Richard Chamberlain is, of course, miniseries royalty. Even if he had done just "The Thorn Birds" and "Shogun," he would have that bragging right. But, roles in "Centennial" and especially "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story" are actually bigger acting gigs for him. His dreamy looks (for the 70s and 80s) and romantic swagger were ideal for the miniseries, and he was able to sustain his performances across the epic sweeps of the movies. In "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story," he gives what I think is easily his finest performance, an old-fashioned acting performance where he sinks his teeth into a complex and interesting character and never lets go. Of course, being the saviour of Jews in World War II is the kind of role every actor wants, but what makes Wallenberg such an interesting man is his unyielding and very chipper devotion to what he's doing. Unlike Oskar Schindler, whose reasons for saving Jews were a but more clouded and selfish, the Raoul Wallenberg of this story does it simply for the humanity of it, which gives Chamberlain a chance to bask in the reflected glory of the character, but not relying on that reflection. He pushes himself here and it works.
It's August 30, 1944 at the Wallenberg estate in Sweden. There is much celebrating and a bonfire. However, on the same night in Budapest, a synagogue is also on fire. And further, there is a party going on at Admiral Horthy's (Guy Deghy) is hosting Adolph Eichmann himself (Kenneth Colley). He is introduced by Baroness Lisl Kemeny (Alice Krige), who flatters him by saying he doesn't look at all "fearsome" like his reputation. Her husband, Baron Gabor Kemeny (Stuart Wilson), is to be part of a "cleansing" in Budapest.
At the Wallenberg party, a drunken Raoul Wallenberg (Richard Chamberlain) actually dares to insult the Nazis, much to his parents' horror. "You have supplied them with gas...for heating and cooking, of course," he quips before launching into an imitation of Hitler that gives the usually-sleep-inducing TV icon a bit of ham on which to chew.
Resistance worker Nikki Fodor (Mark Rylance), warns a concert of Hungarian Jews of the coming hoodlums. Admiral Horthy, who says "I was an anti-Semite before you were born," as proof of his commitment to the Nazi cause, but "I am not going to violate this ancient Hungarian tradition" of trusting the Jews with their money and turning them over to death camps.
Now, that our story is set up, it's time to get to know Raoul Wallenberg. His father considers him a "dilettante," though his mother defends him. He has some sort of job importing and exporting, but nothing too taxing. Raoul is not at all thrilled by the Nazis, and that leaning has caught the attention of Roosevelt's people in Budapest, who offer him a diplomatic cover in order to help their cause. He's already converted, of course, nothing that "I would go to any lengths to save Jews."
Up against Raoul's knowledge of what is going on, the Baron and Baroness are the voices of idiocy. She whines that she can't find a tailor in Budapest anymore because all the Jews have "disappeared." The Baron has some idea, but ignores it, hoping to cozy up to Eichmann in the hopes of being made foreign minister, replete with a new uniform and all.
If you've been wondering how all of this will come together, it only takes 25 minutes of the miniseries before Raoul is sent to Hungary for his top secret and very dangerous mission. It's late in the war and conditions are so grim that "Second Secretary" Raoul Wallenberg has to ride a crowded train, a melting pot of different flotsam and jetsam still able to travel through Europe. But, his discomfort is nothing compared to what he sees outside of his window as a train going East rolls by, with desperate Jews begging for help.
In Budapest, the Jews are wrangled up by the Hungarian police ("they will treat us with respect," one man assumes), but Nikki refuses to go. Before being able to fight, he has to get his girlfriend Hannah (Georgia Slowe) to understand exactly what is happening.
When Raoul arrives at the Swedish embassy building in Budapest, he has to fight through throngs of people begging to be let in and given Swedish protection. He is told by Per Anger (David Robb) that they can only help the Jews who "can establish family or business ties...there is a limit." Raoul asks, "why?" and Per dismisses the question, as Raoul will have to find out for himself just how difficult this task will be. He tells everyone at the embassy that "we can make honorary Swedish citizens of them all," but is told "that's impossible." Raoul still doesn't understand what is going on completely. He says he needs a staff of 100 people to help on his mission, although he's not asking the embassy for money or staff. The money is coming from the people who actually hired him and for staff, he wants to use all the Jews begging to be let in. Well, that sounds good to everyone at the embassy, but they warn him, "do not offend anybody" or else the whole plan will be at risk.
Raoul better act quickly because Eichmann is making his rounds of the area, telling Jewish leaders they must select workers, as he did in Poland and other countries, the Nazi way of letting others think they had a choice. He's interrupted by an aide who gives him the horrifying news that a train bearing over 12,000 Jews to Birkenau ("a new record, I think," he says with glee) has been stopped and turned back to Budapest. "That train must be stopped and we must carry on until we clean out every piece of Jew crap in Hungary," Eichmann says, more villainous with every line.
This is Raoul's first big success. Word gets around quickly and the embassy is swamped. "We need something bigger!" he tells Per, in order to save 700,000 people. He does help one woman, Sonja (Melanie Mayron), who has a small son and because of her proficiency with languages and skills. She's hired on the spot and thus has her protection as an employee of the Swedish legation. He's not above printing fake royal seals on letters to save Jews either.
At a rather bizarre nightclub where a woman belts out "Stormy Weather" without any clue as to what lyrics she's singing, Raoul and Per are in attendance when Eichmann, the Baron and Baroness come in. He has a bottle of champagne sent to the table. "Do you know what it is to be a Rockefeller in America? That's what it is to be a Wallenberg in Sweden," the Baron says his wife, who has never heard of him. Eichmann clucks that he "has to keep the neutrals happy" and trots off to make nice with Raoul. The Baroness takes quite a fancy to Raoul from across the restaurant too. "I'm here to help you with your Jewish problem," Raoul gives Eichmann as an excuse for his being sent to Budapest. "What can Sweden help with? Freight cars? Winter clothing? Please, don't try to camouflage your mission," which he knows of down to the Americans who are behind it. They actually pretend to play nice and make a business deal for housing. Raoul offers Eichmann money for housing, but Eichmann snaps that it works out to "only a dollar a Jew," and he's been offered more. Even worse, as he gets up to go, the sinister man notes that he's overcome "your little delay" and managed to get two trains of Jews sent East to make up for the one Raoul was able to bring back. Per tells Raoul, "some Nazis are less interested in the war than they are in murdering Jews." "I am determined too, and stubborn," Raoul says in response, believing himself to be Eichmann's equal.
There is a terrific scene where Raoul goes to the Hungarian leader to beg for his help. The wily old diplomat, playing both sides, says he can't understand why Sweden's King Gustav is "so interested in Jews," and is peeved that the Swedish legation is playing around with Hungarian citizens in the first place. Raoul wants him to agree to let hundreds of thousands of Jews come under his protection, but he is allotted only 4500. International politics being what they are, the quid pro quo is that Raoul "tell the Allies of my benevolent treatment of Jews." What makes the scene so interesting is the mindset of the Hungarian government. It's clear that the Nazis are losing the war by this point, but they are still very much a presence and to antagonize them can still mean big trouble. Raoul can't understand it, but he has to accept it.
As if the Nazis aren't enough of a problem, Raoul doesn't find an easy time with all of the Jews. Asking a wealthy Budapest Jew to sign over his houses to the Swedish government for the duration of the war, the man actually refuses because they are all he has left and he wants his children to inherit something. Raoul cannot guarantee the outcome of the war. "Who are you to lecture me? Some nice Swedish boy with nothing at stake?" "I'm one of you, I'm half Jewish. Don't you see I'm fighting for my life as well as yours?" That does the trick, at least partially. "Does this entitle me to one of those Swedish documents of yours?" he man asks. "A mint copy," Raoul assures him. "Half Jewish? You told me your great-great-grandfather was Jewish," his driver quips. "One-sixteenth Jewish, call me a liar for a fraction?" he jokes back. What's important is the last line of the scene. "I feel half Jewish," Raoul says, and it's not just lip service.
Then there are the resistance leaders who have taken the Swedish paperwork in order to make fakes from it, but so many that Nikki is worried that the Nazis will be suspicious. They have their own way of doing things.
However, with houses and Swedish flags, Raoul can save a lot of Jews, and right under the nose of the Hungarian army, without their yellow stars. It's a major victory for Raoul and his friends. Of course, just when all is going so well, Eichmann shows up at the Swedish legation. "I respect the Swedes, even new ones," he snarls to Raoul and Per. Eichmann strides around room full of Jews in Raoul's office with a joking demeanor that is even scarier than when he yells directly. Raoul disarms the tension by doing an imitation of the awful man as soon as he leaves. "Could we really be winning here?" Per asks. "Better to hope than not, especially for them," Raoul replies. He figures that Eichmann is leaving Budapest because the Hungarian army is too small and Eichmann has to beg Hitler for more soldiers. In the meantime, the Russians are on their way West, so Budapest might still stand a chance.
That doesn't mean atrocities are halted completely. The Baron and Baroness drive into a mass execution and almost get shot themselves, the first time the Baroness realizes what is actually happening. "Women!" she exclaims. Her husband tries to sooth her by saying it's "old hatred" and not their problem, but her eyes are now open. Buying flowers, she sees Raoul on the street motivating his men and wants to meet him. "I have heard such wonderful things about you. I had to meet you," she says, all aglow, handing a rose to a Jewish worker before going off to have coffee with Raoul.
Raoul has a marvelous crack made to shock the Baroness. They are offered pastry in a restaurant and she refuses. He insists, saying, "if only to reassure ourselves that the ovens of Budapest are still turning out splendid (pause) pastry." She is pulled back down to earth that one, but still claims "I find it hard to believe." "Decent people always find it hard to believe," he retorts. She says she sought him out to hear his side, but he tells her "there are no sides" and lists all of the Nazi atrocities. He wants her help, to convince her husband to "stop this extermination or he will pay for it like the others." She is very upset by the conversation and leaves.
He picks up the thread at a party the Swiss give for the diplomatic corps, stealing a dance with her to parry dialogue back and forth. The Baroness starts off frosty, but is just about to drop that demeanor when her husband reappears to fetch her. Per rushes in with the bad news that the Nazis are on their way back to Budapest.
Hungary surrenders and Horthy is forced to abdicate upon the return of Eichmann and he's in a mood to kill. The Hungarian army falls right in line, though the resistance continues to plug away. Nikki dresses up as a Nazi and tries to save Hannah, who has come to a work camp to deliver fake Swedish papers. However, a German officer takes her "for fun," and Nikki is powerless to stop him. At least until Raoul arrives and summons everyone in the camp with Swedish papers. The Nazis are not happy to see him, pointing guns and threatening to shoot him. That's a perfect place to end the first part of the miniseries.
The second part starts exactly where we left off, with the young German Nazi soldiers firing over his shoulder and Raoul still insisting that anyone with a Swedish pass join him. "You will answer to the Red Cross and the Swedish-German Friendship Society" if he is touched, Raoul tells the Nazi in charge, a bold move, but one that works! Nikki watches with relief as Hannah is saved, along with many others. Raoul even takes those who don't have passes, accepting any piece of paper they can produce, with the Nazis powerless to do anything. "He has a Swedish flag on his car, doesn't he?" the Nazi in charge spits out.
As Raoul heads the flank of Jews leaving the camp, like Moses, the saved hear gunshots, aimed at Jews as reprisals from the upset Hungarian soldiers. "Keep walking!" he shouts.
Raoul still needs the Baroness, hoping once again to push her into pushing her husband, but she insists, "I will not be disloyal to him." Raoul trots out his fear tactic again, that if the Baron doesn't "disassociate himself from this government of madmen," he will stand trial and be executed when the war is over. She tells Raoul she is pregnant, and can't let her baby grow up without a father.
The Baroness decides to take a crack at her husband, telling him that she's worried about the approaching Russians and gently slipping in Wallenberg's name. The Baron isn't buying it. "Who gives a damn about him or his Jews?" but she continues to gently pursue the matter, though the Baron is only interested in sex. But, later on, as Russian bombs rain down on Budapest, the Baroness is stronger, not only using political arguments, but the whole "I will not let our baby be born into a world where..." argument. The Baron initially rages against the Jews, saying "I've told them for years" to essentially blend in and go unnoticed, but she heads that off, telling him he must go to the cabinet and "make them see what they must do!" It seems to do some good because she hears later on the radio the cabinet proclaiming safety for the Jews just as he arrives home.
Crowing a bit, with gifts of cigarettes, Raoul goes to Eichmann to report that he's heard Himmler has "ordered the gas turned off" and that Auschwitz is "to be dismantled." Eichmann claims it's not true. In fact, he is dogmatic in his mission: to be the person responsible for the most Jewish deaths in Europe. "Don't be encouraged by your little moment," he tells Raoul. "Himmler be damned. I'll decide the fate of Hungarian Jews." Undeterred, when Eichmann says he knows Raoul's little secret, that he's Jewish, Raoul retorts, "I'm one-sixteenth Jewish, less than I would prefer." Raoul keep baiting Eichmann until the latter explodes, showing his desperation. "I want that Jew lover dead before the day ends," Eichmann tells his staff as Raoul leaves.
A trap is set and a German truck pummels Raoul's car. Sonja is injured, but not seriously. Raoul calls Eichmann to congratulate him on the ruse, "but I was not in the car" and hangs up, with a clearly irate Eichmann still holding the phone. For that, Eichmann orders the Jews "to be marched." That includes the ones under Wallenberg's protection. "Let them blow their noses in it," one soldier jokes with another as he pulls down the Swedish flag. Even the resistance is forced to say it's time to call in Wallenberg.
Teicholz (Ralph Arliss) goes to see Raoul where all the Jews have been rounded up. At first, the Pole is argumentative, but Raoul says they "are beginning to overlap." If Teicholz won't directly ask for help, Raoul speaks up and says he wants access to the resistance underground or Budapest "will have no survivors." Teicholz has "room for 300," but Raoul wants 1000, "so make room."
As the Jews are corralled into the Hungarian labor camp, trust Nikki is there in his uniform. The only people left at the Swedish legation are Raoul and Per. "Do you ever miss those carefree Scandinavian days?" Raoul asks? Per does, but Raoul doesn't not. "Perhaps nothing ever did before now, Raoul," Per replies, "you found yourself HERE." Per is despondent and wants to go home to his wife as Raoul says, "we hit rock bottom today."
At the end of this very difficult day, there is a bright spot when the Baroness walks into the legation. Is she there to "plead your husband's case" as Raoul puts it? Well, she does want him to know that her husband tried to stop the Nazis and that "he's a good man," but there's a bit of self-preservation too. If he ever is tried, will Raoul testify?
But there's more, and this is where the movie hits a snag. This tight tense story is interrupted by a love plot. The miniseries format virtually demanded it of every movie, but it's particularly needless here. "I'm here because I have to be," she says breathlessly. There's a kiss and then she says she has to go, but she has some superb words on her way out. She says their mutual priest friend told her, "the Nazis' greatest victory was convincing the Jews they were doomed. But now, you changed that, for thousands of them." That's an incredibly powerful line and redeems the entire scene.
The situation for the Jews in the Hungarian camp worsens. Some of the characters we've met are killed, others beaten. For Raoul, it's a race against time. If he can stop the trains from leaving Hungary, he may be able to save them, because once the trains leave Hungarian soil, he cannot help. As he drives to the train station, his car slowed as it winds its way through the miserable masses headed to the same place, he wonders how this can be possible in Christianity. "Perhaps we are witnessing the death of God," he says mournfully.
At the station, Raoul is frantic. Luckily, the Hungarian army is fine with being bribed, and then he has to physically get as many people off the trains as possible, using phony certificates, saying "they are in the ledger," anything to stall. The Nazis on hand are not happy, but the Hungarians calm them. When a Nazi asks the Hungarian commander if he was bribed, he says he was, "but you'll get your chance." After all, Raoul can't save them all, so plenty will be on those trains to make the Nazis happy.
I'm going to be uncharacteristically brief about the end of the movie. Raoul is able to save Jews over and over through various methods, but his triumph is getting the local Nazis to call off an order from Eichmann to machine gun 100,000 Jews. The Germans flee as the Russians approach and the Jews are free to break the padlocks on the ghetto doors. It's this wonderful sight Raoul sees as he drives out of Budapest. "We did make a difference," he says.
Though the story ends better for many of the Jews in Budapest than it did across most of Europe, Raoul's personal story is one of epic tragedy, almost unreal if it weren't the truth. In January 1945, Raoul Wallenberg went to meet with the Russian commander and was never seen again. It's believed he died in captivity in 1947, but rumors and sightings popped up for many years. The man who had literally stood in the firing line to save so many people simple vanished.
I don't know how many stories the creators of "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story" intended to tell. Obviously, the one involving Raoul Wallenberg, but what also comes across strikingly is the Hungarian situation near the end of the war. We are so used to hearing about the Western Front or the concentration camps themselves in the Eastern Front, or the great naval battles of the Pacific that it almost seems like the entire world was not at war. Hungary was very much a part of World War II, on the Axis side, though under Nazi domination. Through a very small lens (the Baron and Baroness), we're able to learn a lot, mainly how even countries in the thick of the Final Solution could be unaware of what was happening, if they chose to be. Something similar happens in "Holocaust" as we watch simple Germans come under the spell of Hitler's propaganda, but that's a more familiar story.
Of course, the main story goes to Raoul Wallenberg, a hero is ever there was one. The title doesn't even need to say "A Hero's Story," to crown him as such, but I suspect that her was so long forgotten, that without it, no one's interest would have been piqued. No doubt Steven Spielberg told Oskar Schindler's story with far more brio and pathos, but a network miniseries could not have told that story and been nearly as powerful. Wallenberg's story, which takes place in just a few brief months, is fascinating, and made believable by Richard Chamberlain's actorly charm and passionate devotion to creating a robust character.
Comments? Question? Email me at hpmaraka@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Sinatra (1992)
If you idolized Frank Sinatra when he was lanky heartthrob, adored him as a Rat Pack leader or even felt the glow of nostalgia in his latter confusing years, the 1992 "Sinatra" is the miniseries for you. If you want the truth, I suppose you should go find Kitty Kelly or Ray Liotta. This "Sinatra" was produced while Old Blue Eyes was still alive (by his daughter Tina, no less, the one with no career of her own other than carrying Dad's torch, a step lower than Frank Jr. and Nancy, who don't do much more), so it's a very adoring, no, make that slavishly adoring, biopic. There are some outbursts and some unsavory characters, but this Frank Sinatra gleams as innocently and brightly as he did as far back as the 1930s.
The soundtrack is by Sinatra himself, so like this movie or not, the music is terrific.
Hoboken, NJ, 1925. Ten-year-old Frankie is already something of a little hoodlum, stealing cigarettes and sheet music. He gets his gall from his mother Dolly (Olympia Dukakis), helping the poor by arranging jobs and making sure the Mayor owes her favors. The minute little Frankie walks into his parents' bar, the denizens beg him to sing, "with feeling." "With feeling costs a nickel," enterprising Frankie tells them before launching into "My Wonderful One." He sasses both Mom and Dad (Joe Santos), but they are helpless against his charm. Frankie wants to a boxer. "Just what the world needs, another punch-drunk palooka," Dolly quips. She wants him to carry a sign at a rally for the Mayor the next day, but he refuses to participate unless he can sing the national anthem. "It's not a love song, Rudy Valley, it's the 'Star Spangled Banner,'" Dolly tells him when she sees him mugging to young girls in the crowd.
A few years pass and miniseries hunk Philip Casnoff joins us the older Sinatra. He doesn't look like Frank (he's must more handsome), but he has the mannerisms down pretty well. He informs his parents that he wants to be a singer, "to be someone," but his father tells him if he doesn't work, he can't stay at home, live there or eat there. So, off he goes to New York City and makes the rounds looking for an agent and work.
Frank brazenly goes backstage at a burlesque theater and asks if they need a singer. You know 'It Had To Be You?'" the manager asks. He does, and stands center stage singing it (Casnoff lip syncs to Sinatra doing it) while the few men present crowd long for any scrap of female flesh that can be produced. He sneaks home to his mother, who says, "get in here, you little son-of-a-bitch" just before a neighbor rushes in with the news that Marty has been taken to the hospital. Father and son kind of reconcile, at least if Frankie will "come home and get a real job."
"Hey, I'm Frank, you're Nancy," Frank says when he strides across the street to meet Nancy (Gina Gershon) and get an impromptu manicure since he sees her doing hers. He gives her a few bars of "Ain't She Sweet" on his ukulele and then meets her on the beach with her large family the next day. Frank accepts a job with Nancy's father as a plasterer. Her father is also salt-of-the-earth, so when one of the female family members says, "he's dreamy," Papa says, "he's a dreamer." Nonetheless, he is eager to teach Frank to appreciate opera and it affords Frank the chance to take singing lessons from Mr. Quinlin (Jeff Corey). His peppy version of "Stormy Weather," doesn't impress the teacher because "you don't understand the words." Frank is not deterred. He wants to learn anything he can be taught. The combination of starting from scratch with Mr. Quinlin and listening to opera with Nancy's father does the trick in a handy montage. Eventually, he has to quit the plastering job because he can't manage the schedule of work and singing lessons. "No work, no Nancy," her pop tells Frank.
When has that ever stopped two youngsters in heat? Witless lover dialogue pretty much sets it up: "I don't wanna lose you," says he. "I don't wanna lose you," says she. It's Nancy, with one line of dialogue, who convinces Frank to go for it again. So, he auditions with "Stormy Weather," this time for Major Bowes (Jay Robinson), who puts him in a group, not exactly what Frank had in mind, but he does make Frank the lead singer. Major Bowes anoints them "The Hoboken Four" and gives them "Shine" to sing. And with that, Frank gets to tour the country with the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, once again using flirtation as a hallmark of his performance style. The girls go for it in a big way, much to the annoyance of the other three group members. So, the scrappy lad ditches Major Bowes and returns to Hoboken and Nancy's waiting arms.
He finds out that Dolly has been arrested for being an "abortionist." She defends her actions because it's the Great Depression and she's helping people who already have too many mouths to feed. "Most people don't make $75 a month and if they did, they wouldn't quit," she yells at him, outraged that he would give up his $75 A WEEK job! Nancy chooses to believe Frank when he says he quit the job because he was "afraid he might lose" her, but this is while they are in bed necking to King Edward VIII's abdication speech. Nancy wants to elope, but Frank insists they have a real wedding, with her gown "covering the floor like the first falling snow." Oh, my stars, where the hell did he dig up that groaner?
When Frank gets a job in the middle of nowhere singing with just a piano between the band's sets, he's told by the bandleader that his name is "too I-talian." When he's introduced that night, Dolly loudly grumbles, "who the hell is Frankie Trent?" Frank has to wheel on the piano player (who is blind and told to "shut your eyes, you're scarin' the customers") while singing "Pennies From Heaven" for tips.
For a tiny bit of "Francis Albert Sinatra, No Saint Was He," the movie tosses in a groupie who refuses to take no for an answer and they have sex in the car. This takes up all of three seconds and is done through fogged-up windows. However, the girl ends up pregnant and Frank is arrested on a morals charge. His explanation to fiancee Nancy is that the girl is married and "there is a whole string of guys." But, Nancy is angry, especially since she has already given up her virginity to him! He swears fidelity to Nancy so many times that he says, "if I swear anymore, God will strike me dead." "Good, you deserve it," she replies, but of course she'll forgive him. And marry him, in a big white dress, just as promised.
Harry James (Matthew Posey) comes to hear Frank sing one night and offers him a job touring with his orchestra on the spot, if he changes his name to Frankie Satin. "I like Sinatra," Frank says and it sticks. He tours and even records. Just as Harry announces they have a gig in Chicago for the holidays, Frank finds Nancy puking in the toilet. He doesn't want pregnant Nancy going on the road with him, predictably. It's late 1939, the news is that "The Reds Invade Finland," but Frank wants to jump from the James band to that of Tommy Dorsey (Bob Gunton). Dorsey gives him a terrific offer (though 42% of it goes to Dorsey "for life"), too good an offer to refuse. "If Harry lets you out," Dorsey cautions. James does and with no rancor, just a hug for Frank. A quarter of the way through the movie and more than that of Frank's life and Frank has been an angel, making no enemies and only officially sleeping with one woman besides beloved Nancy.
