The Witness”

Posted on January 31, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, the third season of The Love Boat comes to a conclusion with an extra-long episode!

Episode 3.28 “No Girls for Doc/Marriage of Convenience/The Caller/The Witness”

(Dir by Gordon Farr and Richard Kinon, originally aired on May 3rd, 1980)

The finale of The Love Boat‘s third season features stage legend and two-time Oscar winner, Helen Hayes. Hayes was considered to be such a big “get” for the show that she receives the zoom lens treatment when she steps onto the ship and all of the action seems to stop for a few minutes, presumably so the audience at home can give her a standing ovation.

Personally, I think Helen Hayes was pretty cool. Along with being a hell of an actress (one whose career extended for over six decades), she was also the wife of Charles MacArthur, an acquaintance of the Algonquin round table, an outspoken Republican, a strong supporter of many charities, and a major benefactor of the Helen Hayes Hospital, a rehabilitation clinic in New York that has made major strides in treating physical disabilities. To say that there are people in the world who can walk because of Helen Hayes is not hyperbole.

That said, Helen Hayes’s story is the dullest one on this cruise. It’s not Hayes’s fault. She is her usual outspoken and likable self. It’s just the storyline itself doesn’t offer up much in the way of drama or comedy. Hayes plays Agatha Winslow, a widow who was married to a friend of Stubing’s. Stubing asks Julie to set Agatha up with someone but then they see Agatha hugging a younger man and Julie says that it won’t be necessary.

AGCK! I HOPE NOT! The younger man is played Helen Hayes’s son, James MacArthur!

No worries. MacArthur is playing Scott Burgess, who is Agatha’s nephew. Scott is a member of the protestant clergy who has never married because he feels that he has to take care of Agatha. Scott and Beatrice Dale (Mildred Natwick) hope that Agatha will fall in love with and marry Beatrice’s brother, a businessman named Hollister (Maurice Evans). Hollister owns a carpet company and he spends most of the episode look down at and commenting on the quality of the ship’s floor. Agatha does not marry Hollister but she does realize that it’s time for her to move on and live her own life. It’s all very pleasant but not very extremely interesting.

Far more interesting is the story of Gail Padgett (Christopher Norris), a woman who is boarding the ship because she needs to get away from her landline phone. As she explains to Julie, someone has been calling and harassing her for months. At no point does Julie suggest what I would suggest, which is that Gail should call the cops. Indeed, when Gail starts to get calls on the boat, Julie never suggests calling the police or going to the captain or anything else. Instead, Gail tells her stalker that she’ll meet him at the Pirate’s Cove Bar. She tells Julie that she has a plan to humiliate him. And again, you would think Julie might say, “How about we just arrest him when he comes in the bar?” But instead, Julie smiles. It’s the Love Boat! No one is murdered on The Love Boat! (Not yet, anyway.)

Gail’s stalker is a nerdy fellow named Melvin, who is played by a young Martin Short. Before Melvin can arrive, Gail is approached by Jack Stander (Larry Breeding). “Hi, I’m Robert Redford,” Jack says before admitting that he’s not Robert Redford and that he spent hours coming up with that opening line. Thinking that Jack is her stalker, Gail takes Jack to her cabin where she get him to undress and then tosses all of his clothes out the porthole. So now, Gail has not only flirted with and then stood up her stalker but she’s also committed theft. WAY TO GO, GAIL!

Anyway, Gail eventually realizes that Jack is not her stalker and they fall in love. Melvin is eventually revealed to be the caller but everyone laughs it off because he’s so nerdy. (Because we all know how harmless nerdy stalkers are….) This was a really weird story but, despite the stupidity of their characters, Christopher Norris and Larry Breeding made for a cute, likably vapid couple.

Maybe Gail should have gone to Wayne Dobson (Larry Wilcox) for help. Wayne is an uptight assistant D.A. who has spent the last two months in a hotel room with Pat Bigelow (Catherine Bach), a witness to a crime who is in protective custody. Even when Pat boards the cruise, Wayne has to come with her and stay in an adjoining cabin. Pat is annoyed but she understand that Wayne is just doing his job.

