Not just another World War II miniseries, "Playing for Time" has pedigree. Based on a true story, the TV version was written by no less than Arthur Miller and directed by no less than Daniel Mann. Arthur Miller did not sit himself down to write for any screen, big or small, that often!
It's the casting of Vanessa Redgrave as a concentration camp survivor that is the wild card. The movie was shown in 1980, just the time when Redgrave was trotting around the world with her pro-Palestinian views, therefore a bizarre choice to play Jewish here. But, Redgrave is one of those actresses so convincing, so damn good and so full invested in her roles, that watching it decades later when the politics have subsided, that's all that matters. Perhaps she was cast for shock value or perhaps because of her skills. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. We're taking "Playing for Time" as an American miniseries and not as a Redgrave political platform.
Furthermore, it turns out not to be the casting, but rather the script, that should be the center of discussion. Gorgeously written, it goes to great lengths to not only defend the downtrodden, as expected, but to also bring a bit of character and, daresay, humanity, to the German characters. This is Arthur Miller, not just any hack, so nothing is 100% crystal clear. There is a lot to wonder and argue about, which is not something usually done when it comes to discussions of Auschwitz. Normally, there is a clear division of good and evil, and though there is no attempt to blame the Jews and exonerate the Nazis, there is a lot of time devoted to how everyone is supposed to react to their various situations, Jews and Nazis alike, a very different and welcome take, especially from a miniseries, always so devoted to pulling tears instead of thoughts out of the head.
Fania Fenelon (Vanessa Redgrave) is a noted French cabaret singer as the movie starts, even doing a number while Nazis hobnob in the club where she performs. But, after a few seconds of documentary footage, Fania is in a crowded train car East, cooed over by everyone in there. An elderly gentleman tells her, "Madame Fenelon, your music is the soul of Paris!" Finally, it's noted that they all may be on the train because they are Jewish, and Fania is only "half" and it's never been a strong part of her identity. At first, the group in the crowded train car is fairly nonchalant, playing chess, cracking jokes, but as times goes by, they start to get cagey and when the urine bucket is accidentally knocked over with no relive of an open window, it becomes dire.
Their train finally stops at a concentration camp and the women are quickly shirked of their clothing and hair, despite still being totally confused about what is happening. The haircutting scene is chilling. The soundtrack has just the sound of dozens of unoiled shears going and screams from the outside. Fania is then tattooed, noticing that some women are allowed to keep their hair. It's only Jews who are shaved, but for finding that out, she gets an extra smack from Frau Schmidt (Viveca Lindfors).
During the trip, Fania befriended Marianne (Melanie Mayron), who assumes her crime is having a boyfriend in the Resistance. "My boyfriend wouldn't let me join because he said it was too dangerous," she cries to Fania as they are huddled together in a cold prison house. Fania discovers they are sleeping next to a dead woman and Marianne panics. To calm her down, Fania rambles off a fairy tale as we see the crematorium at full blast. Fania is part of the crew made to dispose of the remains. Here's where an author like Arthur Miller comes in handy. He assumes we know the history of what happened, so it doesn't take us an hour to get into the story. All of this, including some very harsh documentary footage, has taken only about 15 minutes.
"Does anyone know how to sing 'Madame Butterfly'?" howls a guard. Fania is taken to a room where other emaciated shaved women with yellow stars are playing musical instruments. She walks in slowly and is cleaned up a bit and fed by Etalina (Robin Bartlett), who, along with Michou (Anna Levine) recognize her as a celebrity. The conductor of the troupe is Alma Rose (Jane Alexander), described as "not a warm heart."
Haughty Alma, sporting a full mane of hair, enters and demands to hear Fania play the piano. Nervously, Fania goes to the instrument, hesitant to touch the beloved keys, but soon able to both play and sing. She's tearing through the song, the music filling her again, much to the delight of the assembled all-female orchestra, when in comes Frau Mandel (Shirley Knight), looking more like an Andrews Sister than a Nazi, but she has the attitude right. "Do you know any German music?" she asks Fania, who responds that she cannot join the orchestra unless her friend Marianne gets to join too. Frau Mandel's eyes pop out with anger, but Marianne gets to sing...really badly. Not that the actress does it badly, the character. So badly that we hear dogs barking outside (a bit of schtick this piece certainly doesn't need). "See that they get clean and send them to me at the depot," Frau Mandel says as she leaves. They are in!
What we learn first is that this orchestra is pretty lousy. But, for some reason, Frau Mandel treats them very well, bellowing that Fania should have warm boots and stay well-clothed to protect her voice. It gets downright creepy when Frau Mandel bends down and puts the found warm boots on Fania's feet. The Frau either has a well-thought-out plan in mind or is a lot of bit lesbian. The script right now doesn't tell us, so it will be interesting to see which way it goes.
