching Oprah. Yup, Oprah. Obviously, she doesn't remember she gave a clip to this movie or the whole existence of this movie would have long died (and because I have a copy, I would die too, so if I die...someone call my mother...oh, and Gayle). They book Rebecca for a talk show appearance, but just after having her make-up done, the segment is canceled. "Somebody made a call. Somebody made a call," she whispers to Roddy.
When she gets home, there's a typed note in a gift box that says "put it in your mouth before we do." Further unwrapping reveals a gun (what, did you think it was an expensive spoon from Jill? Or a wire retainer with a threatening note from the Orthodondist?), which she fires at the window. She places the tapes in the safety deposit box.
Roddy finally gets to see Jill's house, though not from the inside because "you are not welcome in my home," so they have to talk in the garden. Roddy, playing both sides, wants Jill to know that "for a price, I could turn the tapes over to you," the tapes that Rebecca has been recording. He reminds her the tapes include a lot of details, which fill up about three minutes of screen time when it's taken us nearly two hours to get through it. Just as Roddy is telling the story of what went on the night Chad was at Paxton's, a bee flies into his mouth and stings him.
You read that correctly.
Just as Roddy is telling the story of what went on that night Chad was at Paxton's, a bee flies into his mouth and stings him.
You read that correctly again.
As Roddy is dying in the garden from his "wasp allergy," Jill talks of roses and then, just as he breathes his lasat, says, "I hope it hurts" as she snaps the head off a rose. Jill calls Roy, asking him to call Joe and have him sack Rebecca's house for the tapes because "he's on them too." Seems like a good idea, I suppose. As someone is breaking into her house, she calls Grant to come stay with her. "I have a customer right now," he says, but promises to come over afterwards. He does, but he's not much help, falling asleep on the couch. So, Rebecca finds Peter outside an AA meeting as she informs him she's leaving town. "Can't tell you where I'm going," she says. She hands him a box (the tapes) but he is not allowed to open them until Christmas. "You don't have to worry about me anymore," she says, but he does worry about her. "You are the most fragile tough girl I ever knew."
Our friend Grant is out jogging in very short shorts, with a Walkman, when Joe pulls him into his limousine. Grant thinks he's a client, but Joe reveals he wants Grant to leave the door unlocked and take the gun from Rebecca's house so a goon can go in and get the tapes everyone thinks are there. For cash, Grant sells out his friend. But, it's Rebecca's bad luck to want to stay in that night. Grant tries to urge her to go out with him, knowing bad men are on the way, but she wants to stay in, at least for a few hours.
Asleep on the couch that night, she's awoken by the noise of someone rifling ther her packed boxes. The guy has a mask on and she knows he's about to kill her with a piece of bric-a-brac. "It's Ming, one of the dynasties," she says, as if that's going to stop a crook from killing her? She's beaten dead with the Ming artifact, and right in the middle of Hail Mary (she's Catholic too!).
"It's over," Roy calls and reports to Jill. Jill marries the German Prince and moves to London. Poor Grant went into another limo and then disappeared. Peter, "long before Chrstimas," found out Rebecca had given him the tapes. He listens to them and somehow becomes close with Chelsea again.
Now that's how you do roman a clef! You bring rich people together, make them ultra ridiculous and then toss in people who don't match. The non-matching people make the rich people look insane, and then someone has to die. Granted, guns and poison should be fine, but hey, but death-by-wasp can't be traced back to anyone, so it's pretty safe. I'm just saying...
Sunday, February 20, 2011
North and South, Book 2 (1986)
I am purposely avoiding miniseries sequels at the time I write about the originals because the comparisons are not fair, in most cases. "Rich Man, Poor Man Book 2" is so unbelievably boring and "Lace II" completely lacks the cheesy charms of its predecessor. However, "North and South Book 2" might as well be done alongside the first because they basically aired together. "North and South Book 1" aired for November Sweeps in 1985 and "North and South Book 2" was ready for May Sweeps in 1986. So, the second part is obviously not a rushed production to capitalize on the success of the first. Most of the cast members revisit their original roles (no Liz Taylor, sorry).
What I will not do at the same time is the third chapter in the "North and South" saga, which aired in 1994 and is pretty dismal. We'll get there, but let's go through the quality before the crap. For the most part, "North and South Book 2" is very consistent in quality like the first portion, though the final two sections go wildly off kilter.
June, 1861, two months after Ft. Sumter. The armies have amassed and patriotism on both sides is still at a fever pitch. Genie Francis is looking for her husband in Washington and is told he's on sniper duty outside the city. She's also harassed by some local gents and she has to literally beat them off. This little scene, the first one, calls into question historical accuracy. Though the seat of the Union government, sympathies of the ordinary citizen leaned decidedly Southern, especially among the rabble that poor Genie encounters here.
Loving Genie eventually makes it her hubby, now being played by the supremely dashing Parker Stevenson, already a better choice then his predecessor. In his new command, he will have the chance to "be a part of history." "By killing Southerners?" Genie asks petulantly. "I didn't mean YOUR family," he says, though I suppose neighbors and friends are fair game. Maybe her Mary Pickford curls are on too tight, but Genie has somehow developed a spine since Book 1.
Down in South Carolina, both Patrick Swayze and his cousin Lewis Smith are in uniform. Patrick is way too old and way too injured to be of much help fighting, but he's the hero, so I won't say anything. Also still kicking are Patrick's mother, Jean Simmons, pissed that the war is tearing apart her family and that of her dearest friends, and Lesley-Anne Down, Patrick's true love, under his protection from her drunken hellish husband. She's recovered nicely from the drug-induced walking coma from which Patrick rescued her. Patrick has a particularly difficult time wrenching himself from Lesley-Anne's cleavage and leaves slave Forest Whitaker "in charge of everything." Off they go, with Lewis taunting, "race you to the war!" The men soon part as they are assigned different war duties.
Lesley-Anne's husband, David Carradine, sporting only a small scar from the sword he took to the eye, has been assigned a commission as a colonel to train new recruits.
Parallel goings-on are happening in Pennsylvania, where James Read is putting on his old uniform, going back into service where he said he would never go again. He will not be fighting, but rather on Lincoln's general staff. To "celebrate the departure of this area's greatest hero," his family is throwing a big fete. His mother Inga Swenson is worried that it's too lavish for wartime, but his sister-in-law, now played by Mary Crosby and her equally avaricious husband, Jonathan Frakes (now sporting a beard) use it as an opportunity to show off, since they will be running the family ironworks in his absence. "Now isn't just a chance to profit from this foolish war, but for you to be the man you always wanted to be," Mary goads her husband, resting her chin on his shoulder to make it seem less offensive than it sounds.
Patrick reports to Richmond, where President Jefferson Davis (Lloyd Bridges) and Robert E. Lee (William Schallert) are trying to make plans. Lee believes both secession and slavery are wrong, but "I could not draw my sword against Virginia." Lee wants to attack Washington, but Davis refuses. Davis has summoned Patrick because of his expertise running factories, which the Confederacy has few of anyway. Lewis and his pal James Houghton are sent on a reconnaissance mission, quickly encountering soldiers from the Union Army. They chase a rider who gets by them and the Union soldiers chase them until a gunfight ensues. The rider Lewis needs to protect turns out to be a woman, Kate McNeil, a Southerner who brings medicine to Confederate camps. She's a feisty one, and both Lewis and James seem to dig her.
Kirstie Alley, James' black sheep sister, has applied to be a nurse at a Union hospital run by Dorothea Dix. She's not an ideal candidate, as far as they are concerned, because she spent time in a mental hospital and her outrageous views could be problematic.
James, his wife Wendy Kilbourne, Parker and Genie are having dinner when in flounces Kirstie on the arm of Congressman David Ogden Stiers, whom she has refused to see since way back in Book 1 because he's married. Parker goes to say goodbye to her, "since I might not see you before the end of the war," but Kirstie needs the Congressman's help, and is not concerned with her family. She wants him to help her get the nursing position in Dix's hospital. "My reward will be...?" the Congressman asks her, hoping for a tumble in bed, but she offers only her friendship.
Brother James decides to go see sister Kirstie, but she is cantankerous from the moment she lets him in the door. He offers to help her get the hospital job and even offers money, trying to mend fences. Kirstie doesn't give an inch. "No one ever cared to know what I think," she says, because she's a woman. He claims it was her views, not her gender, that he objected to. It turns into a shouting match, with James, as ever, trying to make nice (even while shouting), but Kirstie does not want to be part of the family anymore. "If you ever need me, you know how to find me," James says on his way out, a clue that at some point, she will obviously need him.
Patrick's other sister, troublemaker Terri Garber, attends a party for Jefferson Davis with her husband Jim Meltzer, who has not risen in the political ranks of the Confederacy as quickly as he expected. Still itching to be the movie's Scarlett O'Hara, Terri arrives at the ball in a bright red gown where everyone else is sporting muted colors. Jim argues with Jefferson Davis because Jim believes in strong states, where Davis wants a mighty central government. Terri berates her husband for daring to disagree with Davis and storms over to the punch beverage table where she meets Philip Casnoff. The meeting of these two has been destiny waiting for years and years as they are two of the three villains of the piece. Philip is a longtime Jefferson Davis critic, so he is drawn to Jim and has a proposal for him: blockade running, not for arms, but "luxury items" because the profit margin is so high. Jim finds this all very unpatriotic and refuses, but Terri shows up in time to hear the end of the discussion and formally meet Philip. These two are going to be trouble, but awfully fun trouble. Terri wants to invest in Philip's scheme and has her own money with which to do it. "Perhaps we should discuss it later...in private," she tells Philip, which means the bedroom, where she does all of her best work.
One of the men training under David Carradine wants to be released because his family misses him, but David gives the men a long speech about patriotism, though it's undermined by another soldier telling him he doesn't understand because he no longer has a family. Yeah, like that's not going to royally piss him off!
Prophetically, Lesley-Anne tells Jean that "I never want to bring shame to this family." She starts to tell Jean some of her history, but Jean cuts her off. Loving Patrick is all that matters. Well, that's probably because she doesn't realize the story is that she was born to a quarter-black prostitute. David sneaks into Patrick's plantation and abducts his wife with the help of some of his trainees. For extra measure, he throws his lantern onto the roof of the cotton building, which would, of course, is the centerpiece of the family's fortunes. The exploding building awakens Jean, who hears of Lesley-Anne's abduction before fiery beams fall on her. She's alive, but she can tell from the fire that things are about to get really bad around the plantation. Forest refuses to help extinguish the fire any further because he doesn't feel the family cares about him and he gets nothing from working so hard. He's especially angered by the opulent house, which he's never seen before because all he gets is a shack.
Lesley-Anne is returned to the room where David had her locked in for so long, and she seems to think she'll be rescued. "There is no one," David tells her correctly, since all the men at Patrick's plantation are gone. It's not a good time to be a Southern aristocrat. First Jean is nearly killed, then she faces a slave rebellion and now Lesley-Anne is returned to her chamber of horrors.
Only Terri is making it through the war with all of her dash and style intact. She toys with Philip and he toys with her. She dangles a check in front of him and he mentions her brother Patrick. Terri hates all of James' family and even her own, so Philip can use that to his advantage. He also inquires about Lesley-Anne, whose secrets he knows, only to be used at the time it will do maximum harm to Patrick. After a lusty conversation, they start kissing, but the businesswoman in Terri wants to see money coming in before Philip gets more of what "he stole" by kissing her. "Send your card round, sir, when your ship comes in," Terri states before flouncing out the front door. Philip then goes to gaze at the painting of Lesley-Anne's mother that he somehow got from the whorehouse run by Elizabeth Taylor in the Book 1.
Genie gets all the bad news from home and is determined to get back there, even if it means dodging battles happening all over the South. Her husband Parker is riding and comes across a kid playing drums who wants to sound the call for the Army, so Parker takes him along. Back at the camp, officer Kurtwood Smith berates Parker and then gets a chance to audition his drumming for Kurtwood.
In Lincoln's war room, everyone has a different opinion of how to beat the Confederacy. Lincoln keeps things light with jokes, but the odds are favoring the Confederacy since the bulk of the war is being fought on her land.
As a great battle gears up, one of my personal favorite historical trivia points is highlighted. Whole families come to watch the battles from a fairly safe distance, bringing games and picnics. The First Battle of Bull Run is a slaughter on both sides (though the Confederacy comes out ahead in the end). The fighting gets so spread out and so many bodies need attention that they spill into the spectators section. It's the first big battle and now it looks like outcomes may not be so quick in happening.
Genie and her slave Erica Gimpel, good women who are about to have bad things happen as per this story's patterns, break their carriage and have to walk with whatever they can carry. The army happens by and captures Erica, as Genie watches helplessly. Genie shows up at night in a soldier's outfit and one for Erica. This will at least get them out of the camp, even if it rips off Shakespeare and is almost too comic to fit with the movie's mood (though, to be fair, it's not played for laughs). By the next day, they have finally changed back into women's clothing and come across two freeing slaves. Erica talks to them and finds out "we are going the right way."
After Manassas, "it's Christmas in July," as Patrick tells Jefferson Davis. Since the railroads are made of different size rails, the supply lines are forced to use carriages, the damn states' rights bullies refusing to help out on that account. Patrick gets the news of his family's disasters and rushes home.
"To one Union shattered at Manassas, and another union restored," David Carradine toasts to Lesley-Anne, a prisoner at the dinner table. "I want my freedom. You can't force me to love you!" Lesley-Anne rages. David trots out his old lines about owing her and he even has guards stationed at the doorways to stop her from leaving. Patrick races to Lesley-Anne's mansion and has a brutal fight with David that ends with David being thrown out a window to his death. "It's over," Patrick says to Lesley-Anne proudly and comfortingly. Jean accepts Lesley-Anne back at home with open arms.
