Network: CBS
Original Airdate: September 26th, 1995
After taking a couple of years off from her bad girl role as Abby Cunningham Ewing on Knots Landing, Donna Mills revisited her femme fatale roots in the 1995 true crime drama An Element of Truth. Based on the story of con artist Glenda Elizabeth Bell, Mills is a somewhat fictionalized version named Vanessa Graves. From the start of the film she plays up a sympathy act, claiming on a job interview that her husband and daughter were killed in a car accident and she’s desperate to start over. Later, at an office party the story starts changing. Yes, her husband and daughter were killed in an accident, but this time it’s a plane crash. Sometimes it’s a boating accident. It’s whatever she needs to say to suit the situation. Vanessa visits a video dating service and eyes the kindhearted Sidney Wiltz (Peter Reigert, and I’m wondering if “Wiltz” is a play on his wilting nature?), who, of course, is instantly drawn to the gorgeous but grieving “widow,” taking her in almost immediately.
Don't fall for it, Sidney!
Vanessa tells Sidney she works as a secretary at an investment firm, but only holds the lowly position as a way to cover up her real reason for being there: She is, according to her own story, allowed to secretly invest in ventures as long as she does it in cash. So, Sidney starts forking over the big bucks, and Vanessa prints out legitimate looking Word docs indicating great financial growth. Fancy cars, pretty things, big houses, and life in a moderately fast lane seem pretty good and one might even think she actually likes Sidney, but then his garish but handsome (and down on his luck) buddy, Peter (Robin Thomas) shows up and begins an affair with Vanessa. However, it appears the con artist has met her match as he bilks her of all the money she’s collected from Sidney. This means Vanessa has to up her game, and no one is safe from the blonde flimflam as she shakes and shimmies her cold-heart through the rest of the telefilm. And honestly? It’s kind of glorious!
Glorious!
The 1990s was an oddball time in the world of the television film. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, and appreciate it more as time passes, but the true crime telefilm of that era seems infinite, and it’s easy to see why An Element of Truth has flown under my radar for the last two decades. There’s not necessarily a lot going for it that helps to distinguish it from similar fare, and there are admittedly more entertaining small screen examples, such as Death of a Cheerleader (Tori Spelling 4lyfe!), and Deadly Vows (John Ritter 4lyfe!), but that’s not to say it’s not a fun little potboiler, with some great photography and a really entertaining performance by Mills, who knows how sink her teeth into hustler roles. She’s captivating, looks ridiculously gorgeous, and despite playing a detestable character remains charming and watchable.
OK Sidney, you can fall for her.
In fact, the entire cast is quite good with a lovely Perry Reeves putting in an incredibly sympathetic turn as Maizie, Vanessa’s awkward coworker who develops a crush on Sidney. The film has a couple of really sweet moments as we see their relationship develop. Galdarnit! He deserves a good woman!
Love and money do not go hand in hand with these con artists!
Bell, the real con artist, not only managed to snake over a million dollars from her unsuspecting hubby before running off and remarrying, but she also faked a cancer diagnosis as part of her trickery! But the seedier true life elements of Bell's treachery were removed because the powers that be felt that audiences wouldn’t believe those things really happened! Stranger than fiction, folks!
Vanessa works the puppy dog eyes.
Produced by Miss Mills herself, this was just one of several TV movies the beauty took on after Knots Landing as way to help audiences separate her from her infamous Abby Ewing character. Donna Mills Productions, which was founded in the late 1980s, did quite well for itself, and Mills had 10 projects in development with ABC by 1993 (although not all of them came to fruition). While An Element of Truth puts her closer to Abby than any of the other roles I’ve seen, there’s something more sinister about Vanessa, although she is just as gleefully man-eating! It’s an interesting turn for Mills who manages to make Vanessa unique and even disarming at times. And, it's a decent time waster to boot.
To promote the airing of Sharing Richard, the network released a brief statement declaring the film "explores a timely phenomenon: the shortage of single men for women over thirty." To present the issue, Sharing Richard was designed as a "contemporary comedy," in what may have been a sometimes misguided effort to dissect a topic that was on a lot of minds.
Then, shortly after Sharing Richard originally aired, an angry viewer wrote to the Los Angeles Times, complaining, "The concerns of singles dating are very real and complicated issues. The movie's plot utterly made fools of these four characters whose self-awareness, self esteem and mutual respect seemed to be in the dirt. Women were in their usual role of apologizing for messing things up and the man could somehow spread his "caring" among many women. The movie pretended to have a modern plot but frankly it was a long way from giving any kind of decent message about modern relationships."