"Why is it so loud? This is not band music! We are not playing against the wind!" Jane yells at the women. "Music is the holiest activity of mankind," she says and tries to scream musicality into them before bolting through them in disgust. Etalina explains that they all know they are lousy and the fault really lies with Alma. "We were just a marching band," she says, made to play as prisoners went about their work duty, but culture-loving Alma started them on the classics. "She's a victim of her own pride," Etalina says and everyone agrees, mainly because now the Germans love the orchestra, but they can only play three songs, which are starting to bore the people in charge. Fania is convinced to orchestrate some new songs for them.
The girls tell Alma that Fania has agreed and Alma actually takes the news well. They even share a laugh over having to do more German songs. "I'd like to think I'm saving my life rather than pleasing the SS," Fania notes, but Alma asks "do you think you can do one without the other?" That knocks Fania down a bit. There's no copy paper, but they will get around that. "We're artists. We can't help that. There's nothing to be ashamed of," Alma says before dismissing Fania, as a way of justifying the work they are doing while so many others around them suffer.
The first concert with Fania seems to go well. They do the classics well enough and then Fania gets a French pop song as a solo.
However, all is not harmonious among the orchestra members. Etalina is the sassy one in the group, telling somehow-ravishing Elzvieta (Marisa Berenson) that "you can say the word...g.a.s.s.e.d." when Elzvieta tries to get them to see their misery. In fact, there's even some rivalries. They refer to some Polish women as "those bitches" and won't even talk to them! Fania rises above it all, saying she would share anything she has with the rest and would expect the same. As much as they are women trying to get along in terrible conditions, they do try to have a bit of fun, betting Fania for details of fashionable Paris. There's talk about a group of women recently arrived from Holland who had beautiful curls and when asked where they are now, Etalina says they've most likely been gassed. Fania tries to hush such talk. "Why not say it? We'll be better prepared when our time comes," Etalina argues, bringing that conversation to a dead halt.
Fania collects the girls and sings "Stormy Weather" for them, letting Marianne take over. She's gotten better. That makes everyone feel a bit more chipper(when a song as depressing as "Stormy Weather" can do that, you know you're in trouble), but the next morning, the marching band section of the orchestra has to play for the camp workers as they are beaten. Fania asks to watch, seeing and hearing the screams from the crematorium and all of the other awful horrors of the camp.
Marianne remains a problem, refusing to see what is really going on in the camp, begging Fania to find her food and help her. Fania tries to make the poor girl see the truth, but Marianne hides in the shell of a child. Meanwhile, Etalina snaps that "we'll need another 100 Years War before we get a score out of you" to Fania, though some defend Fania, saying it's "hard work." That last line is tossed off casually, but if you think about it, it actually shows the lofty position these women are in. They are in Auschwitz, no doubt about it, and could die at any minute, but they are more protected inside the rehearsal room than everyone else at the camp. "Hard work" becomes relative in the struggle to keep mentally stable.
The slow orchestrating process annoys Alma, who pulls Fania aside to ask why she can't be faster. She confesses that she was spat on that morning. "I didn't realize how much they must hate us," Fania says, referring to everyone else in the camp who must see them as getting special treatment. "Yes, of course, what did you expect?" clip Alma retorts, offering to send her back to the other barracks if she's unhappy. "I'm just not used to being hated like this," Fania whines, but Alma snaps her out of it by telling her it's a matter of life or death and Fania better get used to it. The taskmaster in Alma is her way of surviving. So, Vanessa madly orchestrates all through the night as the gruesome sounds of wailing captives, guns and sirens blare.
When Marianne brings Fania a small crumb of food, Fania refuses it because she knows Marianne got it by letting a man have sex with her. Marianne has started to develop a spine, saying bitingly that what she did for the food was no different than what the orchestra does for the Germans. "It doesn't matter anyway. We won't live to get out of here," she says bitterly. "What if we do live?...You're treating yourself like some mortal piece of meat," Fania tells her, but they are both confused and desperate and no one has any sense of what is right or wrong anymore. Fania does eat the scrap of food, though her face is contorted in confusion as she does and then she breaks down in tears, a hopelessness that is not helped by the sounds of machine guns outside.
As Fania witnesses another convoy of women coming in, she's overcome, but told by a carpenter to "live" so she can tell the story of it all to God. As if that isn't confusing enough to her, one of the girls comes into her bed to confess a crush she has one one of the others. "You're young, what else is there but love?" Fania tells her, ultra modern in her sensitivities.
