Reviews

Too bad she's known primarily as Ben Stiller's mother and Jerry Stiller's wife. Anyone who caught this odd little film saw Anne Meara prove her extraordinary talent as an actress. She captures the complexities of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown as skillfully as any of our leading character actresses -- Sally Field, Sissy Spacek, Jane Alexander. Look again at those little comic sketches she and Jerry Stiller did on Ed Sillivan back in the 60's -- they were wonderful character pieces.

Based on Lanford Wilson's early -- and quite autobiographical -- stage play, "Lemon Sky" is atypical TV fare. It's non-linear structure and surealistic staging might be off-putting for the average couch-potato. But Wilson is a brilliant writer, and Kevin Bacon gives possibly his best performance as a young man trying to fit into the family of an abusive father who left him as a child. This is the film where Bacon fell in love with Kyra Sedgewick, and so did I. Her sexy, tough, tragic performance raises the question of why she never became the major star that her talent deserves. I taped this from PBS, and showed it to dozens of my high school drama classes, and they loved it every time. I wish it were available on video.

Down at General Hospital, recovering from her acid-induced statutory gang-rape at the hands of Sunset Strip "long-hairs", twenty-something teenager Mimsey Farmer gets snippy with her police captain daddy, Aldo Ray, and sneers, "Things that happen to me aren't usually fatal." Maybe not, Mimsey, they can sure damage a girl's career. Unbelievably bad expose' of the wild life of teenagers who terrorize LA by standing around passively on the Strip wearing groovey clothes and carrying signs that say things like "We want peace, not police." Career high-point for Mickey Rooney's kid, who does more flipping of his hair than any given season of Charlie's Angels. Most ludicrous [and longest] moment: Mimsey accidentally drops acid and does a very long, robotic interpretive dance with lots of arched-back, breasts-out wanna-be Ann-Margret faux-eroticism. Groovey, Baby. Best line: "Who's the rat-fink that put the finger on us?" Favorite character: the girl in the cool green dress who takes acid and spends the rest of the movie draping herself across various pices of furniture, railings, window sills, etc. and trying to laugh demonically. Great micro-scene by Margaretta Ramsey as Mimsey's pre-Jerry Springer alcoholic hag-mom.

Playwright William Inge never liked Shirley Booth, or her brilliant performance as Lola in the Broadway and original film versions of "Sheba" -- he wanted an actress that would be believable as a faded beauty. Inge did not live to see Woodward's version of Lola, but he probably would have adored it -- he knew her as a young beauty when she understudied Janice Rule in his "Picnic" on Broadway. But the curse on Lola's husband "Doc" endures, and Olivier is as miscast as Lancaster was in the '52 film. It's one of his hammiest performances. A very young Carrie Fisher is natural and luminous as Marie, and Woodward is wonderful as always, but there's no escaping the long shadow of Booth's heartbreaking, legendary performance, which remains the heart and soul of "Sheba." Inge was wrong.

Kim Stanley was the great interpreter of William Inge at the time he was the most successful playwright in America. On Broadway she played Millie, the younger sister, in his "Picnic" and Cheri in "Bus Stop" -- ironically, the role played in the movie by Monroe, the model for "The Goddess." Cast in "The Goddess", Stanley is clearly too old for the part, and not cinematically 'beautiful' enough. What she does bring to the role is an astonishing talent based on flawless technique and an emotional sensitivity that both made her career and destroyed it. I ran across the movie by accident when I was about 12 years old, and Stanley's performance has continued to haunt me for 36 years. The making of "The Goddess" was so emotionally agonizing that Stanley essentially fled from the movie business. How brilliant she would have been in dozens of roles that won acclaim for lesser talents. Many years later she played Jessica Lange's mother in "Frances" -- a similar story of a glamourous and tragic film star. She told Lange, "As soon as this movie's over, do a comedy. Immediately. Any comedy you can get your hands on." That comedy was "Tootsie" which won Lange her first Osacr.