This may be an issue...
The TVMs of the eighties often had a weird relationship with the women in them. Recently, I was just considering how the telefilm, as a medium, has proven to be a rather female-centric space, featuring so many actresses that are often aligned with the genre, such as Barbara Eden, Patty Duke and Donna Mills (in fact, you can hear my co-hosts and myself discuss the topic on this blog's companion podcast). Yet, even with all of those strong women (and I'm talking outside of the Aqua Net and shoulder pads), there was a real tug of war between making female characters independent while having them chase down a hot guy with a good job. The sentimental, Harlequin-esque romance (which I am totally into) sometimes overwhelmed the idea of female independence. This, my friends, is a bit of an issue (although in the context of entertaining fluff like Sharing Richard, a sometimes fun and mostly inoffensive one). It created an uneasy mixture, and it was up to the Eighties Woman (well, really it's up to the actress playing her) to make the whole thing flow and not seem like it was a conundrum at all. Did all of this back and forth confuse my growing brain? Probably, but that's OK. As nostalgic and sappy as I can be, I don't discount that films are time capsules - especially TV movies - that tended to fall on the most prominent contemporary beats to quickly engage the audience - and are sometimes best served by viewing them with a grain of salt.
In short, unlike the lady who wrote to the LA Times, I make excuses for my romance. So sue me.
Men might be scarce, but there were plenty of 80s sweaters to go around!
Sharing Richard, which is ultimately delightful and flawed, walks this fine line in an attempt to bring all of those modern ideas about love and sex into a story about three best friends who exude independence, but are essentially really, really, really about finding Mr. Right. I won't call them desperate because despite their desire for love and marriage, they also come across as contented with their life as is. Of course, all that goes to hell when they realize they are all falling for the same guy!
The women:
The man:
Admittedly, that guy is pretty much everything. And when I say everything you know I'm not overstating this because it's Ed Marinaro. Eighties Ed Marinaro, a few years after Police Woman Centerfold (lord help me, I love that movie), and Laverne and Shirley (btw, is it just me, or is it creepy that Ed played Laverne's cousin and then went on to play her boyfriend... yikes!) . Anyway, Richard is a handsome and charming plastic surgeon who just happens to be recently divorced. While somewhat bitter about his marriage breaking up he turns out to be a great date, fulfilling certain individual needs in each woman. So, why not just pass him around like a great sweater (an analogy a character uses)? And they do.
At first it's fairly innocent, but then this thing called love gets involved and the trio of lifelong BFFs find themselves sneaking around each others' backs and growing more and more jealous of whichever friend has Richard on any particular night.
Despite the oogie factor that creeps in when two of the friends start having sex with Richard, the film does its best to keep the women likable, and even to a certain degree, Richard, who probably should have been more honest about his dating schedule, but who is also unaware that these women are friends.
Potential mic drop moment...
Of course, marriage and family were, and remain an important core goal for many, female and male. Still, the women in the TV movies of this era are often obsessed with finding the perfect husband, and having babies (see Babies for a more than obvious example). All of this would happen with characters who were also portrayed as independent and career driven. Certainly, you can have both (and hats off to those who do), but inevitably Sharing Richard is a reflection of the eighties (by way of the fifties) American Dream, which includes the white picket fence and 2.5 kids, but with a dose of second wave feminism that mirrored the career woman who "wanted it all." And, the result is that characters can come across as more pathetic than focused or ambitious.
Well, currently 1/3 of him is focused
Luckily, this telefilm goes for the light touch, and has genuinely funny moments, using humor to examine the issues.
The trio of leading ladies are amazing, and I was especially pleased to see Hilary Smith, best known to me as Nora from One Life to Live, showing off her adept comic timing. Her character is a bit grating, but the one liners are choice, and her delivery perfect. Eileen Davidson is great as well, and looks amazing (and pretty much the same as she does now). I was not as familiar with Nancy Frangione, and while I feel her character is the weakest of the bunch, the actress does a good job of making her likable.
Buds before duds...
When these characters become hostile towards each other over a man, it is apparent that the message is mixed and muddled. But some of the humor is timeless, the actresses are warm and Ed... well, he's hot. Despite its flaws, Sharing Richard is worth a watch, mostly for the actors... and shoulder pads, but its also just so damn amiable and more charming than it has any right to be.
I made it through another semester, and to celebrate, I watched a gaggle of TVMs! I thought it would be fun to jot down some brief thoughts on each film, making it a one-woman-blogathon!