Things are not immediately smooth with Dorsey and company. Buddy Rich (Tommy Simotes) rides him for being late (on the drums, of course). Dorsey wants him to sing the previous singer's song, and Frank won't. Cocky as all get out, he declines the use of a lyric sheet for "I'll Never Smile Again" because he knows the words, and of course sings it perfectly the first time out. Even Mama Dolly sways to the gentle version on the radio and Nancy gazes into space hearing it.
"We have a problem," a hotel manager says, "we don't serve Coloreds here," referring to Sy Oliver (John Wesley). This is the first time the famous Sinatra temper flares up in this movie. "Give him the key or I'm gonna wreck this barn. I said give him the key!" Frank brays, pulling the hotel manager by the tie. And this was before all that Chairman of the Board crap.
Confident as ever, Frank has a wow of a conversation with Dorsey late one night. "So, what's your signature song gonna be?" Tommy asks. "I don't want a song, I want a sound. You see, TD, if I can do with my voice what you can do with a trombone, I can knock the whole gang right off the charts." How the hell is Dorsey supposed to follow that? "Breath control" is all he can say. Frank's mixture of undying self-esteem and talent seems to push through any roughness. When Frank launches into "I'll Never Know," the scene is pretty, but the recording used is of very poor quality, and obviously Frank couldn't re-record it. Strange to include that scene, which doesn't further the movie at all.
Frank asks Dorsey for time off to be at the birth of his first child. "When an entertainer is at the birth of his children, it means he's not working. You are!" Dorsey thunders. Frank offers Dorsey the godfather role to his kid, but Dorsey can sling the crap just as well as Frank. He tells him the band is going to be in a movie and that "Billboard is going to name you Top Band Vocalist." That one hits Frank and he forgets about the kid. Instead, he asks Dorsey for not more money, not better billing (which Dorsey was willing to give), but "more strings." By the next tour stop, not only are there an acre of violinists supporting Frank, but even a harp!
The only person not bowing at the altar of Sinatra is Buddy Rich, but since he keeps referring to Frank as a "grease ball," he loses all credibility as a person. And that, my friends, is how you write a movie about people still alive and keep them happy (Rich had died in 1987, so no one needed to walk on eggshells for his sake). In fact, when the two get into a physical altercation that Frank starts over Rich's inability to keep to Frank's tempo, Dorsey takes Frank's side, but only quickly because Nancy is on the phone, complaining that he's never around to talk to her. Since poor Gina Gershon is directly to be as annoying as possible in this scene, Frank still seems like a hero, even though he's clearly not walking on the straight-and-narrow.
In Hollywood, filming a totally insignificant song in a totally insignificant role in a totally insignificant movie, Frank says "I can't sing to a camera," so the director puts a girl in a chair near the band so Frank can focus his attention on her. In the scene and in bed, where he becomes a tiger. But, wait, folks! He doesn't actually do anything but mack on the girl, all clothing on, when his mother calls with the news that he has a daughter. Again, that's how we keep Francis Albert Sinatra and family happy but still remain somewhat faithful to the past. "I'm a father!" Frank says to the girl. "I don't know what to say," she replies. "How about goodbye?" How very family man-esque of him, no?
The rest of the world is still revolving. Frank gets home to Hoboken to celebrate with Nancy and his family, Dorsey in tow. Dolly nags about Frank's billing and Marty has asthmatic attacks while rummaging through old photo albums. And the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Patriotism was good for the Big Band Era.
Frank's career is taking off just when Nancy needs him at home. "You have no right to stop me," he yells. "I don't want to stop you. I want you to be the greatest singer there is. I just don't want to lose you," she whines, to an assurance that he will never leave her. Frank quits Dorsey, though with a year's notice, especially since Dorsey owns over 40% of him. Oh, wait, the latter might not be true anymore, especially since Frank now has a fleet of lawyers, producers and big companies behind him. "You know, not everyone thinks you are as talented as you do. Personally? I hope you fall flat on your face," Dorsey says in frustration.
Initially, the owner of the Paramount Theatre doesn't think Frank can fill it. "You've got a small voice," he's told. "The girls will fill the Paramount," one of his minions says. Indeed they do. Lines of them fight to get in. Frank is on the bill with Benny Goodman (David Kimball), performing what is easily the most complex and important Big Bang contribution. "And now, Frank Sinatra," Goodman announces to screams of delight from the crowd and the legend of the bobbysoxers is born (though the rendition of "Where or When?" is another tinny version that could have been cleaned up for the soundtrack). Casnoff nails the Sinatra presence, the light-as-air performance style and especially the connection with the harpie fans. Even Nancy is impressed.
Everyone Frank knows is on the payroll. Nancy goes over the bills and signs autographs for him while Frank tends to the parts he enjoys. He's loving life in Hollywood, where MGM is putting him under contract. Nancy wants him home, since she's pregnant again, but life on the East Coast is pretty much done. He misses the birth of his second child, despite promises he would be there. "You are 0 for 2," Dolly tells him when she picks up phone, saying it "had a guilty ring." Pretending to be asleep, Nancy cries. He can't get to Nancy because he first has to meet President Roosevelt.
And then it hits. A cliche moment that always has to happen in any miniseries about a real person. Frank and Nancy are arguing about giving Dolly money over and over and Nancy turns to Frank to say (you can say it along with her), "I don't know who you are anymore." Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Luckily, the conversation doesn't go any further than that, but even just the one sentence is one cliche too many. He's having way more fun with his fans and his entourage. Looking at Philip croon "I Fall in Love Too Fast," he actually looks like Sinatra. Until an egg is thrown at him by an angry boy, "on the night my father comes to see me!" bellows Frank.
With fame comes the underside of fame: the boy with the egg, the morals charge popping up out of legal death, the press twisting his words, the fact that he's not in the war and the hellish schedule that has him drinking heavily. He yells at his entourage a lot, but also treats like them like family. Worries are suddenly chucked out when Marilyn Maxwell (Carol Barbee) arrives backstage to spend some personal time with Frank.
The family moves to Hollywood so Frank can take on his first real role, but he has demands. The studio is willing to throw the biggest names in songwriting his way, but he wants Jules Styne (then just about to start a Broadway career) and Sammy Cahn. "They don't start Monday morning, neither do I," he insists. The conversation ends abruptly when Frank sees Ava Gardner (Marcia Gay Harden) walk by. She's crying over her latest dust-up with Artie Shaw, but he makes her laugh.
Nancy learns how to drive a car, but a fancy car isn't to her liking. "There's no room for the groceries," she whines. Her mother says, "the way he eats, you could fit them in here" and opens the glove compartment to find a jewelry box containing a heart bracelet. Let's assume it's not for her. Frank's roving attention hits Nancy square in the face during a New Year's party they host (with Sammy Davis and Bogie, among others), when Nancy sees Marilyn wearing the bracelet from the car! As the countdown reaches it's zenith, Nancy orders Marilyn "out of my house."
The next morning, Nancy lays into Frank. "It's nothing," he assures her, regarding Marilyn. "It's not nothing to me," she says. He replies with another star biopic cliche that better writers could have found a way around: "It's just there's so much pressure. It doesn't let up for a second. Sometimes I feel like climbing the walls." That one appears in every male-with-a-wandering-penis movie about a star. The rest of the conversation follows familiar track, including the expected, "maybe we should go away together, just the two of us," but Frank pricks a hole in that one. How about nights together? The next film is to be filmed in NYC, so that won't work either.
As a reporter gets a soundbite out of Frank about Communism that will no doubt come back to haunt him, he gets in a car with pal Peter Lawford, he meets Gene Tierney, snuggled up with JFK. Loyal agent George Evans (Joe Grifasi) tries to get Frank to play nice with the press (instead of slugging them), to not get his mug on the front page with a dame who isn't his wife and to even stop drinking because it's ruining his voice. "Go away for a few days...no women!" So, Frank takes a few days off in Havana, where he's photographed with Lucky Luciano, among other notorious mobsters. Frank doesn't see the harm in knowing Luciano. "I drive the getaway car," he jokes, and then adds to George, "you said no women. You didn't say anything about mobsters." George begs him to stop his trip down "this self-destructive path."
We met Sammy Davis Jr. (David Raynr) again for a split second because Frank decides to knock out right-wing columnist Lee Mortimer, which lands him in jail. LB Mayer calls him and tells him to apologize. Never one to admit his mistakes, Frank gets rip-roaring drunk and dresses as a priest to meet his pals at Romanoff. This is the perfect place for a tirade. Bogie tells him to get some sleep so he can work. "Work. This isn't work. They dress me funny and I sing. If they gave me 'Hamlet,' they would make me sing," he rails. Frank is ruining his career and he wants his marriage to be over, though Nancy is pregnant again. But mainly, his problem is "I lost it. I lost the feeling."
Even the fans have disappeared. Columbia wants to let him go and he's not even upset. "I'm only 33...is it all over at 33?" "It's a big pendulum, you'll come back," he's assured. He does perk up when he sees Ava Gardner in the hotel lobby. She grabs his arm and takes him to see Billie Holliday (Leata Galloway) perform. That's the spark they need to start their intense affair, one that became Hollywood legend in no time. They are physical wild animals together. Ava is far more practical (and experienced), so when Frank wants to see her again, she purrs, "it was just a brief moment, Francis. Let's not make history out of it." No one has ever refuse Frank before! That makes him even more obsessed, phoning in Christmas with his family and not able to concentrate on his new film.
Though Ava was not married when she met Frank, he was, but somehow, the movie makes her the villain. She yells at him and then kisses him passionately. She toys with him horribly. "It's not enough for you to have a guy, you gotta mess with his head too?" Frank says, grabbing her. That sets Ava off, demanding that he never touch her like that again. "It's never gonna work between us," she says.
As for Nancy, she knows the gossip, and Frank decides it's time to move out. "Come home, Frank. You belong here," she assures him. "Then why don't I feel it?" With that, Nancy is forced to agree. As much as they try, Frank and Ava can't stay apart. When he's singing at a fancy club, Ava, appearing from the mist, walks slowly down the center aisle, drops her fur to reveal a gorgeous outfit. "Every chick in here wants to be you and every cat in here wants to be me," he tells her as they walk very slowly to their table in order to show off. Frank can't keep calm when a photographer snaps a picture of him with Ava, ripping out the film and pushing the guy.
The affair with Ava, volatile as it is, exacts a heavy toll on Frank (of course it does, since this is a rough episode in Frank's life that cannot be ignored, no matter how many children were involved in the making of this film). His faithful George has a heart attack and dies trying to get him out of one scrape or another. MGM drops his contract. "Ah, what the hell? They never gave me a decent role anyway," he says, trying to sound okay, but clearly devastated. He wants Ava by his side, but she has her own career to think about and can't afford to be with him as he heads to London for a singing gig.
However, as he's singing, sounding particularly broken-hearted, Ava actually does show up so Frank can see her in the wings. Naturally, a song is picked that has lyrics matching the exact moment the end of the first portion requires.
What of Nancy? She remains supportive, begging him to "take a rest" when he complains that he is dreading performing. "It doesn't mean anything to me anymore, nothing does," the complaining crooner says, actually speaking of Ava. "Why do you want to hold onto me if I don't want to be here?" he coldly asks her. She believes he will tire of Ava and come back to her.
Things hit rock bottom when Frank gets on stage and cannot sing, spitting blood into his handkerchief. Unfortunately, it's at the Copa in Hollywood, so everyone knows instantly what's going on. The news reporting it says, "that's the old Frank here's the new Frank, Frankie Lane..." and that radio gets switched off immediately. He's supposed to be on complete vocal rest, but when he sees a picture of Ava in the paper with another man, he gets the first plane to Spain where she's filming a movie. Her handsome co-star speaks no English, so Frank gets even nastier. "This is my woman, mi senorita, so adios!" he tells the poor guy. As always, being with Ava brings out the worst in both, but once they get the arguing done, then it's happiness and loving, at least until the next argument. "You're kinda cute when you can't speak," Ava says as Frank presents her with an expensive necklace.
On a rainy romantic day, sweetness in bed turns into a brawl because Ava says he's not "trying hard enough" to divorce Nancy and he can't have both women. "This is torture, Frank. It's wrecking my career. I can't do this anymore," she says. "Two minutes ago, we were happy. What happened?" "I was being a sap. I want you to go home and get a divorce," Ava demands and stalks out.
Back to the Paramount, the site of Frank's biggest success, he goes, but the joint is empty and after that, bookings are few and nothing exciting. Things are so bad that when he goes to light a cigarette at the stove and the pilot does not light, he can kill himself. So, he turns the gas all the way up. Luckily, he's caught in time (obviously). Did this ever really happen? It's tough to believe that someone like Frank Sinatra ever thought of suicide, but easier to accept the fact that it makes for a pungent dramatic twist. "It's torture when we're together and worse when we're not," Ava tells him as a way to cheer him up (?). With Ava in the audience at a New Jersey concert, he can sing perfectly.
It's at this concert that Frank meets Sam Giancana (Rod Steiger), and though Ava is worried that he's in the mafia, Frank says he owes his career to men like that. Even more unlikely in this room is columnist Earl Wilson, and it takes all of Ava's charm to get him to agree not to print a story about seeing her there.
Except Earl Wilson prints an article calling Frank and Ava Romeo and Juliet, which Nancy carps makes her "a villain for trying to keep my family together." For the 53rd time, Frank begs for a divorce, but this time, it works. When word gets out, a reporter asks Frank, "what are your wedding gifts to each other, boxing gloves?" Ava takes it all in stride, but when another reporter asks if it will be a "white wedding" Frank pushes him to the ground and breaks his camera. Ava, naturally, does not wear white. Set to "They Can't Take that Away From Me," Frank and Ava have a montage of great moments, even if one of them is a jealous spat ending in a kiss.
Ava is off to Africa to shoot "Mogambo" with Clark Gable and Frank doesn't trust her, so he goes along. He's obsessed with "From Here to Eternity" and knows the role of Maggio could revitalize his career. The heat is unbearable, but Ava thinks she might be pregnant, which is not good news for her because this role is too important for her. Frank gets good news, a telegram in Africa (uh huh) saying Columbia Pictures has agreed to test him for "From Here to Eternity" and though Ava isn't at all thrilled, he asks her for money to get back to the US.
The screen test is powerful, with Frank giving a tour-de-force, but bad news comes when Frank is told that Ava collapsed in Africa and was rushed to a hospital in London. When he gets there, she's actually in a hotel room dressed for dinner. "I was pregnant and now I'm not. I don't want to talk about it," she tells him. The loss of the baby is left a little vague, but if you bet on abortion, I think you have the safer bed. He thinks having a baby would be good for the marriage. "Did having a baby bring you and Nancy closer together?" she asks dryly? Ouch. Ava is off to a New Year's Eve party, and Frank roars, "walk out of that door and you walk out of my life!" However, the incessant pattern of good versus bad comes back AGAIN and Frank gets a call that he's won the part of Maggio. Unable to accept his success, Ava leaves while he's still on the phone.
As we all know, Frank wins a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (at the expense of a horse, if "The Godfather" is accurate) and his career is back, bigger than ever. He does movies and records, in that ring-a-ding-ding period of his life where he could do no wrong. Yet another montage takes care of the passage of time.
Frank misses another family event, but this time he has a good reason, Sammy has been in a car accident. We've seen Sammy twice, and only for half a second each time, but now he has a full dramatic scene, where he wonders how he'll dance with only one eye. "If I can't dance, I don't want to live," Sammy says as Frank trade vulgarities like teenagers. Frank takes him into the steam room in Vegas where the entire Rat Pack is gathered wearing eye patches like Sammy. Even JFK is there. Dino (Danny Gans) joins them and the three do pretty much the Rat Pack schtick, racism and all. When Frank introduces girlfriend Juliet Prowse from the stage, Mama Dolly quips, "what's he got at his front door, a turnstile?"
Well, speaking of JFK, he's running for President and Papa Joe comes a-callin' on Frank to enlist his friend Sam Giancana's help in securing the election. "What's in it for you? They gonna make you Ambassador to Italy or somethin'?" Sam wonders, but agrees to help. Frank loves being pals with the Kennedys, but practical Bobby Kennedy wants Sammy Davis removed from campaigning because he's black and about to marry white Mai Britt. Bobby has some god-awful reasoning to convince Frank to make Sammy back down, but he doesn't have to worry, because Sammy knows what's going on and even postpones his wedding.
Frank goes to visit "Chicky Baby" JFK in his new digs at the White House. Jack is excited for an upcoming visit to Los Angeles where he will stay with Frank, busy making "improvements" so the whole staff can fit. "I'll see you in the spring," Jack says to Frank on his way out. It's Peter Lawford who is sent to break the news to Frank that the Presidential visit is not happening. "You got no loyalty, you got no guts," Frank yells at Peter for taking sides with the Kennedys against him.
And the mob isn't any happier. With Bobby Kennedy cracking down on the mafia, Sam Giancana and his friends are in trouble and Frank is their link, though Frank is persona non grata at The White House pretty quickly. Sam wants payment on the favor of delivering West Virginia in the election, but Frank says he's the one who asked for the favor, not the Kennedys. It's getting very complicated. Frank has to shed friends just to look proper, but he packs them off with goodies like his music publishing company.
During his European tour, Frank gets to spend time with Ava in Spain, where she now lives. Why Spain? "They got people, real people," she says. He asks her to marry him again. "What could you possibly miss about me?" she asks and bolts. From here, it's the "One For My Baby" mini-montage where Frank watches JFK's funeral procession and cries.
On the set in 1965, Frank meets Mia Farrow (Nina Siemaszko). Frank offers an autograph and she jokes, "no, who are you?" Cue "You Make Me Feel So Young" as Frank and Mia begin their oddball romance. Poor young Mia isn't thrilled with Frank's house, as it's filled with pictures of Ava, and Frank never really cottons to Mia's vibe, which is anything but Old Hollywood. She meditates and reads (take that Ava) and wears love beads. They marry with Frank looking like he's getting hitched to Rosemary's baby itself. Oh, and she has bad taste in music. "It's not music, it's crap," Frank bellows as he grumbles about the state of music. Mia does have one good comeback when he complains about bad lyrics, going through the do-be-do-be-dos of "Strangers in the Night." They have the again inevitable conversation about her advancing career, she wants a baby ("my kids grew up thinking the telephone was their father") and he doesn't, and finally Mia puts her finger on it. "Hey, I'm not Ava!"
In other words, the marriage is doomed from the start. Rather than rehashing conversations Frank has had with either Nancy or Ava (mostly Ava), we breeze through the whole kooky romance at top speed. None of those glamorous sable-and-satin-drenched arguments like Frank and Ava, just stilted phone conversations and bing-bang-boom, it's over. One supposes that the Sinatra children were not at all fond of Stepmother Mia, because the rush job is very obvious.
By the time Frank divorces Mia, he's graying and getting heavy. But, the nurses at the hospital where Marty is dying still think he's pretty foxy. Frank confides in his father that "I'm thinking of leaving the business...I'm tired, tired of being in the spotlight. The music business changes so fast, I can't keep up with the next guy anymore. Maybe I should stop trying," he tells the man who never expected him to make it. He retires, just as he promised his father before Marty expired.
Less than two years later, in 1974, retirement is over. "That's Life." We're now into the tux and toupee years. But, he sells out Madison Square Garden and they still throw roses to the stage. No underwear, for granny panties aren't particularly aerodynamic. At the end of the song, Frank blows a kiss to the audience and the move ends.
Frank Sinatra never seemed so squeaky clean, but you know what? That's not such a bad thing. Despite the temper and such, he was one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th Century and he did lead a colorful life. It may not have been the Technicolor one on display here, but it was a great ride.
Comments? Questions? Laughs? Feel free to email me at hpmaraka@gmail.com so we can chat.
The soundtrack is by Sinatra himself, so like this movie or not, the music is terrific.
Hoboken, NJ, 1925. Ten-year-old Frankie is already something of a little hoodlum, stealing cigarettes and sheet music. He gets his gall from his mother Dolly (Olympia Dukakis), helping the poor by arranging jobs and making sure the Mayor owes her favors. The minute little Frankie walks into his parents' bar, the denizens beg him to sing, "with feeling." "With feeling costs a nickel," enterprising Frankie tells them before launching into "My Wonderful One." He sasses both Mom and Dad (Joe Santos), but they are helpless against his charm. Frankie wants to a boxer. "Just what the world needs, another punch-drunk palooka," Dolly quips. She wants him to carry a sign at a rally for the Mayor the next day, but he refuses to participate unless he can sing the national anthem. "It's not a love song, Rudy Valley, it's the 'Star Spangled Banner,'" Dolly tells him when she sees him mugging to young girls in the crowd.
A few years pass and miniseries hunk Philip Casnoff joins us the older Sinatra. He doesn't look like Frank (he's must more handsome), but he has the mannerisms down pretty well. He informs his parents that he wants to be a singer, "to be someone," but his father tells him if he doesn't work, he can't stay at home, live there or eat there. So, off he goes to New York City and makes the rounds looking for an agent and work.
Frank brazenly goes backstage at a burlesque theater and asks if they need a singer. You know 'It Had To Be You?'" the manager asks. He does, and stands center stage singing it (Casnoff lip syncs to Sinatra doing it) while the few men present crowd long for any scrap of female flesh that can be produced. He sneaks home to his mother, who says, "get in here, you little son-of-a-bitch" just before a neighbor rushes in with the news that Marty has been taken to the hospital. Father and son kind of reconcile, at least if Frankie will "come home and get a real job."
"Hey, I'm Frank, you're Nancy," Frank says when he strides across the street to meet Nancy (Gina Gershon) and get an impromptu manicure since he sees her doing hers. He gives her a few bars of "Ain't She Sweet" on his ukulele and then meets her on the beach with her large family the next day. Frank accepts a job with Nancy's father as a plasterer. Her father is also salt-of-the-earth, so when one of the female family members says, "he's dreamy," Papa says, "he's a dreamer." Nonetheless, he is eager to teach Frank to appreciate opera and it affords Frank the chance to take singing lessons from Mr. Quinlin (Jeff Corey). His peppy version of "Stormy Weather," doesn't impress the teacher because "you don't understand the words." Frank is not deterred. He wants to learn anything he can be taught. The combination of starting from scratch with Mr. Quinlin and listening to opera with Nancy's father does the trick in a handy montage. Eventually, he has to quit the plastering job because he can't manage the schedule of work and singing lessons. "No work, no Nancy," her pop tells Frank.
When has that ever stopped two youngsters in heat? Witless lover dialogue pretty much sets it up: "I don't wanna lose you," says he. "I don't wanna lose you," says she. It's Nancy, with one line of dialogue, who convinces Frank to go for it again. So, he auditions with "Stormy Weather," this time for Major Bowes (Jay Robinson), who puts him in a group, not exactly what Frank had in mind, but he does make Frank the lead singer. Major Bowes anoints them "The Hoboken Four" and gives them "Shine" to sing. And with that, Frank gets to tour the country with the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, once again using flirtation as a hallmark of his performance style. The girls go for it in a big way, much to the annoyance of the other three group members. So, the scrappy lad ditches Major Bowes and returns to Hoboken and Nancy's waiting arms.
He finds out that Dolly has been arrested for being an "abortionist." She defends her actions because it's the Great Depression and she's helping people who already have too many mouths to feed. "Most people don't make $75 a month and if they did, they wouldn't quit," she yells at him, outraged that he would give up his $75 A WEEK job! Nancy chooses to believe Frank when he says he quit the job because he was "afraid he might lose" her, but this is while they are in bed necking to King Edward VIII's abdication speech. Nancy wants to elope, but Frank insists they have a real wedding, with her gown "covering the floor like the first falling snow." Oh, my stars, where the hell did he dig up that groaner?
When Frank gets a job in the middle of nowhere singing with just a piano between the band's sets, he's told by the bandleader that his name is "too I-talian." When he's introduced that night, Dolly loudly grumbles, "who the hell is Frankie Trent?" Frank has to wheel on the piano player (who is blind and told to "shut your eyes, you're scarin' the customers") while singing "Pennies From Heaven" for tips.
For a tiny bit of "Francis Albert Sinatra, No Saint Was He," the movie tosses in a groupie who refuses to take no for an answer and they have sex in the car. This takes up all of three seconds and is done through fogged-up windows. However, the girl ends up pregnant and Frank is arrested on a morals charge. His explanation to fiancee Nancy is that the girl is married and "there is a whole string of guys." But, Nancy is angry, especially since she has already given up her virginity to him! He swears fidelity to Nancy so many times that he says, "if I swear anymore, God will strike me dead." "Good, you deserve it," she replies, but of course she'll forgive him. And marry him, in a big white dress, just as promised.
