Mary White (1977)

          A father’s eulogy for a woman who died too young might not seem like ideal source material for a screen drama, but William Allen White’s celebration of his daughter, Mary, was unusual in many regards. Written in the White family’s hometown of Emporia, Kansas, in 1921, the eulogy was less a lament about the brutality of fate and more a tribute to an inspirational spirit. Moreover, the piece gave Mary White a measure of immortality because the eulogy earned a Pulitzer Prize for William, a progressive newspaperman who was friendly with many of the great minds of his day.

          As written for the screen by Caryl Ledner and directed by Jud Taylor, Mary White boasts depth and resonance—in addition to conveying an impression of what made Mary special, thereby telling an eternal story about the promise of youth, the movie positions Mary as a proto-feminist who became acquainted with and modeled herself after suffragette Jane Addams. As such, Mary White isn’t just some sepia-toned example of sentimental Americana. It’s a lyrical and rigorous character study well suited to the Ms. Magazine era.

          The movie opens with a theatrical gesture, because William (Ed Flanders) speaks directly to camera while setting the scene. Next, the picture transitions to a series of illustrative vignettes. These culminate in Mary’s death during a horseback-riding accident—a sad irony, given her expertise in the saddle. Thereafter, Mary White weaves through flashbacks depicting Mary’s eventful adolescence. She debates with her parents about her plans for the future, challenging even their forward-thinking attitudes with her view that women should not have limits placed upon them by society. She agitates to end segregation at her school, learning hard lessons about how activism impacts people. She disrupts a KKK rally. She takes an illuminating trip to New York City with her father, forcing him to recognize that despite her youth, she aspires to being considered an equal.

          While Flanders’ effortless way of conveying charm, intelligence, and morality anchors Mary White, Kathleen Beller’s performance in the title role is crucial. This is arguably her best-ever work, especially since most of her other ’70s and ’80s roles played up her voluptuous figure instead of her dramatic abilities. Mary White also benefits from a fine supporting cast—including Diana Douglas, Fionnula Flanagan, Tim Matheson, and Donald Moffat—as well as rich cinematography by Bill Butler and a score by Leonard Rosenman that evokes Aaron Copland’s rousing melodies.

Mary White: GROOVY

Promises in the Dark (1979)

          The sole directorial effort by movie producer Jerome Hellman, whose small but impressive list of productions includes Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Coming Home (1978), this pedestrian drama explores the topic of a teenager dying from cancer and the emotional impact her disease has on family members and physicians. Setting aside that there’s absolutely no reason why this should have been a theatrical feature, seeing as how TV movies of the same vintage handled this sort of material quite well, the movie is absurdly overlong at 118 minutes, suggesting that Hellman couldn’t bear to leave unused a single frame that he had shot. Yet the problems with the movie run even deeper than issues of editing: Loring Mandel’s script is so unfocused that for most of the picture’s running time, it’s hard to tell whether the young patient or her principal doctor is the main character. The movie is redeemed by sensitive performances and thoughtful dialogue, and of course the subject matter has innate grit. Nonetheless, Promises is a Dark is a slog when it should have been a quick and steady descent into the profound terrain of existentialism.

          The movie’s nominal star is Marsha Mason, quite good as physician Alexandra Kendall. While treating high school student Elizabeth “Buffy” Koenig (Kathleen Beller) for a broken leg, Dr. Kendall determines the bone shouldn’t have broken under the given circumstances. Tests conducted with radiologist Dr. Jim Sandman (Michael Brandon) reveal cancer. This understandably rocks Buffy’s emotional world and that of her parents, strong mother Fran (Susan Clark) and weak father Bud (Ned Beatty). What ensues is an ordinary melodrama during which Dr. Kendall wrestles with how much to tell Buffy about the grim prognosis, and during which all parties experience levels of denial about the inevitable conclusion of Buffy’s sad saga.

