Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing The American Short Story, which ran semi-regularly on PBS in 1974 to 1981.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime and found on YouTube and Tubi.

This week, after an introduction from Henry Fonda, The American Short Story presents a short film about a young man discovers that he’s a fool.

Episode 6 “I’m A Fool”

(Dir by Noel Black, originally aired in 1977)

In this adaptation of a Sherwood Anderson short story, Ron Howard (back in his younger days, before he became better-known as a director) stars as Andy.  Andy is a young man who runs away from his safe and comfortable life in search of adventure.  He gets a job as a “swipe,” which was apparently what people used to call the folks who took care of the horses at a racetrack.  He and an older black man named Burt (Santiago Gonzalez) travel the racing circuit in Ohio and form a tentative friendship.  Burt can tell that, for all of his attempts to come across as being tough and worldly, Andy is a virgin who gets drunk easily and who has no idea what the real world is like.

Andy claims to be a proud member of the working class but then he meets a pretty and rich girl named Lucy (Amy Irving).  Andy introduces himself as being Walter, the son of a wealthy stable owner.  Andy and Lucy spend the day together and Andy comes to realize that he loves her and that she seems to love him as well.  But then Andy realizes that she only knows him as Walter and that it’s too late to tell her the truth.  “I’m a fool,” Andy says before leaving with Burt.

This 35-minute short film featured good performances from Ron Howard and Amy Irving and some lovely shots of the countryside, showing why a life of wandering through rural Ohio might appeal to a young person searching for meaning.  There’s a great scene in a bar where the outclassed Andy tries to prove himself to a bunch of snobs by drinking whiskey and smoking a cigar.  Unfortunately, the strength of Sherwood Anderson’s original short story is that it puts us straight into Andy’s head and allows us to see the thought process that led to him coming up with his foolish lie.  Despite featuring narration from Ron Howard, this adaptation doesn’t really accomplish that and, as a result, the viewer is always on the outside looking in.

It’s not a bad adaptation but it can’t beat sitting down and reading the original story.