Harry James (Matthew Posey) comes to hear Frank sing one night and offers him a job touring with his orchestra on the spot, if he changes his name to Frankie Satin. "I like Sinatra," Frank says and it sticks. He tours and even records. Just as Harry announces they have a gig in Chicago for the holidays, Frank finds Nancy puking in the toilet. He doesn't want pregnant Nancy going on the road with him, predictably. It's late 1939, the news is that "The Reds Invade Finland," but Frank wants to jump from the James band to that of Tommy Dorsey (Bob Gunton). Dorsey gives him a terrific offer (though 42% of it goes to Dorsey "for life"), too good an offer to refuse. "If Harry lets you out," Dorsey cautions. James does and with no rancor, just a hug for Frank. A quarter of the way through the movie and more than that of Frank's life and Frank has been an angel, making no enemies and only officially sleeping with one woman besides beloved Nancy.
Things are not immediately smooth with Dorsey and company. Buddy Rich (Tommy Simotes) rides him for being late (on the drums, of course). Dorsey wants him to sing the previous singer's song, and Frank won't. Cocky as all get out, he declines the use of a lyric sheet for "I'll Never Smile Again" because he knows the words, and of course sings it perfectly the first time out. Even Mama Dolly sways to the gentle version on the radio and Nancy gazes into space hearing it.
"We have a problem," a hotel manager says, "we don't serve Coloreds here," referring to Sy Oliver (John Wesley). This is the first time the famous Sinatra temper flares up in this movie. "Give him the key or I'm gonna wreck this barn. I said give him the key!" Frank brays, pulling the hotel manager by the tie. And this was before all that Chairman of the Board crap.
Confident as ever, Frank has a wow of a conversation with Dorsey late one night. "So, what's your signature song gonna be?" Tommy asks. "I don't want a song, I want a sound. You see, TD, if I can do with my voice what you can do with a trombone, I can knock the whole gang right off the charts." How the hell is Dorsey supposed to follow that? "Breath control" is all he can say. Frank's mixture of undying self-esteem and talent seems to push through any roughness. When Frank launches into "I'll Never Know," the scene is pretty, but the recording used is of very poor quality, and obviously Frank couldn't re-record it. Strange to include that scene, which doesn't further the movie at all.
Frank asks Dorsey for time off to be at the birth of his first child. "When an entertainer is at the birth of his children, it means he's not working. You are!" Dorsey thunders. Frank offers Dorsey the godfather role to his kid, but Dorsey can sling the crap just as well as Frank. He tells him the band is going to be in a movie and that "Billboard is going to name you Top Band Vocalist." That one hits Frank and he forgets about the kid. Instead, he asks Dorsey for not more money, not better billing (which Dorsey was willing to give), but "more strings." By the next tour stop, not only are there an acre of violinists supporting Frank, but even a harp!
The only person not bowing at the altar of Sinatra is Buddy Rich, but since he keeps referring to Frank as a "grease ball," he loses all credibility as a person. And that, my friends, is how you write a movie about people still alive and keep them happy (Rich had died in 1987, so no one needed to walk on eggshells for his sake). In fact, when the two get into a physical altercation that Frank starts over Rich's inability to keep to Frank's tempo, Dorsey takes Frank's side, but only quickly because Nancy is on the phone, complaining that he's never around to talk to her. Since poor Gina Gershon is directly to be as annoying as possible in this scene, Frank still seems like a hero, even though he's clearly not walking on the straight-and-narrow.
In Hollywood, filming a totally insignificant song in a totally insignificant role in a totally insignificant movie, Frank says "I can't sing to a camera," so the director puts a girl in a chair near the band so Frank can focus his attention on her. In the scene and in bed, where he becomes a tiger. But, wait, folks! He doesn't actually do anything but mack on the girl, all clothing on, when his mother calls with the news that he has a daughter. Again, that's how we keep Francis Albert Sinatra and family happy but still remain somewhat faithful to the past. "I'm a father!" Frank says to the girl. "I don't know what to say," she replies. "How about goodbye?" How very family man-esque of him, no?
The rest of the world is still revolving. Frank gets home to Hoboken to celebrate with Nancy and his family, Dorsey in tow. Dolly nags about Frank's billing and Marty has asthmatic attacks while rummaging through old photo albums. And the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Patriotism was good for the Big Band Era.
Frank's career is taking off just when Nancy needs him at home. "You have no right to stop me," he yells. "I don't want to stop you. I want you to be the greatest singer there is. I just don't want to lose you," she whines, to an assurance that he will never leave her. Frank quits Dorsey, though with a year's notice, especially since Dorsey owns over 40% of him. Oh, wait, the latter might not be true anymore, especially since Frank now has a fleet of lawyers, producers and big companies behind him. "You know, not everyone thinks you are as talented as you do. Personally? I hope you fall flat on your face," Dorsey says in frustration.
Initially, the owner of the Paramount Theatre doesn't think Frank can fill it. "You've got a small voice," he's told. "The girls will fill the Paramount," one of his minions says. Indeed they do. Lines of them fight to get in. Frank is on the bill with Benny Goodman (David Kimball), performing what is easily the most complex and important Big Bang contribution. "And now, Frank Sinatra," Goodman announces to screams of delight from the crowd and the legend of the bobbysoxers is born (though the rendition of "Where or When?" is another tinny version that could have been cleaned up for the soundtrack). Casnoff nails the Sinatra presence, the light-as-air performance style and especially the connection with the harpie fans. Even Nancy is impressed.
Everyone Frank knows is on the payroll. Nancy goes over the bills and signs autographs for him while Frank tends to the parts he enjoys. He's loving life in Hollywood, where MGM is putting him under contract. Nancy wants him home, since she's pregnant again, but life on the East Coast is pretty much done. He misses the birth of his second child, despite promises he would be there. "You are 0 for 2," Dolly tells him when she picks up phone, saying it "had a guilty ring." Pretending to be asleep, Nancy cries. He can't get to Nancy because he first has to meet President Roosevelt.
And then it hits. A cliche moment that always has to happen in any miniseries about a real person. Frank and Nancy are arguing about giving Dolly money over and over and Nancy turns to Frank to say (you can say it along with her), "I don't know who you are anymore." Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Luckily, the conversation doesn't go any further than that, but even just the one sentence is one cliche too many. He's having way more fun with his fans and his entourage. Looking at Philip croon "I Fall in Love Too Fast," he actually looks like Sinatra. Until an egg is thrown at him by an angry boy, "on the night my father comes to see me!" bellows Frank.
With fame comes the underside of fame: the boy with the egg, the morals charge popping up out of legal death, the press twisting his words, the fact that he's not in the war and the hellish schedule that has him drinking heavily. He yells at his entourage a lot, but also treats like them like family. Worries are suddenly chucked out when Marilyn Maxwell (Carol Barbee) arrives backstage to spend some personal time with Frank.
The family moves to Hollywood so Frank can take on his first real role, but he has demands. The studio is willing to throw the biggest names in songwriting his way, but he wants Jules Styne (then just about to start a Broadway career) and Sammy Cahn. "They don't start Monday morning, neither do I," he insists. The conversation ends abruptly when Frank sees Ava Gardner (Marcia Gay Harden) walk by. She's crying over her latest dust-up with Artie Shaw, but he makes her laugh.
Nancy learns how to drive a car, but a fancy car isn't to her liking. "There's no room for the groceries," she whines. Her mother says, "the way he eats, you could fit them in here" and opens the glove compartment to find a jewelry box containing a heart bracelet. Let's assume it's not for her. Frank's roving attention hits Nancy square in the face during a New Year's party they host (with Sammy Davis and Bogie, among others), when Nancy sees Marilyn wearing the bracelet from the car! As the countdown reaches it's zenith, Nancy orders Marilyn "out of my house."
The next morning, Nancy lays into Frank. "It's nothing," he assures her, regarding Marilyn. "It's not nothing to me," she says. He replies with another star biopic cliche that better writers could have found a way around: "It's just there's so much pressure. It doesn't let up for a second. Sometimes I feel like climbing the walls." That one appears in every male-with-a-wandering-penis movie about a star. The rest of the conversation follows familiar track, including the expected, "maybe we should go away together, just the two of us," but Frank pricks a hole in that one. How about nights together? The next film is to be filmed in NYC, so that won't work either.
As a reporter gets a soundbite out of Frank about Communism that will no doubt come back to haunt him, he gets in a car with pal Peter Lawford, he meets Gene Tierney, snuggled up with JFK. Loyal agent George Evans (Joe Grifasi) tries to get Frank to play nice with the press (instead of slugging them), to not get his mug on the front page with a dame who isn't his wife and to even stop drinking because it's ruining his voice. "Go away for a few days...no women!" So, Frank takes a few days off in Havana, where he's photographed with Lucky Luciano, among other notorious mobsters. Frank doesn't see the harm in knowing Luciano. "I drive the getaway car," he jokes, and then adds to George, "you said no women. You didn't say anything about mobsters." George begs him to stop his trip down "this self-destructive path."
We met Sammy Davis Jr. (David Raynr) again for a split second because Frank decides to knock out right-wing columnist Lee Mortimer, which lands him in jail. LB Mayer calls him and tells him to apologize. Never one to admit his mistakes, Frank gets rip-roaring drunk and dresses as a priest to meet his pals at Romanoff. This is the perfect place for a tirade. Bogie tells him to get some sleep so he can work. "Work. This isn't work. They dress me funny and I sing. If they gave me 'Hamlet,' they would make me sing," he rails. Frank is ruining his career and he wants his marriage to be over, though Nancy is pregnant again. But mainly, his problem is "I lost it. I lost the feeling."
Even the fans have disappeared. Columbia wants to let him go and he's not even upset. "I'm only 33...is it all over at 33?" "It's a big pendulum, you'll come back," he's assured. He does perk up when he sees Ava Gardner in the hotel lobby. She grabs his arm and takes him to see Billie Holliday (Leata Galloway) perform. That's the spark they need to start their intense affair, one that became Hollywood legend in no time. They are physical wild animals together. Ava is far more practical (and experienced), so when Frank wants to see her again, she purrs, "it was just a brief moment, Francis. Let's not make history out of it." No one has ever refuse Frank before! That makes him even more obsessed, phoning in Christmas with his family and not able to concentrate on his new film.
Though Ava was not married when she met Frank, he was, but somehow, the movie makes her the villain. She yells at him and then kisses him passionately. She toys with him horribly. "It's not enough for you to have a guy, you gotta mess with his head too?" Frank says, grabbing her. That sets Ava off, demanding that he never touch her like that again. "It's never gonna work between us," she says.
As for Nancy, she knows the gossip, and Frank decides it's time to move out. "Come home, Frank. You belong here," she assures him. "Then why don't I feel it?" With that, Nancy is forced to agree. As much as they try, Frank and Ava can't stay apart. When he's singing at a fancy club, Ava, appearing from the mist, walks slowly down the center aisle, drops her fur to reveal a gorgeous outfit. "Every chick in here wants to be you and every cat in here wants to be me," he tells her as they walk very slowly to their table in order to show off. Frank can't keep calm when a photographer snaps a picture of him with Ava, ripping out the film and pushing the guy.
The affair with Ava, volatile as it is, exacts a heavy toll on Frank (of course it does, since this is a rough episode in Frank's life that cannot be ignored, no matter how many children were involved in the making of this film). His faithful George has a heart attack and dies trying to get him out of one scrape or another. MGM drops his contract. "Ah, what the hell? They never gave me a decent role anyway," he says, trying to sound okay, but clearly devastated. He wants Ava by his side, but she has her own career to think about and can't afford to be with him as he heads to London for a singing gig.
However, as he's singing, sounding particularly broken-hearted, Ava actually does show up so Frank can see her in the wings. Naturally, a song is picked that has lyrics matching the exact moment the end of the first portion requires.
What of Nancy? She remains supportive, begging him to "take a rest" when he complains that he is dreading performing. "It doesn't mean anything to me anymore, nothing does," the complaining crooner says, actually speaking of Ava. "Why do you want to hold onto me if I don't want to be here?" he coldly asks her. She believes he will tire of Ava and come back to her.
Things hit rock bottom when Frank gets on stage and cannot sing, spitting blood into his handkerchief. Unfortunately, it's at the Copa in Hollywood, so everyone knows instantly what's going on. The news reporting it says, "that's the old Frank here's the new Frank, Frankie Lane..." and that radio gets switched off immediately. He's supposed to be on complete vocal rest, but when he sees a picture of Ava in the paper with another man, he gets the first plane to Spain where she's filming a movie. Her handsome co-star speaks no English, so Frank gets even nastier. "This is my woman, mi senorita, so adios!" he tells the poor guy. As always, being with Ava brings out the worst in both, but once they get the arguing done, then it's happiness and loving, at least until the next argument. "You're kinda cute when you can't speak," Ava says as Frank presents her with an expensive necklace.
On a rainy romantic day, sweetness in bed turns into a brawl because Ava says he's not "trying hard enough" to divorce Nancy and he can't have both women. "This is torture, Frank. It's wrecking my career. I can't do this anymore," she says. "Two minutes ago, we were happy. What happened?" "I was being a sap. I want you to go home and get a divorce," Ava demands and stalks out.
Back to the Paramount, the site of Frank's biggest success, he goes, but the joint is empty and after that, bookings are few and nothing exciting. Things are so bad that when he goes to light a cigarette at the stove and the pilot does not light, he can kill himself. So, he turns the gas all the way up. Luckily, he's caught in time (obviously). Did this ever really happen? It's tough to believe that someone like Frank Sinatra ever thought of suicide, but easier to accept the fact that it makes for a pungent dramatic twist. "It's torture when we're together and worse when we're not," Ava tells him as a way to cheer him up (?). With Ava in the audience at a New Jersey concert, he can sing perfectly.
It's at this concert that Frank meets Sam Giancana (Rod Steiger), and though Ava is worried that he's in the mafia, Frank says he owes his career to men like that. Even more unlikely in this room is columnist Earl Wilson, and it takes all of Ava's charm to get him to agree not to print a story about seeing her there.
Except Earl Wilson prints an article calling Frank and Ava Romeo and Juliet, which Nancy carps makes her "a villain for trying to keep my family together." For the 53rd time, Frank begs for a divorce, but this time, it works. When word gets out, a reporter asks Frank, "what are your wedding gifts to each other, boxing gloves?" Ava takes it all in stride, but when another reporter asks if it will be a "white wedding" Frank pushes him to the ground and breaks his camera. Ava, naturally, does not wear white. Set to "They Can't Take that Away From Me," Frank and Ava have a montage of great moments, even if one of them is a jealous spat ending in a kiss.
Ava is off to Africa to shoot "Mogambo" with Clark Gable and Frank doesn't trust her, so he goes along. He's obsessed with "From Here to Eternity" and knows the role of Maggio could revitalize his career. The heat is unbearable, but Ava thinks she might be pregnant, which is not good news for her because this role is too important for her. Frank gets good news, a telegram in Africa (uh huh) saying Columbia Pictures has agreed to test him for "From Here to Eternity" and though Ava isn't at all thrilled, he asks her for money to get back to the US.
The screen test is powerful, with Frank giving a tour-de-force, but bad news comes when Frank is told that Ava collapsed in Africa and was rushed to a hospital in London. When he gets there, she's actually in a hotel room dressed for dinner. "I was pregnant and now I'm not. I don't want to talk about it," she tells him. The loss of the baby is left a little vague, but if you bet on abortion, I think you have the safer bed. He thinks having a baby would be good for the marriage. "Did having a baby bring you and Nancy closer together?" she asks dryly? Ouch. Ava is off to a New Year's Eve party, and Frank roars, "walk out of that door and you walk out of my life!" However, the incessant pattern of good versus bad comes back AGAIN and Frank gets a call that he's won the part of Maggio. Unable to accept his success, Ava leaves while he's still on the phone.
As we all know, Frank wins a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (at the expense of a horse, if "The Godfather" is accurate) and his career is back, bigger than ever. He does movies and records, in that ring-a-ding-ding period of his life where he could do no wrong. Yet another montage takes care of the passage of time.
Frank misses another family event, but this time he has a good reason, Sammy has been in a car accident. We've seen Sammy twice, and only for half a second each time, but now he has a full dramatic scene, where he wonders how he'll dance with only one eye. "If I can't dance, I don't want to live," Sammy says as Frank trade vulgarities like teenagers. Frank takes him into the steam room in Vegas where the entire Rat Pack is gathered wearing eye patches like Sammy. Even JFK is there. Dino (Danny Gans) joins them and the three do pretty much the Rat Pack schtick, racism and all. When Frank introduces girlfriend Juliet Prowse from the stage, Mama Dolly quips, "what's he got at his front door, a turnstile?"
Well, speaking of JFK, he's running for President and Papa Joe comes a-callin' on Frank to enlist his friend Sam Giancana's help in securing the election. "What's in it for you? They gonna make you Ambassador to Italy or somethin'?" Sam wonders, but agrees to help. Frank loves being pals with the Kennedys, but practical Bobby Kennedy wants Sammy Davis removed from campaigning because he's black and about to marry white Mai Britt. Bobby has some god-awful reasoning to convince Frank to make Sammy back down, but he doesn't have to worry, because Sammy knows what's going on and even postpones his wedding.
Frank goes to visit "Chicky Baby" JFK in his new digs at the White House. Jack is excited for an upcoming visit to Los Angeles where he will stay with Frank, busy making "improvements" so the whole staff can fit. "I'll see you in the spring," Jack says to Frank on his way out. It's Peter Lawford who is sent to break the news to Frank that the Presidential visit is not happening. "You got no loyalty, you got no guts," Frank yells at Peter for taking sides with the Kennedys against him.
And the mob isn't any happier. With Bobby Kennedy cracking down on the mafia, Sam Giancana and his friends are in trouble and Frank is their link, though Frank is persona non grata at The White House pretty quickly. Sam wants payment on the favor of delivering West Virginia in the election, but Frank says he's the one who asked for the favor, not the Kennedys. It's getting very complicated. Frank has to shed friends just to look proper, but he packs them off with goodies like his music publishing company.
During his European tour, Frank gets to spend time with Ava in Spain, where she now lives. Why Spain? "They got people, real people," she says. He asks her to marry him again. "What could you possibly miss about me?" she asks and bolts. From here, it's the "One For My Baby" mini-montage where Frank watches JFK's funeral procession and cries.
On the set in 1965, Frank meets Mia Farrow (Nina Siemaszko). Frank offers an autograph and she jokes, "no, who are you?" Cue "You Make Me Feel So Young" as Frank and Mia begin their oddball romance. Poor young Mia isn't thrilled with Frank's house, as it's filled with pictures of Ava, and Frank never really cottons to Mia's vibe, which is anything but Old Hollywood. She meditates and reads (take that Ava) and wears love beads. They marry with Frank looking like he's getting hitched to Rosemary's baby itself. Oh, and she has bad taste in music. "It's not music, it's crap," Frank bellows as he grumbles about the state of music. Mia does have one good comeback when he complains about bad lyrics, going through the do-be-do-be-dos of "Strangers in the Night." They have the again inevitable conversation about her advancing career, she wants a baby ("my kids grew up thinking the telephone was their father") and he doesn't, and finally Mia puts her finger on it. "Hey, I'm not Ava!"
In other words, the marriage is doomed from the start. Rather than rehashing conversations Frank has had with either Nancy or Ava (mostly Ava), we breeze through the whole kooky romance at top speed. None of those glamorous sable-and-satin-drenched arguments like Frank and Ava, just stilted phone conversations and bing-bang-boom, it's over. One supposes that the Sinatra children were not at all fond of Stepmother Mia, because the rush job is very obvious.
By the time Frank divorces Mia, he's graying and getting heavy. But, the nurses at the hospital where Marty is dying still think he's pretty foxy. Frank confides in his father that "I'm thinking of leaving the business...I'm tired, tired of being in the spotlight. The music business changes so fast, I can't keep up with the next guy anymore. Maybe I should stop trying," he tells the man who never expected him to make it. He retires, just as he promised his father before Marty expired.
Less than two years later, in 1974, retirement is over. "That's Life." We're now into the tux and toupee years. But, he sells out Madison Square Garden and they still throw roses to the stage. No underwear, for granny panties aren't particularly aerodynamic. At the end of the song, Frank blows a kiss to the audience and the move ends.
Frank Sinatra never seemed so squeaky clean, but you know what? That's not such a bad thing. Despite the temper and such, he was one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th Century and he did lead a colorful life. It may not have been the Technicolor one on display here, but it was a great ride.
Comments? Questions? Laughs? Feel free to email me at hpmaraka@gmail.com so we can chat.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Rage of Angels (1983)
One of the very first miniseries written about here was "Windmills of the Gods" (go back to December 2010 to read that one). That one had Jaclyn Smith as the United States Ambassador to Romania, from the pages of Sidney Sheldon. Typing that, and having seen it multiple times, it still doesn't make sense.
Far more realistic is "Rage of Angels," which has Jaclyn Smith as an Assistant District Attorney, from the pages of Sidney Sheldon. Sounds a whole lot more realistic, no? Yup, sounds like it.
But, it isn't. It's another made-in-heaven made-for-television hootfest, as delectably trashy as they come. There is no way to take any Sidney Sheldon miniseries serious, and to do so would be foolish, but, as always, Jaclyn Smith is as earnest as all get-out in her sensible shoes. She believes in what she's doing (and considering she's playing a character with the IQ of a carrot, that's asking a lot of our Jaclyn), so let her undertake that burden and the rest of us can sit back and giggle together.
The drama starts immediately! Our Jaclyn, in a cutesy casual ensemble of cutesy tennis shoes, jeans and a cutesy sweater tied over her shoulders, turns (dramatically) to the camera because of a disturbance she hears. She runs toward the courthouse, past the ambulance and the gawkers to a man (Wesley Addy) being tended to by EMTs. "Oh, Pop!" she coos when they tell her he's in the middle of a heart attack. "Do not call me Pop. Pop is for champagne is soda water...everything is going to be all right, Jenny," he says, still cracking wise through the pain. "Don't call me Jenny," she replies, inexplicably, through her tears. Apparently no one is concerned about the severity of the situation, because Jaclyn, still crying, is able to show her father a letter, and read from it. She's been made an ADA in New York City. "I'm one of 278, but I'm one," she says, proudly, but then changing her tune to say she'll be back to practice law with him, "Parker and Parker," to which the old geezer still manages to elicit a laugh, noting, "I say that you got your name first."
As he's being put into the ambulance, I think Pop sees his time being up. So, he lays on the canned advice, with lines like, "keep the rules" and "respect the law--it's the only thing between us and the Furies." What does he mean? Only Sidney Sheldon knows, and he can't tell us, I'm afraid.
Let's get to New York (we were in Washington State before), where Jaclyn can still run, but now her clothes have gone from cutesy to smart, but, as usual for Jaclyn Smith, she's clad nearly from head to toe and in layers, no less. For one of "Charlie's Angels," she never was much of a sexy symbol. Anyway, watch Jaclyn race for the bus. Watch her trip on a sidewalk. Watch her adjust price tag on her brief case. Indeed, folks, it's this hick's first day on the job as one of the 278 chosen few.
Naturally, DA Ron Hunter has already started with the other 277 when Jaclyn breathlessly bursts in the room. She hasn't missed much. In fact, he picks up where her father left off, speaking in legal fortune cookie dialogue. "The courtroom is where the action is. Don't hang from the stars yet because you people will be living in a world made up of subpoenas, research, mainly trivial, law libraries and still more law libraries. Life in the courtroom is an ultimate, not a beginning," he preaches. You know the moment: tough boss tells half they are going to fail and the other half they are going to quit, or at least she tries to, but Jaclyn has a question. "Oh, dear God, she's not only late, she's earnest," he whines.
Jaclyn and the other 277 will be working on "the trial of decade," the trial of Joseph Wiseman, "the grand master of organized crime." The state's turncoat witness is Art Vasil, who, upon being besieged by the media leaving The Tombs for court, already looks like a romantic novel dead man walking. Art rattles off all of Joseph's various business interests for the court, including "linen supplies." We can't forget that one! The mob king's tough-talking lawyer, with insanely huge glasses, is none other than Armand Assante, who has spent a television career playing mob kings. As Ron releases his fireworks questioning, Armand objects and they are called to the bench. "You want to run for Senator? Do it on your own time," the judge admonishes him.