          Doe-eyed starlet Beller gives a fairly muscular performance, though of course playing a character with a disease is every actor’s dream, and supporting actors Beatty, Brandon, Clark, and Donald Moffat make strong contributions in underwritten roles. Mason believably alternates between brittle and vulnerable. Alas, there’s only so much the performers can do in the absence of clear-headed direction. Hellman’s storytelling is so tentative that during a scene of Buffy and her boyfriend discussing the transmutation of the soul after death, the soft-rock bummer “Dust in the Wind” plays on the soundtrack. Subtle! It’s impossible to genuinely dislike a well-meaning fumble like Promises in the Dark. At the same time, however, it’s tough to get excited about a story that doesn't truly find its way until the last scene.

Promises in the Dark: FUNKY

Are You in the House Alone? (1978)

Based on the title and premise, it’s easy to get this TV movie confused with the theatrical feature When a Stranger Calls (1979), which employs the same gimmick of a babysitter terrorized by creepy phone calls, but the similarities mostly end there. When a Stranger Calls is a straight-up thriller about a deranged killer, while Are You in the House Alone? is a serious-minded drama about rape that simply happens to employ horror-movie elements. That said, Are You in the House Alone? is not exceptional—in fact, the movie is quite clumsy, even though the filmmakers treat touchy subject matter with respect. Wide-eyed starlet Kathleen Beller brings sweet vulnerability to the role of Gail, a suburban high-school student who dreams of becoming a photographer. Since her parents (played by Blythe Danner and Tony Bill) squabble regularly, Gail finds solace in her friends and in babysitting—until an unknown admirer starts pestering her with suggestive calls. Meanwhile, Gail becomes involved with sensitive classmate Steve (Scott Colomby), which enflames her stalker’s rage. Eventually, the stalker emerges from hiding and rapes Gail, which transforms the latter half of the movie into an oh-the-humanity treatise on the way the law protects criminals instead of victims. Suffice to say, the various elements of Are You in the House Alone? clash. Sometimes, the picture’s a lurid saga about a girl being menaced; at other times, it’s a gentle love story about Gail and Steve opening their hearts to each other. In a peculiar way, the most memorable aspect of this picture (the social-injustice material) is the least organic—Are You In the House Alone? is a message movie wrapped inside a genre picture. In trying to do too many things, alas, the filmmakers achieve only moderate success with each of those things. Still, Beller’s naturalistic appeal—which often exceeds her acting skill—provides a sympathetic viewpoint, and the picture benefits from the talents of Bill, Danner, and costar Dennis Quaid, who made his big-screen breakout a year later in Breaking Away (1979). Although his role is smallish, Quaid’s intensity demonstrates how ready he was for bigger things.

Are You In the House Alone?: FUNKY

The Betsy (1978)

          Stupid and trashy, but inadvertently amusing exactly because of those qualities, The Betsy was adapted from one of Harold Robbins’ shamelessly eroticized potboiler novels. Like Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann, Robbins made a mint writing sleazy books about rich people screwing each other over (and just plain screwing), so anyone expecting narrative credibility and/or thematic heft is looking in the wrong place. That said, The Betsy delivers the type of guilty-pleasure nonsense that later dominated nighttime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty, along with some R-rated ogling of celebrity skin. And the cast! Great actors slumming in this garbage include Jane Alexander, Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and the legendary Laurence Olivier. They’re joined by young beauties Kathleen Beller, Lesley-Anne Down, and Katharine Ross, all whom disrobe to some degree; Beller’s memorable skinny-dip scene helped make this flick a regular attraction on cable TV in the ’80s.

