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When the Vows Break: Patty Duke’s Fight for Justice

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On March 19, 2024

In TV Movies

Patty Duke and Art Hindle in When the Vows Break.

When she wasn’t crash-dieting or beating her son, Patty Duke partook, as so many actors did, in the time-honored TV movie tradition of crusading for justice. She challenged everything from unsafe schools (The Violation of Sarah McDavid) to the FDA (Fight for Life), while also making time to repeatedly solve her children’s murders (A Killer Among Friends and A Matter of Justice). As Barbara Parker in 1995’s When the Vows Break (also known as Courting Justice), her target is not her estranged husband — she already knows he’s a putz — but the morally compromised jurist presiding over their divorce.

Judge Wendell Adams (Robin Gammell, face fixed in a perma-scowl) opposes divorce so zealously in his family courtroom that he denies a petition based “on insufficient grounds,” arguing that marriage does not require love. Though Barbara and Art (The Silence of Adultery’s Art Hindle) started dating as teens and she worked alongside him as they built a multimillion-dollar construction fortune, she is awarded only 2% of their marital assets. She’s also granted alimony that’s unsecured and subject to revision on the whims of both Art — a financial abuser and obfuscator whose money is his only means of control — and Adams, a clear misogynist.

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The Day the Loving Stopped: Rhoda, McCloud and a Very ’70s Divorce

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On October 13, 2023

In TV Movies

Valerie Harper and Dennis Weaver in The Day the Loving Stopped.

As if Rhoda Morgenstern’s divorce from Joe Gerard wasn’t emotionally bruising enough, here Valerie Harper (Goodbye, Supermom) goes again, putting us through the wringer in The Day the Loving Stopped (1981). This telefilm about a 1970s split with ’80s repercussions isn’t as giddily melodramatic as its title suggests, but coed Judy Danner (Dominique Dunne, Valentine Magic on Love Island) sure cries a lot, a trait shared with mother Norma (Harper). Younger sister Debbie (Ally Sheedy) gets so fed up with all the waterworks that she eventually snaps “Just knock it off!” — it was either that or break into “No More Tears (Enough is Enough).”

The family has gathered for Judy’s wedding to Danny Reynolds (James Canning), a persistent classmate who is resolutely untroubled by his betrothed’s ambivalence about marriage and hostility toward her estranged father, Aaron (Dennis Weaver of Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction). Alone together, the sweethearts can’t put groceries in the trunk without pausing to kiss. Alone with her thoughts, or with Debbie, Judy’s a waterlogged mess who isn’t sure she believes in love. “I’ve never seen it last. I don’t know if it does. Don’t you understand?” she asks, increasingly hysterical. We do, but she clarifies: “I don’t want to do to my kids what they did to us.”

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Connie Sellecca Cries and Commits Bigamy in She Led Two Lives

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On September 14, 2023

In TV Movies

Connie Sellecca and Perry King in She Led Two Lives.

We meet Rebecca Cross (Connie Sellecca), a 35-year-old flannel enthusiast with a flawless complexion and unfortunate bangs, when she’s hauled off to jail in handcuffs. Suspenseful music plays as she’s booked — what crime did the mild-mannered cancer researcher commit? For the answer, let us turn to one of Barbra Streisand’s greatest hits: Rebecca is “A Woman in Love.” And she’ll do anything to get Mike (A Martinez) into her world and hold him within, even if it means committing bigamy. It’s a right she defends over and over again.

Rebecca is already married to Jeffrey (Perry King of Inmates: A Love Story), a dashing surgeon. Weeks earlier, he slid a bracelet onto her wrist for their seventh wedding anniversary and proposed a toast: “To Rebecca. I didn’t think it was possible but I love you more today than the day we were married.” And then he is paged to the operating room, a familiar conclusion to their nights together. Her loneliness is accentuated by her father’s deathbed regret at not spending more time with loved ones, a fate he implores her to avoid.

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Park Overall Calculates The Price of a Broken Heart

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On April 5, 2023

In TV Movies

Park Overall in The Price of a Broken Heart.

Like Park Overall in The Price of a Broken Heart (1999), I would be stunned if my husband cheated—mostly because I don’t have one. But if you were to traffic in heterosexist stereotypes, as Lifetime movies do, my wife is essentially an old-school husband. Society views her as the more dominant and valuable partner because of her career; I’m the one who does her laundry.

How would I react if she ran off with her secretary? Well, I’d be surprised, mostly because she lacks the requisite immaturity, free time and organizational skills for such pursuits. (“Can you pls wash my lacy black bra and book a hotel room for my affair tomorrow? Thx,” she might text me before an assignation.) One thing I’m confident I wouldn’t do is sue her mistress, the course of action Overall’s Dot Hutelmyer charts in The Price of a Broken Heart, a sort of tawdry primetime domestic spin on The Price is Right.

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Because Mommy Works: The Nightmare of Having a Self-Sufficient Mother

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On January 27, 2023

In TV Movies

Anne Archer is a persecuted parent in Because Mommy Works.

From Stella Dallas to Kramer vs. Kramer, there’s no tearjerker quite like the separation of parent and child, and Because Mommy Works (1994) is no exception. An NBC production that found a second home on Lifetime, it could more accurately be called Because Daddy’s a Dipsh*t. And while its plot and resolution are likely to astonish or even amuse younger or more sheltered viewers who don’t take it seriously, the ’90s were indeed still a time when mothers, unlike fathers, were legally penalized for working or attaining higher education.