However, Wayne has fallen in love with Pat and he is upset to receive a telegram saying that the crooks have decided to plead guilty and that Pat can be released from protective custody. Isaac, who was perhaps a bit too excited when he earlier thought Wayne was a male gigolo who was being paid to escort Pat, suggests that Wayne just lie and not let Pat know that her life is no longer in danger. Wayne agrees and Isaac takes Wayne off to give him a makeover that will be so impressive that Pat will fall in love with him and reject notorious Love Boat lothario Mark Bridges (John McCook).

(Of course, any relationship that Wayne and Pat could ever have would be built on lies but whatever….)

Pat does fall for Wayne, though less because of the makeover and more because Wayne finally stops being so uptight. She’s a bit miffed when she finds out that Wayne has been lying to her but she forgives him easily because this is The Love Boat.

Finally, after a night of skinny dipping leads to him losing his clothes and money, Doc announces that he’s through with women. (And again, it doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that maybe Doc should call the police.) That should be a relief to the crew because Doc really is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Instead, they takes bets on how long it will take Doc to go back on his word. It doesn’t take long. Any story that centered around Doc being a Casanova just felt silly. Bernie Kopell was likable as Doc but he was also a bit too naturally mild-mannered to be believable as a legendary lothario.

And so ends the third season of The Love Boat. Vicki is now firmly a member of the crew. Julie has given up on finding love. Isaac and Gopher are as silly as ever. And Doc is going to get the cruise line sued. The 90-minute finale was a bit overextended and had some weak story elements but, overall, the third season was a lot of fun.

Next week …. SEASON 4!

A Blast From The Past: The Mercury Theatre Presents Heart of Darkness

Posted on May 6, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before he revolutionized cinema, Orson Welles revolutionized both theater and radio. As the host and mastermind behind the Mercury Theatre On The Air, Welles was heard on a weekly basis as the show broadcast adaptations of literary classics into American homes. In 1938, both Welles and Mercury Theatre On The Air achieved a certain immortality with their broadcast of War of the Worlds. What is often forgotten is that, one week after terrifying America, the Mercury Theatre presented an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, one which featured Welles in the role of Kurtz and his future Citizen Kane co-star, Ray Collins, as Marlow.

This broadcast was significant in that, when Welles first went to Hollywood, it was with an eye towards turning Heart of Darkness into a film. Welles planned to shoot the film strictly from the point-of-view of Marlow, with the camera serving as Marlow’s eyes. Welles not only planned to play Kurtz in the film but he also intended to provide the voice of Marlow. Unfortunately, the film was never made. With the outbreak of war in Europe, it was felt that the audience most likely to embrace Welles’s experiment would no longer be going to the movies. Welles would instead make his cinematic debut with Citizen Kane, a film that fully embodies Welles’s artistic vision regardless of what Mank tried to sell everyone last year. As for Heart of Darkness, it would later be adapted for television, appearing in greatly altered form as an episode of Playhouse 90 in 1958. Boris Karloff played Kurtz and Roddy McDowall played Marlow and someone decided that it would be a good idea to add a subplot in which Kurtz is revealed to by Marlow’s long lost father. There would be many attempts to turn Conrad’s novella into a feature film but it was not until 1979, with Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, that Conrad’s story would appear on the big screen, albeit in massively altered form. Nicolas Roeg would later direct his own version of Heart of Darkness, one that featured Tim Roth as Marlow and John Malkovich as Kurtz. (I haven’t seen it but that just sounds like perfect casting.)

Today, in honor of the 106th anniversary of the birth of Orson Welles, here is the Mercury Theatre On The Air’s production of Heart of Darkness. This broadcast also features an adaptation of the play, Life With Father. The casts are as follows:

Heart of Darkness: Orson Welles (Author, Ernest Kurtz), Ray Collins (Marlow), Alfred Shirley (Accountant), George Coulouris (Assistant Manager), Edgar Barrier (Second Manager), William Alland (Agent), Virginia Welles (Kurtz’s Intended Bride), Frank Readick (Tchiatosov)

(For those keeping track, Welles, Collins, Coulouris, and Alland would all have key roles in Citizen Kane. Alland played the reporter who is assigned to discover the meaning of Rosebud. Ray Collins played Boss Jim Gettys, the political boss who prevents Kane from being elected governor. Coulouris played Kane’s guardian, Walter Parkes Thatcher. And Welles, of course, was Charles Foster Kane, American. )

Life With Father: Orson Welles (Father), Mildred Natwick (Mother), Mary Wickes (Employment Office Manager), Alice Frost (Margaret), Arthur Anderson (young Clarence Day).