Contrary to what one might expect, when Fania is asked to sing specially for the Germans, in various languages, she does not shudder from it. Instead, she concentrates on the song, usually keeping her eyes closed, and acts them beautifully. No matter her situation, the music is always triumphant in her, always her personal bright spot. "Did you ever hear anything more touching?" Frau Mandel asks head Nazi Dr. Mengele (Max Wright). She then tells Fania to thank Dr. Mengele, and when Fania works up the nerve to actually do it, she interrupts the rest of the Nazis and tells them her real last name is "Goldstein." "You must learn to sing German songs," Commandant Kramer (Clarence Felder) tells her, noting that it makes his work so much easier. When the Nazis love you, they can be very king! Frau Mandel asks Fania if she needs anything and has her people send away for toothbrushes. Not only that, the whole orchestra gets goodies.
Marianne is the only one who sees Frau Mandel's attentions to Fania as suspect. When she even suggests that Fania would sleep with her for the perks, Fania is quick to shout back, "there's no danger of that" and then goes back on the attack, since Marianne is busy whoring herself for anything she can get. The argument goes deeper when Etalina remarks that Frau Mandel is actually beautiful. The others are horrified, but not Fania. "She is beautiful. And she is human. What disgusts me is that a woman who is so beautiful can be doing such things. We are of the same species!" she snarls at everyone, but most of the crowd isn't with her. It's an interesting point, but obviously a tough one to pull off in the middle of a concentration camp.
A drunken Marianne stumbles into the barracks to report that a doctor has told her none of them will ever be able to bear children because of the fear and the diet. This sends Elzvieta to her knees praying (she's Catholic), but Fania knows that Marianne is only acting the way she does out of sheer terror. She tells Marianne that she can control her desire for food (which is what she's trading sex for) if she learns to share what she has with all of the rest, and Marianne knows it's true.
When the group's cellist gets sick, Alma rushes to make sure she isn't gassed, encountering Mala (Maud Adams), a Jewish woman who is a legend in the camp. She was one of the camp's first prisoners and managed to escape, buck naked, but when she was found, she managed to stay alive because she spoke so many languages and rose to the ranks of the camp's head translator. She and her boyfriend have supposedly even helped people escape. Fania, in the middle of a particularly harsh rehearsal with Alma, questions Fania as to how Mala got so powerful. "Mala is a miracle," Alma says. "She's the hope of everyone here. Even these Nazis somehow sense a glory within her." As Fania tried before with Frau Mandel's beauty, this is another attempt to humanize the whole situation, finding hope wherever one can.
The recital gets even uglier because Alma strikes Etalina for hitting a wrong note, which meets no one's approval. "If it weren't for my name, they'd have burned them up long ago," she tries justifying to Fania, asking her why everyone "resents" her so much. Alma says that orchestra members throughout Germany and Austria are regularly slapped, and this should be no different, because they must "respect" her. At the bottom of her toughness is her need to protect all of the women. She tells Fania that as long as the Nazis are kept happy, they will all survive, so why shouldn't she be tough? "We can't really wish to please them," Fania says, but Alma argues against that. "You have me wrong, Fania. You think I fail to see...I refuse to see!" Alma continues. By throwing herself into nothing but the music, she's creating her own way of dealing with the truth around her. She urges Fania to "create all the beauty you are capable of creating" and devote herself fully to her artistry in order to survive.
Alma returns to the room with her own violin, going into a truly wondrous solo, tears coming to her eyes. Certainly Fania recognizes how Alma's music has become such a strong defense mechanism for her. Of course, it's quickly interrupted by Fraut Schmidt, who demands the Jews separate from the others. Marianne gets herself and Fania exempted since they are only half Jewish as the others are trotted out for delousing.
Being half Jewish allows Fania and Marianne to remove half of their stars, which causes another argument in the barracks. Fania, as always, roars the loudest. She's tired of the world being separated into groups and fed up with life. Marianne retorts that "we're also betraying the Catholics. Our mothers were Catholic," and then finds Fania resewing on the ripped half of her star.
After being told 12,000 "angels" per day are being gassed, Fania finds Marianne again turning tricks and begs her to share, but Marianne refuses. She remains alternately astonishingly unaware and yet extremely practical.