Eyes of a Stranger Network: NBC Original Airdate: December 7th, 1992
First up was this early 90s curio starring the babe-a-licious Parker Stevenson and the gorgeous Emma Samms as an upper class couple who run afoul of a two-bit hoodlum (Michael Easton), and his lovely professor/girlfriend (Joan Chen, working some nifty silver flats in the last scene). The couple's lives collide during a rainstorm, and all paths lead to accidental murder, badly thought out cover-ups, some not bad small screen sex scenes and exploding boats.
Written and directed by Richard Friedman, the mastermind behind the goofy but lovable Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge, Stranger is a bit of a convoluted mess. The worst issue was the timeline. For example, Samms finds a videotape on a boat, and after some major mayhem, the boat is burnt to a crisp, and then at least two days pass before the tape comes into question again. Samms tells someone she found the tape yesterday, which would have been impossible.
It’s also ridiculously predictable, but watchable because of the cast, and the overall confident and slick look of the film.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a sexier version of this movie exists, but was edited for television. It has all the markings of those early 90s erotic thrillers that I enjoy so much. Interesting then, that it was produced by Doris Keating, whose father directed such films as The Diary of Knockers McCalla and Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico. I don’t necessarily recommend this to anyone except the Samms or Stevenson completest. Since I fall into the latter, I can’t really complain. Stevenson takes off his shirt just enough to keep me interested! Yes, I'm superficial, and easy to please.
Valentine Magic on Love Island Network: NBC Original Airdate: February 15, 1980
As if Supertrain wasn’t enough of a disaster for NBC, the execs tried to put a spin on Love Boat and Fantasy Island yet again in this choppy, and chaotic romantic comedy that is somewhat watchable and sometimes fun, but not nearly as great as the similar Three on Date.
Eight singles visit Love Island in the hopes of becoming four couples, and… hmmm… if I do my math correctly, yeah, I think we do end up with four couples. I guess that’s a testament to how haphazard the whole thing is, that I had go back through my mind to remember what happened (and the movie just ended 10 minutes ago). Still, gotta love (even if just a little) anything that stars Bill Daily, Lisa Hartman, Dominique Dunne, Christopher Knight, Janis Page, Adrienne Barbeau and Dody Goodman, right? And that’s just part of the game cast, who make the most of the crap material they were handed. (Random trivia: This was the second time Knight and Dunne appeared in a TVM together. The other telefilm was 1979's Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker)
Paige is the Mr. Roarke who mixes up her “white” magic in the hopes of helping people reach complete coupledom (or consciously couple as the young kids might say). Of course, there has to be a little mismatching and mischief first, where little to no hilarity ensues, but there’s a pretty cool costume party. Unfortunately, this Dick Clark production does not have a good beat and I had a hard time dancing to it (see what I did there). But, like the small screen sucker I am, it was good to finally see it.
Sorry, Wrong Number Network: USA Original Airdate: October 11, 1989
This movie has been on my “To Watch” list for what seems like forever. A TVM based on a theatrical film, which was based on a radio play sparked my interest, and yes, I like Loni’s TVMs quite a bit (thinking of My Mother’s Secret Life right at this moment!), and it’s a USA Original… and… and… well, you get my drift. Despite mixed reviews, there are some films I simply need to see for myself. Luckily, although this remake isn’t, like, the best movie ever or anything, it’s a pretty fun timewaster with a surprisingly suspenseful ending.
Loni is Madeline, a Dynasty-rich invalid who has a wild New Year's Eve getting her lines crossed over and over again. Overhearing two men planning a murder of an unknown woman in Madeline’s neighborhood, this housebound heiress starts to uncover the mystery behind her strained marriage, and the real danger that lurks just outside of her door.
Slick and confident, Sorry is also helped by a wonderfully capable cast including Patrick Macnee, Hal Holbrook, and OMG hawt Carl Weintraub. It’s not like you don’t know where this one is going, but the wonderful pacing and crisp and glamorous aesthetics are well worth a look. My favorite of the three films I watched.
During promotion for the soapy telefilm Doctors' Private Lives, the film’s star, John Gavin said, “Barbara [Anderson] plays my wife, and Donna [Mills] plays a widow with whom I become involved. But only physically and emotionally. It doesn’t go any deeper than that.”
If I could insert the sound of a car braking right here I would. As is stands, I just have to giggle at Gavin’s comedic response to starring in one of the most overwrought melodramas I’ve seen in some time. In his defense, Gavin does not play it tongue in cheek during the film, and it’s all the more entertaining for the straight-faced, and genuine performances from an amiable cast of wonderfully familiar faces.
And anyway, Gavin had me at Donna Mills.
