If you’ve ever longed to watch Patty Duke eat depressing amounts of cottage cheese and engage in comic pratfalls while exercising, rejoice! (Hey, it’s preferable to the child abuse in Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom.) Before and After, a 1979 telefilm about a woman who had the audacity to gain 20 pounds, delivers all that and more. First, you’ll want to prepare yourself mentally—I found it helpful to take a deep breath and contemplate how much worse it might’ve been if not written and directed by women.
Once you’ve done that (and perhaps hidden any sharp objects that normally rest nearby), grab a cake pop, as I did, and gather ’round the TV. If you’re open to the experience, you might laugh as Duke pays homage to Rocky by training in gray sweats and punching dead chickens. You may cry as her mother sabotages her progress and her smarmy husband calls her fat. And you’ll definitely check your pulse to make sure you haven’t died when special guest star Betty White heaps scorn and humiliation on underperforming weight-loss group participants.
Our story (by Hindi Brooks) begins at a house party reminiscent of the big shindig in Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction. What’s on offer here isn’t blow, but rather shame, starvation and diet pills. Carole (Duke) is already self-conscious about her appearance when disaster strikes during a game of charades and her pants split. “Don’t you have a caftan or something?” she asks Penny (Barbara Feldon), her emaciated hostess friend.
“I don’t like them, they hide your body,” Penny replies.
That’s why Carole wants one. She says husband Jack (Bradford Dillman) bought her pants two sizes too small. “Why don’t you take the hint, kiddo?” Penny responds.
“What does that mean?” Carole asks.
“Don’t eat.”
On the drive home, Jack finds their glove box full of candy wrappers. “You’re not fat, you just need to lose a few pounds,” he tells her. In an amorous clinch later that night, Carole asks, “Jack, when we make love, do you see me?” He avoids answering and she persists: “No, who do you see? Some skinny model?” She shoves him away when he answers “I see you, Carole. The way you were 10 years ago.”
A consultation with a diet doctor (Eve Roberts) follows. It’s heavy on yuks like “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it shrink.” The doctor jokes about magic formula solutions: “Well, let’s see. We could wire your mouth shut. Or we could try a tummy tuck, or we could remove yards of your intestines. And then you can eat all you want.” Carole joins Penny for an exercise class and feels guilty about leaving Jack at home with a TV dinner. “What do you think’s more important to Jack, a svelte wife or a homemade pot roast?” Penny asks.
Penny, whose eating disorder worsens throughout the film, is a fount of horrible wisdom. When Carole muses “Maybe I was meant to be this way,” Penny is quick to shut her down. “No, you were not meant to be this way,” she chides her. “You were meant to be thin. Carole, it’s all in the packaging.” Their plus-size friend Marge (Conchata Ferrell) disagrees. She offers words of encouragement at the supermarket, which fall on deaf ears. “Perfect is thin. All the rest is fat,” Carole protests. When Marge wonders what that makes her, Carole answers “Not perfect.” They laugh, but things grow more serious in one of the film’s better exchanges.
Carole: Marge, I love you. I don’t care how you look.
Marge: How do I look?
Carole: Heavy. You look heavy! [Pause] I’m sorry.
Marge: Carole, don’t be sorry, I don’t think you insulted me. I am big. And I’m happy. I like my work. Ed and I love each other. You know what he said to me the other evening? He said, ‘Marge, you are a lotta woman.’ And he meant it. I don’t starve myself, I don’t take diet pills, and I don’t kill myself at the gym.
Carole: And you’re really happy the way you are?
Marge: Now you can say you’re sorry.
BEFORE AND AFTER (1979)
Carole’s weight loss struggles reveal troubling family dynamics. Mother Helen (Rosemary Murphy) encourages her diet but brings home butter, bacon, cream and other fatty groceries. She bakes a chocolate cake that Jack hides after putting “incentive” photos on the refrigerator. He later finds his wife in the darkened kitchen, seductive music on the soundtrack as she prepares to take a bite. Jack’s the kind of schmuck who says things like “I want you to be so beautiful and sexy that all men drool over you. But you don’t pay any attention, see? Because you love only me.”
In another scene, they go running together and Carole apologetically taps out early. “Honey, it’s alright if you can’t go the distance,” he tells her. “In fact, I’m sorta glad that you can’t run too far. See, because that way I’m always sure to catch you.” His possessive, vainglorious messaging should alert her to his wandering eye, but it doesn’t. Carole learns of his serial philandering purely by accident, and they separate. Helen blames Carole: “He needs you to be young and attractive so that he can feel young and attractive. Show him you want him. If you just make a little effort, I know you can get him back.”
“Would you rather be a fat deserted wife or a thin deserted wife?” Penny asks Carole, who drowns her sorrows in food. She drags her to a Calorie Counters Anonymous meeting hosted by the deranged Anita (Betty White, having a heckuva time in Sue Ann Nivens mode). “You see, I, too, used to be a porker. And look at me now,” Anita tells the crowd, flaunting her trim figure. She leads the group in an anti-fat song to the tune of “Home on the Range,” before reporting their gains and losses. Gainers are mocked and made to wear pig masks, prompting Carole to leave in disgust.