Terri throws a party, trying to smooth over the ruffled feathers Jim caused at the last big ado. The Confederate Vice President and his wife are there, but as soon as Jim opens his mouth, he puts his foot back into it, Terri constantly having to rescue him from himself. Naturally Philip shows up. After all, the liquor being served at her party is due to his blockade running. Philip snarls that "I have little patience where women are concerned," because Terri hasn't made do on her bedroom promises to him. The double entendres are as thick as Mississippi molasses.
Not to worry, Terri fully intends on becoming Philip's mistress and does so late one night so that no one notices her entering her house. More puns are let loose from the cannon, though there are serious statements too. "I want you. I want you more than any other woman I've ever known. I want you on my own terms," Philip says, pinning Terri's arms behind her back. She tosses her dress over his chess set and once a very slow undressing is finished, he has her right there on the couch in a montage of bodies, roaring fires, jewels and lace stockings. Typical miniseries sex, in other words.
Philip has a special surprise for Terri, a room filled with luxuries from abroad. Shallow Terri goes wild running around the room, but Philip has darker thoughts on his mind. "I want you to be my consort," he says. You see, he has a plan to unseat Jefferson Davis, "who has no stomach for war" and become the Confederate leader himself. "When I've consolidates my power, we will rule...an Emperor and his Empress!" he bellows. Terri giggles at the thought and he says if she ever laughs at him again, he will kill her. She won't. Power is an aphrodisiac for her, so she and Philip do it again, right there among all the luxuries.
The more sober-minded Lesley-Anne is worried about marrying Patrick because of her racial make-up. She worries that friends and neighbors will judge him. "My happiness depends on only one person...you," Patrick gallantly reminds her. They light smooches are interrupted as Genie finally makes it home after her long torturous journey. Genie and Erica have bonded like friends during the trip, and Lesley-Anne says, "I have my maid of honor." Cue the wedding. Lesley-Anne looks ravishing, happy and better dressed than at her first wedding. They can finally kiss as husband and wife now. Sappy Jean and Genie think of all those "who should be here today," but Jean says it's a happy day and they should just celebrate. She forgets that no one in this movie is allowed pure happiness. It always comes with worry. "The day I met you was the day I was born," Patrick gushes romantically when they can finally have sex in a bed and not that abandoned church. Alas, Patrick has to get back to his duty.
In Washington, James is sad because he has access to the casualty list. He suspects Patrick feels the same way because he's doing the same job in Richmond. But, James doesn't want to be part of the "regiment of paper shufflers." He wants to be doing something more important. Wendy begs him not to return to the battlefield.
In Richmond, Patrick is angry at the profiteering and has a suspect in mind, but can't prove it. Bad battlefield news kills their conversation and brings out the latent hawk in Jefferson Davis. So, Patrick has to continue his chase of the blockage runner by himself. His agent tells him Philip "is the clever swindler I ever knew...and he's paying off all the right people," but there is no solid proof linking Philip directly. The problem is that Philip works in code, but Patrick comes up with the idea (all by himself--our boy is maturing) of breaking the code and then intercepting the ships before Philip can get to them, thus smashing his illegal activities. "We will keep this to ourselves," Patrick warns his agent. As they leave their meeting, Union soldiers are there and shoot Patrick's agent dead, giving our hero chase through the rainy countryside. Guess who aims a gun at Patrick to shoot him? Yes, James, who is on a trip back to Richmond. He misleads the soldiers, saving Patrick's life "again." The two old friends decide to "find a dry place and talk."
In a dry farm house, they warm up by a fire and James spots the ring on Patrick's finger. "I'll throw you the damnedest party you ever saw after the war," James says, rattling off guest names and Patrick informs him at least one is dead. Then the North-South argument arrives, as it always does with these two. "We both agree that slavery is an out-moded institution," Patrick reminds James, but there are too many other differences ideologically between them, so they part again, friends at heart, but enemies on the surface.
Kirstie is still determined to get that job at Dorothea Dix's hospital and goes right to Dix herself (Nancy Marchand), who is overwhelmed by the rate of casualties she's having to treat, not to mention the squeamish nurses and lack of medication. Kirstie's Congressman has spoken with Mrs. Dix and Kirstie promises to be the best possible nurses. Dix tells her that she'll be looked down upon by staff and patients and she's not afraid. She also does not fear the hell of war because she's seen it all in her previous work. Dix makes Kirstie promise that she will treat all patients the same, Northern or Southern.
However, Kirstie still has a big mouth. When her Congressman and other dignitaries come to visit the hospital, she requests the government move faster and get the hospitals medication faster. He asks what he'll get in return, but he's still married so no sex. This is the umpteenth time these two have had this conversation, so the Congressman barks at her, "the next time you need a favor, be prepared to do one for me." He's obviously had enough of her attempts to keep him at bay.
Lewis and James are on a scouting mission when they come under Union fire and have to split up. Lewis is wounded, but he manages to get to Kate's farm where she can nurse him back to health. Lewis is obviously now in love with her, even more when he finds out Kate's blacks are all free and she has taught them to read and write. "I've never met a woman quite like you," he admits. John Nixon, Kate free friend, confides in Lewis that he might want to stay away from Kate because she wouldn't be able to handle losing another person in her life after a stillborn child and a dead husband. He has every intention of heeding the advice, but something compels him to climb the stairs to her door, the same thing that compels her to stand at the door. However, instead of knocking, he leaves in the dead of night. Oh, come on, like he won't be back? It may take hours and hours to get them together, but it's miniseries destiny.
Just as Jean is having the cotton house rebuilt, the Confederate Army comes to requisition materials, "three quarters of their supplies and almost all the animals." Genie is worried about how they will manage to survive. Parker doesn't get letters from Genie because letters get held up in supply lines. His drummer boy is impressed with the love he and Genie share and hopes someday to understand it. "North and South" does love its man-on-man fighting, so a fellow soldier taunts Parker about having a Southern wife and they go to fisticuffs, the rest of the men cheering them on. Colonel Kurtwood Smith berates both men. "We're all under a lot of pressure, from the Generals on down," is his response to Parker's problem of missing his wife. Not particularly helpful.
Back in DC, Lincoln decides "we must now put our fight on the side of human rights" and wants to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, but his staff argues over whether or not it's the right time for it. "I need me...a Commander who can give me a victory and then I can free the slaves," Lincoln decides.
After dropping Inga off at a meeting to decide about rolling bandages, Jonathan Frakes and his wife Mary Crosby go to a meeting with a man who has a reputation for shoddy materials, and if they use those materials in making war supplies, it could be disastrous. But, Mary is the stronger personality of the two and she insists they make the deal. It's a complex plan, but Mary has added a detail to it to assure they are never found out: they sign James' name to the contract.
Morgan Fairchild, Philip's original benefactress, surprises Philip and Terri in bed and she threatens to expose their affair. Pulling out a pistol, she says she'll kill him over his treatment of her, but decides rotting in prison over him is not worth it. Her own reputation makes it doubtful anyone would believe her story of Philip and Terri together. "I do hope you both get what you deserve," Morgan says on the way out. However, Morgan isn't finished with Philip. She summons Patrick to her boarding house to expose all of Philip's secrets, not to mention the liaison between Philip and Terri. Morgan claims she has a way to stop Philip's illegal activities and tells Patrick where the next shipment will be arriving. So, he and a bunch of men are there as the ship is being unloaded. A gun battle erupts, but Patrick is the best shot in the country and can kill four men in the time it takes one to cock a pistol. The entire shipment of goods is destroyed.
When Philip finds out, he damns Patrick for ruining his business. Terri doesn't understand why it's such a big deal, but Philip knows he's out of business. Once again, Philip has a revenge plan in mind, and it means exposing Lesley-Anne's secrets. He shows Terri the painting, telling her of the black blood and her mother's career as a prostitute. So, Philip's plan is kill Lesley-Anne, which will destroy Patrick, but Terri does not think it's the best plan because Patrick will stalk Philip and kill him. Terri has a more complex plan in mind that ruins her entire family, especially her brother. Thus ends the the second portion of Book 2.
Part Three starts in September 1862. The South is trouncing the North in the war. Up in Pennsylvania, Mary Crosby is hopeful that the North will be fine and wants to plan a ball, which of course Inga finds in very bad taste during wartime. "Business is thriving during the war, everyone knows that," Mary says, wanting to show off all their good. Inga declares it will be a "modest affair," but Mary chirps that "I can still wear my emeralds." At this point, Inga is so annoyed, she probably wishes shrieking Kirstie would come back rather than shallow Mary. Mary finally admits to Jonathan that she forged James' name on all documents.
Antietem is a particularly gruesome battle. As Lewis puts it, "the damn Yankees have learned how to fight!" Lewis and and his friend James Houghton are there, but so is Parker, way over on the Northern side. Parker proves to be a particularly good shot, picking off Confederates with every shot. He and Lewis literally come face to face, gun raised. This is the kind of cheesy moment we've been expecting since the beginning of "North and South Book 1." For ages, there has been talk of having friends and relatives on opposite sides, but now we actually get to it live, with two men holding guns to each other's heads. What will they do?
They will let a nearby cannon blast distract them and not kill each other, of course! As quickly as the moment came, it went. The cannons on the Union side are a product of Jonathan and Mary's business venture, and right as James Houghton gives a command to fire one of them, it explodes and kills him and several other men. Mary had said the government would never come looking into their business, but with cannons that kill the men firing them, the people responsible for knowingly shoddy war materiel could be in big trouble.
The Antietem sequence is the largest battle shown so far in "North and South." It goes beyond looking like a cheap Civil War re-enactment, actually dripping with money spent on extras, not to mention time devoted to it. After the battle, the camera surveys the carnage, which is considerable. Lewis finds his friend's dead body. "Nearly 25,000 killed, wounded or missing at Antietem creek, nearly half of them ours," Lincoln tells James. Lincoln still needs a really excellent general and the choice seems to be Ulysses Grant (Anthony Zerbe), whom James had known at West Point (if you remember back that far, he helped James and Patrick survive Philip's hazing). The problem with Grant is that he drinks...a lot. James is dispatched to give Grant the news that he's Lincoln's choice. "The President thinks you are the man to end this war," James tells him and then Grant offers James a drink, which turns out to be apple cider. James requests to serve under him, which Grant would like as well.
Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, read to his cabinet with utmost sincerity.
Hated overseer Tony Frank returns to the plantation, offering his services for a small piece of the profits, because word is trickling down to South Carolina and freed slaves are abandoning plantations all over the place. Genie says they need to keep the slaves because the plantation would face ruin without them, but she understands Lesley-Anne's point that freedom can't be refused. The sisters-in-law attend the funeral of a runaway Tony killed. Genie tells all assembled that she wants them to stay, but if any want to leave, come to the family so they can give them the proper paperwork to avoid another unnecessary death like the current one. Forest thinks the slaves should rush the plantation and kill their masters, but Erica is too loyal to the family to consider such a crime. However, Erica isn't averse to the idea of freedom, especially since she has a crush on Lewis. Forest sneaks into Jean's bedroom, knife drawn, but then spots her jewelry box and pockets everything he can carry.
Patrick is up in the Shenandoah Valley praising local men and farmers for their efficiency with supply lines and then rides off just as the Union Army approaches. He hears the guns and joins the battle. The Union definitely wins the short scuffle. Patrick decides to make a trip home, just in time to see the slaves leaving. "But this is your home," never-bright Patrick says, but one of the former slaves says, "no, this was never our home." Jean is so kind to the departing folks that she even gives them money for food! Patrick still can't understand why anyone would want to leave.
But, he gets another shirtless scene with his beloved Lesley-Anne. "Underneath that Southern gentility, your mother is a very strong woman," Lesley-Anne tells Patrick when he complains about how hard the war has been for all of them, especially his mother. "We'll survive because of the strength we give one another. Don't let go. Don't let go," Lesley-Anne warns Patrick, having yet another bout of war depression, or perhaps cluelessness. He and Jean share a very touching scene, lovingly delivered by both (but the kind that leads one to think it will be their last together).
James and his brother Parker share some quiet moments the evening before a battle. Parker hasn't had word from Genie in ages because letters can't get through. It's been two years since they have last seen each other. It's another gritty scene and the damage just seems to get worse and worse. Parker survives, of course, but it's only the memory of his wife that keeps him going. He decides he has to see her. "It's desertion," he's told. "Absence without leave," he corrects and then rides off. The least he could do is take off his uniform, because that is too tempting a target.
And, of course, right on cue, Parker is sitting next to a fire all by himself when a Confederate soldier, also a deserter, comes upon him. "I told the Lord, I could sure use a horse...and look here how he's provided," the soldier says, devouring Parker's food and taking his boots. Parker tosses a boot at the guy's face and they tussle (it's been a while since we've had one of "North and South's" beloved man-on-man fights. A gun goes off and Parker is the one not killed.
Things are so bad at the plantation that Lesley-Anne and Genie are working in the fields and Jean is keeping house. The younger women try to get Jean to ease up on her workload. "You treat me like China to protect me from the war," she yells at them, insisting on doing her share. They have not been filling her in on the latest war news, but she insists on being told everything from now on. She's the most realistic of all, knowing the heyday of the South is done.
Into this world of destitution comes an enormous fancy carriage laden down with gifts and Terri Garber! She's not out of the carriage ten seconds before she's insulted everyone. She's horrified to think of white women working in the fields, but out Scarlett-O'Hara-lite just cares about dresses. We know something is going on in her brain because Terri is kind to Erica. Why? Because she's hoping Erica can "answers some questions" about Lesley-Anne. Alone with Lesley-Anne, Terri tells her she knows about her lineage, even about the prostitution, which is news even to Lesley-Anne. "What worries me is Mother," Terri oozes, worrying about disgracing the future of the family if Lesley-Anne has a baby, one that would be 1/16th black. "Hatred is like wine, it improves with age," Terri says to herself once Lesley-Anne leaves the room. Hey, it's better than "fiddle-dee-dee."