Our heroine's first assignment is to deliver an envelope to Art during a recess. "Don't stare at me like that, I'm no corpse," he bellows, further hastening what we already know to be the inevitable. Proud of herself for having achieved so much on her first day, Jaclyn breathes in the air with a smile...before being grabbed by two cops. Ron wants to know who paid her to deliver an envelope containing a dead canary (which we get to see) to Art. Ron thunders at her, "by the time you get out of prison...you'll be too old to eat, to breath, to live!" as if he's still performing in court. The dead bird has caused Art to back out of testifying, meaning he can't be cross-examined by Armand, who moves for a mistrial. Jaclyn insists on waiting for the word of Ron secretary, who gave her the package, but Armand warns that if she "climbed to the top of the building now and sings 'Melancholy Baby,'" the witness still won't testify. Wouldn't you like to see THAT miniseries, huh? Apparently the judge wants to rush home for that one too, because he declares a mistrial as Jaclyn launches into howling defensive shrieks.
The judge also tells Jaclyn that he will investigate her conduct and proceed "with disbarment proceedings." At home, trying to look like a slob, but with full make-up and terrific lighting, Jaclyn finds out from the news that the secretary who gave her the envelope was killed in a car accident. "This is a creepy town," she says to her father's picture. Wet and fraying, Jaclyn can't get a job in any law office, no matter how hard she tries. Her name is mud.
Time to meet the hero of the piece: Ken Howard, looking squeaky clean and handsome. His brother-in-law and law partner wants him to run for the Senate too. After all, not only is he [insert every positive quality here], he's even a veteran. What's his connection to Jaclyn? He's prosecuting her at her hearing before the Bar, of course! He sees it as "an investigation, not a lynch mob," the sentiments of a White Knight and the only honest lawyer in New York City. He's told to "nail her...it's worth at least a quarter of million votes," though Ken has a (not-at-all-original) reply for that. "And thirty pieces of silver?"
Let's wrap up Art. He's killed, naturally, in prison, while watching a Three Stooges movie that has he and his fellow prisoners laughing so hard many of the others might stroke out.
Ken and Jaclyn meet adorably. She's in a towel just out of the shower when he rings her buzzer. She thinks he's there about a job application. "Your people go back as far as..." she starts. "Wigs and snuff," he finishes. Awwww, they have banter already! It goes on for a bit as Jaclyn reaches fever pitch. "There's the door. Or better yet, there's the window!" she huffs and ducks into the bathroom. He pretends to leave, and when she sees he hasn't, she's furious, throwing out more banter. "I've been investigating your life for four days," Ken pleads. "That's five too many," she snaps. Once again, math is not her strong suit, but that's not even a good line! He invites her to dinner and she agrees, because "I'm hungry. For good...and vindication."
With even the sleazy law firms having turned her away, Jaclyn goes to meet shlumpy private investigator Kevin Conway, but only to rent office space. "I want to go into business myself. I have to go into business myself," she tells him, though she can't afford even the discount rent he offers. However, he has an idea. "You ever serve a summons before? Pretty ladies have an advantage. They are less apt to break your legs," Kevin says, offering her that job. But, right at the end, she realizes he knows who she is. And he still wants her? "I'm desperate too" is his reply.
As our plucky heroine is walking home from grocery shopping, Armand drives up in a big fancy car with roses to present to her. "Strangle any canaries, lately?" she quips, after quipping about what he should do with the roses. I like quipping Jaclyn. She gets to stretch as an actress.
Okay, that last line was a joke.
"I think you got one of the bummest raps in history," Armand informs Jaclyn. What she doesn't know, but he does, is that his boss did not order the hit on Art, but all he does here is deny he had any part in it.
He: "I hate lynch mobs."
She: "I hate criminals."
He: "Then be a jailer, not a lawyer."
I guess living in the Pacific Northwest teaches a woman some interesting skills. When Jaclyn shows up at her new office the next day, Kevin is drunk. Rather than huffing in disappointment, Jaclyn smacks him around, pins his arm behind his back, shouts, "where is my office? Where is my LIFE?" and then dunks his head under a faucet to sober him up. Not only is she skilled physically, she's also something of a shrink. "No one asks you to be happy! Sober, clean and healthy you can be!" she rails. Where the HELL did all of this come from? "I think I want to die," he claims, defenses down. "You can die later," she says sweetly.
Armand sends over flowers and a case to Jaclyn via messenger. Luckily, Kevin is there to tell Jaclyn it's a bad idea, so she turns it down in favor of handing out more summonses. Kevin also has some insight into Jaclyn, sensing that she has feelings for Ken, though they have only had that one awkward scene together! That is soon corrected when Ken shows up at lunch to tell Jaclyn she has been cleared of all wrongdoing by the Bar committee. Now she and Ken can really get to know each other.
"I feel dumb and wonderful," Jaclyn says at lunch. Never has a line had a truer ring in the land of the land of the miniseries! She's referring to her giddy feelings. I took it to be about her character as a whole. The two spend the whole day together, going for a romantic horse-drawn carriage ride at night where Ken complains about his bad marriage and tells Jaclyn he has no hobbies at all except hosting "rap sessions" for some fellow Vietnam vets.
Armand isn't going away. When Jaclyn gets home from work one day, Armand is there already, with oodles of roses. To get him to stop showing up, she agrees to go out with him "in a public place" and he takes her to a hockey game. He loves the brawling, but she doesn't understand either the game, the fighting or the fans. "I see nothing beautiful," she says, as if she's not understanding a night at the opera. It gets more ridiculous when Armand hits a man in the food line who insults him. "You just hit that man!" Jaclyn says a few times, not that she leaves her place in line or doesn't eat her food.
Ken wakes Jaclyn up in the middle of the night (although in one of those gaffes that affected the trashier types of miniseries, it's clearly full daytime outside with loads of people milling about) to tell her she has a client. "A client? C-L-I-E-N-T? I'm there already," she yells, jumping out of bed. But this client cannot pay. It's a priest, Father James Greene. He explains the case, about a prisoner who may have beaten a man to death in prison (Bill Cobbs).
So, wearing her preferred outfit of suit with a flowing skirt and something around her neck (this time a sweater AGAIN), she goes to the prison to meet Bill, who is suffering badly from being in solitary confinement. Here comes Dr. Jaclyn again. When Bill avoids her questions and propositions her sexually, she asks, "do you hate all people?" So, what is Bill's story? "I killed a honkey slime," he starts, but business-like Jaclyn has trouble connecting to him, so he leaves, saying, "this is real! This is black!" in trying to avoid telling her the truth.
Who is her opposing counsel? DA Ron, of course, who threatens to "have your eyes, ears, nose and throat" before the judge arrives. What, you don't want her mouth or her shoulder pads, Ron? Nope. "I'm going to ram your face into the law, THE LAW!" he says furthermore. His threats are one thing, but she opens an anonymous letter in the courtroom telling her to drop the case, that it will end her career (naturally, it's one of those notes with letters cut out of magazines and newspapers, pasted together).
What actor doesn't love a trial scene? We know hammy Ron does, and his opening statement is flashy. Jaclyn can hold her own. Boring as hell, at least she sticks to the law. Though Bill had admitted to killing the man and there were witnesses, the plan is self-defense. Ron makes much out of Bill's being a much bigger man than the victim, but Jaclyn has ample power suits with ties that match on her side!n She also gets a huge break when Ron makes a small legal error that allows her to introduce a "goody box" into evidence. That would be a box of weapons confiscated, proving that the victim might have had a weapon. It's a giant stretch of an argument, especially since all it does is prove that the victim could have had a weapon. Pouring the contents onto the floor, Jaclyn gets to showboat in a way only Ron usually gets to do.
At this point, one wonders when and how Jaclyn (who remember, is supposed to be a novice) became so good in a trial setting. This is her first case! Should we assume Pop taught her the tricks or is she just super brilliant? Let's bet on the former, shall we?
On the stand, Bill says that indeed the victim did have a weapon and he was "forced to kill him" because of it. Ron picks up the salad tongs Bill claims his victim had and, smarmy as all get out, asks how something like that could do any damage. "Testicle crushers," Bill says, as no doubt every man in the courtroom winces. Even Ron has no reply to that one.
Jaclyn wins the case and calls Ken to share the exciting news. As a present, he takes her out on a yacht, complete with wine and cheese. "Ohhhh, cheese! Boy, they are going to lose money on me," she says, once again proving how incredibly socially awkward she can be. I will give Jaclyn credit for the first sensible thing she's had to say so far in the entire movie. She asks Ken if he "minds being seen in public" with her, considering he's a married man running for Senator. Nope, apparently "being seen with an astonishingly beautiful woman" is a plus, though Ken doesn't understand why. Don't affairs usually kill campaigns? Ken also fills Jaclyn in on Kevin, whom he used to use as a private investigator. He's smart and good at what he does, but never passed the bar because of his drinking. There was also a wife. "She came home one day..." Ken starts, with Jaclyn AGAIN finishing his sentence, "and of course there was a woman in the bed." "There was a man in the bed and Nancy killed herself five days later." That's an interesting twist! "I guess he's still waiting for the hyenas to come down from the hills," Jaclyn opines, although I can't say I understand the reference.
Having won such an important case, Jaclyn is suddenly the hottest lawyer in town, inundated with offers. It also seems Kevin has some sort of feelings for her. Ken invites her to one of his Sunday Vietnam vet "rap sessions." She finds them an ornery disappointed bunch, disaffected and angry. Jennifer is deeply moved by what she sees and hears, unable to hold back tears. This scene rings with truth and honest pathos, but what it's doing in a Sidney Sheldon piece, I'm not entirely sure. Sheldon was not known for taking on social causes in his writing and he was a generation older than the Vietnam veterans.
Boyfriend and girlfriend have the obligatory run along the beach at sunset and then a rather awkward morning at a hotel where Ken is clearly upset and out of sorts, but Jaclyn soothes him by saying, "I expect nothing but you." Suddenly wealthy (her big case was that of a convict, so how could that make her rich?), Jaclyn gets a new apartment where she and Ken can do more of that quip crap. She talks about the fireplace giving off heat, he makes it sexual. She talks about preparing dishes in the kitchen, he says she's the only dish for him. A relationship built on puns is a house of cards, if you ask me. When Jaclyn mentions the dreaded word "relationship," she instantly apologizes, remembering his situation. "I would rather have no illusions than broken promises," she tells him when he fumbles for a way to make her feel better, knowing he can never leave his wife. She just keeps smiling and smiling. This incredibly nutso scene ends with Jaclyn a bit disappointed that Ken has mentioned his work with fellow vets in a campaign speech, but after two or three lines, invites him to "see the bedroom." Either Jaclyn's character is extremely stupid (that's been pretty well established) or extremely horny.
You know it's going to be odd when the heroine is invited to the grand palatial estate of his current wife, Deborah May. "I think you must be the most civilized person I've ever met," Jaclyn comments, for lack of any other clear sentiment. Calm WASP Deborah notes, "people change...I feel brand new. In fact, I'm very much in love myself." She's putting off a divorce until after the Senate campaign. "Is that agreeable to you?" Deborah asks? This is too good to be true. She has to be hiding a knife somewhere under the tea table. Her only request? "Let me release [Ken]. Let me let him go."
When Jaclyn arrives home, she finds an envelope with a dead canary in it pinned to her door.
After a fundraiser, Deborah decides to talk to Ken about their relationship. "Emotionally, we're both run out," she says. She tells him she will give him up if Jaclyn can stimulate him and keep him going with his political career. As for her plans, she remains vague. "No villains, no losers, everyone wins," she says, way too smoothly. She has one request of him too, that they have sex one more time. And they do!
Let's pause to learn a fact, via Sidney Sheldon. "The East River isn't a river at all, it's a channel," Ken tells Jaclyn when they have a rendezvous there. Let's unpause...
...to reveal the secret that has been making Deborah so confident. She's pregnant! This gets Jaclyn all upset again, and we know when she gets upset here, she blubbers and can't speak in complete sentences. "I'm hurting terribly," Jaclyn cries, suddenly without any hope. She has already figured out (and I'm not sure how with her lack of ability to put puzzle pieces together) that Deborah will always have an excuse to keep Ken. "There will always be another election...she intends for you to be President." Before leaving him, Jaclyn even compliments Deborah. "She rolled over me...that's good for a Senator's wife," she remarks, almost impressed.
It turns out Deborah is far more devious. As Jaclyn crosses the street one night, Deborah runs her down with her Mercedes. She wakes up in the hospital with bruises and make-up, with Kevin there at her side. The nurse, breaking all rules, tells Kevin that Jaclyn "almost lost the baby."
A year later, Jaclyn and Kevin are celebrating her child's first birthday, which happens to be Election Day. Wait, so Ron and Ken have been campaigning for over a year for a Senate seat? Something is off here timing-wise, but we don't have a choice except to believe it. Tucked into the conversation is a line that should be the focus of it: "I adopted him legally." Even in the early 80s, this character felt it necessary to hide her single motherhood and use that adoption bit? I thought that kind of thing disappeared with Eisenhower.
Jaclyn's big new case is to go after a company that makes trucks. Not only does it happen to be the one that "accidentally" killed the secretary who could have exonerated Jaclyn, but she also has other clients, proving that the trucks are faulty. When George Coe agrees to meet her demands for $2 million settlement for another injured woman, he asks her out to lunch. "Why don't we wait? You can hand me the check over a nice chef's salad," she says, swooping out of the room.
We haven't seen much of creepy Armand lately, and he ups that character description by sitting in the dark in Jaclyn's office, to be there when she arrives for work one morning. She tells him never go come to her office again. "You want me to go to your house?" he asks with swagger? "No." "That's why I came here."
I know you won't believe this, but Jennifer has been outwitted. I know, I know! When you pick yourself up off the floor, I'll tell you how. Remember when George Coe agreed to give her client $2 million? He first had to go to London for a trip, but they do have that lunch. Jaclyn asks for the money and he informs her she can't have it. "The statute of limitations ran out today," he says with a smile. Okay, so George Coe and his lawyers bothered to do their research in order to figure it out, but Jaclyn, whom we're told repeatedly might just be the smartest lawyer EVER in history, didn't bother to check on that detail, not a tiny one either.
But, she manages to cover that mistake in the most Sidney Sheldon-esque way possible, with a juicy deus ex machina that is too goofy for words. She calls George Coe, drunk with his coworkers over their good fortune, to inform him that she has found a lawyer in Hawaii, which is hours behind New York and therefore still within statute of limitations. Genius, pure genius.
After hearing that Ken is now running the Senate subcommittee on organized crime, Jaclyn gets ready for her next case, defending kidnapper John Glover. He admits to kidnapping the child, but explains why. It all started when his wife died in childbirth, as did the child. "It's like they couldn't afford God's rent to stay here," he says, a line meant to be brilliant, but instead laughably ridiculous. Anyway, he saw a little girl who looked like what would have been his child. "I didn't send a ransom note. I didn't want any money. I only wanted little Tammy," he says. Jaclyn has it all figured out in a flash. Someone knew about the kidnapping and send the ransom note to frame John (who, admittedly, did kidnap a kid, so he's not exactly an angel).
Jaclyn has to beg her old nemesis Ron to move John to a hospital because he's obviously crazy, and also to protect him from the other prisoners, who don't look kindly on kidnappers. She throws a tantrum, but that's not going to move Ron. While Jaclyn is speaking in court on another case, Kevin interrupts the the proceedings to tell her John has been playing them. He's really a homicidal maniac. However, Ron actually did have him transferred to a hospital, where he killed guards and escaped.
Pause again. So, Jaclyn didn't learn from the statute of limitations case that she should actually put some research hours into her cases? Wouldn't it have been easy enough to find out their client was a con artist? Unpause.
Needless to say, Ron is incredibly angry, having followed her advice only for it to end so badly. That night, Jaclyn arrives home to find her dog dead in the driveway. And her child is missing. The nanny is gagged and in the closet. John calls Jaclyn just as she's undoing the nanny. Why did John do it? "You knew they'd steal my brain...you took my case so you could have me destroyed," he tells her in stuttering gasps. Oh, John, you give her too much credit. She could have never put that many pieces together. Jaclyn has to go back to Ron to enlist his help in finding her son. She puts a lot of emphasis on forcing Ron to get John. "Strictly speaking, we're not an apprehending organization," he says, quite correctly. The DA's office? Why the hell is she putting any eggs in that basket? Ah, she actually tells us, and it's because she knows the DA has informants and she's hoping to tap into it. "You're not going to help me, are you? You still hate my guts. You're going to let my little boy diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!!!!!!" she yells as she runs out of the office.
Hmmm, where else can she go? Wait a minute, how about mob lawyer Armand Assante? He must have a few tricks up his sleeve. He goes to the mob boss to help figure it out and now we are subject to wizened old mafia boss wisdom, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense and might be fun it it rhymed. They get the police file on John, which Armand is convinced has information the police do not understand. John has Jaclyn's son tucked away and when the kid asks for his mother, he's told, "she in hell, she's deep in hell." Armand and company find a friend of John's and beat the stuffing out of him, getting as far as his sister (Lois Smith). Skittish Lois isn't afraid. "If this is a rape job, go ahead. My doctor's treating me for gonorrhea," she tells Armand and his equally grossed-out pal. Can she lead them to John before he sacrifices Jaclyn's son?
Of course! Armand kills him and the baby is saved. I suppose Jaclyn owes Armand big time now. "There's no thank you big enough," she tells him and even agrees to call him. That calls leads to a trip to Paris where their big pouffy hairstyles flow in tandem in the wind. He takes Jaclyn to the most opulent hotel in Paris, which he calls "quaint," and packs her off to the room while he has a meeting with some sketchy guys. She's left to ponder Paris on the balcony in yet another oversized sweater. The problem they have is that he loves her and she doesn't love him. "Tell me you love me," he says over and over, and all she says is "want" over and over.
By chance, back in New York City, Ken sees Jaclyn with their son, a nanny and a priest (go into a bar...). It's an awkward meeting for the two, getting a bit heated when he chides her for associating with Armand and his kind. Deborah is across the street waving. "She's a great waver," he says, trying to ignore her, but Jaclyn moves on. However, the meeting has upset her enough to snap at poor Kevin. Wearing her worst power suit yet, with a wide tie that was never stylish, Jaclyn is on the attack when Kevin tries to warn her about Armand as well. "I feel so funny. Nobody looks familiar. Everybody seems to have gone away," Kevin ruminates, staring outside the window, an omen of gloom.
Mafia head Joseph dies and Armand and his other lawyer Joe Warren argue about the will. Joe is pissed that Armand has turned into a "sloppy lovesick" fool who can't handle the business. Armand grabs Joe and insists that Jaclyn "and the organization" are both mine.
Kevin's world crumbles faster. He starts drinking again. "Please, tell me why. I'll understand," she chirps. Really? She hasn't understood much so far, so how will she understand that? When he rips into her about "yesterday's heartbreak staring at you through cankered tears," loneliness and even gay bars, she merely looks perplexed, though with sympathetic tears. "I've got nothing!" he yells and thrashes the office. He pulls down bookcases and blames Jaclyn for everything, but all she can do is whimper for him to stop. Yeah, it's clear she doesn't understand, just like he predicted. She takes him home to her family.
But, it's not enough. He goes into the office and hangs himself. When Jaclyn discovers him, she has one of by-now-expected fits of hysteria and then we dash off three months ahead to a legal conference in Mexico. It's not all work, as Jaclyn calls her secretary from a pool filled with hibiscus flowers.
The Senior Senator from New York is supposed to speak, but he can't make it and instead the Junior Senator from New York speaks (that would be our pal Ken, the only person in Mexico wearing a tie as everyone else is in leisure suits and halter tops). Ken gets to Jaclyn's hotel suite and asks point blank if the kid is his. Why didn't she tell him? "I didn't want to tear you in two. I would have ended up with the lesser half. And so would" his wife, she tells him, again proving that math is not a strong suit of hers. For that matter, neither is good dialogue. There was a time when she could quip beautifully, but now she can only quote her infant son. "All gone," she tells Ken.
He asks her out on a date in Mexico and she refuses, but does tell him he could have been a great senator and is not. Why? "Because [Deborah's] eyes don't dance like yours," he replies. That apparently seals the deal. She meets him as requested and they make all sorts of promises to each other in red lighting that is meant to simulate moonlight, but looks like a cut scene from the movie version of "South Pacific."
When Jaclyn gets home from her trip, Armand's chauffeur is waiting to take her to him. In church. He's in a pensive mood, talking in riddles and opposites. "I love you suntanned. I love you pale...I've seen you naked, but never nude," that sort of tripe. He tells in his best mafia voice that, "you must never leave me again," though she replies, "I hope to be rid of you." He insists on protecting her son always, but she doesn't understand what he really wants. "What can I give you to keep you gentle?" she asks. "The title, free and clear," is his answer. Last I checked, she's not the Queen, so what title?
In the next scene, he's boxing with his lackey, who is giving him his spy report on Jaclyn and Ken's moves in Mexico. "You saw him in bed with my property?" he asks, slugging the lackey to the ground. The conversation continues in the sauna where a very hairy-chested Armand orders a hit on Ken. The lackey is biding his time because he wants to hire someone from out of the country who cannot be traced. Ah, but Armand wants to do it himself. The lackey begs him not to. "I want him dead more than I want myself alive," he mumbles. That will certainly win you Jaclyn, won't it? What is she supposed to do, drag your carcass to dinners and the movies?
Joe Warren calls Jaclyn for a mysterious meeting in Lower Manhattan. "I'm not in the boom boom business," referring to the mafia. She doesn't really care, but when he says "lovesick madman" Armand has a hit out on Ken, she is interested. Jaclyn doesn't see what she can do (other than the obvious--telling Ken), but Joe says they are both "your men" and thus her problem. For the first time in the story, Jaclyn actually asks a smart question: why can't Joe take care of Armand? He has some excuse about not starting a mob war. The answer is wan, but I'm so proud of our Jaclyn for starting to understand!
She can't get through to Ken, so she goes to her old friend, DA Rob. She informs him that Armand is going to kill Ken, because "of his obsession for me." Rob asks when? where? how? She has no idea. "Why me? Why me again?" Rob begs of her. "You're going to do nothing? You're going to sit there and stare at me with your dead eyes and do nothing?" she begs. Oh, Jaclyn, the flattery, it's too much! Wait a second, it actually works! He says "I'll handle it." Of course, when she leaves, Rob tells his assistant he has no intention of listening to her.
Armand calls Jaclyn and asks for "a civilized ending," a meeting for that night at 7pm. He then goes out with a gun to shoot Ken on his usual riverside jogging path. Ken runs merrily with his constituents (including one sassy girl who says she'll vote for him because he has "great legs and a cute behind"), while Armand slowly steers a boat to his ideal spot and Jaclyn arrives at Armand's place, perplexed because "he's never kept me waiting before." Back to being completely dimwitted, Jaclyn doesn't put the pieces together immediately, grilling the lackey until darkness falls and threatening to "put you away for life plus forever!" Jeepers, that's a long time.
When she gets the information from the lackey, Jaclyn is caught in traffic trying to get there. Ken stops to take a rest and Armand loads his gun. Amazingly, Jaclyn runs to Ken (how the hell did she know exactly where he would be?), yells his name and then gets shot by Armand, who does a King Lear-like howl when he sees what he's done. Unfortunately, he doesn't see the tugboat behind him, which knocks him into the river. He's caught in the current and goes under.
Ken keeps a vigil at the hospital and Deborah is there too. "She has no right to make it!" Deborah says. She confesses to the notes and hints at the car accident, demanding that "you can be President of the United States someday and I can watch." Again in a hospital bed, this time Jaclyn has no bruises, but still her perfect make-up. Finally catching up with the plot, Jaclyn tells Ken, "I think he wanted me there that night so he could tell me he killed you." You don't say! "Don't look so miserable, you don't have to love my anymore...you loved me once and that's enough. I'm the past," she tells him, setting him up for the inevitable blow-off. He tells her, "you're the most distinguished person I've ever met," leaves the hospital room, takes his wife's hand and walks down the long hallway.