Gavin is Dr. Jeffrey Latimer, a gorgeous and successful professional married to the equally sublime Frances (Barbara Anderson looking ridiculously divine), who is just as ambitious with saving the world as he is with saving lives. The one hiccup in an otherwise perfect relationship is that they have no children. This obstacle doesn’t seem like that much of an issue, until Jeffrey embarks on an extramarital affair with Dr. Beth Demery (the perfectly perfect Donna Mills), a widow who can’t fight her attraction to Jeffrey (I don’t blame her). Strangely, and maybe sadly, Jeffrey loves his wife, but has an affair just because he can. The scoundrel (and he's our hero)!
While all of this is going down (insert dirty joke here), Dr. Mike Wise (Ed Nelson, dusting off his Peyton Place dialog delivery) is dealing with a divorce and the generation gap, which is driving his son Kenny (Leigh McCloskey) away from medical school. Kenny has an adorable girlfriend named Sheila (Robin Mattson), who quickly throws him over for his dear old dad, creating even more tension in the house. And in-between all of this, people die, there’s blackmail and an airplane full of Korean orphans (!) crashes! If that’s not an overflow of awesome, I am not sure I know what is.
Yessir, from the ski slopes to the operating room to the bedroom, Doctors' Private Lives is one of those glamorous 1970s telefilms that I live for. It’s got philandering, conniving, and well to do professionals who wear the best clothes, drink the best wine and sometimes deliver the best lines. Although, admittedly, I was surprised to see it was released in 1978, only about one month before Dallas premiered, setting the bar for high drama. Dallas is far more nuanced and complex, but Doctors makes the best of what is has, and what is has is pretty good.
Along your journey through soapland, you’ll catch John Randolph as Mike’s gregarious uncle, Elinor Donahue as Mike’s grumpy ex, and Anne-Marie Martin as a sexy nurse secretly romancing her friend’s man. And for the record, Randy Powell, who went on to Dallas, plays one of the worst extortionists ever. That's how you do it!
And I’m apparently not the only one who feels this way. Doctors' Private Lives was successful enough that a 4-part followup mini-series aired the following year, featuring much of the same cast, and the addition of another familiar Dallas face, William Smithers, who played the contemptible Jeremy Windell. It makes the whole affair feel full circle (emphasis on affair).
And remember, in an era of car chases and gun fights, Gavin points out, “[There’s] no violence in this show, except in the bedroom.”
Fans of made for television movies know that actors like John Ritter and Andy Griffith often went against type in carefully chosen one-off roles. With the exception of (maybe) Robert Reed and Elizabeth Montgomery, there aren’t too many others who did it better than Ritter or Griffith, both digging deep into dark dramas that sometimes bordered on horror, using telefilms as vehicles to exercise different acting muscles. I’m sure the casting director of Gramps did a little happy dance when they wrangled these two wonderful talents to star in the pitch black comedy that looks a bit like a gender-bending Lifetime domestic thriller.
Gramps, one of the more culty telefilms of the 1990s, does not disappoint either.
Ritter is Clarke MacGruder, a likeable family man who contacts his estranged father, Jack (Andy Griffith) after his mother dies. Charming Jack shows up at the funeral and quickly moves into his long lost family’s good graces. But he’s not planning to leave anytime soon, and begins a series of manipulative, often violent, schemes to stay in the fold. Things quickly escalate to murder, and as the family finds itself ripping apart at the seams, Jack attempts one more deadly reunion.
The above pithy synopsis does not really do any justice to Jack’s dangerous (but oh so fun to watch) plan hatching. He is incredibly devious, and knows how to establish complex manipulation as well, exploiting a maybe-past affair Jack’s wife Betsy (Mary-Margaret Hume of Dawson’s Creek and the quintessentially eighties Charlie’s Angels ripoff Velvet) may have had with her co-worker to the hilt. He hires a hooker to pose as Betsy in a no-tell-motel kind of situation. This enthusiastic woman of the night “accidentally” leaves Betsy’s calendar behind, and drama ensues. Also, gramps gets a little action in that scene too!
Zoinks!
He also bashes in knee caps, terrorizes little kids and makes no compunction when it comes to blowing away the grandfatherly competition. In short, I love him.
While Clarke is the guy dealing with all of the collateral damage, it’s his son Matthew (Casey Wurzbach) who is the apple of Jack’s eye. After years of life without his son or a family, Jack wants the little guy all for himself, plying him with candy, and even lying for him in an effort to win his grandson’s undying love. Unfortunately, when this movie ends we don’t get a glimpse of Matthew inheriting Jack’s mean streak. Sure that’s probably way too predictable, but you know, keep the dream alive.