Free from the distraction of her jackass husband, Carole dedicates herself to an exercise regimen and miserably restrictive diet. Her progress is partially fueled by the shame her weight—which is perfectly average by today’s standards—has brought to her family. One of her daughters is bullied at school for having a mother whose pants split in public. (In another scene, she tells her younger sister their father left “Because Mommy has a weight problem.”) It doesn’t hurt that there’s a hunky younger love interest on the periphery, self-described “immoral artist” Michael (Art Hindle, who also played opposite Duke in When the Vows Break).
In a trite little twist, Carole volunteers to teach sculpture to blind students. Michael, sighted and newly hired as an administrator, essentially introduces himself by sharing a “sexy” (his words) nude sketch he made of her as soon as they met. “I’m a very square lady,” she tells him. His rakish response? “No, you’re a very well-rounded lady.” His attraction to a heavier Carole does nothing to boost her self-esteem; she’s intent on losing weight before embarking on an affair. (Similarly, her volunteerism is merely a meet-cute device; it doesn’t teach Important Lessons on shape and beauty.)
Michael’s reward for his campaign of sexual harassment is a romantic island getaway. Carole is now a size four and revels in it, but reality intrudes once she’s back home. Michael, like Jack, is moody and needy. And Penny’s already precarious health deteriorates rapidly due to starvation, pill abuse, and a newfound affinity for dangerous liquid protein products. (While she’s comatose, her new husband, a former Calorie Counters member, angrily rants about food and assaults a cafeteria tray full of pie.) Worst of all, in my opinion, were the continued antics of Jack.
He provided my biggest “WTF?” moment—in a movie brimming with them—when, pre-separation, he discovers Michael’s sketch and confronts Carole. “Who would want to sketch me naked?” she demands, and he agrees, saying “Yeah. OK. I’m sorry, it’s ridiculous.” Predictably, he finds himself tormented when other men now desire the woman he discarded. He gets rough with her when she returns from the island, but later softens his approach. “Honey, I made a mistake,” he announces in all seriousness. “You see, when you were fat, I felt betrayed.”
At that, I paused the video so my laughter didn’t drown out the rest of the dialogue. “But I suddenly realized that I love you,” he continues. “I mean, I love you, fat or thin. I need you. And I think you need me.” Surely screenwriter Brooks was poking fun at the whole damn movie with that line, but it’s a little hard to say with certainty. By then, Carole and her mother had already engaged in some mystifying pop psychology (stretching all the way back to Carole’s infancy) to repair their relationship. Now she tells Jack, “I need me,” and theorizes her weight was “the only part of me nobody else could ever control.”
The frustrating thing about Before and After is how fun and breezy it is when its characters aren’t so obsessive. Director Kim Friedman (of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Square Pegs) brings a particularly playful and natural touch to Carole’s friendships. Duke, Feldon and Ferrell work wonderfully together, you just wish they had something more interesting to discuss than men and weight. Maddeningly, the film concludes with hints of a possible reunion with Jack. I would’ve preferred a reunion with cake.
For more on eating disorders in TV movies, you can check out my review of “For the Love of Nancy,” starring Tracey Gold. And thanks to reader Lisa (who also recommended “Goddess of Love”) for suggesting I check this one out.
Streaming and DVD availability
Before and After hasn’t made it to DVD or legitimate streaming platforms. Fortunately, you can find an old VHS transfer on YouTube via the incredible Patty Duke Fanzine. Amazon currently offers many of Duke’s other films as part of its Prime library, and you can browse those here.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.
… But wait, there’s more!
There’s a short chapter devoted to Before and After in Patty Duke’s In the Presence of Greatness: My Sixty-Year Journey as an Actress. She speaks very warmly of screenwriter Hindi Brooks, director Kim Friedman, and costars Barbara Feldon and Conchata Ferrell, and even mentions Jean Smart, who made her TV debut in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment early in the film. There’s also a great one-page section of the book (in a separate chapter) about Betty White.
Equally interesting is Duke’s recollection of how she got the job. By the time producers called her, they were in a bind because original star Brenda Vaccaro “left the production over creative differences with the film’s producer, Fred Konigsberg.” (Duke never asked about the particulars.) Duke shrewdly negotiated pay at double her going rate for a TV movie, as filming had already begun and she had them over a barrel.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Lisa
You just made my whole, well, week with this. I have been in the fetal position today, which makes it hard to type this because I read that the premier, arthouse masterpiece film conceived by and starring Patrick Swayze–Roadhouse–is being rebooted. That’s like the first horseman of the Apocalypse in my book.
See? I needed to read this. I had forgotten about Betty White and the pig masks! Bravo. I need to rewatch this. I haven’t seen it since it was on TV. This is awesome.