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.
Holding her own against a giant of the stage and screen proved the easier task: Bertinelli could handle custody battles in her sleep by 1996. Maternal anxiety was already a bottomless well for telefilm producers when the box office success of 1992’s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle fueled a genre explosion that cemented Lifetime’s place in the public consciousness. Baby-snatchers, hospital mix-ups, artificial insemination nightmares, and outrageous decisions from family courts (see: Because Mommy Works and The Price She Paid) had eclipsed even infidelity and murder in popularity. Zachary marked the fourth or fifth time Bertinelli fought for a child.
What made this film — and Bertinelli’s performance — so different was the composition of its family. Gay characters were still a rarity on American television then and gay parents were cultural bogeymen. A mother in a lesbian relationship hadn’t fought for custody of a child in a network movie of the week since Gena Rowlands in 1978’s A Question of Love, which is remembered today for its censorship: ABC wouldn’t even allow Jane Alexander to kiss Rowlands’ hand. Casting Bertinelli as the lead in a project so controversial was a small stroke of genius — even marriage to one of the most debauched rock stars in the world couldn’t tarnish her image as America’s sweetheart.
Jody Ann Shaffell, her Two Mothers for Zachary character, has a wild-child reputation herself, and sneaks out of the maternity ward to smoke and reminisce about her hard-partying days not long after giving birth. Her pregnancy and poverty have forced an uneasy détente with her disapproving mother, Nancy (Redgrave), whose controlling tendencies come out at the hospital even when she’s on her best behavior; she doesn’t want to cede her spot in the delivery room to Jody’s estranged husband and seethes when she isn’t the first grandparent to hold Zachary. We aren’t as surprised as we should be when an unexpected love interest of Jody’s sends Nancy into a fury that goes all the way to the Supreme Court of Virginia.
“Oh, man. Mama warned me!” Jody grunts between contractions in a flashback, annoyed by her ex’s clumsy attempts to reconcile. You might be reminded of Tallulah Bankhead’s quip about bisexuality — “Daddy warned me about men and alcohol. But he never warned me about women and cocaine” — if you know what happens next. After a postpartum one-night stand with a cowboy from a honky-tonk roller-rink, Jody obliquely swears off romance. But blue-collar lesbian love is in the air of the Valu-Mart break room as she gets to know Maggie Fergus (Colleen Flynn), a decent, plainspoken coworker who’s drawn to jobs that allow her to work with her hands and wear uniforms.
“Sure would be nice if Sir Lancelot would ride up on his white stallion and rescue me,” Jody jokes as she smokes and paints her nails, confessing she’s fearful of having to go back on welfare should she alienate Nancy and lose her financial support.
“I must be reading a different set of fairy tales, because I keep waiting for Lady Guinevere,” Maggie replies. Jody’s blink-and-you-miss-it reaction, a thrilled jolt of recognition, is beautifully perceptive work by Bertinelli, who needs only a split-second to convey something the dialogue argues against but later confirms: this wasn’t Jody’s first gay rodeo, she’d been attracted to women before. Director Peter Werner (Killer Instinct) and screenwriter Linda Voorhees frequently opt for subtlety over the usual made-for-TV sledgehammers, whether dropping clues about Jody’s stint as a runaway child or giving Redgrave time to work through Nancy’s realization that Jody and Maggie are romantically involved.
Redgrave, who’d played gay before and would do so again quite movingly in If These Walls Could Talk 2, is so phenomenal in Jody’s coming-out scene that you’ll pardon her awful Southern accent. Nancy’s homophobia, which is broadly shared by supporting characters (including Jan, a former friend of Jody’s played by out actress Kim Dickens) and Virginia lawmakers, will turn your stomach. But the most chilling thing about Redgrave’s performance is Nancy’s pathological need to get what she wants at any cost, even grievous emotional injury to her daughter and grandson. Her narcissism, which rivals that of Bibi Besch’s miserable matriarch in Doing Time on Maple Drive, lingers long after a title card informs us of Jody’s legal fate.
Streaming and DVD availability
Two Mothers for Zachary currently streams on Amazon, Tubi, and other free platforms.
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… But wait, there’s more!
Two Mothers for Zachary is based on the real-life court case of Bottoms vs. Bottoms, which pitted Sharon Bottoms against her mother, Kay, for custody of Sharon’s son in the early ’90s. You can read more about it in Sharon’s New York Times obituary and watch an interview with her lawyer in this PBS News Hour segment about her death and legal legacy. She was survived by her son and a husband — the lesbian relationship her mom went scorched-earth over didn’t last.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
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