As for our Jaclyn, she's "giving up everything" in the words of her secretary, to go back to Washington. The woman even packs up a house in a jacket with shoulder pads. Dressing down, up, or sideways is not something she has been able to manage. Her friend the priest has one last case for her and as she pleads and refuses, the camera pulls away and the movie ends.
The Jennifer Parker lead character in "Rage of Angels" is the most unappealing of all Sidney Sheldon heroines, mainly because she's so utterly idiotic. Granted, "Rage of Angels" is not one of his better books, because most of the characters are unappealing and it misses the touch of the exotic that Sheldon did so well. The movie version goes one worse by letting go of the erotic, something no Sheldon book ever lacked. Dozens of men want the same woman here and we don't have so much as a sex scene. The biggest kiss is from a man to his wife!
However, things here proved so popular that "Rage of Angels" begot a miniseries sequel...
Questions? Comments? Laughs? Email me at hpmaraka@gmail.com and let's chat!
Far more realistic is "Rage of Angels," which has Jaclyn Smith as an Assistant District Attorney, from the pages of Sidney Sheldon. Sounds a whole lot more realistic, no? Yup, sounds like it.
But, it isn't. It's another made-in-heaven made-for-television hootfest, as delectably trashy as they come. There is no way to take any Sidney Sheldon miniseries serious, and to do so would be foolish, but, as always, Jaclyn Smith is as earnest as all get-out in her sensible shoes. She believes in what she's doing (and considering she's playing a character with the IQ of a carrot, that's asking a lot of our Jaclyn), so let her undertake that burden and the rest of us can sit back and giggle together.
The drama starts immediately! Our Jaclyn, in a cutesy casual ensemble of cutesy tennis shoes, jeans and a cutesy sweater tied over her shoulders, turns (dramatically) to the camera because of a disturbance she hears. She runs toward the courthouse, past the ambulance and the gawkers to a man (Wesley Addy) being tended to by EMTs. "Oh, Pop!" she coos when they tell her he's in the middle of a heart attack. "Do not call me Pop. Pop is for champagne is soda water...everything is going to be all right, Jenny," he says, still cracking wise through the pain. "Don't call me Jenny," she replies, inexplicably, through her tears. Apparently no one is concerned about the severity of the situation, because Jaclyn, still crying, is able to show her father a letter, and read from it. She's been made an ADA in New York City. "I'm one of 278, but I'm one," she says, proudly, but then changing her tune to say she'll be back to practice law with him, "Parker and Parker," to which the old geezer still manages to elicit a laugh, noting, "I say that you got your name first."
As he's being put into the ambulance, I think Pop sees his time being up. So, he lays on the canned advice, with lines like, "keep the rules" and "respect the law--it's the only thing between us and the Furies." What does he mean? Only Sidney Sheldon knows, and he can't tell us, I'm afraid.
Let's get to New York (we were in Washington State before), where Jaclyn can still run, but now her clothes have gone from cutesy to smart, but, as usual for Jaclyn Smith, she's clad nearly from head to toe and in layers, no less. For one of "Charlie's Angels," she never was much of a sexy symbol. Anyway, watch Jaclyn race for the bus. Watch her trip on a sidewalk. Watch her adjust price tag on her brief case. Indeed, folks, it's this hick's first day on the job as one of the 278 chosen few.
Naturally, DA Ron Hunter has already started with the other 277 when Jaclyn breathlessly bursts in the room. She hasn't missed much. In fact, he picks up where her father left off, speaking in legal fortune cookie dialogue. "The courtroom is where the action is. Don't hang from the stars yet because you people will be living in a world made up of subpoenas, research, mainly trivial, law libraries and still more law libraries. Life in the courtroom is an ultimate, not a beginning," he preaches. You know the moment: tough boss tells half they are going to fail and the other half they are going to quit, or at least she tries to, but Jaclyn has a question. "Oh, dear God, she's not only late, she's earnest," he whines.
Jaclyn and the other 277 will be working on "the trial of decade," the trial of Joseph Wiseman, "the grand master of organized crime." The state's turncoat witness is Art Vasil, who, upon being besieged by the media leaving The Tombs for court, already looks like a romantic novel dead man walking. Art rattles off all of Joseph's various business interests for the court, including "linen supplies." We can't forget that one! The mob king's tough-talking lawyer, with insanely huge glasses, is none other than Armand Assante, who has spent a television career playing mob kings. As Ron releases his fireworks questioning, Armand objects and they are called to the bench. "You want to run for Senator? Do it on your own time," the judge admonishes him.
Our heroine's first assignment is to deliver an envelope to Art during a recess. "Don't stare at me like that, I'm no corpse," he bellows, further hastening what we already know to be the inevitable. Proud of herself for having achieved so much on her first day, Jaclyn breathes in the air with a smile...before being grabbed by two cops. Ron wants to know who paid her to deliver an envelope containing a dead canary (which we get to see) to Art. Ron thunders at her, "by the time you get out of prison...you'll be too old to eat, to breath, to live!" as if he's still performing in court. The dead bird has caused Art to back out of testifying, meaning he can't be cross-examined by Armand, who moves for a mistrial. Jaclyn insists on waiting for the word of Ron secretary, who gave her the package, but Armand warns that if she "climbed to the top of the building now and sings 'Melancholy Baby,'" the witness still won't testify. Wouldn't you like to see THAT miniseries, huh? Apparently the judge wants to rush home for that one too, because he declares a mistrial as Jaclyn launches into howling defensive shrieks.
The judge also tells Jaclyn that he will investigate her conduct and proceed "with disbarment proceedings." At home, trying to look like a slob, but with full make-up and terrific lighting, Jaclyn finds out from the news that the secretary who gave her the envelope was killed in a car accident. "This is a creepy town," she says to her father's picture. Wet and fraying, Jaclyn can't get a job in any law office, no matter how hard she tries. Her name is mud.
Time to meet the hero of the piece: Ken Howard, looking squeaky clean and handsome. His brother-in-law and law partner wants him to run for the Senate too. After all, not only is he [insert every positive quality here], he's even a veteran. What's his connection to Jaclyn? He's prosecuting her at her hearing before the Bar, of course! He sees it as "an investigation, not a lynch mob," the sentiments of a White Knight and the only honest lawyer in New York City. He's told to "nail her...it's worth at least a quarter of million votes," though Ken has a (not-at-all-original) reply for that. "And thirty pieces of silver?"
Let's wrap up Art. He's killed, naturally, in prison, while watching a Three Stooges movie that has he and his fellow prisoners laughing so hard many of the others might stroke out.
Ken and Jaclyn meet adorably. She's in a towel just out of the shower when he rings her buzzer. She thinks he's there about a job application. "Your people go back as far as..." she starts. "Wigs and snuff," he finishes. Awwww, they have banter already! It goes on for a bit as Jaclyn reaches fever pitch. "There's the door. Or better yet, there's the window!" she huffs and ducks into the bathroom. He pretends to leave, and when she sees he hasn't, she's furious, throwing out more banter. "I've been investigating your life for four days," Ken pleads. "That's five too many," she snaps. Once again, math is not her strong suit, but that's not even a good line! He invites her to dinner and she agrees, because "I'm hungry. For good...and vindication."
With even the sleazy law firms having turned her away, Jaclyn goes to meet shlumpy private investigator Kevin Conway, but only to rent office space. "I want to go into business myself. I have to go into business myself," she tells him, though she can't afford even the discount rent he offers. However, he has an idea. "You ever serve a summons before? Pretty ladies have an advantage. They are less apt to break your legs," Kevin says, offering her that job. But, right at the end, she realizes he knows who she is. And he still wants her? "I'm desperate too" is his reply.
As our plucky heroine is walking home from grocery shopping, Armand drives up in a big fancy car with roses to present to her. "Strangle any canaries, lately?" she quips, after quipping about what he should do with the roses. I like quipping Jaclyn. She gets to stretch as an actress.
Okay, that last line was a joke.
"I think you got one of the bummest raps in history," Armand informs Jaclyn. What she doesn't know, but he does, is that his boss did not order the hit on Art, but all he does here is deny he had any part in it.
He: "I hate lynch mobs."
She: "I hate criminals."
He: "Then be a jailer, not a lawyer."
I guess living in the Pacific Northwest teaches a woman some interesting skills. When Jaclyn shows up at her new office the next day, Kevin is drunk. Rather than huffing in disappointment, Jaclyn smacks him around, pins his arm behind his back, shouts, "where is my office? Where is my LIFE?" and then dunks his head under a faucet to sober him up. Not only is she skilled physically, she's also something of a shrink. "No one asks you to be happy! Sober, clean and healthy you can be!" she rails. Where the HELL did all of this come from? "I think I want to die," he claims, defenses down. "You can die later," she says sweetly.
Armand sends over flowers and a case to Jaclyn via messenger. Luckily, Kevin is there to tell Jaclyn it's a bad idea, so she turns it down in favor of handing out more summonses. Kevin also has some insight into Jaclyn, sensing that she has feelings for Ken, though they have only had that one awkward scene together! That is soon corrected when Ken shows up at lunch to tell Jaclyn she has been cleared of all wrongdoing by the Bar committee. Now she and Ken can really get to know each other.
"I feel dumb and wonderful," Jaclyn says at lunch. Never has a line had a truer ring in the land of the land of the miniseries! She's referring to her giddy feelings. I took it to be about her character as a whole. The two spend the whole day together, going for a romantic horse-drawn carriage ride at night where Ken complains about his bad marriage and tells Jaclyn he has no hobbies at all except hosting "rap sessions" for some fellow Vietnam vets.
Armand isn't going away. When Jaclyn gets home from work one day, Armand is there already, with oodles of roses. To get him to stop showing up, she agrees to go out with him "in a public place" and he takes her to a hockey game. He loves the brawling, but she doesn't understand either the game, the fighting or the fans. "I see nothing beautiful," she says, as if she's not understanding a night at the opera. It gets more ridiculous when Armand hits a man in the food line who insults him. "You just hit that man!" Jaclyn says a few times, not that she leaves her place in line or doesn't eat her food.
Ken wakes Jaclyn up in the middle of the night (although in one of those gaffes that affected the trashier types of miniseries, it's clearly full daytime outside with loads of people milling about) to tell her she has a client. "A client? C-L-I-E-N-T? I'm there already," she yells, jumping out of bed. But this client cannot pay. It's a priest, Father James Greene. He explains the case, about a prisoner who may have beaten a man to death in prison (Bill Cobbs).
So, wearing her preferred outfit of suit with a flowing skirt and something around her neck (this time a sweater AGAIN), she goes to the prison to meet Bill, who is suffering badly from being in solitary confinement. Here comes Dr. Jaclyn again. When Bill avoids her questions and propositions her sexually, she asks, "do you hate all people?" So, what is Bill's story? "I killed a honkey slime," he starts, but business-like Jaclyn has trouble connecting to him, so he leaves, saying, "this is real! This is black!" in trying to avoid telling her the truth.
Who is her opposing counsel? DA Ron, of course, who threatens to "have your eyes, ears, nose and throat" before the judge arrives. What, you don't want her mouth or her shoulder pads, Ron? Nope. "I'm going to ram your face into the law, THE LAW!" he says furthermore. His threats are one thing, but she opens an anonymous letter in the courtroom telling her to drop the case, that it will end her career (naturally, it's one of those notes with letters cut out of magazines and newspapers, pasted together).
What actor doesn't love a trial scene? We know hammy Ron does, and his opening statement is flashy. Jaclyn can hold her own. Boring as hell, at least she sticks to the law. Though Bill had admitted to killing the man and there were witnesses, the plan is self-defense. Ron makes much out of Bill's being a much bigger man than the victim, but Jaclyn has ample power suits with ties that match on her side!n She also gets a huge break when Ron makes a small legal error that allows her to introduce a "goody box" into evidence. That would be a box of weapons confiscated, proving that the victim might have had a weapon. It's a giant stretch of an argument, especially since all it does is prove that the victim could have had a weapon. Pouring the contents onto the floor, Jaclyn gets to showboat in a way only Ron usually gets to do.
At this point, one wonders when and how Jaclyn (who remember, is supposed to be a novice) became so good in a trial setting. This is her first case! Should we assume Pop taught her the tricks or is she just super brilliant? Let's bet on the former, shall we?
On the stand, Bill says that indeed the victim did have a weapon and he was "forced to kill him" because of it. Ron picks up the salad tongs Bill claims his victim had and, smarmy as all get out, asks how something like that could do any damage. "Testicle crushers," Bill says, as no doubt every man in the courtroom winces. Even Ron has no reply to that one.
Jaclyn wins the case and calls Ken to share the exciting news. As a present, he takes her out on a yacht, complete with wine and cheese. "Ohhhh, cheese! Boy, they are going to lose money on me," she says, once again proving how incredibly socially awkward she can be. I will give Jaclyn credit for the first sensible thing she's had to say so far in the entire movie. She asks Ken if he "minds being seen in public" with her, considering he's a married man running for Senator. Nope, apparently "being seen with an astonishingly beautiful woman" is a plus, though Ken doesn't understand why. Don't affairs usually kill campaigns? Ken also fills Jaclyn in on Kevin, whom he used to use as a private investigator. He's smart and good at what he does, but never passed the bar because of his drinking. There was also a wife. "She came home one day..." Ken starts, with Jaclyn AGAIN finishing his sentence, "and of course there was a woman in the bed." "There was a man in the bed and Nancy killed herself five days later." That's an interesting twist! "I guess he's still waiting for the hyenas to come down from the hills," Jaclyn opines, although I can't say I understand the reference.
Having won such an important case, Jaclyn is suddenly the hottest lawyer in town, inundated with offers. It also seems Kevin has some sort of feelings for her. Ken invites her to one of his Sunday Vietnam vet "rap sessions." She finds them an ornery disappointed bunch, disaffected and angry. Jennifer is deeply moved by what she sees and hears, unable to hold back tears. This scene rings with truth and honest pathos, but what it's doing in a Sidney Sheldon piece, I'm not entirely sure. Sheldon was not known for taking on social causes in his writing and he was a generation older than the Vietnam veterans.
Boyfriend and girlfriend have the obligatory run along the beach at sunset and then a rather awkward morning at a hotel where Ken is clearly upset and out of sorts, but Jaclyn soothes him by saying, "I expect nothing but you." Suddenly wealthy (her big case was that of a convict, so how could that make her rich?), Jaclyn gets a new apartment where she and Ken can do more of that quip crap. She talks about the fireplace giving off heat, he makes it sexual. She talks about preparing dishes in the kitchen, he says she's the only dish for him. A relationship built on puns is a house of cards, if you ask me. When Jaclyn mentions the dreaded word "relationship," she instantly apologizes, remembering his situation. "I would rather have no illusions than broken promises," she tells him when he fumbles for a way to make her feel better, knowing he can never leave his wife. She just keeps smiling and smiling. This incredibly nutso scene ends with Jaclyn a bit disappointed that Ken has mentioned his work with fellow vets in a campaign speech, but after two or three lines, invites him to "see the bedroom." Either Jaclyn's character is extremely stupid (that's been pretty well established) or extremely horny.
You know it's going to be odd when the heroine is invited to the grand palatial estate of his current wife, Deborah May. "I think you must be the most civilized person I've ever met," Jaclyn comments, for lack of any other clear sentiment. Calm WASP Deborah notes, "people change...I feel brand new. In fact, I'm very much in love myself." She's putting off a divorce until after the Senate campaign. "Is that agreeable to you?" Deborah asks? This is too good to be true. She has to be hiding a knife somewhere under the tea table. Her only request? "Let me release [Ken]. Let me let him go."
When Jaclyn arrives home, she finds an envelope with a dead canary in it pinned to her door.
After a fundraiser, Deborah decides to talk to Ken about their relationship. "Emotionally, we're both run out," she says. She tells him she will give him up if Jaclyn can stimulate him and keep him going with his political career. As for her plans, she remains vague. "No villains, no losers, everyone wins," she says, way too smoothly. She has one request of him too, that they have sex one more time. And they do!
Let's pause to learn a fact, via Sidney Sheldon. "The East River isn't a river at all, it's a channel," Ken tells Jaclyn when they have a rendezvous there. Let's unpause...
...to reveal the secret that has been making Deborah so confident. She's pregnant! This gets Jaclyn all upset again, and we know when she gets upset here, she blubbers and can't speak in complete sentences. "I'm hurting terribly," Jaclyn cries, suddenly without any hope. She has already figured out (and I'm not sure how with her lack of ability to put puzzle pieces together) that Deborah will always have an excuse to keep Ken. "There will always be another election...she intends for you to be President." Before leaving him, Jaclyn even compliments Deborah. "She rolled over me...that's good for a Senator's wife," she remarks, almost impressed.
It turns out Deborah is far more devious. As Jaclyn crosses the street one night, Deborah runs her down with her Mercedes. She wakes up in the hospital with bruises and make-up, with Kevin there at her side. The nurse, breaking all rules, tells Kevin that Jaclyn "almost lost the baby."
A year later, Jaclyn and Kevin are celebrating her child's first birthday, which happens to be Election Day. Wait, so Ron and Ken have been campaigning for over a year for a Senate seat? Something is off here timing-wise, but we don't have a choice except to believe it. Tucked into the conversation is a line that should be the focus of it: "I adopted him legally." Even in the early 80s, this character felt it necessary to hide her single motherhood and use that adoption bit? I thought that kind of thing disappeared with Eisenhower.
Jaclyn's big new case is to go after a company that makes trucks. Not only does it happen to be the one that "accidentally" killed the secretary who could have exonerated Jaclyn, but she also has other clients, proving that the trucks are faulty. When George Coe agrees to meet her demands for $2 million settlement for another injured woman, he asks her out to lunch. "Why don't we wait? You can hand me the check over a nice chef's salad," she says, swooping out of the room.
We haven't seen much of creepy Armand lately, and he ups that character description by sitting in the dark in Jaclyn's office, to be there when she arrives for work one morning. She tells him never go come to her office again. "You want me to go to your house?" he asks with swagger? "No." "That's why I came here."
I know you won't believe this, but Jennifer has been outwitted. I know, I know! When you pick yourself up off the floor, I'll tell you how. Remember when George Coe agreed to give her client $2 million? He first had to go to London for a trip, but they do have that lunch. Jaclyn asks for the money and he informs her she can't have it. "The statute of limitations ran out today," he says with a smile. Okay, so George Coe and his lawyers bothered to do their research in order to figure it out, but Jaclyn, whom we're told repeatedly might just be the smartest lawyer EVER in history, didn't bother to check on that detail, not a tiny one either.
But, she manages to cover that mistake in the most Sidney Sheldon-esque way possible, with a juicy deus ex machina that is too goofy for words. She calls George Coe, drunk with his coworkers over their good fortune, to inform him that she has found a lawyer in Hawaii, which is hours behind New York and therefore still within statute of limitations. Genius, pure genius.
After hearing that Ken is now running the Senate subcommittee on organized crime, Jaclyn gets ready for her next case, defending kidnapper John Glover. He admits to kidnapping the child, but explains why. It all started when his wife died in childbirth, as did the child. "It's like they couldn't afford God's rent to stay here," he says, a line meant to be brilliant, but instead laughably ridiculous. Anyway, he saw a little girl who looked like what would have been his child. "I didn't send a ransom note. I didn't want any money. I only wanted little Tammy," he says. Jaclyn has it all figured out in a flash. Someone knew about the kidnapping and send the ransom note to frame John (who, admittedly, did kidnap a kid, so he's not exactly an angel).
Jaclyn has to beg her old nemesis Ron to move John to a hospital because he's obviously crazy, and also to protect him from the other prisoners, who don't look kindly on kidnappers. She throws a tantrum, but that's not going to move Ron. While Jaclyn is speaking in court on another case, Kevin interrupts the the proceedings to tell her John has been playing them. He's really a homicidal maniac. However, Ron actually did have him transferred to a hospital, where he killed guards and escaped.
Pause again. So, Jaclyn didn't learn from the statute of limitations case that she should actually put some research hours into her cases? Wouldn't it have been easy enough to find out their client was a con artist? Unpause.
Needless to say, Ron is incredibly angry, having followed her advice only for it to end so badly. That night, Jaclyn arrives home to find her dog dead in the driveway. And her child is missing. The nanny is gagged and in the closet. John calls Jaclyn just as she's undoing the nanny. Why did John do it? "You knew they'd steal my brain...you took my case so you could have me destroyed," he tells her in stuttering gasps. Oh, John, you give her too much credit. She could have never put that many pieces together. Jaclyn has to go back to Ron to enlist his help in finding her son. She puts a lot of emphasis on forcing Ron to get John. "Strictly speaking, we're not an apprehending organization," he says, quite correctly. The DA's office? Why the hell is she putting any eggs in that basket? Ah, she actually tells us, and it's because she knows the DA has informants and she's hoping to tap into it. "You're not going to help me, are you? You still hate my guts. You're going to let my little boy diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!!!!!!" she yells as she runs out of the office.
Hmmm, where else can she go? Wait a minute, how about mob lawyer Armand Assante? He must have a few tricks up his sleeve. He goes to the mob boss to help figure it out and now we are subject to wizened old mafia boss wisdom, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense and might be fun it it rhymed. They get the police file on John, which Armand is convinced has information the police do not understand. John has Jaclyn's son tucked away and when the kid asks for his mother, he's told, "she in hell, she's deep in hell." Armand and company find a friend of John's and beat the stuffing out of him, getting as far as his sister (Lois Smith). Skittish Lois isn't afraid. "If this is a rape job, go ahead. My doctor's treating me for gonorrhea," she tells Armand and his equally grossed-out pal. Can she lead them to John before he sacrifices Jaclyn's son?
Of course! Armand kills him and the baby is saved. I suppose Jaclyn owes Armand big time now. "There's no thank you big enough," she tells him and even agrees to call him. That calls leads to a trip to Paris where their big pouffy hairstyles flow in tandem in the wind. He takes Jaclyn to the most opulent hotel in Paris, which he calls "quaint," and packs her off to the room while he has a meeting with some sketchy guys. She's left to ponder Paris on the balcony in yet another oversized sweater. The problem they have is that he loves her and she doesn't love him. "Tell me you love me," he says over and over, and all she says is "want" over and over.
By chance, back in New York City, Ken sees Jaclyn with their son, a nanny and a priest (go into a bar...). It's an awkward meeting for the two, getting a bit heated when he chides her for associating with Armand and his kind. Deborah is across the street waving. "She's a great waver," he says, trying to ignore her, but Jaclyn moves on. However, the meeting has upset her enough to snap at poor Kevin. Wearing her worst power suit yet, with a wide tie that was never stylish, Jaclyn is on the attack when Kevin tries to warn her about Armand as well. "I feel so funny. Nobody looks familiar. Everybody seems to have gone away," Kevin ruminates, staring outside the window, an omen of gloom.
Mafia head Joseph dies and Armand and his other lawyer Joe Warren argue about the will. Joe is pissed that Armand has turned into a "sloppy lovesick" fool who can't handle the business. Armand grabs Joe and insists that Jaclyn "and the organization" are both mine.
Kevin's world crumbles faster. He starts drinking again. "Please, tell me why. I'll understand," she chirps. Really? She hasn't understood much so far, so how will she understand that? When he rips into her about "yesterday's heartbreak staring at you through cankered tears," loneliness and even gay bars, she merely looks perplexed, though with sympathetic tears. "I've got nothing!" he yells and thrashes the office. He pulls down bookcases and blames Jaclyn for everything, but all she can do is whimper for him to stop. Yeah, it's clear she doesn't understand, just like he predicted. She takes him home to her family.
But, it's not enough. He goes into the office and hangs himself. When Jaclyn discovers him, she has one of by-now-expected fits of hysteria and then we dash off three months ahead to a legal conference in Mexico. It's not all work, as Jaclyn calls her secretary from a pool filled with hibiscus flowers.
The Senior Senator from New York is supposed to speak, but he can't make it and instead the Junior Senator from New York speaks (that would be our pal Ken, the only person in Mexico wearing a tie as everyone else is in leisure suits and halter tops). Ken gets to Jaclyn's hotel suite and asks point blank if the kid is his. Why didn't she tell him? "I didn't want to tear you in two. I would have ended up with the lesser half. And so would" his wife, she tells him, again proving that math is not a strong suit of hers. For that matter, neither is good dialogue. There was a time when she could quip beautifully, but now she can only quote her infant son. "All gone," she tells Ken.