This program was originally aired on November 6th, 1938. Welles was 22 years old at the time of this broadcast. So, sit back and enjoy Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre.

Love on the Shattered Lens: Barefoot In The Park (dir by Gene Saks)

Posted on February 27, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1967 film, Barefoot in the Park, tells the story of two newlyweds.

Paul Bratter (Robert Redford) may have a terrible last name (seriously, Bratter?) but he’s an up-and-coming lawyer with a bright future. He’s a little bit uptight and doesn’t seem to have the greatest understanding of human nature but he’s handsome and he’s charming and he means well. Paul has just recently married Corie (Jane Fonda). Corie is a free spirit who cringes at the idea of conformity. Having been raised by a judgmental mother who has always told her that she will never be good enough to make it on her own, Corie has decided to murder Paul and steal all of his money by insisting that they live in a drafty apartment that’s on the fifth floor of an New York apartment building that doesn’t have an elevator. If climbing up the stairs doesn’t kill Paul, the fact that the skylight has hole in it probably will. Helping Corie with her plan is her eccentric neighbor, Victor Velasco (Charles Boyer). When Paul comes home one day to discover Victor lifting up his lingerie-clad wife, Victor says, “We are heating up the apartment.” Corie assures Paul that they’re just trying to get the radiator to start working but we know the truth….

Okay, that’s actually the Lifetime version of Barefoot in the Park. The real Barefoot in the Park is a charming, lighter-than-light adaptation of Neil Simon’s famous play. (If I’m biased towards the play, it’s because I once played Corie in a heavily edited version of the play that we put on in high school. I was the perfect Corie, if I may say so myself.) As played by Robert Redford, Paul is charming but uptight and, as played by Jane Fonda, Corie is a free spirit who doesn’t really seem to have much common sense about the realities of living in New York City. (Running barefoot in Central Park? Probably not a good idea in 1967.) They do end up living on the fifth floor and there are a lot of jokes (in fact, there’s probably too many jokes) about people getting out of breath from having to climb all of the stairs. There’s also a broken skylight, which is a problem since it snows in New York. However, Corie never deliberately plots to kill Paul. Instead, she tries to set her mom (played, in an Oscar-nominated performance, by Mildred Natwick) up with Victor.

Barefoot in the Park is probably one of those films that seemed semi-daring when it was originally released in 1967 (“Look! A honeymoon sex joke! Look! Corie’s walking around in Paul’s shirt! Look! Paul looks like he’s about to say a forbidden word!”) but today, it seems like an old-fashioned but likable fantasy about what’s like to be a newlywed in New York. The city’s beautiful and full of romance. The dialogue is witty and zippy. (Zippy’s a word, isn’t it?) Charles Boyer overacts in the most charming way possible and Mildred Natwick has some good moments as Corie’s mom. (To appreciate Natwick’s peformance, it helps to imagine what the film would have been like if Shelley Winters had played the role.) Most importantly, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda have got an amazing chemistry and, as they were both young in 1967 and considerably less weather-beaten than they are today, it’s hard to imagine a more beautiful couple. Though Gene Saks’s direction is visually flat and, cinematically, the film never quite breaks out of its stage-bound origins, the chemistry of Redford and Fonda and Boyer and Natwick carry you through the occasional rough patch.

Seriously, I kind of love this movie!