          The turgid story revolves around Loren Hardeman (Olivier), an auto-industry titan who rules a fractious extended family. Now semi-retired and confined to a wheelchair, Hardeman hires maverick racecar designer/driver Angelo Perino (Jones) to build a new car with terrific fuel efficiency, because Hardeman wants to leave as his legacy a “people’s car” like the Volkswagen Beetle. This plan ruffles the feathers of Hardeman’s grandson, Loren Hardeman III (Duvall), who wants to get the family’s corporation out of the money-losing car business. As these warring forces jockey for control over the company’s destiny, with Loren III’s college-aged daughter, Betsy (Beller), caught in the middle, old betrayals surface. It turns out Hardeman the First became lovers with the wife (Ross) of his son, Loren II, driving the younger man to suicide. This understandably left Loren III with a few granddaddy issues. There’s also a somewhat pointless romantic-triangle bit involving jet-setter Lady Bobby Ayres (Down), who competes with Betsy for Peroni’s affections. Suffice to say, the story is overheated in the extreme, with characters spewing florid lines like, “I love you, Loren, even if I have to be damned for it,” or, “I always knew it would be like this, from the first time I saw you.”

          John Barry’s characteristically lush musical score adds a touch of class, Duvall somehow manages to deliver a credible dramatic performance, and Alexander is sharp in her small role. However, Beller, Down, Jones, and Ross coast through the movie, trying (in vain) not to embarrass themselves. As for Olivier, he’s outrageously bad. Hissing and/or screaming lines in an inept Midwestern accent, Olivier has no sense of proportion, playing every scene with such intensity that his work reaches the level of camp. Especially since Olivier was still capable of good work at this late stage of his life (see 1976’s Marathon Man), it’s depressing to watch him flounder.

The Betsy: LAME

Movie Movie (1978)

          A gently satirical tribute to the corny double-features of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Movie Movie begins with a short introduction from George Burns, continues into a boxing picture called Dynamite Hands, shifts gears for a fake trailer, and concludes with a showbiz-themed musical called Baxter’s Beauties of 1933. Replicating the way contract players were rotated through interchangeable roles during the studio era, many actors appear in both features (and the fake trailer), with George C. Scott playing all the lead roles. As written by comedy pros Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller, Movie Movie cleverly spoofs every contrivance common to movies that were cranked out a weekly basis, from plots predicated on absurd coincidences to completely implausible happy endings.

          Many of the subtler jokes, like the gimmick of having the same actor (Art Carney) open both features by giving a dour medical prognosis that triggers the plot, may be lost on viewers who aren’t steeped in old-school Hollywood cinema. However, the very funny dialogue, which riffs on the way studio hacks used to jumble clichés and metaphors into a stew of verbal nonsense, is terrific even without knowing the context. One example: “It’s funny, isn’t it, how many times your guts can get slapped in the face.” Or: “With the woman you love at your side to stand behind your back, a man can move mountains with his bare heart.” One gets the impression Gelbart and Keller spent their youths groaning through lines like these every Saturday at the local movie palace, only to hurry back for more the next week; whereas some cinematic satires falter because contempt for the subject matter makes the comedy seem mean-spirited, Movie Movie shines because its humor stems from nostalgic affection. So, with venerable director Stanley Donen playing to his strong suit of smoothly choreographed light comedy, Movie Movie becomes first-rate escapist silliness.

          Of the two features, Dynamite Hands is marginally better because the focus is on delivering verbal gags and spoofing clichéd storytelling. However, Baxter’s Beauties of 1933 has song-and-dance numbers that Donen stages with his signature effervescence. Appearing in both features, Carney, Red Buttons, Trish Van Devere, and Eli Wallach have a blast sending up the mannered acting of studio-era hams. Scott manages to be sweetly affecting in his dual roles, as a gruff boxing trainer in the first picture and as a Broadway impresario in the second. Kathleen Beller, Harry Hamlin, and real-life Broadway hoofer Ann Reinking are featured in Dynamite Hands, while Rebecca York costars with Bostwick in Baxter’s Beauties. They all get into the spirit of the thing, investing their performances with golly-gee-whiz enthusiasm. Also working in Movie Movie’s favor is zippy pacing—two features, a trailer, an introduction, and credits get crammed into 105 fast-moving minutes.

Movie Movie: GROOVY