Lesley-Anne leaves a Dear Patrick letter for her hubby, along with her wedding ring and leaves the plantation. Terri reads the letter and then gives it to Erica to hold for Patrick. Erica sends some hatred Terri's way, telling her "someday, you're going to know what it is to be alone," though Terri can only think of the revenge she's getting and laughs.
Former slave Beau Billingslea creates an aqueduct system that will help the planting and Erica is so proud of him, though still not realizing he's hopelessly in love with her. He forces her to talk about the hated overseer, which she has steadfastly refused to discuss. "It made me afraid to really love somebody," she says, "but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to love." Poor Beau. The arrival of a Confederate soldier interrupts their conversation. But it's not a soldier, it's Parker in the uniform of the dead Confederate soldier, which will present a problem because Terri is at the house and she'll turn him in the minute she sees him. As Erica bursts in to tell them that Beau's water wheel works, Terri is trying to get her mother to live with her in Charleston, but of course Erica isn't really there to discuss seed corn, but to bring Genie to Parker.
The reunion comes with music and kisses and the two fall right into a pile of hay. After all, it's been two years! They have a lot of hay pile reminiscing to do. Genie urges Parker not to go back, but he has to. His little drummer boy would miss him. "I don't want to go back, but I have to," Parker sweetly tells Genie, just as Terri rides by and sees him. Terri threatens him, because no matter which side he's on, he's a deserter and she wishes him punished or dead. As Terri goes to tell the authorities, Genie comes at her with a pitchfork, full of sass! She tells Parker to take the horse and go and keeps Terri pinned inside the barn. "You are going to stay right here until Billy is long gone," Genie tells her at the end of a triumphant speech where she rips into her detestable sister. "If I never see you again, little sister, it would be too soon," Terri says as her carriage drives away. Terri better not be gone from the miniseries because Scarlett-O'Hara-lite is the only person having any fun.
I say that and then Nurse Kirstie returns, after a long absence, ordering doctors, nurses and soldiers around, much to the dismay of Book 2's most precious slumming Oscar-winner, not to mention "Gone With the Wind" veteran, Olivia de Havilland. She's the administrator of the hospital site where Kirstie is making such a fuss. In her trademark soothing tone, Olivia has come to speak to Kirstie about her "insubordination." "You must watch your manner," she tells Kirstie, who doesn't pay attention to a word she says. Kirstie intends to continue berating the doctors and ignoring the Southern patients. She also reminds Olivia that the morphine supply is due to her friendship with Congressman David Ogden Stiers.
We bathe in the warmth of Olivia's presence only for a moment before we're hit with another slumming Oscar-whammy, Hollywood's favorite son, Jimmy Stewart (and Olivia's co-star in "Airport '77")! He's a lawyer to whom Lesley-Anne goes to for advice. She wants to make sure she has a bit of money from her father's estate (but none from David Carradine's), but the real purpose of the visit is to get an assurance from her lawyer that he will never tell anyone she's in Charleston and when Patrick inevitably sues for divorce due to desertion, he will not contest it. Dressed in widow's weeds, Lesley-Anne ends Part 3 hoping to spare Patrick and his family any humiliation.
By May of 1864, the South has little hope left of winning the war, but they keep fighting. James is still fighting with the regulars, but his supply train is ambushed. He's a damn good shot and manages to kill a few of the Confederate men, but the Confederate men manage to overcome the train. James and his men are to be sent to Libby Prison.
Lewis is surveying the damage of yet another battlefield when Kate arrives with drugs for the injured men. They should be happy to see each other, but Lewis remembers the advice of Kate's friend to stay away from her to avoid falling in love and possibly dying on her. He treats her roughly, she runs away from him and then he pins her to the ground where bright sunlight peeking through the trees tell us that the two are about to become lovers. Yes, folks, it's another "North and South" sex scene, a montage of limbs, both on the trees and on their bodies, but these two are in the middle of a forest just off a battlefield, the most unlikely place to consummate a union. They fall asleep where they have sex, but Lewis wakes up with horrible nightmares of James Houghton dying due to the exploding cannon over and over. "You're a part of me now. I love you," Kate says to calm him down.
Parker is back in the Union Army, as sure a shot as ever, only failing to pick off a whole pack of snipers because he runs out of ammo. According to Kurtwood, "you left here a deserted and you came back a fool," among other cute little motto phrases, but takes him back because the army is desperate. Plus, he gives him a less-than-ideal assignment, "the forward skirmishers" and he will face a court martial at war's end. To balance out the perceived of badness, we do have some saccharine to toss in with the Little Drummer Boy wanting to bury a found skull because, "he was a good soldier, I just know it."
Finally, Grant (whose beard seems to be falling off wisp by wisp) is put in full command and he's decided to "raid behind the lines" while Sherman handles things in Georgia. "People are tired of war. If we don't destroy Lee's Army, Lincoln could be defeated in November and the Union gone forever. Only unconditional surrender will give us a lasting peace," says the Union's best hope (and Reconstruction's Greatest admirer--some last peace!). Even when battles are lost, he seems to have a plan in his mind as to how he'll win the war.
There's something important to note, something most people probably would not even bother to see. At this point in the movie, start taking a look at the extras. On the Confederate side, they are getting older, weaker, fatter, in essence less soldier-like. These are men conscripted into a dying Army. "North and South Book 2" does a good job of portraying the soldiers as they really were late in the war.
When a Southern soldier is brought in, Kirstie not only refuses the request for his bed, but even for water, causing Olivia to scold the exhausted workaholic. Olivia warns her that if she follows the current pattern of giving inferior care to Southern soldiers, "I'll do my best to have you dismissed from the nursing corps."
In Richmond, Patrick knows the war is lost, but he has bigger problems with his wife having disappeared. He hires Detective Michael Champion to find her since he can't leave his post. Lesley-Anne gives birth to a son.
Patrick is shot but snipers while riding alone and he ends up in Kirstie's hospital. Well, this is going to be a test for her! Not only is he Southern, but her sworn enemy. She gives him a bed, so far, so good. She sends him to surgery immediately, also good. As he improves, Patrick recognizes Kirstie. He goes to thank you, but she retorts, "all wounded in this hospital receive the same care" with the hiss of an asp.
Upon seeing a Southern soldier attempting to conscript a black boy, she stops her carriage and puts a stop to it, threatening to use influence we know she doesn't have. But, between that and the boy's ruse of coughing to appear sick, they get him from the clutches of the Confederate Army. Lesley-Anne volunteers to take him home, which turns out to be a shanty town too deplorable for human life. Since Bumper Robinson's mother is sick and they can't afford food or medicine, Lesley-Anne turns them into a pet project. "Sometimes, the best way to forget someone you lost is to help someone else," Lesley-Anne gives as a reason for helping Bumper and his kin. Unfortunately, three men stop the carriage and try to take the supplies, but Lee Horsley arrives on the scene and shoots one dead, scaring off the other two. Lee has the hots for Lesley-Anne immediately. A woman at Lesley-Anne's boarding house tells her that Lee "left the Army under very mysterious circumstances," and he should not ever be received. Lesley-Anne sees a fellow black sheep in him.
Patrick suggests to Kirstie that they "swap stories of our families," and eventually Kirstie softens a little bit. She tells him she has not seen Billy's name "on any of the casualty lists," but has no knowledge of anyone else. Kirstie is told that Patrick is going to be sent to prison, being a General after all. With this news, they wish each other well and he even kisses her hand. He then knocks out a soldier, steals a horse and makes a dash toward freedom. Kirstie flashes a hint of a smile to know he's gotten away.
Libby Prison is James' new home. It's run by, I can't believe I'm writing this, Wayne Newton, perhaps the only guest star in a miniseries every to slum upwards! He orders the new men to strip for cavity searches, as he brandishes a walking stick with a fist on the end of it. There's symbolism for you. "Now that we have finished with materials things, it's time we got to work on the spiritual. You boys got to learn you ain't officers and gentlemen no more. What you are is nothing...you are lower than scum, you are lower than dirt, so why don't you boys get down on your knees in the dirt and show me what you are now," Wayne sadistically notes, slapping his palm with that fist walking stick the whole time. James refuses to let his men knee in front of "trash," as he refers to Wayne, so Wayne beats a soldier and most of the men end up kneeling. James feels they should be treated better and asks for Wayne's superior. He's the top there is and "there are no rules." He then beats James up a bit. It could only be goofier if the men all yelled, "danke schoen, sir" as he left the room.
It's been a long time since we've caught up with Terri's husband Jim, who angles for states' rights from Jefferson Davis. Davis is much smarter, knowing that they have to win the war as a block of states and then they can worry about the individual states. When he tells Terri of his failure to persuade Davis, she's not sympathetic. He's frustrated that no one listens to him. "Not half as frustrating as you are to me," she snaps at him and leaves the house. Naturally, she's off to Philip's. She wants to be rid of her husband, but Philip won't hear of it. He's planning a coup against Davis and Jim would be a useful figure head in "my new government." Terri convinces Jim to go see Philip, though he's wary of him. Because Jim is so malleable, it takes a few compliments to get Jim to listen to him and to convince him overthrowing Davis' government is the right way to rebuild the Confederacy. He drops in that he would Jim Vice President. "You make it sound almost patriotic," Jim says. "It's more than that, it's your destiny," Philip shoots back and Jim is had.
Kirstie, exhausted and petulant, mechanically ties a tourniquet to a dying Confederate soldier's leg, but he unties it so he can die. Olivia has had it with Kirstie. "I believe you are capable of anything. Even the murder of a Southerner," Olivia says in measured tones and then adds a further piece of good news, that she intends to see Kirstie tried for murder! Hold on for an unexpected moment, readers. Not only is Kirstie probably capable of killing a Confederate soldier, but also of killing Olivia de Havilland. She comes at her (or rather the camera, the way it's filmed) and pushes her chair over, for some reason causing instant death, with the requisite trickle of blood from the mouth. Kirstie has a mini breakdown (her hands twitch) and she leaves the hospital. She makes it to Congressman David Ogden Stiers' house. He tells her that Olivia isn't dead (PHEW), but she has filed murder charges. The Congressman considers it "political suicide" to get help her, and then reminds her that the last time he helped her, he told her the "next time would not be free." This time, she has no choice but to agree. He watches her undress with a cigar and brandy. Kirstie Alley is not one of more erotic actresses, so I'm not sure what he's getting to excited about, but to each his own.
The last time Lewis was around, he and Kate were engaging in afterglow, but things have changed. Lewis goes to pay a visit and finds her black friends tied up outside by three men who have Kate hostage inside. When he peers through the window, he finds the Union soldiers about to rape her. Lewis bursts inside shooting. Two are killed and the third escapes. Defying all rules about such situations, not to mention offending good taste, Lewis and Kate have sex.
Wendy goes to Lincoln in the hopes that he will help get her husband released, but he can't. Not only has he made it policy that there are no prison exchanges, he cannot do it for just one man. "I don't run this war, it runs me," he tells her. He says he'll try to help and thanks her for "your sacrifice." When Wendy brings the news home, Jonathan and Mary agree with the President, that James should stay in prison. After all, they would lose everything. Wendy, with Inga's agreement, wants to get a message to Patrick and maybe he can help. They better act quickly, because Libby Prison is a hell hole. James tries to defend a boy being beaten and actually does knock them all out, but Wayne and his fist walking stick arrive. The prison guards tell Wayne James was attempting to rape the kid, so Wayne decides to punish him badly. One of the guards remind Wayne that the man actually in charge of the prison is due to return in a week and doesn't believe in violence. This gets Wayne even angrier. James is tied to a pole and left out in the rain to give Part Four a gloomy ending.
The war is nearing a close in December, 1864, but James may not have that long in Libby Prison. "You're only half dead, stop being so shiftless and lazy," Wayne scowls at James, who has tried making a hole in the way. As a general warning to all the prisoners, Wayne claims to have gun powder hidden. James may not have that long in Libby Prison. "You're only half dead, stop being so shiftless and lazy," Wayne scowls at James, who has tried making a hole in the way. As a general warning to all the prisoners, Wayne claims to have gun powder hidden under the floor and if anyone thinks of escaping, he'll simply blow them up.
Lewis shows up in Richmond, bearing bad news for Patrick (who is suffering from laryngitis) that James is in Libby Prison. Patrick wants to get him out, but Lewis "doesn't care too much for Yankees these days," but agrees to go with Patrick. General Patrick goes to Libby and the guards try to stall as long as they can, eventually presenting the shell of a man James has become. "I intend to report this entire detachment gross neglect of duty," Patrick threatens, but Wayne steps in as they try to leave. He will not abide by the order, so the men have to fight their way out.
CONTINUITY CHECK: during the fight, Patrick is able to kick with both legs, just like ran at top speed across railroad tracks one time with that terribly mangled leg. Okay, I know it looks good to stage "Batman"-style fight scenes, but so much care has been taken to see that "North and South" is true to itself that moments like these can really weary a viewer's patience.
Wayne has a knife hidden in his boot and he draws it, only to be pushed against a way and into the knife, dead. James can be taken out safely. They are already on horseback by the time one of Wayne's men tries to stop them. James is in too much pain to travel easily. "You saved my life," James cries to Patrick and Lewis. They put him in a tiny boat with some supplies and send him back to Northern safety. "Can I ask one more favor? Tell Jeff Davis that if he stops this war, I'll buy the champagne," James jokes, even in his condition. "You best make that offer to Lincoln," Patrick retorts, their playful banter omnipresent. "We kill Yankees by the hundreds and save one man. It doesn't make any sense, Lewis opines. He doesn't understand the bond these two men have.
Don't underestimate the power of Inga Swenson's Great 1864 Christmas Sing-a-long. It charms her young granddaughter, but Mary isn't so easily full of Christmas cheer. It takes a massive diamond necklace from her husband to do that, though the rest of the family thinks it's ostentatious. Inga misses her sons, but Wendy puts it in some sort of perspective, telling her that there are families who know for sure their loved ones will never return. Cue the Christmas miracle: a knock at the door reveals James, now safe at home with his wife, mother and daughter.