Gramps knows exactly what it’s doing. From the opening sepia toned shot of a young father taking his kid fishing, screenwriter J.B. White and director Bradford May cleverly nod towards the more serene relationship between Andy and Opie, only to cut to a handsome but older Griffith torching a house! So, while Gramps takes a bit of time establishing the relationships between characters, that underlying theme of menace permeates each frame.
According to Ritter’s widow, Amy Yasbeck in her book With Love and Laughter, John Ritter, the film was shot in North and South Carolina, and Yasbeck wrote that she was impressed by the level of evil Griffith brought to the part. I kid you not - she actually wrote, “Evil Andy was riveting.” Yasbeck went on to say that Mr. and Mrs. Griffith loved John so much they named their pet dog after him, Mary-Margaret Ritter (presumably the Mary-Margaret is a loving nod towards Hume). Every holiday season the Ritters could count on a card from the Griffiths with their beloved family dog.
Casey Wurzbach also fell in love with John (as we all did, really) and recently ran a marathon in his honor with Yasbeck in an effort to raise money and give attention to the risks of aortic dissections. Visit Casey’s facebook page for more info.
I’ve written a little bit about both Griffith and Ritter’s post-comedy series work, and watching the two team up in Gramps the other night reminded me of what mammoth talents they both were. While this is really Griffith’s film, and it looks like he’s relishing every freakin’ second, Ritter is the anchor, or the domestic thriller straight man, and is also wonderful in a great little movie that deserves more attention.
Awhile back I wrote about some of the more interesting romance movie series of the eighties and nineties (you can read my two-part post here and here). At the time, I was only somewhat familiar with the Harlequin TVMs, mostly because I bought something called Change of Place from the series on a whim and thought it was thoroughly adorable. As I mentioned in my previous article, the Harlequin telefilms aired mostly on Sunday afternoons on stations affiliated with CBS, making it perfect for lazy day viewing. And true to form, a movie with the title At the Midnight Hour is exactly what you’d expect from something airing under the Harlequin moniker, and that’s definitely not a bad thing.
Lovely Patsy Kensit is Elizabeth, a recently widowed woman who finds employment as a nanny for the brilliant but aloof scientist Richard Keaton (Simon MacCorkindale). Richard is also recently widowed and had shipped his son Andrew (Keegan MacIntosh) off to live with his grandparents, who die in some kind of accident (geesh, can this get more maudlin?). So, Andrew is back on the gorgeous Keaton estate grounds but is almost as aloof as his father (and definitely brattier). He also thinks the ghost of his mother is stalking the nannies, scaring them off of the grounds and out of his life. In short, he’s got separation issues. Elizabeth seeks to be the one reliable thing in Andrew’s life, but things get hinky when it is slowly revealed that Andrew’s mother may have been murdered by someone who is very close to the Keaton family.
Midnight Hour is a Canadian lensed film, featuring British leads starring in a movie intended for an American audience. Très international, no? The most interesting cast member is the venerable Canadian-born character actress Kay Hawtrey, whom I know best as Mrs. Chalmers the Embalmer from Funeral Home. She is merely window dressing here, and doesn’t even really make for a decent red herring, but seeing her was a definite treat.
The biggest issues I had with this telefilm are the obvious ending (you will be able to pick out the wife-killing culprit the second you lay eyes on them), as well as the way Elizabeth declares Richard as her greatest love. At the beginning of the film we see Elizabeth’s husband basically putting himself between her and a bullet, saving her life (while ending his). Then, after she and Richard do the naked pretzel in the beautiful library with the awesome fireplace, she proclaims that she really didn’t love her first husband that much! What? This man died for you! I was slightly incensed to say the least, but then I remembered it was a Harlequin movie and somehow managed to pull myself together.
I should add that despite a couple of badly written moments (you know, like that part where Elizabeth totally degrades her love for the guy who took a bullet for her… OK, OK, moving on…), this gothic but ultra light thriller has all of the right elements. There’s that large, dark library that is always lit by an inviting fire, there’s the proverbial slinking around darkened hallways, things that go bump in the night, metaphorical ghosts and a nice helping of romance that, surprisingly, never feels overdone. And surprise, surprise! Andrew is kind of adorable as the nerdy kid who just needs a little love (awwww!). As someone who has little tolerance for damaged kids in romance movies (take that as you will), I found I actually gave a damn what happened to him. Kensit is wonderful as usual and the reliable MacCorkindale is appropriately broad shouldered and sexy. While it’s no Rebecca or anything, At the Midnight Hour is definitely a treat for the forgiving hopeless romantic!