He asks her out on a date in Mexico and she refuses, but does tell him he could have been a great senator and is not. Why? "Because [Deborah's] eyes don't dance like yours," he replies. That apparently seals the deal. She meets him as requested and they make all sorts of promises to each other in red lighting that is meant to simulate moonlight, but looks like a cut scene from the movie version of "South Pacific."
When Jaclyn gets home from her trip, Armand's chauffeur is waiting to take her to him. In church. He's in a pensive mood, talking in riddles and opposites. "I love you suntanned. I love you pale...I've seen you naked, but never nude," that sort of tripe. He tells in his best mafia voice that, "you must never leave me again," though she replies, "I hope to be rid of you." He insists on protecting her son always, but she doesn't understand what he really wants. "What can I give you to keep you gentle?" she asks. "The title, free and clear," is his answer. Last I checked, she's not the Queen, so what title?
In the next scene, he's boxing with his lackey, who is giving him his spy report on Jaclyn and Ken's moves in Mexico. "You saw him in bed with my property?" he asks, slugging the lackey to the ground. The conversation continues in the sauna where a very hairy-chested Armand orders a hit on Ken. The lackey is biding his time because he wants to hire someone from out of the country who cannot be traced. Ah, but Armand wants to do it himself. The lackey begs him not to. "I want him dead more than I want myself alive," he mumbles. That will certainly win you Jaclyn, won't it? What is she supposed to do, drag your carcass to dinners and the movies?
Joe Warren calls Jaclyn for a mysterious meeting in Lower Manhattan. "I'm not in the boom boom business," referring to the mafia. She doesn't really care, but when he says "lovesick madman" Armand has a hit out on Ken, she is interested. Jaclyn doesn't see what she can do (other than the obvious--telling Ken), but Joe says they are both "your men" and thus her problem. For the first time in the story, Jaclyn actually asks a smart question: why can't Joe take care of Armand? He has some excuse about not starting a mob war. The answer is wan, but I'm so proud of our Jaclyn for starting to understand!
She can't get through to Ken, so she goes to her old friend, DA Rob. She informs him that Armand is going to kill Ken, because "of his obsession for me." Rob asks when? where? how? She has no idea. "Why me? Why me again?" Rob begs of her. "You're going to do nothing? You're going to sit there and stare at me with your dead eyes and do nothing?" she begs. Oh, Jaclyn, the flattery, it's too much! Wait a second, it actually works! He says "I'll handle it." Of course, when she leaves, Rob tells his assistant he has no intention of listening to her.
Armand calls Jaclyn and asks for "a civilized ending," a meeting for that night at 7pm. He then goes out with a gun to shoot Ken on his usual riverside jogging path. Ken runs merrily with his constituents (including one sassy girl who says she'll vote for him because he has "great legs and a cute behind"), while Armand slowly steers a boat to his ideal spot and Jaclyn arrives at Armand's place, perplexed because "he's never kept me waiting before." Back to being completely dimwitted, Jaclyn doesn't put the pieces together immediately, grilling the lackey until darkness falls and threatening to "put you away for life plus forever!" Jeepers, that's a long time.
When she gets the information from the lackey, Jaclyn is caught in traffic trying to get there. Ken stops to take a rest and Armand loads his gun. Amazingly, Jaclyn runs to Ken (how the hell did she know exactly where he would be?), yells his name and then gets shot by Armand, who does a King Lear-like howl when he sees what he's done. Unfortunately, he doesn't see the tugboat behind him, which knocks him into the river. He's caught in the current and goes under.
Ken keeps a vigil at the hospital and Deborah is there too. "She has no right to make it!" Deborah says. She confesses to the notes and hints at the car accident, demanding that "you can be President of the United States someday and I can watch." Again in a hospital bed, this time Jaclyn has no bruises, but still her perfect make-up. Finally catching up with the plot, Jaclyn tells Ken, "I think he wanted me there that night so he could tell me he killed you." You don't say! "Don't look so miserable, you don't have to love my anymore...you loved me once and that's enough. I'm the past," she tells him, setting him up for the inevitable blow-off. He tells her, "you're the most distinguished person I've ever met," leaves the hospital room, takes his wife's hand and walks down the long hallway.
As for our Jaclyn, she's "giving up everything" in the words of her secretary, to go back to Washington. The woman even packs up a house in a jacket with shoulder pads. Dressing down, up, or sideways is not something she has been able to manage. Her friend the priest has one last case for her and as she pleads and refuses, the camera pulls away and the movie ends.
The Jennifer Parker lead character in "Rage of Angels" is the most unappealing of all Sidney Sheldon heroines, mainly because she's so utterly idiotic. Granted, "Rage of Angels" is not one of his better books, because most of the characters are unappealing and it misses the touch of the exotic that Sheldon did so well. The movie version goes one worse by letting go of the erotic, something no Sheldon book ever lacked. Dozens of men want the same woman here and we don't have so much as a sex scene. The biggest kiss is from a man to his wife!
However, things here proved so popular that "Rage of Angels" begot a miniseries sequel...
Questions? Comments? Laughs? Email me at hpmaraka@gmail.com and let's chat!
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls (1981)
Universally adored as perhaps THE ne plus ultra camp classic of all time, the 1967 film version of Jacqueline Susann's smut-fueled roman a clef "Valley of the Dolls," is one of those movies from which you cannot turn away. It lures you in, traps you and won't let you go. For decades, you will be quoting the lines. And no, you don't have to be a drag queen to appreciate the myriad treasures of that film. The performance of Patty Duke alone should have had the Academy changing the rules to take back Oscars from actors who go this far outside of good acting.
But alas, we're not here to discuss the 1967 "Valley of the Dolls" (though if you would like to, let me know, because I can go on for hours and hours), but the 1981 remake, which added the author's name to the official title though she was already dead. This remake resets the piece in 1981, which automatically knocks out any chance of figuring out which characters in the original were based on celebrities (Is Neely Judy Garland? Is Helen Ethel Merman?), and let's face it, 1981 was not nearly as deliciously cheesy a time as 1967. But, a bit more faithful to the Susann novel than the original movie (at least until the half an hour or so), this remake, which spawned a very brief television series, certainly has its goofy charms as well. It tries very hard to create some classic lines of its own, but none of them compare.
Because of Patty Duke's immortal performance, the presence of Susan Hayward and the tragedy that would befall Sharon Tate only a few years later, people tend to think of the original as having an A-List cast, but that's anything but true (how's life today, Barbara Parkins?). So, this remake gets by with a B-Level cast just the same, though none of them are in any danger of stepping over the line into immortality from this piece of nonsense.
Before jumping in, let's give credit where it's due. Well, credit and blame. The original novel "Valley of the Dolls" was a gigantic sensation in its time. Partially due to Susann's willingness to play her part nationwide, sales of the book skyrocketed and trashy literature had a new heroine. It was "Peyton Place" but twenty times dirtier and more fascinating because of it. So, of course it had to be a movie. And of course Susann had to write more books in this vein before dying tragically young(ish).
And that folks, is the central problem with the 1981 "Valley of the Dolls." Nearly two decades of familiarity, a movie version and a sexual revolution later, the actions of the characters and their sexual liberties seem almost tame here. Why do it at all? With Mr. Susann, Irving Mansfield as an executive producer, I suppose we have our answer.
Note: because the characters in "Valley of the Dolls" are so well-known, I'm going to use character names here.
The first thing to notice is a song by Dionne Warwick, who sang the title song in the original, but it's not that song, just some pale imitation called "What Became of Me?" by no less than Sammy Cahn of all people. That sets the tone for the next four hours, pale imitation.
Forget New York City and Broadway, by 1981, the were as decaying as Helen Lawson's career. For 1981, it's all about Los Angeles and Hollywood. Ann Welles (Catherine Hicks) has graduated from a legal secretary to a full-fledged lawyer, though still for an entertainment agency. Ann is still somewhat mousy to start, wearing a suit that she tells a co-worker "I sewed when I was 16," an outfit that is so buttoned up and free of skin it could be worn by a nun.
Ann has to work on some contracts to please superstar and notorious bitch Helen Lawson (slumming Jean Simmons). We first encounter Helen in a screening room watching a terrifically awful movie musical number performed by Tony Polar (Bert Convy) to Jennifer North (Veronica Hamel). "Damn her! I want her out. I want her out of the picture!" Helen screams, going into the projection room, knocking the movie off the projector. As she trashes the room, she berates the poor nobody editor with lines like, "didn't anyone ever tell you 'Fanfare' is a Helen Lawson picture?" The movie's director Lyon Burke (David Birney) calms him down, telling him that she only rages because she's old and Jennifer is young and pretty. He then has to placate Helen, which he does, though she still wants Jennifer fired. "You've heard all those rumors about her doing pornos," is her rationalization, though she's also jealous because she assumes Lyon is sleeping with Jennifer. "You get rid of that tramp or I'll put everyone connected with this film on welfare," Helen rails before storming out. The lines are a hoot, but it's Jean Simmons, drawing on decades of experience, who makes them work. Unlike Susan Hayward, who played every role as a "broad," it doesn't come as naturally to Jean, making it all the more impressive.
The head of the law firm is Henry Bellamy (James Coburn), who has gone over the Helen Lawson contract and found out that Helen holds all the cards. To make sure we understand just how important Henry is, their meeting is interrupted by a call from Rome, from Carlo. Do we need to ask Carlo who? (Ponti, we assume). Ann admires Henry's artwork and Henry is quite taken with her, inviting her to lunch, you know, to discuss business.
On the movie set, Lyon is shooting a scene with Tony and Jennifer, though Tony is both unable to ride a bike and remember lines. "It's okay," Lyon says, the only director in history to be calmer than anyone else on the shoot. He pulls Jennifer aside to tell her to cue him, and Jennifer takes the opportunity to make sure Lyon won't fire her at Helen's insistence. When she returns to help Tony, all he can do is ask her out on a date.
That night, Tony picks Jennifer up, but she won't get in the car until he opens the door. "I never let superstars take me for granted," she jokes. They take a ride around the Hollywood Hills, bonding over shared experiences of childhood poverty (via one-liners). He takes her back to his house, where she's on guard. When she asks him if he's ever been in love, he replies, "not until now." That's her cue to pull away. "I want to be more than a one-night stand," she says, assuming she's just another notch on the bedpost, but Tony assures her, "you mean much more to me than that."
Lyon meets with Henry and Ann, the only woman he so far hasn't charmed and promised to call, where Ann summarizes their position with Helen: $5million at stake. Lyon wants to fire her and recast, but Henry refuses. She's the star. Lyon also will not fire Jennifer, threatening to quit if it comes to that. "I suppose it's time to stop catering to her," Henry says of Helen and then decides to talk about casting another role, another one that has enraged Helen.
It's at this point that Lyon notices Ann and invites her out for a drink. Instead, Ann suggests going to a showcase where her roommate Neely O'Hara (Lisa Hartman) is performing because Ann thinks she would be perfect for the role in the movie. This gives Neely an opportunity to tear into a truly awful rock song that shows off absolutely no talent at all, but somehow Lyon is bewitched. I'm not sure what the plot of the movie is, but the number we've seen so far (Tony's with Jennifer) was an old-time type and Neely sings rock. "You're not supposed to be able to find talent like that anymore, right? Wrong!" Lyon tells Ann after agreeing to give Neely a vocal and screen test. No, Lyon, you should never have to find "talent" like that. For some reason, this has Lyon going glassy-eyed and talking about the serious types of movies he wants to make. And that is followed by him inviting Ann back to his house, saying he's forward because he has no times for games. "Sorry Lyon, no games, no score," says out Miss Priss.
So much ground is covered in that scene, it's amazing, especially because it's handled so ineptly!
Anyway, at 6am the next morning, Neely is laying down her vocal track. She has a lot of trouble and she's very nervous, though Lyon has an infinite amount of patience, as usual.. Cue the first "doll." Neely downs a pill to perk her up and suddenly she can perform the song perfectly (or perfectly badly, if you are on the outside of the movie). The screen test is done with Neely dressed like a Mandrell sister. It takes ten days, but Neely gets the part. Ann has known, so she has a bottle of champagne ready to celebrate and Lyon himself shows up at their apartment to drop off the script...and to invite Ann out on a second date.
They stay in, where now it's Ann's turn to go glassy-eyed and tell her life story in a bland monologue. Lyon plays less attention than I did, only wanting to kiss her, which he does, of course.
Get ready folks, it's Neely's first day on the set. She's so nervous that someone offers her "a little help...to take the edge off." More Tic Tacs, I mean dolls. Remember when I said I didn't know what "Fanfare" was about? And remember when I told you to get ready? On the first, I'm more confused than ever and on the second, you better make sure you're prepared. Neely's first day on the set is as the leader of an elaborate production number where she and a bunch of girls come off a cruise ship in cheerleader outfits dong choreography so ridiculous it looks like it was lifted from the Village People's "Can't Stop the Music." Neely wears hot pants to distinguish her from the rest of the girls. Amazingly, her first take is perfect.
Also on the set are Tony and Jennifer, having a giggle over a terrible meal she made. Cue Miriam (Broadway legend Carol Lawrence), Tony's controlling sister, who snorts to Jennifer, "I saw your centerfold...do you do that sort of thing often?" The conversation is a catfight waiting to happen, but Jennifer retains the upper hand. Miriam warns Tony not to "get involved," but Tony tells her, "you manage my business affairs" and he'll take care of Jennifer.
In her most efficient demeanor, Ann goes to Helen's trailer to suspend her, and Helen is outraged, though Ann manages to chide her for her behavior because she is "someone I've loved all of my life." Idol worship has to be put on hold as Helen hears more of Neely's production number being shot and storms out. This part takes on the second story of a double decker bus with the band dressed in sailor outfits. Why? Beats the hell out of me! Helen gets even angrier because "that's my song!" "Not anymore," Lyon says, informing her that the picture is being reshot around the younger cast. "What's my next shot?" a defeated Helen asks, even taking a moment to thank Ann for her harsh words.
Because of the way Ann has handled Helen, Henry buys her a painting and puts her in charge of everything regarding "Fanfare" while he's out of town. "Beware of Lyon. He has a way of devouring baby moguls," a phrase Ann had just coined for people so young in the business who rise so high. This means she has to be on the set all the time. She invades the pastries, but Neely doesn't because she's busy popping pills. When Henry calls to inform Lyon that they have decided to give Neely two extra numbers (musicals by 1981 barely had two, let alone two extra!), he also talks to Ann, who is so super smart about everything she knows exactly how much money it costs every time Tony can't remember his lines.
Anyone in screenwriting classes should take notes on a scene between Tony and Jennifer, because it's everything one should not do in constructing a scene. Jennifer, emerging from the pool, somehow gets to the subject of children and Tony says he loves them, but never thought about having any. "Are you trying to tell me something?" he asks. "No," she says. She takes five steps. "Not really," she says. Pours lemonade. "Well, think about it," she says. Giving himself nearly a full minute to ham it up, Bert-as-Tony registers about 15 facial expressions and slowly walks over to Jennifer to ask if she's pregnant. She's "not sure," but wants to prepare him so he can prepare Miriam. The scene should have taken 10 seconds, not 10 years.
It's been decided to do an all-out "media blitz" on Neely and turn her into a star in five minutes. In order to act, record, model, pose and live through it all, Neely needs more and more dolls. She's so wired that her faithful Teddi Casablana (Steve Inwood), who presumably is still "not a fag" in the immortal words of 1967, gives her dolls to sleep. "We're streetfighters, you and me...we're going to show this town who we really are," Teddi tells her, for reasons I can't comprehend because there has been no establishment of his character or who the hell he even is! "Teddi, love me," Neely says as she pulls him close to her.
Steel yourselves, it's time for a Jean Simmons number. No, not Gene Simmons, Jean Simmons. Only because Margaret Whiting handled the vocals and a mobile pulled concentration away from her, was Susan Hayward able to pull off "I'll Plant My Own Tree" in the original movie version. Jean is not so lucky. Stuck on a sound stage that looks like the old set of "Hollywood Palace," on a block with a band around her, poor Jean is drenched in a red dress so voluminous it must have come from "Gone With the Wind," she lip syncs to someone who is definitely no Margaret Whiting. Thankfully, it soon turns into a duet with Tony, and since Bert Convy can actually sing, he melds with her ghost vocalist better than when said vocalist sings solo. I ask again the question of "what the hell is this movie about?" The two are dressed for something from the 50s, though the song sounds like vintage 70s Carpenters. When that scene is done, the movie is officially full shot and since the sound stage is so enormous, it can be used for the wrap party.
Helen asks Henry if he indeed would have canceled the picture if she hasn't "backed down on Jennifer North." Absolutely he would have. "Ann did a good job of bluffing me down, but it's nice to know I still have some clout," she says wistfully. You want to rethink that, Helen? Whatever this movie is about, it ain't gonna be good! Jennifer informs Tony she's pregnant and he goes to the microphone to announce his engagement to Jennifer. Even Helen claps at this news, though Miriam is is pissed. "When you have a moment, meet me in your dressing room. It's urgent. And don't tell Tony," she hisses at Jennifer. Before she can go, she has to accept congratulations from Ann and Neely, while everyone else spreads good cheer to Tony.
Lyon gets a call from Paris, telling him his new art film there is a go, but the call actually sounds like it's from 1967, because Lyon tells Ann she's coming with him, but she has her job in LA. "Is that suddenly more important than us?" he asks. "Either come with me or forget about it," he snaps when she offers to take long weekends in Paris. She says no and he walks out.
Now what is so urgent that Miriam had to drag Jennifer away from the party? "I don't dislike you, Jennifer, I never did...now I think you really care," Miriam says, and then makes Jennifer promise to keep this conversation a secret. "There is no easy way to say this," she starts. It seems that Tony's father (not hers, FYI), "died in the back ward of a mental hospital, a vegetable." Ouch! Tony was only four and given a lot of tests, only to find out he was born "with a death sentence over him...he was going to die the same way his father did." Mugging to the back row of the balcony and lays out some fancy medical terms that essentially add up to the fact that Tony is soon to be a goner. She has the paperwork to prove it. "He's going to die. He's dying right now. Only first he's going to become a helpless child, only it won't be in the back ward of a mental hospital. I've already picked the best sanitarium there is. There only thing I can hope is that he doesn't know what is happening to him," Miriam dramatically tells Jennifer, who dissolves into tears of her own. Jennifer asks what will happen if she has a child, and of course Miriam says it's not at all possible. Uh oh.
Tony has been making plans in Jennifer's absence, culminating in a desire to fly to Rome the next day to get married. Jennifer wants a drink first. Is that okay, wonders Tony? She assures him it is. I think at this point, Jennifer is no longer worried about the health of her never-to-be-born fetus, and a glass of wine won't make things any worse. In fact, she tells him that she would like to go on a very very long honeymoon together and a baby would be in the way. "Let's put off having this baby," she says, to which Tony angrily replies, "you want to kill it?" She makes it sound like she wants a few years of alone time with him before they settle into family life. "After we kill our child, we can have a ball. We can celebrate!" Tony snarls. "Are you just a lousy ambitious actress on the make?" he fumes, asking her if she's just been using him until the picture ended? "I can't go through with it, Tony, I can't," she says simply. "I'm going on the concert tour and you can go tot hell," he says before storming out. This is 1981 and not 1967, so Jennifer can have an abortion free, clear and legally.
Jennifer then goes to Paris when she buys her own dolls at a news stand. She becomes an addicted mess very quickly in a rat trap of an apartment (though with strong windows because closing just one mutes all the tolling bells of the city) which she can't pay for.
Neely becomes an overnight sensation, the kind that is mobbed by fans when she tries to walk down Hollywood Boulevard (you know, where all the fans hang out and thus stars are bound to be mobbed). A fan puts a sticker saying "I Love Neely" over Helen Lawson's billing on a poster for "Fanfare." She and Teddi fight over her career. He feels Ann and Henry have stymied it by controlling it so tightly, and she won't fight them.
As for Ann, she's on her way up as well. She has bought a best-seller to turn into a movie...no, a musical for Neely, and she's reminded that "there is a great part in it for Jennifer," though no one has heard from her. Ann has scads of men leaving her messages proposing dates, but she ignores them all. She misses Lyon.
In a seedy Parisian bar, a blond woman with a severe haircut and big shoulder pads buys Jennifer a drink, saying she's an artist. "I've been watching you for some minutes and I can tell you are a very unhappy woman," Vivienne (Camille Spary) opines. She invites Jennifer to her studio for some wine. "Why not?" Jennifer tartly replies. Anything for free booze. Vivienne offers Jennifer a modeling job, and Jennifer collapses, not having eaten since she started on the dolls. Vivienne offers to help her. "You need someone. You shouldn't be alone," she says. Remember, folks, what a severe haircut meant in 1981.
Guess who is nominated for Best Supporting Actress? Neely! Yup, word comes via telegram (apparently also from 1967). Oh, what award is this? I have no idea, no one actually says. It can't be an Oscar, because that would be a trademark violation, and last I checked, they didn't send nominees telegrams ahead of the announcement. Guess who is not nominated for Best Actress? Helen, and Ann feels sorry for her. "This started out as a Helen Lawson picture," she whines to Henry and then asks him, "could you arrange for one of those Lifetime Achievement Awards" for Helen. He can arrange that, no problem. This definitely isn't the Oscars. They discuss Lyon's time in Paris, where apparently he's already made his movie and it tanked. That was quick!
It's the night of the awards and Army Archerd is playing himself on the red carpet. He interviews Helen first. Does she think Neely will win? "Oh, I'm rooting for her," she says with a recognizable sneer. He has to be fed the name of Tony's date. When Neely shows up, whoever designed the costumes for this movie should be shot. Starting with the tightly braided hair, it's a mess from top to bottom (hey, it's an awards show, we're allowed to judge the outfits). Teddi doesn't let her answer anything, doing it himself. Ann and Henry come together and Lyon jumps out from the crowd to greet them.
"Look at that hair!" Henry says, supposedly lovingly, when Neely is announced as the winner and kisses everyone in the cast on her way up. Everyone except for Helen, that is. Helen is backstage wearing a giant frown and puffing on a cigarette, unhappily watching on a monitor.
The fur flies backstage. "Those pills must have affected your mind, you thanked everyone but the star of the picture," Helen snaps. "I thanked everyone who helped me," Neely retorts. "You look like a porcupine in heat," Helen notices (and she's right). "You're a hag...has-been of the year," Neely says when Nathan Lane, of all people, playing a stage hand, tries to get Helen onto the stage. Helen gives Neely a resounding slap across the face and is then help by two women, but soon escapes in time to pull off Helen's wig to reveal her natural gray hair just as Helen's name is announced on stage.
Neely takes the wig and holds it over a toilet so Helen can see it, dropping it down and chirping, "go get it, Miss Lawson," as she flushes. Nathan Lane is about to have a heart attack in his attempt to get Helen on, and she finally decides to go with her gray hair (which is a really bad wig--you can see the wig line!). She's a pro, strutting out on stage and accepting the award with a joke about her hair and noting that she's in good company getting this award, with Helen Hayes and Laurence Olivier. And then she tops it all by saying that, "when I was very young, I had a walk-on in a movie about Mary, Queen of Scots" who famously died wearing a wig, covering gray hair. "I'm glad I showed you mine while we still have time to get to know each other," Helen says to a rapturous crowd and strides off stage a self-possessed veteran. Take that, you newcomer swine, Neely O'Hara!
At a celebratory lunch, Teddi fires away at Henry and Ann. "I'm serving notice right now...unless you are prepared to renegotiate," he warns. Henry and Ann agree, but then Henry says that "everything is negotiable except her hair," cutting Teddi down to his first job as a hair stylist. "The amateurs have a tendency to bring everybody down to their level," Henry snarls, "and in this case, that's intolerable." He storms out and then Teddi storms out, so Neely has to run after him. "That's baby's in trouble. She's far down the road," Lyon notes to Ann, who has worked her addiction into the shooting schedule. Lyon wants to direct the picture and Ann, wearing the same color as the booth and therefore blending into it, won't give him a firm yes or no on that.