The barracks are in turmoil because Mala has escaped with her boyfriend. The orchestra members turn it into a romance fable and Elzvieta says, "let's play something for them!" They start a wedding march and everyone is briefly happy. Just after, truckloads of non-Jewish Poles arrive, scaring the orchestra members, who can't understand what the Nazis are doing. Frau Mandel picks one child out of the lot and takes him away, much to the horror of the kid's mother, who is ignored. When Frau Mandel asks Alma why the girls are so upset, Alma says it's because they all fear the Poles will be given their barracks. Frau Mandel, giddy with delight over this kid, assures them no one from the barracks will be killed. She leads the child around, cooing that she needs to take him to find new clothing. "Work hard," she chirps briskly as she leaves. Once again, Giselle (Marcell Rosenblatt) is the voice of reason, but Alma insists they get back to rehearsing. As they do, Frau Mandel is seeing playing with the child among burning clothing and the despair the camp grounds. As if that's not bad enough, Mala and her boyfriend have been caught and are publicly put to death while everyone watches. The juxtapositions of all this so quickly is meant to be shocking, and it is. One moment Frau Mandel is insisting they will be safe and the next she is nodding to have the chairs kicked out from under Mala and her boyfriend. Hope and fear can barely be separated.
During rehearsal one day, while Fania is playing the piano, it's literally taken out from under her, newly taken to the officers quarters. The Commandant also takes Greta (Grace Stover) from the orchestra to be a maid for his wife, and then places a whole host of other conditions on the women, who are being made to play for Dr. Mengele's special patients, the insane, as an experiment on what music will do to them. Frau Mandel makes the whole episode more uncomfortable by talking to Fania, who says they could use more food. Apparently Alma has said extra rations "should be earned," and though Fania agrees with her in front of everyone, Alma hauls her into her office to blast her again. According to Alma, the girls don't deserve it until they place a piece perfectly. Again, the perfection of music is her best chance of survival, but of course she can't make anyone else understand that. Fania starts to cry, saying, "I'm merely trying to decide whether I wish to live." "Oh, come now Fania, no one dies if they can help it. You must try to be more honest with yourself," Alma cautions.
A male cellist is brought over to train Etalina, who is reduced to schoolgirl giggles as he just leans the cello up against her. Naturally, a moment of joy like that has to be trumped by more disaster. Paulette (Verna Bloom) returns after her stint in the hospital to report that once the concert for Dr. Mengele's patients is over, the patients are all being gassed. Though Paulette is barely able to stand up, she insists on rehearsing, perhaps an actual convert to Alma's way of thinking?
Etalina tells Fania that when they were playing outside, she saw her family coming in on a recent convoy (as the sounds of bullets and death pad the soundtrack). "I wasn't sure," she says, breaking into hysterics. "But what could you do?" Fania says, embracing her. It's a very stark moment. There has been so much discussion over whether or not Fraul Mandel is human, but how has the humanity of these women changed? "I have no answers anymore. I'm living from minute to minute," Fania tells Paulette, who asks her if she should have told the other patients about the immiment gassing. Her transforming is becoming quite clear.
As bombs clamor, hope rises that the war is ending. Fania goes off to be alone and Elzvieta follows her. "Everyone tries to tell you their troubles, don't they? You're someone to trust, Fania. Maybe it's because you have no ideologies, just satisfied to be a prisoner. One senses so much feeling in you," Elzvieta notes, but in a praising demeanor. It's a short speech, but a very interesting one. "I'm dying by inches and very well I know it," Fania responds, proof that she hasn't completely lost her self. Elzvieta cries about her lost life. "I only want one Jewish woman to understand," she weeps, trying to equate her situation with theirs. The truth is that they are all being handled so miserably, Jew or not. Elzvieta begs for forgiveness, but Fania doesn't know why she seeks it. She's done nothing to anyone personally. "It's meaningless. I'm afraid nothing you can do will ever change that," Fania says. Okay, so maybe she has lost her self. This is a powerful scene, well done by both actresses, who are so utterly confused by the situation that they don't know whether life or death is the better option.
Alma beams with delight in telling Fania, "I am going to be released!" Apparently the Germans want her to tour for the troops. Fania notes that she'll be playing for the people who are keeping them prisoner, but Alma sees it merely as "playing for honorable men," soldiers, not Nazis. "Not all Germans are Nazis. You're nothing but a racist if you think so," Alma says. "The only Jew to play for the German army! My head will explode," Fania says at the lunacy of the whole situation, just as Frau Schmidt enters to offer her congratulations and to invite Alma to a farewell dinner. There's something very desperate about her offer, and Alma is flabbergasted, and Fania of course sees it. Alma castigates her for being so negative and Fania can't make her see the other side. "You're totally wrong about practically everything, but I must say, you probably saved us all, so I thank you from the bottom of my heart," Fania says to Alma. "You can thank my refusal to despair," she replies.