And what of our Southern women? No finery or Christmas trappings for them. Genie is digging in the garden when hated Tony Frank arrives, bearing food. "We have enough," Genie says defiantly. He tries once again to slither his way into her plantation, but Erica shows up toting a gun. The first shot is a warning, but she intends the second to hit its target. "Get out of here...leave the horse," she orders, exorcising her demons when it comes to this man.
"You're some kind of killing machine," Lewis' friend tells him after they kill a small band of Union soldiers and find out where Grant is heading. Lewis shoots the last one alive when the man merely reaches for a drink of water.
Accompanied by Lee, Lesley-Anne continues her charity work with Charleston's destitute black population, only to hear that little Bumper has been been conscripted. Lee takes Lesley-Anne to headquarters to find out what they can do, and he learns where Bumper is. Lee gets orders that allow him to take the boys back to the plantation. The man in charge knows about Lee and his "pay-offs," so he sends the black boys back into the wagon and waits for his payment, which comes in the form of a kick to the face from Lee. Lesley-Anne is shocked to find out Lee won Bumper's freedom through bribes. "Honor is dead," Lee reminds her, telling her that he left the Army because he found better ways to fight the whole system. Lesley-Anne is grateful, but not willing to go to bed with him.
Lesley-Anne then decides she will use David Carradine's money to help the poor. "That man never did a good thing for anyone in his whole life, so let's just call this poetic justice," she tells her lawyer Jimmy Stewart. She's willing to bankrupt herself in order to assist the displaced.
James is healing nicely, though he will be going back to the front. However, he's concerned that Patrick has changed. He thinks Patrick saved him not out of loyalty, but to "repay a debt." A Union officer shows up at James' house to tell him of a "formal investigation" about the shoddy cannons coming out of the ironworks. James' signature is on "incriminating documents," but he has a few hours to come with proof that he is not involved. He sets off to find Jonathan and Mary's business partner. He finds him, but, predictably, they fight and the partner's neck is snapped. Well, he's dead and thus cannot testify, but James still has Jonathan, who stands up to his wife for the first time. "You miserable traitor," James rails at his brother and insists he take "full responsibility," which will mean "long prison terms" for husband and wife. Jonathan agrees to cooperate, so that problem is solved. Phew!
The plot to kill Jefferson Davis is still alive and well in the minds of Philip and Terri, but she has no more money. Not to worry, Philip has a man willing to give $15,000, with the condition that he gets a night with Terri. She's aghast, but agrees to go along with it. "But we love each other," she tries to complain, but Philip cuts her off by saying, "I don't recall love ever being mentioned." Terri beds the old coot with the cash, hating every minute of it. Should we feel sorry for her? I vote not. It's hardly penance yet. Philip takes Terri to his out-of-town armory of war supplies. In here, comes the creepiest of moments, where Philip talks about killing Jefferson Davis and her brother Patrick while moving a gun up and down Terri's body as seduction. It works. They do it right there among the barrels of gunpowder.
Having become a regular Soup Kitchen Sally to hundreds of people, Lesley-Anne is almost out of money, and all she has left is David's house. Jimmy Stewart tells her he has a buyer for her house, but the buyer wishes to remain anonymous. Hmm, who could it be? Well, it's Lee Horsley, of course, who can raise cash any time he wants by gambling. He tells Jimmy not to be concerned. "It's not every day a lawyer helps a scoundrel help a lady," Lee says with a grin.
In need of money, Philip is told by the man from whom he purchases guns that the "Angel Lady" is the only woman in Charleston who still has money and he should seek her out and use his charm to get her money. Speaking of Lesley-Anne, when Lee confesses his love for her, she admits she's actually still married and though he's willing to accept her as is, she will not hurt him. "A part of me will always belong to him," she says, trying to spare Lee the agony of loving her. Lee vows never go give up, the lovestruck fool.
When Lesley-Anne returns home, there is a card from Philip, whose very name frightens her. She seeks out Linda Evans, a former actress who once played a magnificent Cordelia in "King Lear" that Lesley-Anne once saw (not only does that seem unlikely, but they are supposed to be the same age...?????). Lesley-Anne wants to hire her for her acting abilities, to "find out what somebody wants from me." Folks, this is where "North and South" jumps off track, majorly. This is a plot twist worthy of of Sidney Sheldon or Judith Krantz, not John Jakes. The only way to find out what Philip wants is to hire an actress? Come on!
At any rate, Philip spills his whole plan about killing Jefferson Davis to Linda Evans, making a stupid plot twist even worse. Would a man as devious as this really reveal the whole truth of his plan to a complete stranger? Certainly he would have lies ready. She asks for two days to mull it over, but he insists on having an answer the next morning. Lesley-Anne has heard the entire conversation. When Lesley-Anne tries to pay Linda, she tells her to use the money for her charity. "Think of it as a benefit performance," she says. Yes, that is the line, word for word. I played it three times and laughed through all of them.
Philip knew all along Linda was an actress (I've seen most things she's done in her career and I've never been convinced), so he waits for Lesley-Anne to leave her house. He attacks her and is about to pull off her veil when Lee shows up to, let's say it in unison...fight man-on-man. Philip shoots Lee, who asks Lesley-Anne if she loves him and she admits it, the last thing he hears as he dies.
Dreaded former overseer Tony Frank comes to his old plantation and ruins Beau's irrigation system, stealing all the remaining food for good measure. Beau is beaten, but survives. Erica shows him particular kindness. There is still a hint of splendor at the old plantation, especially when Jean leafs through a photo album and remembers the good times.
The Confederate Army is bedraggled. Lewis' friend wants to desert and Lewis tries to stop him. "I'd rather die than go on this way," he tells Lewis. Lewis lets him go, but the words penetrate. He looks terrible, his clothes in tatters and all hope nearly gone. He goes to Kate's place, a place where he feels most comfortable. One of her friends has been killed by Union soldiers. The boy's father pours coffee on Lewis, but accident and Lewis reacts as if the man were still a slave, but apologizes for it. "I'm not fit to be around decent people," he claims, even her, the woman he loves. "Nothing makes any sense anymore," says the character who retained the most sanity for the most time. If he's given up, things must really be dire. Lewis leaves, but gets to his horse and realizes how much he needs Kate and goes back inside to her. When he leaves to return to camp, both are happier.
It's Terri's weak-willed husband Jim who tells Jefferson Davis about the illegal gun running scheme Philip has going. Davis calls in Patrick to help him sort it out. Terri tries to get Philip to stop the scheme. "The Confederacy is dead!" she tells him, but he says it will thrive "under my leadership." Terri has to hide in the back because Philip is expecting visitors. It's Jim who arrives, pretending to go along with Philip's plans. Patrick slips in, hearing the whole plan from Philip's mouth. Expecting a fist-fight? Close. Will you settle for a gunfight instead? No. Well, once Patrick runs out of bullets, you'll get your fist fight. Philip smacks Patrick around with a wooden plank while Terri and Jim accidentally set the storehouse full of gunpowder on fire. "My empire, I'm going to save my empire," Philip rages as he runs back into the burning building, moments before a spectacular explosion. "It was like Judgment Day," Terri worries, admitting "I'm a sinner too" and that she'll burn in hell with Philip. She recounts all of her sins for them, include the plot to kill her brother-in-law, her abortion and her success at driving a wedge between Patrick and Lesley-Anne. Patrick smacks his sister hard across the face when he hears this and then tells her he never wants to see her again. She asks her husband for forgiveness, but he tells her "it's too late." Goodbye Terri as Episode Five concludes.
We rejoin the story in March, 1965. The Armies are at Petersburg waiting for a conclusion to the war. Jefferson Davis is pining over the lost ammunition that Philip had been stockpiling and still hoping for a miracle from General Lee. Patrick knows all is lost and only wants to find Lesley-Anne. His detective has not been able to turn up anything. She's still feeding the poor, but money and supplies are virtually gone. General Sherman has made life in South Carolina lousy for the state he feels started the war. Lesley-Anne goes to General Sherman himself to plead the case for Charleston. There is no possible way a Southern civilian female would EVER get time with Charleston, so this scene is inherently ludicrous, but Lesley-Anne actually infuses it with enough good acting to make it almost believable. She pleads her case well, and Sherman promises her supplies. "You're a woman of courage and courage always wins," he tells her. Well, okay.
Starting the process of wrapping up all the plot lines, hated overseer Tony Frank is captured by Forest's men. Forest has gotten himself a following, blacks poor whites who believe they can take all of the property that belonged to the whites once the war ends. Tony pleads for his life, saying they will need his plantation experience to make his dream a reality. They form an unlikely and very tentative alliance.
There's a knock at Congressman David Ogden Stiers' door. There is a man looking for Kirstie because the warrant for her arrest is still valid. At a party the Congressman throws, she tells him to stop the investigation, though he keeps saying, "these things take time." When he asks her if he's as good in bed as her dead husband, the fire in her eyes returns and she says, "there's no one like you."
Plucky Genie is prying every piece of candle wax from the candlesticks when the Union Army arrives to take the plantation. "There are only women here. We didn't start this war, we're trying to survive it!" she tells the soldiers. Jean backs her up, saying, "you'll have to burn down this house around me" and then pulls a pistol. The Union soldier in charge is a very old friend of Patrick from the West Point days, so he has the house spared, to be used by the army.
Lincoln pays a visit to Grant's camp, with James in tow, trying to boost morale and hear Grant's plan to end the war. Lincoln reminds everyone to "let 'em off easy" as Grant says. Lincoln does not want harsh reprisals, but he's in the minority on that one. "Some people want the South to bleed for what they've done," he's told, but he responds, "The South has bled enough, and so have we."
James can see Patrick just across the battlefield with his binoculars. He's not sure what to do, but his brother Parker is there to egg him on. "Sound the advance," James says. James, Parker and the Union Army advance as Patrick, Lewis and the Confederate Army sound the order to fire. The final battle is on. Even Parker's Little Drummer Boy is part of it, racing across the field with Parker, though hit by cannon fire soon into the battle. Parker, having made it all the way across the battlefield, is shot in the shoulder and sees his Little Drummer Boy's body, going back to carry it back to safety. James and Patrick are close enough to easily kill each other, but they resist, sticking to their roles as leaders of the battle. Patrick is particularly agile (I'm tired of being the continuity police by now, so let's just let Dancer Patrick spend the rest of the movie pretending his not Actor Patrick).
The Union Army is victorious, but the causalities are very high. Parker and his Little Drummer Boy are alive, though both severely wounded. Parker solemnly tells the Little Drummer Boy that he will live, but healing will take a while. Parker can only stay a few days and then return for him when he's fully able to travel. "You hurry up and get well. Just remember you're my friend and I love you," Parker sweetly reminds the kid, whom he intends to take home to his wife when the war is over. Grant now has to plan to finally end it all. He gives strict orders not to simply pick off the Confederates from behind, but to cut them off and attack from the front and all sides. As the Union Army is about to wipe out the Confederate Army, word comes that the Confederacy has surrendered. The Union Army celebrates, but the Southern soldiers are sad and stuck to the ground in disbelief. The formalities are handled at Appomattox on April 9. Lee arrives first, but Grant and his victorious men, James included, are soon there as well. Lee is given a very polite (and very long) send off.
News of the surrender reaches the plantation, where Genie and Jean are still surviving. Lewis goes to tell Kate what has happened, but Kate died in childbirth. Lewis never even knew she was pregnant. The baby lived and was taken by a relative to Charleston. He goes to Charleston to claim his son. Lewis makes it back to the plantation first, but Genie's wishes come true when Parker comes riding up to the house. Beau, however, wants to leave, claiming there is nothing left for him at the plantation. "Not without me," Erica tells him as another man's wish comes true. Jean gives Beau and Erica a piece of the plantation, "to start a new lifge there together."
It seems Kirstie has adapted to being the Congressman's mistress quite well. She asks him when he will get the murder charges dropped. "I'm sick of you harping on that," he tells her and she blurts out, "like I'm sick of servicing you?" and then immediately regrets she said it. He forgives her, but after one last session together, he tells her he will never return as he's going to be a Senator. "Do you think I would risk my political career for you? You were a challenge and once a challenge is met, one moves on," he coldly tells her, though undeniably she deserves it. Oh, and he also tells her that murder charge was long dismissed. "Just collecting on past favors my dear," he tells her when she slaps him for using her. Kirstie is way too unbalanced to take this abuse, so she kills the Congressman.
James visits Kirstie in prison, but "there's no chance for reprieve." She understands, and also appreciates the irony of hanging for murder on what would have been her anniversary had Georg lived. The only thing she has left is her wedding ring, which she gives to James as a present to his daughter, "from her crazy aunt." Both cry as James says goodbye. Despite all differences, they have forgiven each other. No other sibling has come to visit. "No matter what she did, I loved her," Inga cries, surrounded by James and Wendy.
In bed, Wendy and James have one of those "what was it all for?" conversations, but for James the war is not over until he finds out what happened to Patrick, whom we last saw presumably dead on the battlefield at Petersburg. He wanders all over the South trying to find Patrick, but nobody has seen him. Finally, at a field hospital, he sees Patrick, a broken man sitting up against a tree. James is overcome seeing Patrick, but the latter has lost his spark. Part of that is due to the fact he can't find Lesley-Anne. They get the bad news that Lincoln has been shot and James breaks down. "I could really use your help now," Patrick tells him, to give him a reason to live. The spark is coming back. They go to see Lawyer Jimmy Stewart, but he refuses to break confidentiality. "I can no longer keep two people apart who should be together," he finally tells Patrick. Lesley-Anne is playing with her baby when Patrick shows up (another continuity gaffe has this baby still an infant, where Lewis' baby is already older, though born after). He tells her, "you don't have to be afraid anymore" and the cymbals crash big time when they fall into each other's arms. "I have to tell you, there's another man in my life now," she notes and gives him the baby he never even knew he had (they haven't seen each other in two years, but the kid looks under one year).