Neely passes out during a recording session and awakes to find Teddi gone. She follows him to a bar where he's canoodling with another woman. Neely throws a drink in the woman's face and slaps Teddi. "You pig, you slob," Teddi spits out, "you make me sick. You disgust me." Neely falls up against a parked car, in her tight Spandex pants and then drives away, deprived of the howler of a monologue Patty Duke got around this time in the original version. Instead, she gets a trip in an elevator where she pushes all the buttons and cries. She heads to the roof, tries to get some dolls and accidentally drops them over.
Henry gets the news first and calls Ann, but Lyon picks up and refuses to let Ann have the phone for no apparent reason but to be macho and waste a few moments. When Ann and company arrive, Neely is still on the roof and the reporters are watching from below. "Is there anyway we can help?" Lyon asks a policeman? "Hey, maybe!" he says and lets Lyon and Ann up to the roof. Teddi is stopped by a reporter who has one question: "why?" He blames Henry and the "exclusive contract." When Teddi tries to go up, they won't let him.
Instead, Ann and Lyon are harnessed and sent to the edge to help her. Uh huh, right! Because both of them are such great negotiators. "Don't you remember all the dreaming we shared in that crummy apartment?" Ann begs of Neely. Why is she doing it? Because Teddi is "cheating on me." "You're going to turn him into the world's #1 stud," if she jumps, Lyon asks her. "Is he that good? Is he that good in the sack?" Lyon continues. That's the most ridiculous line of reasoning, but it seems to work. It gets Neely to accept a cup of coffee from Ann so Lyon and the rescue team can grab her.
"I really wanted to die and come back to see what everyone thought of it, like the dailies," Neely blubbers in the ambulance. Lyon and Ann take this seriously, but the cop on hand, if I'm not mistaken, is having trouble stifling a laugh.
A way-too-long sequence of scenes where the movie wants us to think there might be something between Henry and Ann ends with Lyon showing up at her apartment very jealous. "Move in with me," Ann suggests. "I want to make love to you, not do the dishes," Lyon answers, in his usual sexist way, though with this odd non-sequiter.
Remember Jennifer? You do? I had quite forgotten about her since it's been oodles of time since we last saw her in Paris with Vivienne, the artist with the severe haircut. She has heard the news about Neely and calls Ann to find out how she is. A painter friend of Vivienne's named Robaire (David Hess), wants to paint Jennifer too. "For a hundred francs an hour," Vivienne says, "that's what I pay her." "Ah, but you get extras," he points out, causing all eyes to look at the floor. Jennifer has the opportunity to buy more dolls, does, but doesn't take any. Instead, she returns to Vivienne to tell her, "I'm living a life that's not me" and announces she's moving out.
Typically, Lyon wants to get back to directing. "Without my work, I just don't feel alive," he tells her as a break-up line, in this, the first scene we've seen of Lyon and Ann since they declared their love for each other. Lyon hasn't made a lick of sense since his first scene, so are we surprised?
His directing gig is in Paris, with Francoise (Britt Ekland) handling business affairs. Lyon makes a reference to taxes. "You should move to Europe, only poor people pay taxes here," Francoise says, apparently in the park of the script written before the events of 1789.
Neely arrives home from the hospital with three men in tow. He notes that he should have brought flowers. "Get some lilies, Teddi. For yourself. I've signed with Famous World Talent," Neely says confidently. Honey, if you signed with an agency named Famous World Talent, you have bigger problems than addiction! "Get out, Teddi. Your bags will be downstairs tomorrow," she says. "Teddi, you lose, split," one of her new agents warns. She then does a press conference at the Bellamy offices, back to her blonde hair. She's not upset about losing the role in Ann's movie because "it's too soon after my high wire act above Wilshire Boulevard," she notes, but apparently a music tour will be fine for her sanity.
Jennifer is still posing for Vivienne, who introduces her to Enid Marshall (Tricia O'Neill). Enid is an agent who wants her back in the states to do commercials. As for Ann, she's decided she wants to spend the night at Henry's, and does. Ewwwwww.
In Paris, Lyon and Francoise attend a fashion show (why? who the hell knows?) that is spoken entirely in English, and he sees Jennifer with her gal pals. He asks her to dinner, at a place where they pour wine out of miniature cannons. Jennifer goes through her tale of woe, making it clear she's no longer a) on drugs or b) with Vivienne. After spending a lot of the night with Lyon, she wakes him up to say she's going back to LA.
Enid takes Jennifer to meet cosmetics mogul Kevin Gilmore (Gary Collins), who can't get enough of Jennifer. "We've been testing your photos all over America and what we've come up with is, despite your looks, women all over America love you!" he tells her. Okay, I guess that's a compliment. He wants her to model cosmetics, to be the "Now Woman." What follows is, of course, a montage of Jennifer's cheesecake shots for the cosmetics. If Veronica Hamel weren't so stunning, it would probably be laughable. While becoming a success, she starts seeing Kevin, who teaches her to fish. "You mean, I have the pleasure or re-opening your beach house?" she asks. "Re-opening my life," he replies, as he's been alone since his wife died. He tells her that happy story with a roaring fire. Not only was the wife sick, but apparently a horrible person as she was dying. "Too bad you never had any children, you'd still have a part of her," Jennifer lovingly coos, obviously thinking of her own situation. She's finally found a man who doesn't love her just for her looks and that makes her happy, though you couldn't real tell from the wooden acting what it is Kevin really feels.
Well, unfortunately, Neely has started hitting the dolls and booze again and the tour is suffering. "You want me to function, right? I just need a little help," she tells a worried Ann. Neely says she's bored talking about herself (that's news), so what about Ann? Does she think about Lyon? "I try not to," she says. Lyon's new movie, his second made in the blink of an eye, is a giant hit, and Francoise has a new movie lined up for him, but he wants to go back to LA so he can not only director, but write, his new movie.
It turns out that Henry and Kevin are old friends, so they take their women to lunch, but Ann notices something isn't quite right with Jennifer, so it's time for an emergency trip to the powder room, ladies only. Ann wants her to see a doctor, and she agrees. "Make it in the morning. I have a photo session in the afternoon," Jennifer tells her. In the middle of her shoot, Jennifer get an important call telling her to rush back to the doctor, to "something called an Oncologist...it means a specialist in tumors," Jennifer tells Ann. The rather diffident doctor diagnoses breast cancer, which has spread into her body. "You're telling me, I'm dying?" "Once again," says the doctor nastily, explaining that it's not hopeless, but it's not looking too good unless she does aggressive treatment, starting with a double mastectomy. The bitchy doctor has one negative thing after another to tell Jennifer, who asks if she can have children. "To even think about children at this point is completely unrealistic," the doctor replies, with all the warmth of an Alaskan nun.
"I'll do whatever I have to do, not here, not LA," Jennifer finally agrees, picking New York City so Kevin won't know. She doesn't want him to know anything because of how he lost his first wife. "I'll write you a prescription for some tranquilizers," is the doctor's end line. Yippee, more dolls!
Jennifer lies to Kevin, at first, but he's figured out she's sick because her answering service called his answering service. So, she tells him the truth, but tells him, "I won't put you through that again." He loves her too much to let her go and insists they will get married that weekend, "even if it's in the hospital...and we can adopt a couple of children." It all seems so perfect until she wakes up that night, sees Kevin crying outside and comes up with a new plan. One that involves a whole bottle of dolls. Finding her dead is a sure way to make Kevin feel better!
Not only is Jennifer North the most sympathetic character in "Valley of the Dolls," but Veronica Hamel gives the movie's best performance, so spending the final hour without her is going to be pretty damn painful. Missing Gary Collins? Not so much.
Neely insists on performing that night, but Ann is asked to be there because "she's been acting really weird lately." Poor Ann, always there to hold everyone's hands. The concert gives us another chance for a Lisa Hartman song. The arena looks like it seats 74 comfortably, and not two of them can clap in time with another. Neely starts off with a ballad, but it soon turns into a up-tempo song where she gets to smile and snap her hair back and forth a lot. If she's dedicating this to Jennifer, no thanks! Ah, that's not the dedication song. Neely stops the show to mention Jennifer's death and THEN dedicates a song to her (killing more time through bad singing). At least this one is a ballad, but after just a verse, she is too upset to finish and dashes off the stage. Ann wants to stay and help Neely, who wants to be alone and promises to call her in the morning.
Alone in her dressing room, Neely hears voices saying "they are going to kill you," so she bolts to the stage, where finally she allows herself to be taken to the hospital. The funky camera angles and running make-up tell us she's fully crazy, fully hooked on dolls. Things get worse at the hospital, where she is in a full "amphetamine psychosis" and runs around the halls like a lunatic. This can mean only one thing, a trip to the Betty Ford Cen...some fancy rehab in Southern California that caters to the rich and famous. Getting there, a clearly disturbed Neely asks Ann, "is Jen going to join us?" "No, honey, she can't," Ann says sympathetically.
Ann's co-worker sets her up to go on a lunch date with Lyon by telling her he's a writer with his first script and she needs to meet him. Ann actually likes the script idea, about a girl from Kansas with problems, aka "The Neely O'Hara Story" in a nutshell. He also apologizes to her. "I'm still in love with you," is supposed to cover all of his nonsense. Pig that he is, he says, "what I'd like to try is to make a commitment, a real commitment." Try?
"Henry, Lyon and I were married last night in Las Vegas," Ann tells Henry, who has been courting Ann for "nearly a year now." He's understandably upset, mainly because he doesn't think Lyon is good enough. Ann's reply? "I still believe in love. And if you love someone, you marry him," she snaps, proof that Lyon's 60s mentality has rubbed off on her big time.
I guess the news has shocked Henry worse than expected, because he has a heart attack that very day! Ann calls Lyon to tell him she has to stay at the office "to make contingency plans." When she gets home, the King and Queen of Selfishville have a whopper of a conversation. "Why did this have to happen right after I told him about us?" she asks. "Coincidence?" he answers, seriously. King tells Queen that she's expected to run the office because Henry has "groomed her for it," which lights her up. King then thinks of himself, being alone without her so many hours, noting, "I won't have an excuse not to finish the script." These two get worse and worse with every scene! Lyon has always been unbearable, but Ann used to have her good moments.
In rehab, where "this is no such thing as instant therapy," according to a doctor, Neely is actually the sanest of the bunch. There's a woman who tells her "if I leave here, they'll kill me." "Who?" "The Russians." Um, yeah. Neely wisely chooses to worry about the fact that she's lost the ability to sing.
Ann and Lyon have many reasons to celebrate. He has finished the script and she's been promoted to "run the production end of the film division." Lyon claims to be very proud of her and also claims that he'll be fine with her increased workload. Even better for him, she's already negotiated a contract for the rights to his movie, provided Neely stars in it (in her own story?). Neely is still in rehab, but she has her voice back. Apparently it was all in her mind, explains the doctor, or some man in a white coat pretending to be a doctor, because his explanation isn't based at all in medical science. There's no denying she has her voice back, because she's giving her fellow patients an impromptu concert, belting out another rock song to an audience who can't clap well (okay, it's a sanitarium, they have an excise). She pulls up one of the men from the crowd and it's...
...Tony! Yup, 163 hours later, we meet Tony again. He's in the institution withering away, just like Miriam promised he would be. He's something of a zombie, and doesn't recognize Lyon or Ann. The unhelpful doctor, who discloses Tony's condition willingly to Lyon and Ann, suggests it's time for a nap and takes him away so Ann and Lyon can talk to Neely about the movie. Neely thinks she only needs "a month or two" more of rehab, and Lyon is just fine with that. Is he starting to care about someone else?
Out on her own, Neely is assured by Lyon that "you are going to be wonderful" and that he will protect her during the filming process. Is she worried about going back to Kansas to shoot? Nah, she's okay with it, now that she's clean. Ann will not be attending because she's too busy at the office, Lyon says rather nastily (good, his selfishness is back). There's a great deal of tension between husband and wife at the office where she has to make sure the business end of the movie is okay, butting heads with his creative needs. Actually, Ann tries to smooth things over, but Lyon is too focused on himself to work on the marriage.
The rushes from Neely's picture impress everyone (except me, to whom it seems just plain badly acted), and Ann puts in a call to Lyon on set in Kansas. He's busy in a bar pumping up Neely's ego. "You always made me feel like someone special," she tells him, apparently not realizing that he's thinking more of her body than her psyche. When he invites her into his motel room, she begins to understand, but she goes anyway. He gets the message from Ann, but declines to call her back. Not thinking of Neely's issues, he offers her cognac, but she remembers them before falling into his arms for big kissing.
When Lyon returns home, Ann greets him with, "I missed the hell out of you." "Sometimes I forget how lovely you really are," he says. That's a troubling line, but she doesn't catch it. It's not until she's watching the dailies that she hears about "the special coaching" Neely is getting, "eight hours of rehearsal every night," according to others in the room. Ann storms out to "think about it," but loyal Henry is "here if you need me."
She rushes to the location where they are shooting, barges into Neely's trailer and finds Neely and her husband kissing. "Oh, Ann, I'm sorry," Neely pouts before ditching the trailer. Why is he sleeping with her? He has a few choice reasons:
"Part of it's the work, you put people together..."
"Neely needs to feel love"
"Part of it's us. Your work. You don't seem to need anything these days."
The first makes no sense, the second is a cop-out and the third finally gets to some truth. Ann realizes that and goes for the kill. "Aren't we really talking about what you need, Lyon?" she asks, apparently unaware that for the last four hours, that's all they've talked about. "My career threatens your masculinity, it always has. It didn't have to, that's what's so sad." Bingo, she's finally gotten it! "I'm good with film. I'm not good with commitment. I do love you and I wish you would give this another shot," he says, turning from anger to guilt in one sentence. "You finish your picture and then get out of my life," Ann says, making the right decision. Ann can't hate Neely, and in fact reassures her that they are fine and nothing can hinder her continued recovery. "We're friends and we're always going to be friends. That's a deal." Wow, that's one forgiving friend!
"Well, that's done," Lyon tells Neely. "I'd like to see you after we finish," he also says, as if the last scene didn't happen! What a cad! Is there no limit to this character's corrosive selfishness? "As far as we're concerned, it's a wrap," Neely tells him, which would be a decent line to throw in his face if she wasn't crying. It just seems cheesy delivered that way.
Dionne and her song are back, which cues the end of the movie. Ann strides to her car, where she forces us to watch a flashback of Ann and Tony's Greatest Moments before driving off. That's not quite the end Jacqueline Susann had in mind, but it is a happy ending, of sorts.
The miniseries movement was not above remakes, but "Valley of the Dolls" was an odd choice. There was no way to remake the original movie or even the Susann novel because that time had long passed. So, someone had the bright idea to modernize it. Not bright, bad. The gasps it elicited in the 1960s were the gasps of the coming sexual revolution, of the Women's Liberation movement, of paperbacks that could only be sold in certain stores. In 1981, what's to gasp about? Only a new angle on the story could have made this work, and there is no possible new angle. So, we're left with a cartoonish story, vapid acting (except for Veronica Hamel and Jean Simmons, who do their best with what they have) and a script that tries way too hard to make itself seem important. It's not, with the exception of a few lines. By 1981, "Valley of the Dolls" was simply another insider's look at Hollywood, which was nothing new.
But alas, we're not here to discuss the 1967 "Valley of the Dolls" (though if you would like to, let me know, because I can go on for hours and hours), but the 1981 remake, which added the author's name to the official title though she was already dead. This remake resets the piece in 1981, which automatically knocks out any chance of figuring out which characters in the original were based on celebrities (Is Neely Judy Garland? Is Helen Ethel Merman?), and let's face it, 1981 was not nearly as deliciously cheesy a time as 1967. But, a bit more faithful to the Susann novel than the original movie (at least until the half an hour or so), this remake, which spawned a very brief television series, certainly has its goofy charms as well. It tries very hard to create some classic lines of its own, but none of them compare.
Because of Patty Duke's immortal performance, the presence of Susan Hayward and the tragedy that would befall Sharon Tate only a few years later, people tend to think of the original as having an A-List cast, but that's anything but true (how's life today, Barbara Parkins?). So, this remake gets by with a B-Level cast just the same, though none of them are in any danger of stepping over the line into immortality from this piece of nonsense.
Before jumping in, let's give credit where it's due. Well, credit and blame. The original novel "Valley of the Dolls" was a gigantic sensation in its time. Partially due to Susann's willingness to play her part nationwide, sales of the book skyrocketed and trashy literature had a new heroine. It was "Peyton Place" but twenty times dirtier and more fascinating because of it. So, of course it had to be a movie. And of course Susann had to write more books in this vein before dying tragically young(ish).
And that folks, is the central problem with the 1981 "Valley of the Dolls." Nearly two decades of familiarity, a movie version and a sexual revolution later, the actions of the characters and their sexual liberties seem almost tame here. Why do it at all? With Mr. Susann, Irving Mansfield as an executive producer, I suppose we have our answer.
Note: because the characters in "Valley of the Dolls" are so well-known, I'm going to use character names here.
The first thing to notice is a song by Dionne Warwick, who sang the title song in the original, but it's not that song, just some pale imitation called "What Became of Me?" by no less than Sammy Cahn of all people. That sets the tone for the next four hours, pale imitation.
Forget New York City and Broadway, by 1981, the were as decaying as Helen Lawson's career. For 1981, it's all about Los Angeles and Hollywood. Ann Welles (Catherine Hicks) has graduated from a legal secretary to a full-fledged lawyer, though still for an entertainment agency. Ann is still somewhat mousy to start, wearing a suit that she tells a co-worker "I sewed when I was 16," an outfit that is so buttoned up and free of skin it could be worn by a nun.
Ann has to work on some contracts to please superstar and notorious bitch Helen Lawson (slumming Jean Simmons). We first encounter Helen in a screening room watching a terrifically awful movie musical number performed by Tony Polar (Bert Convy) to Jennifer North (Veronica Hamel). "Damn her! I want her out. I want her out of the picture!" Helen screams, going into the projection room, knocking the movie off the projector. As she trashes the room, she berates the poor nobody editor with lines like, "didn't anyone ever tell you 'Fanfare' is a Helen Lawson picture?" The movie's director Lyon Burke (David Birney) calms him down, telling him that she only rages because she's old and Jennifer is young and pretty. He then has to placate Helen, which he does, though she still wants Jennifer fired. "You've heard all those rumors about her doing pornos," is her rationalization, though she's also jealous because she assumes Lyon is sleeping with Jennifer. "You get rid of that tramp or I'll put everyone connected with this film on welfare," Helen rails before storming out. The lines are a hoot, but it's Jean Simmons, drawing on decades of experience, who makes them work. Unlike Susan Hayward, who played every role as a "broad," it doesn't come as naturally to Jean, making it all the more impressive.
The head of the law firm is Henry Bellamy (James Coburn), who has gone over the Helen Lawson contract and found out that Helen holds all the cards. To make sure we understand just how important Henry is, their meeting is interrupted by a call from Rome, from Carlo. Do we need to ask Carlo who? (Ponti, we assume). Ann admires Henry's artwork and Henry is quite taken with her, inviting her to lunch, you know, to discuss business.
On the movie set, Lyon is shooting a scene with Tony and Jennifer, though Tony is both unable to ride a bike and remember lines. "It's okay," Lyon says, the only director in history to be calmer than anyone else on the shoot. He pulls Jennifer aside to tell her to cue him, and Jennifer takes the opportunity to make sure Lyon won't fire her at Helen's insistence. When she returns to help Tony, all he can do is ask her out on a date.
That night, Tony picks Jennifer up, but she won't get in the car until he opens the door. "I never let superstars take me for granted," she jokes. They take a ride around the Hollywood Hills, bonding over shared experiences of childhood poverty (via one-liners). He takes her back to his house, where she's on guard. When she asks him if he's ever been in love, he replies, "not until now." That's her cue to pull away. "I want to be more than a one-night stand," she says, assuming she's just another notch on the bedpost, but Tony assures her, "you mean much more to me than that."
Lyon meets with Henry and Ann, the only woman he so far hasn't charmed and promised to call, where Ann summarizes their position with Helen: $5million at stake. Lyon wants to fire her and recast, but Henry refuses. She's the star. Lyon also will not fire Jennifer, threatening to quit if it comes to that. "I suppose it's time to stop catering to her," Henry says of Helen and then decides to talk about casting another role, another one that has enraged Helen.
It's at this point that Lyon notices Ann and invites her out for a drink. Instead, Ann suggests going to a showcase where her roommate Neely O'Hara (Lisa Hartman) is performing because Ann thinks she would be perfect for the role in the movie. This gives Neely an opportunity to tear into a truly awful rock song that shows off absolutely no talent at all, but somehow Lyon is bewitched. I'm not sure what the plot of the movie is, but the number we've seen so far (Tony's with Jennifer) was an old-time type and Neely sings rock. "You're not supposed to be able to find talent like that anymore, right? Wrong!" Lyon tells Ann after agreeing to give Neely a vocal and screen test. No, Lyon, you should never have to find "talent" like that. For some reason, this has Lyon going glassy-eyed and talking about the serious types of movies he wants to make. And that is followed by him inviting Ann back to his house, saying he's forward because he has no times for games. "Sorry Lyon, no games, no score," says out Miss Priss.
So much ground is covered in that scene, it's amazing, especially because it's handled so ineptly!
Anyway, at 6am the next morning, Neely is laying down her vocal track. She has a lot of trouble and she's very nervous, though Lyon has an infinite amount of patience, as usual.. Cue the first "doll." Neely downs a pill to perk her up and suddenly she can perform the song perfectly (or perfectly badly, if you are on the outside of the movie). The screen test is done with Neely dressed like a Mandrell sister. It takes ten days, but Neely gets the part. Ann has known, so she has a bottle of champagne ready to celebrate and Lyon himself shows up at their apartment to drop off the script...and to invite Ann out on a second date.
They stay in, where now it's Ann's turn to go glassy-eyed and tell her life story in a bland monologue. Lyon plays less attention than I did, only wanting to kiss her, which he does, of course.
Get ready folks, it's Neely's first day on the set. She's so nervous that someone offers her "a little help...to take the edge off." More Tic Tacs, I mean dolls. Remember when I said I didn't know what "Fanfare" was about? And remember when I told you to get ready? On the first, I'm more confused than ever and on the second, you better make sure you're prepared. Neely's first day on the set is as the leader of an elaborate production number where she and a bunch of girls come off a cruise ship in cheerleader outfits dong choreography so ridiculous it looks like it was lifted from the Village People's "Can't Stop the Music." Neely wears hot pants to distinguish her from the rest of the girls. Amazingly, her first take is perfect.
Also on the set are Tony and Jennifer, having a giggle over a terrible meal she made. Cue Miriam (Broadway legend Carol Lawrence), Tony's controlling sister, who snorts to Jennifer, "I saw your centerfold...do you do that sort of thing often?" The conversation is a catfight waiting to happen, but Jennifer retains the upper hand. Miriam warns Tony not to "get involved," but Tony tells her, "you manage my business affairs" and he'll take care of Jennifer.
In her most efficient demeanor, Ann goes to Helen's trailer to suspend her, and Helen is outraged, though Ann manages to chide her for her behavior because she is "someone I've loved all of my life." Idol worship has to be put on hold as Helen hears more of Neely's production number being shot and storms out. This part takes on the second story of a double decker bus with the band dressed in sailor outfits. Why? Beats the hell out of me! Helen gets even angrier because "that's my song!" "Not anymore," Lyon says, informing her that the picture is being reshot around the younger cast. "What's my next shot?" a defeated Helen asks, even taking a moment to thank Ann for her harsh words.
Because of the way Ann has handled Helen, Henry buys her a painting and puts her in charge of everything regarding "Fanfare" while he's out of town. "Beware of Lyon. He has a way of devouring baby moguls," a phrase Ann had just coined for people so young in the business who rise so high. This means she has to be on the set all the time. She invades the pastries, but Neely doesn't because she's busy popping pills. When Henry calls to inform Lyon that they have decided to give Neely two extra numbers (musicals by 1981 barely had two, let alone two extra!), he also talks to Ann, who is so super smart about everything she knows exactly how much money it costs every time Tony can't remember his lines.
Anyone in screenwriting classes should take notes on a scene between Tony and Jennifer, because it's everything one should not do in constructing a scene. Jennifer, emerging from the pool, somehow gets to the subject of children and Tony says he loves them, but never thought about having any. "Are you trying to tell me something?" he asks. "No," she says. She takes five steps. "Not really," she says. Pours lemonade. "Well, think about it," she says. Giving himself nearly a full minute to ham it up, Bert-as-Tony registers about 15 facial expressions and slowly walks over to Jennifer to ask if she's pregnant. She's "not sure," but wants to prepare him so he can prepare Miriam. The scene should have taken 10 seconds, not 10 years.
