Clean-cut 1950s teenager Doug McKeon (as Lonnie Welles) goes off to college. There, he flips burgers, learns about girls, joins the basketball team, and makes text-to-text connections between Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caulfield. Back home, mother Eva Marie Saint (as Emma) is having a difficult time hiding her advancing Leukemia from husband Jason Robards (as Lloyd). The family watches "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" on television - but, learn real life is not quite like a Norman Rockwell magazine cover...
They are good enough to almost pull it off; but, the cast seems a little too advanced for the parts they are playing. Writer/director John Wilder bases his TV-movie one of Rockwell's nostalgic "Saturday Evening Post" cover paintings. The point is, of course, that beautiful pictures can oftentimes mask painful situations. This was from an era when people were ho-humming about how real life was not like Rockwell or "Ozzie and Harriet". Veteran Claire Trevor (as Grace Porter) is impressive, as usual, in her last acting appearance.
***** Breaking Home Ties (11/26/87) Doug McKeon, Eva Marie Saint, Jason Robards, Claire Trevor
They are good enough to almost pull it off; but, the cast seems a little too advanced for the parts they are playing. Writer/director John Wilder bases his TV-movie one of Rockwell's nostalgic "Saturday Evening Post" cover paintings. The point is, of course, that beautiful pictures can oftentimes mask painful situations. This was from an era when people were ho-humming about how real life was not like Rockwell or "Ozzie and Harriet". Veteran Claire Trevor (as Grace Porter) is impressive, as usual, in her last acting appearance.
***** Breaking Home Ties (11/26/87) Doug McKeon, Eva Marie Saint, Jason Robards, Claire Trevor