The happy family plus James heads for the plantation, where the happy family members are having dinner with Forest and Tony's posse raid the house and set it on fire. Everyone has survived so much, is this really necessary? Lewis, Genie, Parker, Beau and Erica all take up arms and manage to shoot a whole bunch of people, thoug Forest bursts in and tries to grab Erica. Jean smashes a vase over his head, but he pushes her against the door and knocks her out. Lewis kills Forest. The battle is still raging when James and Patrick arrive with Lesley-Anne and the baby. Erica is watching at the window when Beau is shot and killed. Tony tries to molest Genie, but Parker jumps in to save her. As he's aboutot kill Parker, Genie shoots him from behind. The raiders, or what's left of them, scamper off as the family flees the house. Unfortunately, Jean dies. She is inseparable from the house and once it started to burn, it was inevitable she would go along with it. "My mother lived to see her way of life erased from the face of the earth, but she blamed no one," Patrick says as part of the eulogy before slipping into one of Lincoln's speeches of forgiveness.
The final speech goes to James, who holds out his half of the $10 bill to start anew in business and life. Patrick has his half as well and declares James "the best friend a man could ever have. We're a family." As family they all wak down the path from the plantation one last time, their lives completely separated from all they knew before the war.
Because "North and South Book 2" is forced to show the entire Civil War, there is a lot of time wasting. The Linda Evans acting scheme, the Wayne Newton prison humiliation, even the Lewis and Kate love plot, are all filler. The most moving moments come during the actual battle scenes and at the end when we shave down the characters to just the essentials, the ones who have been with us since the beginning and have become so familiar over the course of 18 hours. Since it ends on such a lovely note, pure American heartstring tugging, a lot of the flaws are forgiven.
Remember, though, the story is not over. In 1994, the final part of the trilogy appeared, but for now, let's simply bask in the glow of a true miniseries classic and not worry about how it's junked up later on.
What I will not do at the same time is the third chapter in the "North and South" saga, which aired in 1994 and is pretty dismal. We'll get there, but let's go through the quality before the crap. For the most part, "North and South Book 2" is very consistent in quality like the first portion, though the final two sections go wildly off kilter.
June, 1861, two months after Ft. Sumter. The armies have amassed and patriotism on both sides is still at a fever pitch. Genie Francis is looking for her husband in Washington and is told he's on sniper duty outside the city. She's also harassed by some local gents and she has to literally beat them off. This little scene, the first one, calls into question historical accuracy. Though the seat of the Union government, sympathies of the ordinary citizen leaned decidedly Southern, especially among the rabble that poor Genie encounters here.
Loving Genie eventually makes it her hubby, now being played by the supremely dashing Parker Stevenson, already a better choice then his predecessor. In his new command, he will have the chance to "be a part of history." "By killing Southerners?" Genie asks petulantly. "I didn't mean YOUR family," he says, though I suppose neighbors and friends are fair game. Maybe her Mary Pickford curls are on too tight, but Genie has somehow developed a spine since Book 1.
Down in South Carolina, both Patrick Swayze and his cousin Lewis Smith are in uniform. Patrick is way too old and way too injured to be of much help fighting, but he's the hero, so I won't say anything. Also still kicking are Patrick's mother, Jean Simmons, pissed that the war is tearing apart her family and that of her dearest friends, and Lesley-Anne Down, Patrick's true love, under his protection from her drunken hellish husband. She's recovered nicely from the drug-induced walking coma from which Patrick rescued her. Patrick has a particularly difficult time wrenching himself from Lesley-Anne's cleavage and leaves slave Forest Whitaker "in charge of everything." Off they go, with Lewis taunting, "race you to the war!" The men soon part as they are assigned different war duties.
Lesley-Anne's husband, David Carradine, sporting only a small scar from the sword he took to the eye, has been assigned a commission as a colonel to train new recruits.
Parallel goings-on are happening in Pennsylvania, where James Read is putting on his old uniform, going back into service where he said he would never go again. He will not be fighting, but rather on Lincoln's general staff. To "celebrate the departure of this area's greatest hero," his family is throwing a big fete. His mother Inga Swenson is worried that it's too lavish for wartime, but his sister-in-law, now played by Mary Crosby and her equally avaricious husband, Jonathan Frakes (now sporting a beard) use it as an opportunity to show off, since they will be running the family ironworks in his absence. "Now isn't just a chance to profit from this foolish war, but for you to be the man you always wanted to be," Mary goads her husband, resting her chin on his shoulder to make it seem less offensive than it sounds.
Patrick reports to Richmond, where President Jefferson Davis (Lloyd Bridges) and Robert E. Lee (William Schallert) are trying to make plans. Lee believes both secession and slavery are wrong, but "I could not draw my sword against Virginia." Lee wants to attack Washington, but Davis refuses. Davis has summoned Patrick because of his expertise running factories, which the Confederacy has few of anyway. Lewis and his pal James Houghton are sent on a reconnaissance mission, quickly encountering soldiers from the Union Army. They chase a rider who gets by them and the Union soldiers chase them until a gunfight ensues. The rider Lewis needs to protect turns out to be a woman, Kate McNeil, a Southerner who brings medicine to Confederate camps. She's a feisty one, and both Lewis and James seem to dig her.
Kirstie Alley, James' black sheep sister, has applied to be a nurse at a Union hospital run by Dorothea Dix. She's not an ideal candidate, as far as they are concerned, because she spent time in a mental hospital and her outrageous views could be problematic.
James, his wife Wendy Kilbourne, Parker and Genie are having dinner when in flounces Kirstie on the arm of Congressman David Ogden Stiers, whom she has refused to see since way back in Book 1 because he's married. Parker goes to say goodbye to her, "since I might not see you before the end of the war," but Kirstie needs the Congressman's help, and is not concerned with her family. She wants him to help her get the nursing position in Dix's hospital. "My reward will be...?" the Congressman asks her, hoping for a tumble in bed, but she offers only her friendship.
Brother James decides to go see sister Kirstie, but she is cantankerous from the moment she lets him in the door. He offers to help her get the hospital job and even offers money, trying to mend fences. Kirstie doesn't give an inch. "No one ever cared to know what I think," she says, because she's a woman. He claims it was her views, not her gender, that he objected to. It turns into a shouting match, with James, as ever, trying to make nice (even while shouting), but Kirstie does not want to be part of the family anymore. "If you ever need me, you know how to find me," James says on his way out, a clue that at some point, she will obviously need him.
Patrick's other sister, troublemaker Terri Garber, attends a party for Jefferson Davis with her husband Jim Meltzer, who has not risen in the political ranks of the Confederacy as quickly as he expected. Still itching to be the movie's Scarlett O'Hara, Terri arrives at the ball in a bright red gown where everyone else is sporting muted colors. Jim argues with Jefferson Davis because Jim believes in strong states, where Davis wants a mighty central government. Terri berates her husband for daring to disagree with Davis and storms over to the punch beverage table where she meets Philip Casnoff. The meeting of these two has been destiny waiting for years and years as they are two of the three villains of the piece. Philip is a longtime Jefferson Davis critic, so he is drawn to Jim and has a proposal for him: blockade running, not for arms, but "luxury items" because the profit margin is so high. Jim finds this all very unpatriotic and refuses, but Terri shows up in time to hear the end of the discussion and formally meet Philip. These two are going to be trouble, but awfully fun trouble. Terri wants to invest in Philip's scheme and has her own money with which to do it. "Perhaps we should discuss it later...in private," she tells Philip, which means the bedroom, where she does all of her best work.
One of the men training under David Carradine wants to be released because his family misses him, but David gives the men a long speech about patriotism, though it's undermined by another soldier telling him he doesn't understand because he no longer has a family. Yeah, like that's not going to royally piss him off!
Prophetically, Lesley-Anne tells Jean that "I never want to bring shame to this family." She starts to tell Jean some of her history, but Jean cuts her off. Loving Patrick is all that matters. Well, that's probably because she doesn't realize the story is that she was born to a quarter-black prostitute. David sneaks into Patrick's plantation and abducts his wife with the help of some of his trainees. For extra measure, he throws his lantern onto the roof of the cotton building, which would, of course, is the centerpiece of the family's fortunes. The exploding building awakens Jean, who hears of Lesley-Anne's abduction before fiery beams fall on her. She's alive, but she can tell from the fire that things are about to get really bad around the plantation. Forest refuses to help extinguish the fire any further because he doesn't feel the family cares about him and he gets nothing from working so hard. He's especially angered by the opulent house, which he's never seen before because all he gets is a shack.
Lesley-Anne is returned to the room where David had her locked in for so long, and she seems to think she'll be rescued. "There is no one," David tells her correctly, since all the men at Patrick's plantation are gone. It's not a good time to be a Southern aristocrat. First Jean is nearly killed, then she faces a slave rebellion and now Lesley-Anne is returned to her chamber of horrors.
Only Terri is making it through the war with all of her dash and style intact. She toys with Philip and he toys with her. She dangles a check in front of him and he mentions her brother Patrick. Terri hates all of James' family and even her own, so Philip can use that to his advantage. He also inquires about Lesley-Anne, whose secrets he knows, only to be used at the time it will do maximum harm to Patrick. After a lusty conversation, they start kissing, but the businesswoman in Terri wants to see money coming in before Philip gets more of what "he stole" by kissing her. "Send your card round, sir, when your ship comes in," Terri states before flouncing out the front door. Philip then goes to gaze at the painting of Lesley-Anne's mother that he somehow got from the whorehouse run by Elizabeth Taylor in the Book 1.
Genie gets all the bad news from home and is determined to get back there, even if it means dodging battles happening all over the South. Her husband Parker is riding and comes across a kid playing drums who wants to sound the call for the Army, so Parker takes him along. Back at the camp, officer Kurtwood Smith berates Parker and then gets a chance to audition his drumming for Kurtwood.
In Lincoln's war room, everyone has a different opinion of how to beat the Confederacy. Lincoln keeps things light with jokes, but the odds are favoring the Confederacy since the bulk of the war is being fought on her land.
As a great battle gears up, one of my personal favorite historical trivia points is highlighted. Whole families come to watch the battles from a fairly safe distance, bringing games and picnics. The First Battle of Bull Run is a slaughter on both sides (though the Confederacy comes out ahead in the end). The fighting gets so spread out and so many bodies need attention that they spill into the spectators section. It's the first big battle and now it looks like outcomes may not be so quick in happening.
Genie and her slave Erica Gimpel, good women who are about to have bad things happen as per this story's patterns, break their carriage and have to walk with whatever they can carry. The army happens by and captures Erica, as Genie watches helplessly. Genie shows up at night in a soldier's outfit and one for Erica. This will at least get them out of the camp, even if it rips off Shakespeare and is almost too comic to fit with the movie's mood (though, to be fair, it's not played for laughs). By the next day, they have finally changed back into women's clothing and come across two freeing slaves. Erica talks to them and finds out "we are going the right way."
After Manassas, "it's Christmas in July," as Patrick tells Jefferson Davis. Since the railroads are made of different size rails, the supply lines are forced to use carriages, the damn states' rights bullies refusing to help out on that account. Patrick gets the news of his family's disasters and rushes home.
"To one Union shattered at Manassas, and another union restored," David Carradine toasts to Lesley-Anne, a prisoner at the dinner table. "I want my freedom. You can't force me to love you!" Lesley-Anne rages. David trots out his old lines about owing her and he even has guards stationed at the doorways to stop her from leaving. Patrick races to Lesley-Anne's mansion and has a brutal fight with David that ends with David being thrown out a window to his death. "It's over," Patrick says to Lesley-Anne proudly and comfortingly. Jean accepts Lesley-Anne back at home with open arms.
Terri throws a party, trying to smooth over the ruffled feathers Jim caused at the last big ado. The Confederate Vice President and his wife are there, but as soon as Jim opens his mouth, he puts his foot back into it, Terri constantly having to rescue him from himself. Naturally Philip shows up. After all, the liquor being served at her party is due to his blockade running. Philip snarls that "I have little patience where women are concerned," because Terri hasn't made do on her bedroom promises to him. The double entendres are as thick as Mississippi molasses.
Not to worry, Terri fully intends on becoming Philip's mistress and does so late one night so that no one notices her entering her house. More puns are let loose from the cannon, though there are serious statements too. "I want you. I want you more than any other woman I've ever known. I want you on my own terms," Philip says, pinning Terri's arms behind her back. She tosses her dress over his chess set and once a very slow undressing is finished, he has her right there on the couch in a montage of bodies, roaring fires, jewels and lace stockings. Typical miniseries sex, in other words.
Philip has a special surprise for Terri, a room filled with luxuries from abroad. Shallow Terri goes wild running around the room, but Philip has darker thoughts on his mind. "I want you to be my consort," he says. You see, he has a plan to unseat Jefferson Davis, "who has no stomach for war" and become the Confederate leader himself. "When I've consolidates my power, we will rule...an Emperor and his Empress!" he bellows. Terri giggles at the thought and he says if she ever laughs at him again, he will kill her. She won't. Power is an aphrodisiac for her, so she and Philip do it again, right there among all the luxuries.
The more sober-minded Lesley-Anne is worried about marrying Patrick because of her racial make-up. She worries that friends and neighbors will judge him. "My happiness depends on only one person...you," Patrick gallantly reminds her. They light smooches are interrupted as Genie finally makes it home after her long torturous journey. Genie and Erica have bonded like friends during the trip, and Lesley-Anne says, "I have my maid of honor." Cue the wedding. Lesley-Anne looks ravishing, happy and better dressed than at her first wedding. They can finally kiss as husband and wife now. Sappy Jean and Genie think of all those "who should be here today," but Jean says it's a happy day and they should just celebrate. She forgets that no one in this movie is allowed pure happiness. It always comes with worry. "The day I met you was the day I was born," Patrick gushes romantically when they can finally have sex in a bed and not that abandoned church. Alas, Patrick has to get back to his duty.
