Laughter is Contagious in Someone I Touched

The 1970s were a complicated time for telefilm husbands, whether it was Robert Reed making obscene phone calls and assaulting his wife in The Secret Night Caller, or Patty Duke’s dipshit spouse justifying his serial infidelity in Before and After by telling her “You see, when you were fat, I felt betrayed.” And so you may feel a familiar sense of dread from the opening moments of Someone I Touched (1975), largely due to its opening ballad.

That treacly theme, warbled by Leachman herself, appears to lay it all out, allowing us to mentally prepare for the inevitable moment when a woman accepts at least partial blame for her husband’s transgressions. Here is but a sampling of its lyrical treasures, which begin normally enough: “Someone I touched/You’re someone I touched/And right away, I knew/I was in love with you.” Things get slightly weirder as we enter “Forget the others I touched/Those others I touched” territory, which includes a cold, abrupt reminder: “Yes, everything dies.”

The worst is yet to come, as “But this feeling, gentle and warm/Every time you’re close to me” inexplicably segues into “I never meant to reject you or push you away/You’ll always be someone I touched.” It goes on and on, this composition by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, culminating in “Don’t let it turn to dust/Let’s let our ample trust/Open the door/You’re so much more than someone I touched.” I can overlook its clunkiness (Alan and Marilyn Bergman weren’t in the budget), but the whole thing feels suspiciously like brainwashing.

Adding insult to injury, it plays over idyllic scenes of scantily-attired teens—including Carrie (Glynis O’Connor)—enjoying a game of beach volleyball. But playtime is over for young Carrie when Frank Berlin (Andy Robinson), who works for the county health department, tracks her down and pulls her aside for a chat. Assuring her “it’s nothing that can’t be fixed,” he pauses before breaking the news: “I’m afraid you’ve got yourself a case of VD.” She thinks he’s joking, but he continues, “Infectious syphilis. First stage. […] At this stage it’s not even dangerous. Unless you’re pregnant.”

Pregnancy isn’t a concern for Carrie, a 20-year-old supermarket cashier who looks about 12. But it’s an issue for Laura Hyatt (Leachman), a children’s book editor who has been trying to conceive for the better part of a decade, with only a miscarriage and a strained marriage to show for it. The same night Laura tells her architect husband Sam (James Olson) she’s four months pregnant, Carrie nervously lurks outside, prepared to disclose her infection. But Laura draws the curtains for a private celebration. If she isn’t syphilitic already, she will be soon—Sam is one of Carrie’s recent sexual contacts.

“A one-night stand with a kid who was barely out of her teens. I don’t even remember her name,” Sam mutters after Frank poses as a client to speak with him at work. Here we’re treated to the obligatory public service announcement about syphilis, which Sam thought was a thing of the past. “Right now, it’s an epidemic,” Frank explains. “We can cure it, but there’s no vaccine to prevent it. So—the pill, more available sex—VD is out of control. About half a million people in this country are infected with it today and many of them don’t even know it.”

Sam’s early diagnosis is simple enough to treat, but Laura and their fetus are at greater risk. Frank urges him to get tested immediately, and for Laura to do likewise, but Sam is reluctant. “My wife is not very strong emotionally,” he tells an unmoved Frank. Possible consequences for the pregnancy, including “miscarriage, stillbirth, brain damage, deformity, and sometimes even blindness or deafness around 10 or 11,” are too great for the expectant father to ignore, so he schedules an emergency appointment with Dr. Klemperer, Laura’s obstetrician (a perfect Peggy Feury), who couldn’t look more exhausted by mediocre husbands if she tried.

When Sam tries, politely but not very subtly, to coerce the doctor into silence, she is steely and finally schools him: “This kind of thing isn’t new to me, Mr. Hyatt, I see it day in and day out. Half my patients are women in their mid-thirties, frightened women. Worried about stretch marks and scars, about whether or not they’ll be satisfactory sexual partners after the baby. And why? Because their husbands are out pumping up their sagging masculinity, proving their virility with girls half their age. I’m only concerned about the patient, Mr. Hyatt. Who in this case happens to be your wife.” He takes his lumps and prepares to confess, but surprises await.

James S. Henerson’s sophisticated screenplay (his credits include The Feminist and the Fuzz and the herpes flick Intimate Agony, starring no less a master thespian than Anthony Geary) is surprisingly short on moralizing. But for the more maladjusted among us, it’s long on laughs. Nothing’s quite as funny as its opening theme, but there’s something special about Leachman’s cry of “I could’ve given birth to a baby with no arms!” And then there’s Carrie’s talk with her hardened mother, Enid (Lenka Peterson, O’Connor’s real-life mom), about boy troubles.

“We can get it fixed, you know. Those things aren’t so hard these days,” Enid reassures her daughter, who she mistakenly assumes is pregnant. (The line is a shocking reminder of how far we’ve regressed in 47 years.) When Carrie replies “He didn’t give me a baby, Mom. He gave me syphilis,” Enid slaps her silly while calling her a tramp. Peterson’s physicality makes it a jarring scene (Patty Duke and Sean Astin gave us something similar but milder in Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom). Carrie, like viewers, understands that Enid’s reaction is less about VD than years of personal disappointment, and comforts her sobbing mother.

The emotional carnage at the Hyatt household is somewhat muted. Sam and Laura engage in a bit of light George and Martha score-settling when he comes clean; their marriage’s rockiness predates any recent sexual developments. Those conflicts, including Laura’s neuroses and Sam briefly walking out on her, are largely attributed to their fertility woes. (She additionally declares herself “unreliable in bed,” a charge Sam contests.) Leachman and Olson work best together in their tensest scenes, when you’re not quite sure if Laura’s about to reach for a laugh or a metaphorical knife. Less believable is the notion that a child will heal their rift.

Kenneth Mars provides some welcome comic relief as Paul, Laura’s boss and confidante, but my favorite character, by far, was Frank. The crusading health department worker visits enough characters you half-expect he’ll knock on your door next. (If only he’d popped up in Baby of the Bride to explain how conception occurs.) It’s a testament to Andy Robinson’s versatility—his Dirty Harry villain, Scorpio, is one of the most unique in all of filmdom—that Frank’s passion for public health burns brighter than anything else in Someone I Touched.

Streaming and DVD availability

Tragically, Someone I Touched (which my wife insists should’ve been called Syphyllis) hasn’t been released on DVD. It currently streams at ScreenPix; a one-week free trial is available through Amazon at the link.

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