THE BABY MAKER 1970

In 1970--decades before the topic of surrogacy became a standby staple of Lifetime TV thrillers, mediocre comedy fodder (Paternity, Baby Mama), or a nightmare vision of a dystopian future (The Handmaid’s Tale)--it was considered a subject so unique and unusual that critics and audiences alike were at a bit of a loss as to how to respond to a movie proposing surrogacy as a legitimate alternative for a couple wanting a child but unable to conceive.  

Barbara Hershey as Patricia "Tish" Gray

Sam Groom as Jay Wilcox

Collin Wilcox as Suzanne Wilcox

Scott Glenn as Tad Jacks

The Baby Maker, the debut film of Oscar-nominated screenwriter James Bridges (The Paper Chase, The China Syndrome) tells the story of a Los Angles hippie (Barbara Hershey, the then go-to flower child of the movies) who, for a substantial amount of money and because she just loves being pregnant (“Proof of the reality of my own existence”), agrees to bear a child for a square-but-nice, well-to-do Brentwood couple (Sam Groom & Collin Wilcox). Combining as it does—with varying degrees of success—elements of the well-intentioned Generation Gap TV movie (Maybe I’ll Come Home in The Spring); the quickie cash-in counterculture youth flick (1969s natural childbirth gimmick comedy Generation); the racy and “with it” social exposé (The Christine Jorgensen Story); and the indie character drama (Five Easy Pieces), The Baby Maker proved a hard picture to categorize and an even tougher film to market.

"The kind of film that makes talk!" 
This ungrammatical tagline underscores the overall
please-don't-let-me-be-misunderstood tone of this newspaper ad (click to enlarge) 

Young audiences deemed The Baby Maker "too straight" and mainstream, just another example of a major studio depicting hippie counterculture inauthentically on the screen (a valid criticism considering The Baby Maker has a scene depicting Hershey's tree-hugger character literally hugging a tree). Meanwhile, mainstream critics labeled the film “bizarre”(The Miami News) and tripped over their words as they tried to frame the movie's then-daring themes in ways that didn't suggest simple exploitation and sensationalism. On that score, The Baby Maker's marketing campaign didn't help matters much.

 

Audiences titillated by the film’s teasingly salacious ad copy: “She’ll live with a couple. Share the husband. They get a baby that’s at least half theirs. She gets the joy of making it” (Time capsule note: the term "making it" was also '60s slang for having sex, so the ad engages in a bit of double entendre) were inevitably disappointed. 

Imagine expecting a movie about a hippy-dippy tie-dye three-way and instead find yourself watching a thoughtful, often clinical, nearly two-hour character drama contemplating the permanence of decisions in the era of "If it feels good, do it." 

Lili Valenty as Mrs. Culnick, the sweet little old lady go-between who
 facilitates the pairing of the childless couple with a willing surrogate

It also didn't help marketing matters much that America's love affair with the hippie was on the wane. A few months prior to the release of The Baby Maker, John G. Avildsen released a low-budget social melodrama titled Joe that climaxed in a vigilante massacre at a hippie commune by a pair of ultra-conservative working-class reactionaries. The film struck an odd, cathartic chord with a public still reeling from the hippie violence detailed in the ongoing Manson trials, and became a controversial sleeper hit. In this social climate, The Baby Maker’s positive depiction of hippie culture and the idealism of youth started to look a tad dated and cliché.

All of which contributed to The Baby Maker enjoying only the briefest of theatrical runs before promptly disappearing from both movie screens and people's memories. This in spite of it having received a good share of favorable notices for its performances. Barbara Hershey attracted a lot of Best Actress Oscar nomination buzz in the trade papers, the film ultimately garnering an Academy Award nod for its original song score by composer Fred Karlin. (Karlin did win the Oscar that year, but in another category for a different film: Best Song “For All We Know” from Lovers and Other Strangers.)

"I was just looking at your records. You have an awful lot of Frank Sinatra."
The surrogate mother meets (and sizes up) the father

Although I recall when The Baby Maker was originally released, I don’t recall it ever appearing on television or even coming out on video. My reaction to the newspaper ads at the time was likely in line with how they appeared to most people: the film looked like cheap exploitation Drive-In fare. Not that that had ever proved a deterrent to my interest in a movie before. It's just that with both Myra Breckinridge and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls hitting the screens at the same time that year, my reasoning was that if I was going to see vulgar trash, it might as well be big-budget vulgar trash from a major studio.

The opportunity to see The Baby Maker came in 1975 when I was still in high school and working as an usher in San Francisco's Alhambra Theater. The Baby Maker played as the bottom half on a double bill with The Happy Hooker, of all things (although, as the guy who also set up the outdoor advertising, I have to say this was one of our more eye-catching marquees). By this time Barbara Hershey had officially changed her name to Barbara Seagull (an ill-advised phase which lasted about two years), and hippies in movies were starting to look as quaint as beatniks. Nevertheless, for the week of the film's run, I saw it about three times. And absolutely loved it. 