In Washington, James is sad because he has access to the casualty list. He suspects Patrick feels the same way because he's doing the same job in Richmond. But, James doesn't want to be part of the "regiment of paper shufflers." He wants to be doing something more important. Wendy begs him not to return to the battlefield.
In Richmond, Patrick is angry at the profiteering and has a suspect in mind, but can't prove it. Bad battlefield news kills their conversation and brings out the latent hawk in Jefferson Davis. So, Patrick has to continue his chase of the blockage runner by himself. His agent tells him Philip "is the clever swindler I ever knew...and he's paying off all the right people," but there is no solid proof linking Philip directly. The problem is that Philip works in code, but Patrick comes up with the idea (all by himself--our boy is maturing) of breaking the code and then intercepting the ships before Philip can get to them, thus smashing his illegal activities. "We will keep this to ourselves," Patrick warns his agent. As they leave their meeting, Union soldiers are there and shoot Patrick's agent dead, giving our hero chase through the rainy countryside. Guess who aims a gun at Patrick to shoot him? Yes, James, who is on a trip back to Richmond. He misleads the soldiers, saving Patrick's life "again." The two old friends decide to "find a dry place and talk."
In a dry farm house, they warm up by a fire and James spots the ring on Patrick's finger. "I'll throw you the damnedest party you ever saw after the war," James says, rattling off guest names and Patrick informs him at least one is dead. Then the North-South argument arrives, as it always does with these two. "We both agree that slavery is an out-moded institution," Patrick reminds James, but there are too many other differences ideologically between them, so they part again, friends at heart, but enemies on the surface.
Kirstie is still determined to get that job at Dorothea Dix's hospital and goes right to Dix herself (Nancy Marchand), who is overwhelmed by the rate of casualties she's having to treat, not to mention the squeamish nurses and lack of medication. Kirstie's Congressman has spoken with Mrs. Dix and Kirstie promises to be the best possible nurses. Dix tells her that she'll be looked down upon by staff and patients and she's not afraid. She also does not fear the hell of war because she's seen it all in her previous work. Dix makes Kirstie promise that she will treat all patients the same, Northern or Southern.
However, Kirstie still has a big mouth. When her Congressman and other dignitaries come to visit the hospital, she requests the government move faster and get the hospitals medication faster. He asks what he'll get in return, but he's still married so no sex. This is the umpteenth time these two have had this conversation, so the Congressman barks at her, "the next time you need a favor, be prepared to do one for me." He's obviously had enough of her attempts to keep him at bay.
Lewis and James are on a scouting mission when they come under Union fire and have to split up. Lewis is wounded, but he manages to get to Kate's farm where she can nurse him back to health. Lewis is obviously now in love with her, even more when he finds out Kate's blacks are all free and she has taught them to read and write. "I've never met a woman quite like you," he admits. John Nixon, Kate free friend, confides in Lewis that he might want to stay away from Kate because she wouldn't be able to handle losing another person in her life after a stillborn child and a dead husband. He has every intention of heeding the advice, but something compels him to climb the stairs to her door, the same thing that compels her to stand at the door. However, instead of knocking, he leaves in the dead of night. Oh, come on, like he won't be back? It may take hours and hours to get them together, but it's miniseries destiny.
Just as Jean is having the cotton house rebuilt, the Confederate Army comes to requisition materials, "three quarters of their supplies and almost all the animals." Genie is worried about how they will manage to survive. Parker doesn't get letters from Genie because letters get held up in supply lines. His drummer boy is impressed with the love he and Genie share and hopes someday to understand it. "North and South" does love its man-on-man fighting, so a fellow soldier taunts Parker about having a Southern wife and they go to fisticuffs, the rest of the men cheering them on. Colonel Kurtwood Smith berates both men. "We're all under a lot of pressure, from the Generals on down," is his response to Parker's problem of missing his wife. Not particularly helpful.
Back in DC, Lincoln decides "we must now put our fight on the side of human rights" and wants to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, but his staff argues over whether or not it's the right time for it. "I need me...a Commander who can give me a victory and then I can free the slaves," Lincoln decides.
After dropping Inga off at a meeting to decide about rolling bandages, Jonathan Frakes and his wife Mary Crosby go to a meeting with a man who has a reputation for shoddy materials, and if they use those materials in making war supplies, it could be disastrous. But, Mary is the stronger personality of the two and she insists they make the deal. It's a complex plan, but Mary has added a detail to it to assure they are never found out: they sign James' name to the contract.
Morgan Fairchild, Philip's original benefactress, surprises Philip and Terri in bed and she threatens to expose their affair. Pulling out a pistol, she says she'll kill him over his treatment of her, but decides rotting in prison over him is not worth it. Her own reputation makes it doubtful anyone would believe her story of Philip and Terri together. "I do hope you both get what you deserve," Morgan says on the way out. However, Morgan isn't finished with Philip. She summons Patrick to her boarding house to expose all of Philip's secrets, not to mention the liaison between Philip and Terri. Morgan claims she has a way to stop Philip's illegal activities and tells Patrick where the next shipment will be arriving. So, he and a bunch of men are there as the ship is being unloaded. A gun battle erupts, but Patrick is the best shot in the country and can kill four men in the time it takes one to cock a pistol. The entire shipment of goods is destroyed.
When Philip finds out, he damns Patrick for ruining his business. Terri doesn't understand why it's such a big deal, but Philip knows he's out of business. Once again, Philip has a revenge plan in mind, and it means exposing Lesley-Anne's secrets. He shows Terri the painting, telling her of the black blood and her mother's career as a prostitute. So, Philip's plan is kill Lesley-Anne, which will destroy Patrick, but Terri does not think it's the best plan because Patrick will stalk Philip and kill him. Terri has a more complex plan in mind that ruins her entire family, especially her brother. Thus ends the the second portion of Book 2.
Part Three starts in September 1862. The South is trouncing the North in the war. Up in Pennsylvania, Mary Crosby is hopeful that the North will be fine and wants to plan a ball, which of course Inga finds in very bad taste during wartime. "Business is thriving during the war, everyone knows that," Mary says, wanting to show off all their good. Inga declares it will be a "modest affair," but Mary chirps that "I can still wear my emeralds." At this point, Inga is so annoyed, she probably wishes shrieking Kirstie would come back rather than shallow Mary. Mary finally admits to Jonathan that she forged James' name on all documents.
Antietem is a particularly gruesome battle. As Lewis puts it, "the damn Yankees have learned how to fight!" Lewis and and his friend James Houghton are there, but so is Parker, way over on the Northern side. Parker proves to be a particularly good shot, picking off Confederates with every shot. He and Lewis literally come face to face, gun raised. This is the kind of cheesy moment we've been expecting since the beginning of "North and South Book 1." For ages, there has been talk of having friends and relatives on opposite sides, but now we actually get to it live, with two men holding guns to each other's heads. What will they do?
They will let a nearby cannon blast distract them and not kill each other, of course! As quickly as the moment came, it went. The cannons on the Union side are a product of Jonathan and Mary's business venture, and right as James Houghton gives a command to fire one of them, it explodes and kills him and several other men. Mary had said the government would never come looking into their business, but with cannons that kill the men firing them, the people responsible for knowingly shoddy war materiel could be in big trouble.
The Antietem sequence is the largest battle shown so far in "North and South." It goes beyond looking like a cheap Civil War re-enactment, actually dripping with money spent on extras, not to mention time devoted to it. After the battle, the camera surveys the carnage, which is considerable. Lewis finds his friend's dead body. "Nearly 25,000 killed, wounded or missing at Antietem creek, nearly half of them ours," Lincoln tells James. Lincoln still needs a really excellent general and the choice seems to be Ulysses Grant (Anthony Zerbe), whom James had known at West Point (if you remember back that far, he helped James and Patrick survive Philip's hazing). The problem with Grant is that he drinks...a lot. James is dispatched to give Grant the news that he's Lincoln's choice. "The President thinks you are the man to end this war," James tells him and then Grant offers James a drink, which turns out to be apple cider. James requests to serve under him, which Grant would like as well.
Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, read to his cabinet with utmost sincerity.
Hated overseer Tony Frank returns to the plantation, offering his services for a small piece of the profits, because word is trickling down to South Carolina and freed slaves are abandoning plantations all over the place. Genie says they need to keep the slaves because the plantation would face ruin without them, but she understands Lesley-Anne's point that freedom can't be refused. The sisters-in-law attend the funeral of a runaway Tony killed. Genie tells all assembled that she wants them to stay, but if any want to leave, come to the family so they can give them the proper paperwork to avoid another unnecessary death like the current one. Forest thinks the slaves should rush the plantation and kill their masters, but Erica is too loyal to the family to consider such a crime. However, Erica isn't averse to the idea of freedom, especially since she has a crush on Lewis. Forest sneaks into Jean's bedroom, knife drawn, but then spots her jewelry box and pockets everything he can carry.
Patrick is up in the Shenandoah Valley praising local men and farmers for their efficiency with supply lines and then rides off just as the Union Army approaches. He hears the guns and joins the battle. The Union definitely wins the short scuffle. Patrick decides to make a trip home, just in time to see the slaves leaving. "But this is your home," never-bright Patrick says, but one of the former slaves says, "no, this was never our home." Jean is so kind to the departing folks that she even gives them money for food! Patrick still can't understand why anyone would want to leave.
But, he gets another shirtless scene with his beloved Lesley-Anne. "Underneath that Southern gentility, your mother is a very strong woman," Lesley-Anne tells Patrick when he complains about how hard the war has been for all of them, especially his mother. "We'll survive because of the strength we give one another. Don't let go. Don't let go," Lesley-Anne warns Patrick, having yet another bout of war depression, or perhaps cluelessness. He and Jean share a very touching scene, lovingly delivered by both (but the kind that leads one to think it will be their last together).
James and his brother Parker share some quiet moments the evening before a battle. Parker hasn't had word from Genie in ages because letters can't get through. It's been two years since they have last seen each other. It's another gritty scene and the damage just seems to get worse and worse. Parker survives, of course, but it's only the memory of his wife that keeps him going. He decides he has to see her. "It's desertion," he's told. "Absence without leave," he corrects and then rides off. The least he could do is take off his uniform, because that is too tempting a target.
And, of course, right on cue, Parker is sitting next to a fire all by himself when a Confederate soldier, also a deserter, comes upon him. "I told the Lord, I could sure use a horse...and look here how he's provided," the soldier says, devouring Parker's food and taking his boots. Parker tosses a boot at the guy's face and they tussle (it's been a while since we've had one of "North and South's" beloved man-on-man fights. A gun goes off and Parker is the one not killed.
Things are so bad at the plantation that Lesley-Anne and Genie are working in the fields and Jean is keeping house. The younger women try to get Jean to ease up on her workload. "You treat me like China to protect me from the war," she yells at them, insisting on doing her share. They have not been filling her in on the latest war news, but she insists on being told everything from now on. She's the most realistic of all, knowing the heyday of the South is done.
Into this world of destitution comes an enormous fancy carriage laden down with gifts and Terri Garber! She's not out of the carriage ten seconds before she's insulted everyone. She's horrified to think of white women working in the fields, but out Scarlett-O'Hara-lite just cares about dresses. We know something is going on in her brain because Terri is kind to Erica. Why? Because she's hoping Erica can "answers some questions" about Lesley-Anne. Alone with Lesley-Anne, Terri tells her she knows about her lineage, even about the prostitution, which is news even to Lesley-Anne. "What worries me is Mother," Terri oozes, worrying about disgracing the future of the family if Lesley-Anne has a baby, one that would be 1/16th black. "Hatred is like wine, it improves with age," Terri says to herself once Lesley-Anne leaves the room. Hey, it's better than "fiddle-dee-dee."
Lesley-Anne leaves a Dear Patrick letter for her hubby, along with her wedding ring and leaves the plantation. Terri reads the letter and then gives it to Erica to hold for Patrick. Erica sends some hatred Terri's way, telling her "someday, you're going to know what it is to be alone," though Terri can only think of the revenge she's getting and laughs.
Former slave Beau Billingslea creates an aqueduct system that will help the planting and Erica is so proud of him, though still not realizing he's hopelessly in love with her. He forces her to talk about the hated overseer, which she has steadfastly refused to discuss. "It made me afraid to really love somebody," she says, "but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to love." Poor Beau. The arrival of a Confederate soldier interrupts their conversation. But it's not a soldier, it's Parker in the uniform of the dead Confederate soldier, which will present a problem because Terri is at the house and she'll turn him in the minute she sees him. As Erica bursts in to tell them that Beau's water wheel works, Terri is trying to get her mother to live with her in Charleston, but of course Erica isn't really there to discuss seed corn, but to bring Genie to Parker.
The reunion comes with music and kisses and the two fall right into a pile of hay. After all, it's been two years! They have a lot of hay pile reminiscing to do. Genie urges Parker not to go back, but he has to. His little drummer boy would miss him. "I don't want to go back, but I have to," Parker sweetly tells Genie, just as Terri rides by and sees him. Terri threatens him, because no matter which side he's on, he's a deserter and she wishes him punished or dead. As Terri goes to tell the authorities, Genie comes at her with a pitchfork, full of sass! She tells Parker to take the horse and go and keeps Terri pinned inside the barn. "You are going to stay right here until Billy is long gone," Genie tells her at the end of a triumphant speech where she rips into her detestable sister. "If I never see you again, little sister, it would be too soon," Terri says as her carriage drives away. Terri better not be gone from the miniseries because Scarlett-O'Hara-lite is the only person having any fun.