It's been decided to do an all-out "media blitz" on Neely and turn her into a star in five minutes. In order to act, record, model, pose and live through it all, Neely needs more and more dolls. She's so wired that her faithful Teddi Casablana (Steve Inwood), who presumably is still "not a fag" in the immortal words of 1967, gives her dolls to sleep. "We're streetfighters, you and me...we're going to show this town who we really are," Teddi tells her, for reasons I can't comprehend because there has been no establishment of his character or who the hell he even is! "Teddi, love me," Neely says as she pulls him close to her.
Steel yourselves, it's time for a Jean Simmons number. No, not Gene Simmons, Jean Simmons. Only because Margaret Whiting handled the vocals and a mobile pulled concentration away from her, was Susan Hayward able to pull off "I'll Plant My Own Tree" in the original movie version. Jean is not so lucky. Stuck on a sound stage that looks like the old set of "Hollywood Palace," on a block with a band around her, poor Jean is drenched in a red dress so voluminous it must have come from "Gone With the Wind," she lip syncs to someone who is definitely no Margaret Whiting. Thankfully, it soon turns into a duet with Tony, and since Bert Convy can actually sing, he melds with her ghost vocalist better than when said vocalist sings solo. I ask again the question of "what the hell is this movie about?" The two are dressed for something from the 50s, though the song sounds like vintage 70s Carpenters. When that scene is done, the movie is officially full shot and since the sound stage is so enormous, it can be used for the wrap party.
Helen asks Henry if he indeed would have canceled the picture if she hasn't "backed down on Jennifer North." Absolutely he would have. "Ann did a good job of bluffing me down, but it's nice to know I still have some clout," she says wistfully. You want to rethink that, Helen? Whatever this movie is about, it ain't gonna be good! Jennifer informs Tony she's pregnant and he goes to the microphone to announce his engagement to Jennifer. Even Helen claps at this news, though Miriam is is pissed. "When you have a moment, meet me in your dressing room. It's urgent. And don't tell Tony," she hisses at Jennifer. Before she can go, she has to accept congratulations from Ann and Neely, while everyone else spreads good cheer to Tony.
Lyon gets a call from Paris, telling him his new art film there is a go, but the call actually sounds like it's from 1967, because Lyon tells Ann she's coming with him, but she has her job in LA. "Is that suddenly more important than us?" he asks. "Either come with me or forget about it," he snaps when she offers to take long weekends in Paris. She says no and he walks out.
Now what is so urgent that Miriam had to drag Jennifer away from the party? "I don't dislike you, Jennifer, I never did...now I think you really care," Miriam says, and then makes Jennifer promise to keep this conversation a secret. "There is no easy way to say this," she starts. It seems that Tony's father (not hers, FYI), "died in the back ward of a mental hospital, a vegetable." Ouch! Tony was only four and given a lot of tests, only to find out he was born "with a death sentence over him...he was going to die the same way his father did." Mugging to the back row of the balcony and lays out some fancy medical terms that essentially add up to the fact that Tony is soon to be a goner. She has the paperwork to prove it. "He's going to die. He's dying right now. Only first he's going to become a helpless child, only it won't be in the back ward of a mental hospital. I've already picked the best sanitarium there is. There only thing I can hope is that he doesn't know what is happening to him," Miriam dramatically tells Jennifer, who dissolves into tears of her own. Jennifer asks what will happen if she has a child, and of course Miriam says it's not at all possible. Uh oh.
Tony has been making plans in Jennifer's absence, culminating in a desire to fly to Rome the next day to get married. Jennifer wants a drink first. Is that okay, wonders Tony? She assures him it is. I think at this point, Jennifer is no longer worried about the health of her never-to-be-born fetus, and a glass of wine won't make things any worse. In fact, she tells him that she would like to go on a very very long honeymoon together and a baby would be in the way. "Let's put off having this baby," she says, to which Tony angrily replies, "you want to kill it?" She makes it sound like she wants a few years of alone time with him before they settle into family life. "After we kill our child, we can have a ball. We can celebrate!" Tony snarls. "Are you just a lousy ambitious actress on the make?" he fumes, asking her if she's just been using him until the picture ended? "I can't go through with it, Tony, I can't," she says simply. "I'm going on the concert tour and you can go tot hell," he says before storming out. This is 1981 and not 1967, so Jennifer can have an abortion free, clear and legally.
Jennifer then goes to Paris when she buys her own dolls at a news stand. She becomes an addicted mess very quickly in a rat trap of an apartment (though with strong windows because closing just one mutes all the tolling bells of the city) which she can't pay for.
Neely becomes an overnight sensation, the kind that is mobbed by fans when she tries to walk down Hollywood Boulevard (you know, where all the fans hang out and thus stars are bound to be mobbed). A fan puts a sticker saying "I Love Neely" over Helen Lawson's billing on a poster for "Fanfare." She and Teddi fight over her career. He feels Ann and Henry have stymied it by controlling it so tightly, and she won't fight them.
As for Ann, she's on her way up as well. She has bought a best-seller to turn into a movie...no, a musical for Neely, and she's reminded that "there is a great part in it for Jennifer," though no one has heard from her. Ann has scads of men leaving her messages proposing dates, but she ignores them all. She misses Lyon.
In a seedy Parisian bar, a blond woman with a severe haircut and big shoulder pads buys Jennifer a drink, saying she's an artist. "I've been watching you for some minutes and I can tell you are a very unhappy woman," Vivienne (Camille Spary) opines. She invites Jennifer to her studio for some wine. "Why not?" Jennifer tartly replies. Anything for free booze. Vivienne offers Jennifer a modeling job, and Jennifer collapses, not having eaten since she started on the dolls. Vivienne offers to help her. "You need someone. You shouldn't be alone," she says. Remember, folks, what a severe haircut meant in 1981.
Guess who is nominated for Best Supporting Actress? Neely! Yup, word comes via telegram (apparently also from 1967). Oh, what award is this? I have no idea, no one actually says. It can't be an Oscar, because that would be a trademark violation, and last I checked, they didn't send nominees telegrams ahead of the announcement. Guess who is not nominated for Best Actress? Helen, and Ann feels sorry for her. "This started out as a Helen Lawson picture," she whines to Henry and then asks him, "could you arrange for one of those Lifetime Achievement Awards" for Helen. He can arrange that, no problem. This definitely isn't the Oscars. They discuss Lyon's time in Paris, where apparently he's already made his movie and it tanked. That was quick!
It's the night of the awards and Army Archerd is playing himself on the red carpet. He interviews Helen first. Does she think Neely will win? "Oh, I'm rooting for her," she says with a recognizable sneer. He has to be fed the name of Tony's date. When Neely shows up, whoever designed the costumes for this movie should be shot. Starting with the tightly braided hair, it's a mess from top to bottom (hey, it's an awards show, we're allowed to judge the outfits). Teddi doesn't let her answer anything, doing it himself. Ann and Henry come together and Lyon jumps out from the crowd to greet them.
"Look at that hair!" Henry says, supposedly lovingly, when Neely is announced as the winner and kisses everyone in the cast on her way up. Everyone except for Helen, that is. Helen is backstage wearing a giant frown and puffing on a cigarette, unhappily watching on a monitor.
The fur flies backstage. "Those pills must have affected your mind, you thanked everyone but the star of the picture," Helen snaps. "I thanked everyone who helped me," Neely retorts. "You look like a porcupine in heat," Helen notices (and she's right). "You're a hag...has-been of the year," Neely says when Nathan Lane, of all people, playing a stage hand, tries to get Helen onto the stage. Helen gives Neely a resounding slap across the face and is then help by two women, but soon escapes in time to pull off Helen's wig to reveal her natural gray hair just as Helen's name is announced on stage.
Neely takes the wig and holds it over a toilet so Helen can see it, dropping it down and chirping, "go get it, Miss Lawson," as she flushes. Nathan Lane is about to have a heart attack in his attempt to get Helen on, and she finally decides to go with her gray hair (which is a really bad wig--you can see the wig line!). She's a pro, strutting out on stage and accepting the award with a joke about her hair and noting that she's in good company getting this award, with Helen Hayes and Laurence Olivier. And then she tops it all by saying that, "when I was very young, I had a walk-on in a movie about Mary, Queen of Scots" who famously died wearing a wig, covering gray hair. "I'm glad I showed you mine while we still have time to get to know each other," Helen says to a rapturous crowd and strides off stage a self-possessed veteran. Take that, you newcomer swine, Neely O'Hara!
At a celebratory lunch, Teddi fires away at Henry and Ann. "I'm serving notice right now...unless you are prepared to renegotiate," he warns. Henry and Ann agree, but then Henry says that "everything is negotiable except her hair," cutting Teddi down to his first job as a hair stylist. "The amateurs have a tendency to bring everybody down to their level," Henry snarls, "and in this case, that's intolerable." He storms out and then Teddi storms out, so Neely has to run after him. "That's baby's in trouble. She's far down the road," Lyon notes to Ann, who has worked her addiction into the shooting schedule. Lyon wants to direct the picture and Ann, wearing the same color as the booth and therefore blending into it, won't give him a firm yes or no on that.
Neely passes out during a recording session and awakes to find Teddi gone. She follows him to a bar where he's canoodling with another woman. Neely throws a drink in the woman's face and slaps Teddi. "You pig, you slob," Teddi spits out, "you make me sick. You disgust me." Neely falls up against a parked car, in her tight Spandex pants and then drives away, deprived of the howler of a monologue Patty Duke got around this time in the original version. Instead, she gets a trip in an elevator where she pushes all the buttons and cries. She heads to the roof, tries to get some dolls and accidentally drops them over.
Henry gets the news first and calls Ann, but Lyon picks up and refuses to let Ann have the phone for no apparent reason but to be macho and waste a few moments. When Ann and company arrive, Neely is still on the roof and the reporters are watching from below. "Is there anyway we can help?" Lyon asks a policeman? "Hey, maybe!" he says and lets Lyon and Ann up to the roof. Teddi is stopped by a reporter who has one question: "why?" He blames Henry and the "exclusive contract." When Teddi tries to go up, they won't let him.
Instead, Ann and Lyon are harnessed and sent to the edge to help her. Uh huh, right! Because both of them are such great negotiators. "Don't you remember all the dreaming we shared in that crummy apartment?" Ann begs of Neely. Why is she doing it? Because Teddi is "cheating on me." "You're going to turn him into the world's #1 stud," if she jumps, Lyon asks her. "Is he that good? Is he that good in the sack?" Lyon continues. That's the most ridiculous line of reasoning, but it seems to work. It gets Neely to accept a cup of coffee from Ann so Lyon and the rescue team can grab her.
"I really wanted to die and come back to see what everyone thought of it, like the dailies," Neely blubbers in the ambulance. Lyon and Ann take this seriously, but the cop on hand, if I'm not mistaken, is having trouble stifling a laugh.
A way-too-long sequence of scenes where the movie wants us to think there might be something between Henry and Ann ends with Lyon showing up at her apartment very jealous. "Move in with me," Ann suggests. "I want to make love to you, not do the dishes," Lyon answers, in his usual sexist way, though with this odd non-sequiter.
Remember Jennifer? You do? I had quite forgotten about her since it's been oodles of time since we last saw her in Paris with Vivienne, the artist with the severe haircut. She has heard the news about Neely and calls Ann to find out how she is. A painter friend of Vivienne's named Robaire (David Hess), wants to paint Jennifer too. "For a hundred francs an hour," Vivienne says, "that's what I pay her." "Ah, but you get extras," he points out, causing all eyes to look at the floor. Jennifer has the opportunity to buy more dolls, does, but doesn't take any. Instead, she returns to Vivienne to tell her, "I'm living a life that's not me" and announces she's moving out.
Typically, Lyon wants to get back to directing. "Without my work, I just don't feel alive," he tells her as a break-up line, in this, the first scene we've seen of Lyon and Ann since they declared their love for each other. Lyon hasn't made a lick of sense since his first scene, so are we surprised?
His directing gig is in Paris, with Francoise (Britt Ekland) handling business affairs. Lyon makes a reference to taxes. "You should move to Europe, only poor people pay taxes here," Francoise says, apparently in the park of the script written before the events of 1789.
Neely arrives home from the hospital with three men in tow. He notes that he should have brought flowers. "Get some lilies, Teddi. For yourself. I've signed with Famous World Talent," Neely says confidently. Honey, if you signed with an agency named Famous World Talent, you have bigger problems than addiction! "Get out, Teddi. Your bags will be downstairs tomorrow," she says. "Teddi, you lose, split," one of her new agents warns. She then does a press conference at the Bellamy offices, back to her blonde hair. She's not upset about losing the role in Ann's movie because "it's too soon after my high wire act above Wilshire Boulevard," she notes, but apparently a music tour will be fine for her sanity.
Jennifer is still posing for Vivienne, who introduces her to Enid Marshall (Tricia O'Neill). Enid is an agent who wants her back in the states to do commercials. As for Ann, she's decided she wants to spend the night at Henry's, and does. Ewwwwww.
In Paris, Lyon and Francoise attend a fashion show (why? who the hell knows?) that is spoken entirely in English, and he sees Jennifer with her gal pals. He asks her to dinner, at a place where they pour wine out of miniature cannons. Jennifer goes through her tale of woe, making it clear she's no longer a) on drugs or b) with Vivienne. After spending a lot of the night with Lyon, she wakes him up to say she's going back to LA.
Enid takes Jennifer to meet cosmetics mogul Kevin Gilmore (Gary Collins), who can't get enough of Jennifer. "We've been testing your photos all over America and what we've come up with is, despite your looks, women all over America love you!" he tells her. Okay, I guess that's a compliment. He wants her to model cosmetics, to be the "Now Woman." What follows is, of course, a montage of Jennifer's cheesecake shots for the cosmetics. If Veronica Hamel weren't so stunning, it would probably be laughable. While becoming a success, she starts seeing Kevin, who teaches her to fish. "You mean, I have the pleasure or re-opening your beach house?" she asks. "Re-opening my life," he replies, as he's been alone since his wife died. He tells her that happy story with a roaring fire. Not only was the wife sick, but apparently a horrible person as she was dying. "Too bad you never had any children, you'd still have a part of her," Jennifer lovingly coos, obviously thinking of her own situation. She's finally found a man who doesn't love her just for her looks and that makes her happy, though you couldn't real tell from the wooden acting what it is Kevin really feels.
Well, unfortunately, Neely has started hitting the dolls and booze again and the tour is suffering. "You want me to function, right? I just need a little help," she tells a worried Ann. Neely says she's bored talking about herself (that's news), so what about Ann? Does she think about Lyon? "I try not to," she says. Lyon's new movie, his second made in the blink of an eye, is a giant hit, and Francoise has a new movie lined up for him, but he wants to go back to LA so he can not only director, but write, his new movie.
It turns out that Henry and Kevin are old friends, so they take their women to lunch, but Ann notices something isn't quite right with Jennifer, so it's time for an emergency trip to the powder room, ladies only. Ann wants her to see a doctor, and she agrees. "Make it in the morning. I have a photo session in the afternoon," Jennifer tells her. In the middle of her shoot, Jennifer get an important call telling her to rush back to the doctor, to "something called an Oncologist...it means a specialist in tumors," Jennifer tells Ann. The rather diffident doctor diagnoses breast cancer, which has spread into her body. "You're telling me, I'm dying?" "Once again," says the doctor nastily, explaining that it's not hopeless, but it's not looking too good unless she does aggressive treatment, starting with a double mastectomy. The bitchy doctor has one negative thing after another to tell Jennifer, who asks if she can have children. "To even think about children at this point is completely unrealistic," the doctor replies, with all the warmth of an Alaskan nun.
"I'll do whatever I have to do, not here, not LA," Jennifer finally agrees, picking New York City so Kevin won't know. She doesn't want him to know anything because of how he lost his first wife. "I'll write you a prescription for some tranquilizers," is the doctor's end line. Yippee, more dolls!
Jennifer lies to Kevin, at first, but he's figured out she's sick because her answering service called his answering service. So, she tells him the truth, but tells him, "I won't put you through that again." He loves her too much to let her go and insists they will get married that weekend, "even if it's in the hospital...and we can adopt a couple of children." It all seems so perfect until she wakes up that night, sees Kevin crying outside and comes up with a new plan. One that involves a whole bottle of dolls. Finding her dead is a sure way to make Kevin feel better!
Not only is Jennifer North the most sympathetic character in "Valley of the Dolls," but Veronica Hamel gives the movie's best performance, so spending the final hour without her is going to be pretty damn painful. Missing Gary Collins? Not so much.
Neely insists on performing that night, but Ann is asked to be there because "she's been acting really weird lately." Poor Ann, always there to hold everyone's hands. The concert gives us another chance for a Lisa Hartman song. The arena looks like it seats 74 comfortably, and not two of them can clap in time with another. Neely starts off with a ballad, but it soon turns into a up-tempo song where she gets to smile and snap her hair back and forth a lot. If she's dedicating this to Jennifer, no thanks! Ah, that's not the dedication song. Neely stops the show to mention Jennifer's death and THEN dedicates a song to her (killing more time through bad singing). At least this one is a ballad, but after just a verse, she is too upset to finish and dashes off the stage. Ann wants to stay and help Neely, who wants to be alone and promises to call her in the morning.
Alone in her dressing room, Neely hears voices saying "they are going to kill you," so she bolts to the stage, where finally she allows herself to be taken to the hospital. The funky camera angles and running make-up tell us she's fully crazy, fully hooked on dolls. Things get worse at the hospital, where she is in a full "amphetamine psychosis" and runs around the halls like a lunatic. This can mean only one thing, a trip to the Betty Ford Cen...some fancy rehab in Southern California that caters to the rich and famous. Getting there, a clearly disturbed Neely asks Ann, "is Jen going to join us?" "No, honey, she can't," Ann says sympathetically.
Ann's co-worker sets her up to go on a lunch date with Lyon by telling her he's a writer with his first script and she needs to meet him. Ann actually likes the script idea, about a girl from Kansas with problems, aka "The Neely O'Hara Story" in a nutshell. He also apologizes to her. "I'm still in love with you," is supposed to cover all of his nonsense. Pig that he is, he says, "what I'd like to try is to make a commitment, a real commitment." Try?
"Henry, Lyon and I were married last night in Las Vegas," Ann tells Henry, who has been courting Ann for "nearly a year now." He's understandably upset, mainly because he doesn't think Lyon is good enough. Ann's reply? "I still believe in love. And if you love someone, you marry him," she snaps, proof that Lyon's 60s mentality has rubbed off on her big time.
I guess the news has shocked Henry worse than expected, because he has a heart attack that very day! Ann calls Lyon to tell him she has to stay at the office "to make contingency plans." When she gets home, the King and Queen of Selfishville have a whopper of a conversation. "Why did this have to happen right after I told him about us?" she asks. "Coincidence?" he answers, seriously. King tells Queen that she's expected to run the office because Henry has "groomed her for it," which lights her up. King then thinks of himself, being alone without her so many hours, noting, "I won't have an excuse not to finish the script." These two get worse and worse with every scene! Lyon has always been unbearable, but Ann used to have her good moments.
In rehab, where "this is no such thing as instant therapy," according to a doctor, Neely is actually the sanest of the bunch. There's a woman who tells her "if I leave here, they'll kill me." "Who?" "The Russians." Um, yeah. Neely wisely chooses to worry about the fact that she's lost the ability to sing.
Ann and Lyon have many reasons to celebrate. He has finished the script and she's been promoted to "run the production end of the film division." Lyon claims to be very proud of her and also claims that he'll be fine with her increased workload. Even better for him, she's already negotiated a contract for the rights to his movie, provided Neely stars in it (in her own story?). Neely is still in rehab, but she has her voice back. Apparently it was all in her mind, explains the doctor, or some man in a white coat pretending to be a doctor, because his explanation isn't based at all in medical science. There's no denying she has her voice back, because she's giving her fellow patients an impromptu concert, belting out another rock song to an audience who can't clap well (okay, it's a sanitarium, they have an excise). She pulls up one of the men from the crowd and it's...
...Tony! Yup, 163 hours later, we meet Tony again. He's in the institution withering away, just like Miriam promised he would be. He's something of a zombie, and doesn't recognize Lyon or Ann. The unhelpful doctor, who discloses Tony's condition willingly to Lyon and Ann, suggests it's time for a nap and takes him away so Ann and Lyon can talk to Neely about the movie. Neely thinks she only needs "a month or two" more of rehab, and Lyon is just fine with that. Is he starting to care about someone else?
Out on her own, Neely is assured by Lyon that "you are going to be wonderful" and that he will protect her during the filming process. Is she worried about going back to Kansas to shoot? Nah, she's okay with it, now that she's clean. Ann will not be attending because she's too busy at the office, Lyon says rather nastily (good, his selfishness is back). There's a great deal of tension between husband and wife at the office where she has to make sure the business end of the movie is okay, butting heads with his creative needs. Actually, Ann tries to smooth things over, but Lyon is too focused on himself to work on the marriage.
The rushes from Neely's picture impress everyone (except me, to whom it seems just plain badly acted), and Ann puts in a call to Lyon on set in Kansas. He's busy in a bar pumping up Neely's ego. "You always made me feel like someone special," she tells him, apparently not realizing that he's thinking more of her body than her psyche. When he invites her into his motel room, she begins to understand, but she goes anyway. He gets the message from Ann, but declines to call her back. Not thinking of Neely's issues, he offers her cognac, but she remembers them before falling into his arms for big kissing.
When Lyon returns home, Ann greets him with, "I missed the hell out of you." "Sometimes I forget how lovely you really are," he says. That's a troubling line, but she doesn't catch it. It's not until she's watching the dailies that she hears about "the special coaching" Neely is getting, "eight hours of rehearsal every night," according to others in the room. Ann storms out to "think about it," but loyal Henry is "here if you need me."
She rushes to the location where they are shooting, barges into Neely's trailer and finds Neely and her husband kissing. "Oh, Ann, I'm sorry," Neely pouts before ditching the trailer. Why is he sleeping with her? He has a few choice reasons:
"Part of it's the work, you put people together..."
"Neely needs to feel love"
"Part of it's us. Your work. You don't seem to need anything these days."
The first makes no sense, the second is a cop-out and the third finally gets to some truth. Ann realizes that and goes for the kill. "Aren't we really talking about what you need, Lyon?" she asks, apparently unaware that for the last four hours, that's all they've talked about. "My career threatens your masculinity, it always has. It didn't have to, that's what's so sad." Bingo, she's finally gotten it! "I'm good with film. I'm not good with commitment. I do love you and I wish you would give this another shot," he says, turning from anger to guilt in one sentence. "You finish your picture and then get out of my life," Ann says, making the right decision. Ann can't hate Neely, and in fact reassures her that they are fine and nothing can hinder her continued recovery. "We're friends and we're always going to be friends. That's a deal." Wow, that's one forgiving friend!
"Well, that's done," Lyon tells Neely. "I'd like to see you after we finish," he also says, as if the last scene didn't happen! What a cad! Is there no limit to this character's corrosive selfishness? "As far as we're concerned, it's a wrap," Neely tells him, which would be a decent line to throw in his face if she wasn't crying. It just seems cheesy delivered that way.
Dionne and her song are back, which cues the end of the movie. Ann strides to her car, where she forces us to watch a flashback of Ann and Tony's Greatest Moments before driving off. That's not quite the end Jacqueline Susann had in mind, but it is a happy ending, of sorts.
The miniseries movement was not above remakes, but "Valley of the Dolls" was an odd choice. There was no way to remake the original movie or even the Susann novel because that time had long passed. So, someone had the bright idea to modernize it. Not bright, bad. The gasps it elicited in the 1960s were the gasps of the coming sexual revolution, of the Women's Liberation movement, of paperbacks that could only be sold in certain stores. In 1981, what's to gasp about? Only a new angle on the story could have made this work, and there is no possible new angle. So, we're left with a cartoonish story, vapid acting (except for Veronica Hamel and Jean Simmons, who do their best with what they have) and a script that tries way too hard to make itself seem important. It's not, with the exception of a few lines. By 1981, "Valley of the Dolls" was simply another insider's look at Hollywood, which was nothing new.
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