A terrific ensemble about the creation of the movie business as we know it today makes this one of the more notable TV movies of the golden age of the movie of the week. The first part of two, this starts in Albany where young Mark Harmon befriends theater owners Vincent Gardenia and Kaye Ballard and courts their daughter. He becomes more like their son than their own son, happier in the laundry business. After going into the movie making business with Gardenia, they escape the cartel run by Howard Duff by going to California where Harmon falls for the pretty young extra Morgan Fairchild whom he casts in the lead in a six reeler, something that the cartel was against.
Covering the growing years of cinema from the early days of the flickers to two feelers to full length films, this is a nice fictitious look at what the industry had to go through to get where it is, or at least was in 1980. Fairchild once again gets to work with the other "Dallas" Morgan (Brittany), playing the leading lady of narcissistic leading man Robert Goulet. There are mentions of real life stage and silent screen icons of the time (with Fernando Lamas playing an ambitious director) as well as fictional representations of others in the business. Robert Culp, as Duff's right hand man, is the epitome of slime, and late in this part comes along Carolyn Jones as his partner in crime.
As has been documented throughout the history of show business, the road to success is the boulevard of broken dreams as Harmon finds a change in Fairchild as she finds success, and that involves the controversy over a back street abortion and through the cartel the subtlety of anti-Semitism. Gardenia and Ballard are touching as the loving Jewish couple who take Harmon in, and Ballard is quite understated in her role. The story jumps right over the world war to a different town as Harmon finds out, and as fictional as this all is (based on Harold Robbins' novel), it's fascinating.
Covering the growing years of cinema from the early days of the flickers to two feelers to full length films, this is a nice fictitious look at what the industry had to go through to get where it is, or at least was in 1980. Fairchild once again gets to work with the other "Dallas" Morgan (Brittany), playing the leading lady of narcissistic leading man Robert Goulet. There are mentions of real life stage and silent screen icons of the time (with Fernando Lamas playing an ambitious director) as well as fictional representations of others in the business. Robert Culp, as Duff's right hand man, is the epitome of slime, and late in this part comes along Carolyn Jones as his partner in crime.
As has been documented throughout the history of show business, the road to success is the boulevard of broken dreams as Harmon finds a change in Fairchild as she finds success, and that involves the controversy over a back street abortion and through the cartel the subtlety of anti-Semitism. Gardenia and Ballard are touching as the loving Jewish couple who take Harmon in, and Ballard is quite understated in her role. The story jumps right over the world war to a different town as Harmon finds out, and as fictional as this all is (based on Harold Robbins' novel), it's fascinating.