I say that and then Nurse Kirstie returns, after a long absence, ordering doctors, nurses and soldiers around, much to the dismay of Book 2's most precious slumming Oscar-winner, not to mention "Gone With the Wind" veteran, Olivia de Havilland. She's the administrator of the hospital site where Kirstie is making such a fuss. In her trademark soothing tone, Olivia has come to speak to Kirstie about her "insubordination." "You must watch your manner," she tells Kirstie, who doesn't pay attention to a word she says. Kirstie intends to continue berating the doctors and ignoring the Southern patients. She also reminds Olivia that the morphine supply is due to her friendship with Congressman David Ogden Stiers.
We bathe in the warmth of Olivia's presence only for a moment before we're hit with another slumming Oscar-whammy, Hollywood's favorite son, Jimmy Stewart (and Olivia's co-star in "Airport '77")! He's a lawyer to whom Lesley-Anne goes to for advice. She wants to make sure she has a bit of money from her father's estate (but none from David Carradine's), but the real purpose of the visit is to get an assurance from her lawyer that he will never tell anyone she's in Charleston and when Patrick inevitably sues for divorce due to desertion, he will not contest it. Dressed in widow's weeds, Lesley-Anne ends Part 3 hoping to spare Patrick and his family any humiliation.
By May of 1864, the South has little hope left of winning the war, but they keep fighting. James is still fighting with the regulars, but his supply train is ambushed. He's a damn good shot and manages to kill a few of the Confederate men, but the Confederate men manage to overcome the train. James and his men are to be sent to Libby Prison.
Lewis is surveying the damage of yet another battlefield when Kate arrives with drugs for the injured men. They should be happy to see each other, but Lewis remembers the advice of Kate's friend to stay away from her to avoid falling in love and possibly dying on her. He treats her roughly, she runs away from him and then he pins her to the ground where bright sunlight peeking through the trees tell us that the two are about to become lovers. Yes, folks, it's another "North and South" sex scene, a montage of limbs, both on the trees and on their bodies, but these two are in the middle of a forest just off a battlefield, the most unlikely place to consummate a union. They fall asleep where they have sex, but Lewis wakes up with horrible nightmares of James Houghton dying due to the exploding cannon over and over. "You're a part of me now. I love you," Kate says to calm him down.
Parker is back in the Union Army, as sure a shot as ever, only failing to pick off a whole pack of snipers because he runs out of ammo. According to Kurtwood, "you left here a deserted and you came back a fool," among other cute little motto phrases, but takes him back because the army is desperate. Plus, he gives him a less-than-ideal assignment, "the forward skirmishers" and he will face a court martial at war's end. To balance out the perceived of badness, we do have some saccharine to toss in with the Little Drummer Boy wanting to bury a found skull because, "he was a good soldier, I just know it."
Finally, Grant (whose beard seems to be falling off wisp by wisp) is put in full command and he's decided to "raid behind the lines" while Sherman handles things in Georgia. "People are tired of war. If we don't destroy Lee's Army, Lincoln could be defeated in November and the Union gone forever. Only unconditional surrender will give us a lasting peace," says the Union's best hope (and Reconstruction's Greatest admirer--some last peace!). Even when battles are lost, he seems to have a plan in his mind as to how he'll win the war.
There's something important to note, something most people probably would not even bother to see. At this point in the movie, start taking a look at the extras. On the Confederate side, they are getting older, weaker, fatter, in essence less soldier-like. These are men conscripted into a dying Army. "North and South Book 2" does a good job of portraying the soldiers as they really were late in the war.
When a Southern soldier is brought in, Kirstie not only refuses the request for his bed, but even for water, causing Olivia to scold the exhausted workaholic. Olivia warns her that if she follows the current pattern of giving inferior care to Southern soldiers, "I'll do my best to have you dismissed from the nursing corps."
In Richmond, Patrick knows the war is lost, but he has bigger problems with his wife having disappeared. He hires Detective Michael Champion to find her since he can't leave his post. Lesley-Anne gives birth to a son.
Patrick is shot but snipers while riding alone and he ends up in Kirstie's hospital. Well, this is going to be a test for her! Not only is he Southern, but her sworn enemy. She gives him a bed, so far, so good. She sends him to surgery immediately, also good. As he improves, Patrick recognizes Kirstie. He goes to thank you, but she retorts, "all wounded in this hospital receive the same care" with the hiss of an asp.
Upon seeing a Southern soldier attempting to conscript a black boy, she stops her carriage and puts a stop to it, threatening to use influence we know she doesn't have. But, between that and the boy's ruse of coughing to appear sick, they get him from the clutches of the Confederate Army. Lesley-Anne volunteers to take him home, which turns out to be a shanty town too deplorable for human life. Since Bumper Robinson's mother is sick and they can't afford food or medicine, Lesley-Anne turns them into a pet project. "Sometimes, the best way to forget someone you lost is to help someone else," Lesley-Anne gives as a reason for helping Bumper and his kin. Unfortunately, three men stop the carriage and try to take the supplies, but Lee Horsley arrives on the scene and shoots one dead, scaring off the other two. Lee has the hots for Lesley-Anne immediately. A woman at Lesley-Anne's boarding house tells her that Lee "left the Army under very mysterious circumstances," and he should not ever be received. Lesley-Anne sees a fellow black sheep in him.
Patrick suggests to Kirstie that they "swap stories of our families," and eventually Kirstie softens a little bit. She tells him she has not seen Billy's name "on any of the casualty lists," but has no knowledge of anyone else. Kirstie is told that Patrick is going to be sent to prison, being a General after all. With this news, they wish each other well and he even kisses her hand. He then knocks out a soldier, steals a horse and makes a dash toward freedom. Kirstie flashes a hint of a smile to know he's gotten away.
Libby Prison is James' new home. It's run by, I can't believe I'm writing this, Wayne Newton, perhaps the only guest star in a miniseries every to slum upwards! He orders the new men to strip for cavity searches, as he brandishes a walking stick with a fist on the end of it. There's symbolism for you. "Now that we have finished with materials things, it's time we got to work on the spiritual. You boys got to learn you ain't officers and gentlemen no more. What you are is nothing...you are lower than scum, you are lower than dirt, so why don't you boys get down on your knees in the dirt and show me what you are now," Wayne sadistically notes, slapping his palm with that fist walking stick the whole time. James refuses to let his men knee in front of "trash," as he refers to Wayne, so Wayne beats a soldier and most of the men end up kneeling. James feels they should be treated better and asks for Wayne's superior. He's the top there is and "there are no rules." He then beats James up a bit. It could only be goofier if the men all yelled, "danke schoen, sir" as he left the room.
It's been a long time since we've caught up with Terri's husband Jim, who angles for states' rights from Jefferson Davis. Davis is much smarter, knowing that they have to win the war as a block of states and then they can worry about the individual states. When he tells Terri of his failure to persuade Davis, she's not sympathetic. He's frustrated that no one listens to him. "Not half as frustrating as you are to me," she snaps at him and leaves the house. Naturally, she's off to Philip's. She wants to be rid of her husband, but Philip won't hear of it. He's planning a coup against Davis and Jim would be a useful figure head in "my new government." Terri convinces Jim to go see Philip, though he's wary of him. Because Jim is so malleable, it takes a few compliments to get Jim to listen to him and to convince him overthrowing Davis' government is the right way to rebuild the Confederacy. He drops in that he would Jim Vice President. "You make it sound almost patriotic," Jim says. "It's more than that, it's your destiny," Philip shoots back and Jim is had.
Kirstie, exhausted and petulant, mechanically ties a tourniquet to a dying Confederate soldier's leg, but he unties it so he can die. Olivia has had it with Kirstie. "I believe you are capable of anything. Even the murder of a Southerner," Olivia says in measured tones and then adds a further piece of good news, that she intends to see Kirstie tried for murder! Hold on for an unexpected moment, readers. Not only is Kirstie probably capable of killing a Confederate soldier, but also of killing Olivia de Havilland. She comes at her (or rather the camera, the way it's filmed) and pushes her chair over, for some reason causing instant death, with the requisite trickle of blood from the mouth. Kirstie has a mini breakdown (her hands twitch) and she leaves the hospital. She makes it to Congressman David Ogden Stiers' house. He tells her that Olivia isn't dead (PHEW), but she has filed murder charges. The Congressman considers it "political suicide" to get help her, and then reminds her that the last time he helped her, he told her the "next time would not be free." This time, she has no choice but to agree. He watches her undress with a cigar and brandy. Kirstie Alley is not one of more erotic actresses, so I'm not sure what he's getting to excited about, but to each his own.
The last time Lewis was around, he and Kate were engaging in afterglow, but things have changed. Lewis goes to pay a visit and finds her black friends tied up outside by three men who have Kate hostage inside. When he peers through the window, he finds the Union soldiers about to rape her. Lewis bursts inside shooting. Two are killed and the third escapes. Defying all rules about such situations, not to mention offending good taste, Lewis and Kate have sex.
Wendy goes to Lincoln in the hopes that he will help get her husband released, but he can't. Not only has he made it policy that there are no prison exchanges, he cannot do it for just one man. "I don't run this war, it runs me," he tells her. He says he'll try to help and thanks her for "your sacrifice." When Wendy brings the news home, Jonathan and Mary agree with the President, that James should stay in prison. After all, they would lose everything. Wendy, with Inga's agreement, wants to get a message to Patrick and maybe he can help. They better act quickly, because Libby Prison is a hell hole. James tries to defend a boy being beaten and actually does knock them all out, but Wayne and his fist walking stick arrive. The prison guards tell Wayne James was attempting to rape the kid, so Wayne decides to punish him badly. One of the guards remind Wayne that the man actually in charge of the prison is due to return in a week and doesn't believe in violence. This gets Wayne even angrier. James is tied to a pole and left out in the rain to give Part Four a gloomy ending.
The war is nearing a close in December, 1864, but James may not have that long in Libby Prison. "You're only half dead, stop being so shiftless and lazy," Wayne scowls at James, who has tried making a hole in the way. As a general warning to all the prisoners, Wayne claims to have gun powder hidden. James may not have that long in Libby Prison. "You're only half dead, stop being so shiftless and lazy," Wayne scowls at James, who has tried making a hole in the way. As a general warning to all the prisoners, Wayne claims to have gun powder hidden under the floor and if anyone thinks of escaping, he'll simply blow them up.
Lewis shows up in Richmond, bearing bad news for Patrick (who is suffering from laryngitis) that James is in Libby Prison. Patrick wants to get him out, but Lewis "doesn't care too much for Yankees these days," but agrees to go with Patrick. General Patrick goes to Libby and the guards try to stall as long as they can, eventually presenting the shell of a man James has become. "I intend to report this entire detachment gross neglect of duty," Patrick threatens, but Wayne steps in as they try to leave. He will not abide by the order, so the men have to fight their way out.
CONTINUITY CHECK: during the fight, Patrick is able to kick with both legs, just like ran at top speed across railroad tracks one time with that terribly mangled leg. Okay, I know it looks good to stage "Batman"-style fight scenes, but so much care has been taken to see that "North and South" is true to itself that moments like these can really weary a viewer's patience.
Wayne has a knife hidden in his boot and he draws it, only to be pushed against a way and into the knife, dead. James can be taken out safely. They are already on horseback by the time one of Wayne's men tries to stop them. James is in too much pain to travel easily. "You saved my life," James cries to Patrick and Lewis. They put him in a tiny boat with some supplies and send him back to Northern safety. "Can I ask one more favor? Tell Jeff Davis that if he stops this war, I'll buy the champagne," James jokes, even in his condition. "You best make that offer to Lincoln," Patrick retorts, their playful banter omnipresent. "We kill Yankees by the hundreds and save one man. It doesn't make any sense, Lewis opines. He doesn't understand the bond these two men have.
Don't underestimate the power of Inga Swenson's Great 1864 Christmas Sing-a-long. It charms her young granddaughter, but Mary isn't so easily full of Christmas cheer. It takes a massive diamond necklace from her husband to do that, though the rest of the family thinks it's ostentatious. Inga misses her sons, but Wendy puts it in some sort of perspective, telling her that there are families who know for sure their loved ones will never return. Cue the Christmas miracle: a knock at the door reveals James, now safe at home with his wife, mother and daughter.
And what of our Southern women? No finery or Christmas trappings for them. Genie is digging in the garden when hated Tony Frank arrives, bearing food. "We have enough," Genie says defiantly. He tries once again to slither his way into her plantation, but Erica shows up toting a gun. The first shot is a warning, but she intends the second to hit its target. "Get out of here...leave the horse," she orders, exorcising her demons when it comes to this man.
"You're some kind of killing machine," Lewis' friend tells him after they kill a small band of Union soldiers and find out where Grant is heading. Lewis shoots the last one alive when the man merely reaches for a drink of water.
Accompanied by Lee, Lesley-Anne continues her charity work with Charleston's destitute black population, only to hear that little Bumper has been been conscripted. Lee takes Lesley-Anne to headquarters to find out what they can do, and he learns where Bumper is. Lee gets orders that allow him to take the boys back to the plantation. The man in charge knows about Lee and his "pay-offs," so he sends the black boys back into the wagon and waits for his payment, which comes in the form of a kick to the face from Lee. Lesley-Anne is shocked to find out Lee won Bumper's freedom through bribes. "Honor is dead," Lee reminds her, telling her that he left the Army because he found better ways to fight the whole system. Lesley-Anne is grateful, but not willing to go to bed with him.
Lesley-Anne then decides she will use David Carradine's money to help the poor. "That man never did a good thing for anyone in his whole life, so let's just call this poetic justice," she tells her lawyer Jimmy Stewart. She's willing to bankrupt herself in order to assist the displaced.
James is healing nicely, though he will be going back to the front. However, he's concerned that Patrick has changed. He thinks Patrick saved him not out of loyalty, but to "repay a debt." A Union officer shows up at James' house to tell him of a "formal investigation" about the shoddy cannons coming out of the ironworks. James' signature is on "incriminating documents," but he has a few hours to come with proof that he is not involved. He sets off to find Jonathan and Mary's business partner. He finds him, but, predictably, they fight and the partner's neck is snapped. Well, he's dead and thus cannot testify, but James still has Jonathan, who stands up to his wife for the first time. "You miserable traitor," James rails at his brother and insists he take "full responsibility," which will mean "long prison terms" for husband and wife. Jonathan agrees to cooperate, so that problem is solved. Phew!