Sail Away: John Wayne in John Ford’s THE LONG VOYAGE HOME (United Artists 1940)

Posted on August 12, 2017 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

This is my third year participating in the TCM Summer Under the Stars blogathon hosted by Kristen at Journeys in Classic Film , and second entry spotlighting Big John Wayne . The Duke and director John Ford made eleven films together, from 1939’s STAGECOACH to 1963’s DONOVAN’S REEF. Wayne’s role in the first as The Ringo Kid established him as a star presence to be reckoned with, and the iconic actor always gave credit to his mentor Ford for his screen success. I recently viewed their second collaboration, 1940’s THE LONG VOYAGE HOME, a complete departure for Wayne as a Swedish sailor on a tramp steamer, based on four short plays by Eugene O’Neill, and was amazed at both the actor’s performance and the technical brilliance of Ford and his cinematographer Gregg Toland , the man behind the camera for Welles’ CITIZEN KANE.

THE LONG VOYAGE HOME is a seafaring saga…

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Embracing the Melodrama #37: Dangerous Liaisons (dir by Stephen Frears)

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When watching a film like the 1988 best picture nominee Dangerous Liaisons, it helps to know something about history. The film takes place in 18th century France and, even though it’s never specifically stated in the film, I watched it very much aware that the story was taking place just a few years before the French Revolution. Even the aristocratic libertines who survive until the end of the film are probably destined to end up losing their lives at the guillotine. Even though you don’t see anyone losing their head during Dangerous Liaisons (nor do you hear anyone say, “Let them eat cake.”), the film offers up such an atmosphere of decadence and manipulation that it leaves the viewer with little doubt as to why the people occasionally feel the need to rise up and destroy their social betters.

Dangerous Liaisons tells the story of the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) and the Marquise de Mertuil (Glenn Close), two amoral members of the aristocracy who deal with their boredom by playing games with the emotions of others. Valmont is a notorious womanizer while Mertuil is obsessed with “dominating” the male sex and “avenging my own.” At the start of the film, Mertuil has discovered that a former lover is planning on marrying the innocent Cecile (18 year-old Uma Thurman, stealing every scene that she appears in), who has basically spent her entire life in a convent. Mertuil asks Valmont to seduce and take Cecile’s virginity before the wedding. At first, Valmont says that Cecile is to easy of a challenge and declines. Instead, Valmont has decided that he wants to seduce Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Phieffer), a married woman who is renowned for both her strong religious feelings and her virtuous character. Mertuil agrees that she will sleep with Valmont if he can provide her with written proof that he’s managed to seduce Tourvel.

Tourvel is staying with Valmont’s aunt (Mildred Natwick), which gives Valmont — with the help of his servant, Azolan (Peter Capaldi) — several chances to try to trick Tourvel into believing that he’s a better man than everyone assumes him to be. (With Azolan’s help, Valmont finds a poor family and donates money to them. Of course, he makes sure that word of this gets back to Tourvel.) However, Valmont then discovers that Cecile’s mother (Swoosie Kurtz) has been writing letters to Tourvel, warning her about Valmont’s lack of character. To get revenge, Valmont agrees to seduce Cecile.

Dangerous Liaisons, which is based on a play that was based on a novel, is sumptuous costume drama. If you’re like me and you love seeing how the rich and famous lived in past centuries, you’ll find a lot to enjoy in Dangerous Liaisons. With the elaborate costumes and the ornate sets, the film is a real visual feast.

The film is also a feast for those of us who enjoy good acting as well. With the exception of a very young Keanu Reeves (who is oddly miscast as the poor music teacher who falls in love with Cecile), the entire film is perfectly cast, right down to the most minor of characters. (I particularly enjoyed listening to Peter Capaldi, even if his Scottish accent occasionally did seem rather out-of-place in a film about the pre-Revolution France.) For me, the biggest shock was John Malkovich. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve always felt that Malkovich was a good character actor but he’s never been someone that I would think of as being sexy. However, he gives close to a perfect performance as Valmont and, oddly enough, the fact that he’s not really conventionally handsome only serves to make Valmont all the more seductive. Purring out his cynical dialogue and openly leering at every single woman in Paris, Malkovich turns Valmont into a familiar but all too appealing devil.

Dangerous Liaisons was later remade as Cruel Intentions, which is a film that I’ll be taking a look at very soon.