The ladies are brought into their rehearsal room, given flowers and made to stand around a casket draped with a Nazi flag. Dr. Mengele is there and so is Frau Mandel, with the baby. They pull Fania oer to see the corpse, which of course belongs to Alma. All of the women are made to file by and leave flowers on her body. Dr. Mengele even kisses her violin and places it in the box with her. It should be no surprise that Alma is dead, especially after a speech celebrating her ability to leave the concentration camp.
Fania tears off to find out what happened and Alma was poisoned at dinner. They were never going to let her out! Fania returns to the room to find Olga (Christine Baranski) conducting, and very badly. She tries to grab the wand from Olga and a big battle ensues. As Olga yowls "they want an Aryan to conduct," Fania screams that Alma left it to her to conduct. When I say battle, I mean battle, with hair-pulling, punching and the rest. A plane swoops over the camp and Olga and her fellow non-Jews try to make the music continue while the Jews race to the window to watch. Unfortunately, the plane upon which the latter built their hopes is shot down. Quick freedom is not coming.
They have a more pressing enemy. Marianne returns one night with a fur stole, having gotten it "from the executioner," the others rail. "He killed Mala and others," they say, but she cuts them off, asking "whose side do you think you are on? Because if anybody is not sure, you are on the side of the executioners. You go out. You ask any prisoner in this camp. They'll be happy to tell you!" Giselle wants Fania to argue this position, but Fania thinks Marianne is right. Though she admits that nothing is their fault and that they are innocent, "we've changed. We've learned a little something about the human ways...and it's not good news." Fania sticks to her idea that even the Nazis are human, though Giselle doesn't want herself equated with them. The discussion is put on hold when Dr. Mengele arrives, and Olga offers to play for him. Fania assures Dr. Mengele, who is petrified into silence by the sounds of the planes bombing around them, that the orchestra will do "our utmost" to honor the memory of Alma and play for him as planned. It satisfies him enough and the girls agree, although Giselle tells her she hopes Fania will never have to beg again. Alma's idea about the music saving them is proving true.
Frau Mandel is the next visitor, asking for "Madame Butterly" by Fania and Marianne as the clutches the hat of her beloved little adopted boy. "The greatness of a people has always depended on the sacrifices they are willing to make," Frau Mandel tells Fania, saying she gave the boy "back." There's a sacrifice: send the boy back to an almost certain death from his plush existence with her. Skewed as it may be, it underlies the point Fania has been making over and over, that they are all humans. Maybe good, maybe bad, but human, having feelings on some level. I won't deny it's somewhat cheesy to have given Frau Mandel such an obvious little plot turn to show her humanity, but one can't help but see that all-important point.
As the Allies approach, the VIPs hustle to leave the camp, with Frau Mandel literally shooting a woman to get a spot on a departing truck. Olga insists they rehearse, but the rest refuse. "She finally gets an orchestra and the war has to end," Etalina quips as Olga despairs over not being able to lead.
It turns out Frau Mandel did not make it on a truck and she's out of her mind the next morning. "I seem to have lost it, the little hat," she tears around weeping (referring to the adopted boy's hat). Elzvieta and Fania are pried apart, with Fania giving the other money because she says, "I'm not sure I want to live." Marianne is still on the make, trying to seduce the soldiers dragging them from the camp. She even beats Fania with a piece of wood to stay in good with the soldiers, but the soldiers drop the girls as soon as they can, since the Russians are due any minute. The camp survivors stuff themselves into a building of misery. Some are dying, some are even giving birth. Fania wants to give up, but the ladies won't let her! Prayers start up as everyone realizes the Germans are done and the Russians are there to save them.
The Germans, Marianne with them, are put onto trucks and then pelted with rocks furiously by the survivors. Fania, weak and ready to die, is carried to safety and then asked for a statement. Given a recording device, she sings into it, in French, a song of victory and survival. Music is the way to escape.
The movie itself, Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Alexander all won Emmy Awards. It would be tough to deny how much the deserve it. Vanessa's performance as a woman with dwindling confidence in the face of utter confusion is one of her strongest, but I actually think the best performance is Jane's. It's unflinching and unlikeable, but utterly real. Never maudlin, never corny, always toeing the line exactly, it's ideal. They are all terrific, even Shirley Knight is as a Nazi!
In less than three hours, "Playing for Time" manages to portray the entire Holocaust with a more intimate passion than its bigger and brassier World War II miniseries cousins. It also dares to ask some very pointed questions and demands the viewer think about them. In 1980, that was still possible. In another ten years, forget it.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
The Women of Brewster Place (1989)
"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!
"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!
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.
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"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.
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"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...
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