The plot to kill Jefferson Davis is still alive and well in the minds of Philip and Terri, but she has no more money. Not to worry, Philip has a man willing to give $15,000, with the condition that he gets a night with Terri. She's aghast, but agrees to go along with it. "But we love each other," she tries to complain, but Philip cuts her off by saying, "I don't recall love ever being mentioned." Terri beds the old coot with the cash, hating every minute of it. Should we feel sorry for her? I vote not. It's hardly penance yet. Philip takes Terri to his out-of-town armory of war supplies. In here, comes the creepiest of moments, where Philip talks about killing Jefferson Davis and her brother Patrick while moving a gun up and down Terri's body as seduction. It works. They do it right there among the barrels of gunpowder.
Having become a regular Soup Kitchen Sally to hundreds of people, Lesley-Anne is almost out of money, and all she has left is David's house. Jimmy Stewart tells her he has a buyer for her house, but the buyer wishes to remain anonymous. Hmm, who could it be? Well, it's Lee Horsley, of course, who can raise cash any time he wants by gambling. He tells Jimmy not to be concerned. "It's not every day a lawyer helps a scoundrel help a lady," Lee says with a grin.
In need of money, Philip is told by the man from whom he purchases guns that the "Angel Lady" is the only woman in Charleston who still has money and he should seek her out and use his charm to get her money. Speaking of Lesley-Anne, when Lee confesses his love for her, she admits she's actually still married and though he's willing to accept her as is, she will not hurt him. "A part of me will always belong to him," she says, trying to spare Lee the agony of loving her. Lee vows never go give up, the lovestruck fool.
When Lesley-Anne returns home, there is a card from Philip, whose very name frightens her. She seeks out Linda Evans, a former actress who once played a magnificent Cordelia in "King Lear" that Lesley-Anne once saw (not only does that seem unlikely, but they are supposed to be the same age...?????). Lesley-Anne wants to hire her for her acting abilities, to "find out what somebody wants from me." Folks, this is where "North and South" jumps off track, majorly. This is a plot twist worthy of of Sidney Sheldon or Judith Krantz, not John Jakes. The only way to find out what Philip wants is to hire an actress? Come on!
At any rate, Philip spills his whole plan about killing Jefferson Davis to Linda Evans, making a stupid plot twist even worse. Would a man as devious as this really reveal the whole truth of his plan to a complete stranger? Certainly he would have lies ready. She asks for two days to mull it over, but he insists on having an answer the next morning. Lesley-Anne has heard the entire conversation. When Lesley-Anne tries to pay Linda, she tells her to use the money for her charity. "Think of it as a benefit performance," she says. Yes, that is the line, word for word. I played it three times and laughed through all of them.
Philip knew all along Linda was an actress (I've seen most things she's done in her career and I've never been convinced), so he waits for Lesley-Anne to leave her house. He attacks her and is about to pull off her veil when Lee shows up to, let's say it in unison...fight man-on-man. Philip shoots Lee, who asks Lesley-Anne if she loves him and she admits it, the last thing he hears as he dies.
Dreaded former overseer Tony Frank comes to his old plantation and ruins Beau's irrigation system, stealing all the remaining food for good measure. Beau is beaten, but survives. Erica shows him particular kindness. There is still a hint of splendor at the old plantation, especially when Jean leafs through a photo album and remembers the good times.
The Confederate Army is bedraggled. Lewis' friend wants to desert and Lewis tries to stop him. "I'd rather die than go on this way," he tells Lewis. Lewis lets him go, but the words penetrate. He looks terrible, his clothes in tatters and all hope nearly gone. He goes to Kate's place, a place where he feels most comfortable. One of her friends has been killed by Union soldiers. The boy's father pours coffee on Lewis, but accident and Lewis reacts as if the man were still a slave, but apologizes for it. "I'm not fit to be around decent people," he claims, even her, the woman he loves. "Nothing makes any sense anymore," says the character who retained the most sanity for the most time. If he's given up, things must really be dire. Lewis leaves, but gets to his horse and realizes how much he needs Kate and goes back inside to her. When he leaves to return to camp, both are happier.
It's Terri's weak-willed husband Jim who tells Jefferson Davis about the illegal gun running scheme Philip has going. Davis calls in Patrick to help him sort it out. Terri tries to get Philip to stop the scheme. "The Confederacy is dead!" she tells him, but he says it will thrive "under my leadership." Terri has to hide in the back because Philip is expecting visitors. It's Jim who arrives, pretending to go along with Philip's plans. Patrick slips in, hearing the whole plan from Philip's mouth. Expecting a fist-fight? Close. Will you settle for a gunfight instead? No. Well, once Patrick runs out of bullets, you'll get your fist fight. Philip smacks Patrick around with a wooden plank while Terri and Jim accidentally set the storehouse full of gunpowder on fire. "My empire, I'm going to save my empire," Philip rages as he runs back into the burning building, moments before a spectacular explosion. "It was like Judgment Day," Terri worries, admitting "I'm a sinner too" and that she'll burn in hell with Philip. She recounts all of her sins for them, include the plot to kill her brother-in-law, her abortion and her success at driving a wedge between Patrick and Lesley-Anne. Patrick smacks his sister hard across the face when he hears this and then tells her he never wants to see her again. She asks her husband for forgiveness, but he tells her "it's too late." Goodbye Terri as Episode Five concludes.
We rejoin the story in March, 1965. The Armies are at Petersburg waiting for a conclusion to the war. Jefferson Davis is pining over the lost ammunition that Philip had been stockpiling and still hoping for a miracle from General Lee. Patrick knows all is lost and only wants to find Lesley-Anne. His detective has not been able to turn up anything. She's still feeding the poor, but money and supplies are virtually gone. General Sherman has made life in South Carolina lousy for the state he feels started the war. Lesley-Anne goes to General Sherman himself to plead the case for Charleston. There is no possible way a Southern civilian female would EVER get time with Charleston, so this scene is inherently ludicrous, but Lesley-Anne actually infuses it with enough good acting to make it almost believable. She pleads her case well, and Sherman promises her supplies. "You're a woman of courage and courage always wins," he tells her. Well, okay.
Starting the process of wrapping up all the plot lines, hated overseer Tony Frank is captured by Forest's men. Forest has gotten himself a following, blacks poor whites who believe they can take all of the property that belonged to the whites once the war ends. Tony pleads for his life, saying they will need his plantation experience to make his dream a reality. They form an unlikely and very tentative alliance.
There's a knock at Congressman David Ogden Stiers' door. There is a man looking for Kirstie because the warrant for her arrest is still valid. At a party the Congressman throws, she tells him to stop the investigation, though he keeps saying, "these things take time." When he asks her if he's as good in bed as her dead husband, the fire in her eyes returns and she says, "there's no one like you."
Plucky Genie is prying every piece of candle wax from the candlesticks when the Union Army arrives to take the plantation. "There are only women here. We didn't start this war, we're trying to survive it!" she tells the soldiers. Jean backs her up, saying, "you'll have to burn down this house around me" and then pulls a pistol. The Union soldier in charge is a very old friend of Patrick from the West Point days, so he has the house spared, to be used by the army.
Lincoln pays a visit to Grant's camp, with James in tow, trying to boost morale and hear Grant's plan to end the war. Lincoln reminds everyone to "let 'em off easy" as Grant says. Lincoln does not want harsh reprisals, but he's in the minority on that one. "Some people want the South to bleed for what they've done," he's told, but he responds, "The South has bled enough, and so have we."
James can see Patrick just across the battlefield with his binoculars. He's not sure what to do, but his brother Parker is there to egg him on. "Sound the advance," James says. James, Parker and the Union Army advance as Patrick, Lewis and the Confederate Army sound the order to fire. The final battle is on. Even Parker's Little Drummer Boy is part of it, racing across the field with Parker, though hit by cannon fire soon into the battle. Parker, having made it all the way across the battlefield, is shot in the shoulder and sees his Little Drummer Boy's body, going back to carry it back to safety. James and Patrick are close enough to easily kill each other, but they resist, sticking to their roles as leaders of the battle. Patrick is particularly agile (I'm tired of being the continuity police by now, so let's just let Dancer Patrick spend the rest of the movie pretending his not Actor Patrick).
The Union Army is victorious, but the causalities are very high. Parker and his Little Drummer Boy are alive, though both severely wounded. Parker solemnly tells the Little Drummer Boy that he will live, but healing will take a while. Parker can only stay a few days and then return for him when he's fully able to travel. "You hurry up and get well. Just remember you're my friend and I love you," Parker sweetly reminds the kid, whom he intends to take home to his wife when the war is over. Grant now has to plan to finally end it all. He gives strict orders not to simply pick off the Confederates from behind, but to cut them off and attack from the front and all sides. As the Union Army is about to wipe out the Confederate Army, word comes that the Confederacy has surrendered. The Union Army celebrates, but the Southern soldiers are sad and stuck to the ground in disbelief. The formalities are handled at Appomattox on April 9. Lee arrives first, but Grant and his victorious men, James included, are soon there as well. Lee is given a very polite (and very long) send off.
News of the surrender reaches the plantation, where Genie and Jean are still surviving. Lewis goes to tell Kate what has happened, but Kate died in childbirth. Lewis never even knew she was pregnant. The baby lived and was taken by a relative to Charleston. He goes to Charleston to claim his son. Lewis makes it back to the plantation first, but Genie's wishes come true when Parker comes riding up to the house. Beau, however, wants to leave, claiming there is nothing left for him at the plantation. "Not without me," Erica tells him as another man's wish comes true. Jean gives Beau and Erica a piece of the plantation, "to start a new lifge there together."
It seems Kirstie has adapted to being the Congressman's mistress quite well. She asks him when he will get the murder charges dropped. "I'm sick of you harping on that," he tells her and she blurts out, "like I'm sick of servicing you?" and then immediately regrets she said it. He forgives her, but after one last session together, he tells her he will never return as he's going to be a Senator. "Do you think I would risk my political career for you? You were a challenge and once a challenge is met, one moves on," he coldly tells her, though undeniably she deserves it. Oh, and he also tells her that murder charge was long dismissed. "Just collecting on past favors my dear," he tells her when she slaps him for using her. Kirstie is way too unbalanced to take this abuse, so she kills the Congressman.
James visits Kirstie in prison, but "there's no chance for reprieve." She understands, and also appreciates the irony of hanging for murder on what would have been her anniversary had Georg lived. The only thing she has left is her wedding ring, which she gives to James as a present to his daughter, "from her crazy aunt." Both cry as James says goodbye. Despite all differences, they have forgiven each other. No other sibling has come to visit. "No matter what she did, I loved her," Inga cries, surrounded by James and Wendy.
In bed, Wendy and James have one of those "what was it all for?" conversations, but for James the war is not over until he finds out what happened to Patrick, whom we last saw presumably dead on the battlefield at Petersburg. He wanders all over the South trying to find Patrick, but nobody has seen him. Finally, at a field hospital, he sees Patrick, a broken man sitting up against a tree. James is overcome seeing Patrick, but the latter has lost his spark. Part of that is due to the fact he can't find Lesley-Anne. They get the bad news that Lincoln has been shot and James breaks down. "I could really use your help now," Patrick tells him, to give him a reason to live. The spark is coming back. They go to see Lawyer Jimmy Stewart, but he refuses to break confidentiality. "I can no longer keep two people apart who should be together," he finally tells Patrick. Lesley-Anne is playing with her baby when Patrick shows up (another continuity gaffe has this baby still an infant, where Lewis' baby is already older, though born after). He tells her, "you don't have to be afraid anymore" and the cymbals crash big time when they fall into each other's arms. "I have to tell you, there's another man in my life now," she notes and gives him the baby he never even knew he had (they haven't seen each other in two years, but the kid looks under one year).
The happy family plus James heads for the plantation, where the happy family members are having dinner with Forest and Tony's posse raid the house and set it on fire. Everyone has survived so much, is this really necessary? Lewis, Genie, Parker, Beau and Erica all take up arms and manage to shoot a whole bunch of people, thoug Forest bursts in and tries to grab Erica. Jean smashes a vase over his head, but he pushes her against the door and knocks her out. Lewis kills Forest. The battle is still raging when James and Patrick arrive with Lesley-Anne and the baby. Erica is watching at the window when Beau is shot and killed. Tony tries to molest Genie, but Parker jumps in to save her. As he's aboutot kill Parker, Genie shoots him from behind. The raiders, or what's left of them, scamper off as the family flees the house. Unfortunately, Jean dies. She is inseparable from the house and once it started to burn, it was inevitable she would go along with it. "My mother lived to see her way of life erased from the face of the earth, but she blamed no one," Patrick says as part of the eulogy before slipping into one of Lincoln's speeches of forgiveness.
The final speech goes to James, who holds out his half of the $10 bill to start anew in business and life. Patrick has his half as well and declares James "the best friend a man could ever have. We're a family." As family they all wak down the path from the plantation one last time, their lives completely separated from all they knew before the war.
Because "North and South Book 2" is forced to show the entire Civil War, there is a lot of time wasting. The Linda Evans acting scheme, the Wayne Newton prison humiliation, even the Lewis and Kate love plot, are all filler. The most moving moments come during the actual battle scenes and at the end when we shave down the characters to just the essentials, the ones who have been with us since the beginning and have become so familiar over the course of 18 hours. Since it ends on such a lovely note, pure American heartstring tugging, a lot of the flaws are forgiven.
Remember, though, the story is not over. In 1994, the final part of the trilogy appeared, but for now, let's simply bask in the glow of a true miniseries classic and not worry about how it's junked up later on.
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