Anne Archer plays Abby Forman, a cardiac care nurse and mother to six-year-old Willie (Casey Wurzbach of Gramps). Her ex-husband, Ted (John Heard, a specialist of sorts in detestable characters), has spent nearly half of Willie’s life largely absent from it, doing whatever he pleases, but believes he has fulfilled his fatherly obligations by never missing a child support payment. Now remarried to homemaker Claire (Ashley Crow, who makes the most of a small but complex role), he reappears to again hassle Abby for having the temerity to think that she, like him or any other working father, can effectively parent while also holding a job.

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Jaclyn Smith Believes in Santa in The Night They Saved Christmas

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On December 9, 2022

In TV Movies

Jaclyn Smith with her brood in The Night They Saved Christmas.

There is no greater ’80s holiday fantasy movie than A Smoky Mountain Christmas (1986), with its savory squirrel stew blend of witchcraft, fairy tales, backwoods orphans, country music stardom and poisoned maybe-lesbian pies. But once you’ve completed your annual viewing of that Dolly Parton classic, you might consider checking out The Night They Saved Christmas (1984), another family-oriented telefilm that will leave you staring at the screen in confusion, murmuring “What the jingle hell is this?”

Nearly as bad as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, it essentially hinges on whether an oil company will slaughter Santa and his elves (who number in the thousands) for a shot at greater riches. But there’s so much more to it than that, nearly all of it bleak and depressing. The Night They Saved Christmas doesn’t only inspire ’80s nostalgia because of its sophisticated robot toys, parents on the verge of divorce, fashionable winter jumpers and references to Saudi involvement in American oil. It’s also a heartwarming reminder of our constant proximity to ruthless annihilation in the waning years of the Cold War.

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The Victim: Soggy Suspense with Elizabeth Montgomery

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On October 28, 2022

In TV Movies

Elizabeth Montgomery in The Victim.

“When something’s dead, the only decent thing to do is bury it,” Elizabeth Montgomery’s younger sister tells her in the made-for-TV thriller The Victim (1972). Susan Chappel (Jess Walton) is referring to her marriage to Ben (George Maharis); she recently retained a divorce lawyer. But in a macabre twist, she’s soon dead herself—and certainly not buried.

As Kate Wainwright (Montgomery) inches closer to that horrifying discovery, we’re treated to 75 minutes of thunder and lightning and close calls with a corpse. Hitchcock’s Rope it ain’t, but The Victim (adapted by Merwin Gerard from a story by McKnight Malmar) derives its more twisted suspense from a body in a trunk. And this time it’s wicker and not entirely closed, allowing viewers to notice what escapes Kate’s attention in Ben and Susan’s dark basement.

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Dial ‘M’ for Murder: The Angie Dickinson Remake

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On October 24, 2022

In TV Movies

Angie Dickinson with Ron Moody in Dial ‘M’ for Murder.

Onscreen adultery rarely looked more glamorous than when it was being committed by Angie Dickinson, who followed her turn as one of the more significant straying spouses in the history of cinema—in Brian De Palma’s 1980 classic, Dressed to Kill—with a TV remake of another notable tale of extramarital betrayal, Dial ‘M’ for Murder. In an intriguing departure from other adaptations of Frederick Knott’s stage play, Dickinson was 50 years old when she tackled the role of Margot Wendice—twice as old as Grace Kelly, who played Margot in Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial ‘M’ for Murder (1954).

That Dickinson’s Margot and Christopher Plummer’s Tony Wendice are an age-appropriate pairing subtly reconfigures their power dynamic. Grace Kelly’s youthfulness, contrasted with the Ray Milland’s cool, mature composure as a retired tennis player, enhanced her character’s vulnerability. In Andrew Davis’ A Perfect Murder, a 1998 remake, Gwyneth Paltrow would’ve been more believable as the daughter, not wife, of an embattled Michael Douglas. Dickinson, who held her own in westerns, exploitation flicks, police fare, and opposite the Rat Pack, was no ingénue by 1981, raising the domestic stakes.

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Before and After: Patty Duke’s Diet Mania

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On August 8, 2022

In TV Movies

“I am so f*cking sick of salad.”

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.

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Barbara Stanwyck Charges Ten Cents a Dance

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On June 2, 2022

In '30s Films

Some would call ten cents a bargain.

It’s not every day that you dust off a 1931 pre-code Barbara Stanwyck film because of a ’90s-era Cheryl Ladd TV movie, but I wouldn’t mind if it happened more often. While toiling on an upcoming post about Ladd’s Dancing with Danger (1994), in which she played a taxi dancer, I was reminded of Stanwyck’s turn as a woman in the same profession in Ten Cents a Dance.

Stanwyck is my favorite American actress. This is a play on the possibly apocryphal Clifton Webb quote about her (“My favorite American lesbian,” discussed more below), but it’s also the truth. Behind my desk is a framed original insert poster for There’s Always Tomorrow, and I own nearly all of her films that have been released on DVD. When, years ago, I cheekily volunteered to die for assorted femme fatales, Stanwyck didn’t make the list. That’s because I would’ve been a comically dazed Henry Fonda in her presence, not a Fred MacMurray.

Barbara Stanwyck with Ricardo Cortez in Ten Cents a Dance.

Ten Cents a Dance is one of her least scandalous pre-code films, and has strange origins. It is, as the credits note, “based upon the popular song by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers.” Stanwyck plays Barbara O’Neill, a young woman with dim prospects employed at the Palais de Dance. When a crude, tobacco-chewing sailor asks “What’s a guy gotta do to dance with you gals?” Barbara replies with half a sneer, “All you need is a ticket and some courage.” Her irritation is palpable as he drags her across the floor.

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