Salome Jens | Through the Shattered Lens

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, we have an adaptation of a Henry James short story.

Episode #3 “The Jolly Corner”

(Dir by Arthur Barron, originally aired in 1975)

In 1906, Spencer Brydon (Fritz Weaver) returns to America from Europe, where he’s spent the majority of his adult life. Brydon has specifically returned to oversee some properties that he has inherited, including his childhood home and an adjacent building that’s going to be turned into an apartment complex. The middle-aged Brydon reconnects with his old friend, Alice Shaverton (Salome Jens), and finds himself wondering what type of man he would have come if he had stayed and worked in America as opposed to living a life of leisure in Europe.

Soon, Spencer comes to feel that his alternate “American” self is actually haunting his childhood home, his so-called “Jolly Corner.” His American self haunts him like a ghost, a menacing shadow that continually forces him to ask “what if?” He becomes obsessed with both his former home and his shadowy alter ego. But is this American version of Spencer Brydon real? And if it is real, what does it want from the Spencer Brydon who went to Europe?

This was a really well-done adaptation of a Henry James short story, one that was full of gothic atmosphere and which featured a compelling lead performance from Fritz Weaver. As directed by Arthur Barron, this episode did a good job of portraying the story’s horror elements while also reminding us that James’s story, for all of its talk of ghosts and alternate realities, is ultimately a portrait of a really bad midlife crisis. Spencer did what a lot of rich Americans do. He went to Europe to escape the responsibilities of his home country. And now, in middle-age, he’s asking himself, “Is this all there is?”

If nothing else, watching this episode might inspire the viewer to read more Henry James. That’s a good thing.

David Phillips (Gary Coleman) is a teenager who sets fires when he gets upset. He has many reasons to be upset. His parents (Ron O’Neal and Cicely Tyson) are getting divorced and are constantly fighting. His teachers at school are always getting on his back. He has to take care of his younger siblings and his dog. He can’t even get the bigger kids in school to let him play basketball with them. At first, David just plays with his lighter but, after he accidentally sets his mother’s coat on fire, David discovers that he likes to watch things burn. David and his mother both claim it’s just coincidence that David is always nearby whenever a fire breaks out but Fire Chief Walker (Yaphet Kotto) knows what’s really going on. After David nearly burns down his house, Walker tries to reach him before it’s too late.

This isn’t really meant to be a horror film but it’s shot like one, with plenty of scenes of Gary Coleman staring at a burning fire with a possessed-look in his eyes. The movie tries to make David sympathetic but the scene where he threatens his own dog with a lighter suggests that David has more problems than just his parents splitting up. This was Gary Coleman’s first dramatic role. I think it may have also been his only dramatic role. It’s not that he’s not convincing as a really angry kid. It’s just that he’s Gary Coleman so, no matter how much the movie tries, it still comes across as being a special episode of Diff’rent Strokes where Arnold becomes a pyromaniac. Coleman tries to play up the drama of the situation but it’s hard not to laugh whenever he looks shocked at one of the fires that he has just started. Every scene seems like it should end with Conrad Bain showing up with the cops.

For years, this movie was next to impossible to find but finally, someone found an old VHS tape in their garage and uploaded the movie to both YouTube and the Internet Archive, ensuring the world will never forget the time that Gary Coleman played with fire.

One final note: the director is better known for eventually becoming business partners with notorious Hollywood madam, Heidi Fleiss.