Tad and Tish
One of the things I like about how the character of Tish is conceived is that she never thinks twice about treating her body as her own property to do with as she wishes. Although she is in an open relationship with her boyfriend Tad (for all of six months), when she decides to be a surrogate she doesn't seek his permission or approval. The scene where she finally tells him is touching and beautifully played. It feels light years away from how I imagine the scene would be written today. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

Before making his directing debut with The Baby Maker, James Bridges was a successful screenwriter who got his start working in television (Bridges wrote one of my all-time favorite episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: “The Unlocked Window”) and had a background of acting and directing for the theater. Dissatisfied with the quality of the films made from his scripts (The Appaloosa, Colossus: The Forbin Project), Bridges decided that he’d try his hand at directing direct his next screenplay  -“I can fuck ‘em up as good as they can!” The Baby Maker's lead character is based on a woman he and life-partner/business partner Jack Larson knew from a Venice Beach bar called The Carousel. A bohemian, free-spirit type who enjoyed the feeling of being pregnant and made extra money by serving as a surrogate mother for childless couples. 

It's Complicated

The Baby Maker is a twist on the classic triangle, the third party in this instance being recruited in a most impersonal way to participate in a most personal form of interrelation. In those pre-in vitro days, the fact that the surrogate is to be impregnated “the old-fashioned way” may have served as the film's principle gimmick and marketing hook, but The Baby Maker distinguishes itself in the manner in which its sensational premise actually serves as a springboard for a thoughtful examination of culture conflict. The film's humor and heart arise out of the clash of generations, personalities, backgrounds, and the unanticipated emotions arising out of what ostensibly is--in form and function--a business arrangement.

In all, Bridges set a heady task for himself in his first outing as director. And while he’s not always successful in balancing the film's varying shifts in tone or in sustaining the narrative thrust of the story over the length of the film’s running time (sometimes it feels up in the air as to which character's story the film is trying to tell); it does feel as though he's telling a story he believes in. 

 Collin Wilcox made her memorable film debut as Mayella in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

PERFORMANCES

Critics were divided over The Baby Maker’s overall merits, but the quality of Barbara Hershey’s performance was undisputed. And without a doubt, her performance is the single most distinguished takeaway from the entire film. Barbara Hershey’s real-life hippie-dippy reputation may have blighted her early career (and indeed may have cost her a much-deserved Oscar nod for her role here), but it’s precisely her naturalness in the role that grounds the film. Though her character may have been written as an archetype, it's Hershey who comes across as the real thing. Hers is the film's defining voice and ultimately its saving grace.

Hershey, who just the year before gave a truly chilling performance as a sociopath in Frank Perry's shattering Last Summer (1969) gives another incredible performance in this, her 5th film. Always an underrated actress, she is The Baby Maker's Most Valuable Player. In scene after scene, whether it be some bit of dialogue that would sound hokey or laughable coming from someone else, or a moment when the film feels to be veering into soapy waters, Hershey’s unselfconscious and nuanced performance moors potential contrivance to truth.

Making his film debut, actor Scott Glenn is very good as Tish's sweet but immature boyfriend. 
In 1980 Glenn would go on to have a featured role in James Bridges' Urban Cowboy

As the middle-class couple, Collin Wilcox and stolidly handsome Sam Groom supply more traditional performances which, by comparison, feel more generic, but both are quite good. (Groom's sizable head and chiseled features made him a natural for the closeup-heavy medium of television, where he found success in the '70s as the star of the syndicated program Police Surgeon). Wilcox is a standout as Suzanne, playing the character as a pragmatic but somewhat neurotic woman. The Baby Maker actually excels in making women the dominant players in the film by placing their unique bonds and relationships front and center, and having their actions move the narrative forward. A young Jeannie Berlin is wonderful as Tish’s outspoken, activist best friend.

Tish uses some of her money to help support her single mom (Phyllis Coates) and her grandmother (Madge Kennedy) who both live in a Venice trailer park. In a sea of post-Easy Rider male-centric buddy films, The Baby Maker is unique for its dominant female perspective. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I’m a big believer in the tenet that the engagement of different voices can’t help but result in different stories. The subject matter of The Baby Maker couldn’t be more heterosexual, but as a story written and produced by two gay men, I feel it qualifies as a keen example of Queer Cinema.

For all its progressive ideas, the youth movement and hippie counterculture (at least as it has been depicted in films) has always been woefully male-centric, conventional, and in most cases downright misogynist in its attitudes towards women. For example: The Strawberry Statement, a 1970 film about campus protests, couldn't conceive of anything more important for its female activists to do beyond making Xerox copies of protest pamphlets and doing the marketing. To the best of my recollection, The Baby Maker is one of the few hippie-themed films to present the a woman's point of view as the dominant perspective. A genuine woman's perspective, not a fetishized, free-love, heterosexual male gaze fantasy of the sort depicted in films like Chastity, Candy, or There's a Girl in My Soup.

The Baby Maker producer Jack Larson (l.) & director James Bridges met when both appeared as actors in the film Johnny Trouble (1957). Openly gay, they remained lovers/partners till Bridges' death in 1993. Larson passed away in 2015

For its time, The Baby Maker’s feminist perspective, non-sexualized heroine, and unorthodox domestic relationships were a subtle challenge to the heteronormative status quo; something I wholly attribute to the gay sensibilities of its creators. Like the works of playwrights Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee, I think what’s brilliant about Bridges’ screenplay is that it looks at heterosexuality through the projected outsider insights of Queer perception.

