Cranky Lesbian

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Tag: Vanessa Redgrave

Valerie Bertinelli Fights Homophobia in Two Mothers for Zachary

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On April 5, 2025

In TV Movies

Valerie Bertinelli’s Two Mothers for Zachary is a hair-raising tale of institutionalized homophobia.

Every TV movie titan’s filmography is a testament to her pluck and perseverance, and few were pluckier than the great Valerie Bertinelli. By the mid-1990s, in accordance with the bloodhound rule — so named for Thelma Ritter’s “What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end” scene in All About Eve — she had boldly confronted gambling addiction (The Seduction of Gina); misogyny within the Catholic Church (Shattered Vows); and a Battle of the Network Stars monkey bar challenge, among other social ills. In Two Mothers for Zachary, she tackled two of her biggest challenges yet: fighting institutionalized homophobia and sharing the screen with Vanessa Redgrave (Second Serve), whose unfashionable orange bowl cut was perhaps a misguided tribute to Bertinelli’s original TV mom, Bonnie Franklin.

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Second Serve: Vanessa Redgrave Plays Doubles in Richards Biopic

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On July 20, 2023

In TV Movies

Vanessa Redgrave in Second Serve.

For simplicity’s sake, both male and female pronouns are used for Richard and Renée. It’s not a political commentary, it’s a reflection of how the story is told.

There is initially something jarring about Vanessa Redgrave’s performance as Renée Richards, the pioneering transgender athlete, in Second Serve. Her unconvincing male appearance pre-transition conjures memories of Jean Arless as gawky Warren in William Castle’s Homicidal, a classic Psycho knockoff with a memorable gender gimmick, and you worry this 1986 CBS adaptation of Richards’s autobiography might cheapen a complex story. But it doesn’t take long for the magnetic Redgrave to draw you in, particularly when filmed in medium-closeups that remove her hips from the equation.

We’re introduced to Renée first as Dr. Richard Raskind (changed to Radley for the film), and Redgrave exudes an Anthony Perkins quality—lanky, haunted, her demeanor alternately reserved and impetuous—that suits the character well. You suspect she understands Richard, whose private struggles with gender dysphoria aren’t immediately revealed, more intuitively than director Anthony Page (I Never Promised You a Rose Garden) and screenwriters Gavin Lambert and Stephanie Liss. Yet there are limits to her powers of empathy: you’d never guess from Redgrave’s vaguely WASPy characterization (and sometimes thinly-suppressed British accent) that she’s playing a Queens-bred Jew.*

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