In a reversal of a common youth film trope, the male bodies are the
ones exposed and made the object of the female gaze in The Baby Maker

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Being that I was just a child when my family lived in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the late ‘60s, I tend not to be a very good judge of what passes for the authentic or inauthentic representation of hippie culture in movies. Largely shielded from the sex and drugs side of it all, my kid's-eye-view memory of the era consists largely of its pop-cultural trappings. My nostalgia buttons can be pushed by the most superficial signposts of the era, so even though The Baby Maker takes place in Los Angeles, one of its major perks for me is how often it triggers moments of "I remember that!" memory-jogging that take me back to my San Francisco roots.

Fringed suede/leather jackets were all the rage, and everyone seemed to know how to tie-dye but me.  My elder sister (who really caught the hippie bug) was a whiz, but I tended to use so much bleach that my garments actually disintegrated. Hitchhikers were visible all over San Francisco, but my family was so large (me & 4 sisters) that picking up thumb-trippers was never a practical option even if my parents were open to it. Which they weren't. This suited me just fine, for The Doors' Riders on the Storm  was being played on the radio at the time and I'd had the holy hell scared out of me by the lyric "There's a killer on the road..."

War Is Not Healthy For Children & Other Living Things
I remember the many protests and picket-sign slogans of the day, the above being so ubiquitous as to have been used as the poster graphic for the 1971 film Bless the Beasts and the Children. In this scene, Jeannie Berlin (daughter of writer/director Elaine May) leads a protest against a store selling toy guns.

Pop-Top Fashion
From roughly 1965 to 1975, beverage cans came with disposable pop-tops. Hippies, being ecology-minded and all, took to using these aluminum tabs to create fashion and "art." Everything from hats, dresses, and vests were made out of these things. I hope she'll forgive me for ratting on her, but my older sister (Yes, Ms. Tie-dye) made herself a pop-top headband just like this. 

Home Decor
The days of gigantic stereos, door-size coffee tables, and sofas that seat 20

Candles, Candles, Everywhere
Candle stores and vendors were like the Starbucks of the Sixties; you couldn't take two steps on Telegraph Avenue without bumping into one. I had a beloved star-shaped rainbow candle in my room (back when they were, y'know, just rainbows and not my way of coming out to my parents) and, of course, my sister made her own 

The Single Wing Turquoise Bird
How's that for a '60s name? Psychedelic light shows and avant-garde multimedia theater was all the rage. Not only did every youth-culture movie feature at least one sequence of freak-out visuals, but the phenomenon went mainstream with 2001: A Space Odyssey. In The Baby Maker, Tish and friends attend a light show performance by The Single Wing Turquoise Bird, a real-life performance troupe that is still in existence.

Although it’s one of my favorites, I don't mean to paint The Baby Maker as some kind of undiscovered classic. It’s shot in the flat, undistinguished style of a TV movie, the hippie trappings and dialogue can be a bit distancing, and modern audiences may find the tempo a tad sluggish. But it's notable now for its "my body, my choice" attitude about a woman's personal freedom and pregnancy.

A consistent theme in many of my favorite films is the human need for contact, so I'm a sucker for movies about people who misguidedly assume that independence means the absence of emotional attachments. Lastly, anybody who knows me knows how much I love a good cry at the movies, and the ending of The Baby Maker never fails to get the ol' waterworks going.

 BONUS MATERIAL

The Superman Connection

The Baby Maker producer Jack Larson was best known as cub reporter Jimmy Olson on the TV series The Adventures of Superman from 1952 to 1958. That show's original Lois Lane (1st season only) was actress Phyllis Coates. Larson and Coates remained friends over the years, leading to her being cast in The Baby Maker in the role of Barbara Hersey's mother.

Phyllis Coates, Jack Larson, and Ann Doran in The Adventures of Superman

Phyllis Coates as Patricia's mother

Brenda Sykes (Cleopatra Jones) appears in an unbilled bit part as a woman
with whom Tad shares a joint and a flirtation

In 1985 I got a job as a dance/exercise extra in the virtually unwatchable James Bridges film Perfect, starring John Travolta & Jamie Lee Curtis. Although the aerobics class scenes were shot on location at the Sports Connection gym in West Hollywood, this particular scene was shot months later on a set designed to look exactly like the gym. These reshoots were necessitated by the feeling from the higher-ups that the previously shot aerobic class scenes weren't "sexy enough,"
Aside from having to do something like six hours of pelvic tucks, what's most memorable about this particular sequence is that, after filming had begun, shooting halted in order for the costume people to figure out a way to sew up the legs to Travolta's shorts in order to give him a more pronounced package. When Travolta returned a half-hour later with a more camera-ready crotch, it also appeared that a bit of filler had been added. Jack Larson served as producer on this film as well and was often present on what proved to be a very gay (and happy) set.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2017