ORDINARY PEOPLE 1980

"Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."  - Tolstoy

Ordinary People won the 1981 Best Picture Oscar against Raging Bull, The Elephant Man, Tess, and Coal Miner's Daughter. While hindsight and time have confirmed my opinion that Martin Scorsese’s searing and ambitious Raging Bull was the more deserving prize recipient that year, I must assert that in saying this, I am in no way diminishing or discounting the brilliance that is Ordinary People. It's an easy film to dramatically discredit due to its essentially conventional structure and familiar domestic themes, and it's an easy film to creatively overlook because it lacks both the cinematic bravura and operatic scope of Scorsese’s masterpiece. But, when leaving these comparisons aside, director Robert Redford's Ordinary People has always struck me as one of the most emotionally eloquent and evocative domestic dramas I've ever seen.

The passion of Scorsese's beautifully-rendered masterpiece moves me aesthetically, and I respond to it (as I do with the films of Stanley Kubrick) and on a level largely cerebral. But to this day, of all the movies nominated that year, Ordinary People is the film that moves me the most. Its poignance speaks to me in ways that perhaps have little to do with art, but everything to do with my enduring fondness for motion pictures that explore the human condition.

As the years go by, I come to appreciate Ordinary People’s simple, straightforward, cinematic approach more and more; for it feels less like the absence of style in a first-time director, and more like a deliberate attempt on Redford’s part to convey a certain conventionality and constriction in the world these people inhabit. A means of training the focus on what’s most important to the story: the inability of its characters to understand and express feelings that fall beyond the scope of the coping mechanisms of structure, order, and self-control.

Mary Tyler Moore as Beth Jarrett

Donald Sutherland as Calvin Jarrett

Timothy Hutton as Conrad Jarrett

Judd Hirsch as Dr. Tyrone C. Berger

Elizabeth McGovern as Jeannine Pratt

Dinah Manoff as Karen Alrich

Ordinary People tells the story of the Jarretts, an upper middle-class family living in the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest; an affluent neighborhood of spacious homes, manicured lawns, and people skilled in the art of emotional repression. Fittingly, the film opens with a montage of tranquil, postcard-perfect images of this tony residential community, for in this beige-colored, WASP enclave, appearances seem to do all the talking. Most vociferously, these meticulously kept-up appearances speak of status and wealth, but they're also an avowal of the belief that if everything looks right, it must then certainly be right.
Out of order comes security, from security comes happiness. The unexpected is kept at bay. Everyone is safe. Lives are happy. All is as it should be and there is no mess. Except for in the Jarrett household, where, bit by bit, their lives are slowly coming apart.

Keeping Up Appearances

Looking at them from the outside, one would assume the Jarretts haven’t a problem in the world. Genial, easygoing Calvin is a successful tax attorney; elegant, poised Beth, mother and housewife, is an avid golfer and paragon of perfectionism; and 17-year-old Conrad…he’s just been released from a mental hospital after having tried to kill himself.

You see, Buck Jarrett, eldest son, star athlete and all-around Golden Boy, drowned in a boating accident a little over a year ago, and the emotional fallout of the tragedy (or more precisely, the lack of it) has left a huge fissure in the Jarrett’s façade of have-it-all normalcy.
The loss of the older brother he looked up to causes Conrad to suffer a nervous breakdown born of guilt for having survived and from feeling he'll never measure up in the eyes of his parents enough to compensate for the void. Beth, who one senses blames Conrad for his brother’s death, has virtually shut him out of her life. Unable to display affection and withholding of approval, she thinks that Conrad’s suicide attempt was a deliberate act of revenge directed at her (the deed left the image-conscious Beth having to weather both the stigma of having an institutionalized son and the humiliation of others knowing that all is far from orderly in the Jarrett household).

Calvin, stuck in the role of conciliator, drinks a bit too much and tends to turn a blind eye to what he perhaps knows/fears to be true between Beth and Conrad. In his earnest efforts to make everything nice, he too, lives in a state of denial about his feelings.

Recovering from shock therapy, left behind a grade for his months-long stay at a mental hospital,
Conrad feels the pressure of others wanting things to return to "normal" as quickly as possible

In chronicling Conrad’s journey toward forgiveness (himself and his mother) Ordinary People’s look at the dysfunction within a by-all-appearances functional family covers little of what I’d call new ground. Certainly not after all those ’60 post-Graduate films eviscerating the middle class for their false values, the wave of Vietnam-era ‘70s films and TV movies devoted to cultural soul-searching, or the 1973 PBS documentary An American Family (television's first reality show), which regaled us with the spectacle of the disintegration of a quintessential WASP family from the comfort of our living rooms.

But how Robert Redford succeeds in making Ordinary People an extraordinarily unique look at a familiar film topic is in the way his direction displays an uncommon sensitivity and understanding of this world and these people. Gone are the cliché, easy-target jibes at the upper-middle-class so typical of the domestic disintegration genre. In its place, an obvious familiarity with the rituals of suppression (few interactions occur outside of the formalized: meals, cocktail parties, golf games; and "keeping busy" are the cure-all panacea), and an empathy for the adult characters and compassion for the adolescents.

The "French Toast scene" is one of my favorites. The father who tries too hard, the son who feels too much, and the mother who expresses her feelings in the only way she knows how: through the dutiful carrying out of household rituals. The tension is thick as maple syrup.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Ordinary People was a critical and commercial success upon release, its few detractors mostly citing it for perhaps being a little too ordinary in its approach. A solemn, pedigreed, adult drama about important issues, Ordinary People is the kind of film studios once touted as a “prestige picture” and critics merely labeled “Oscar bait.” (Indeed, it was nominated for six Oscars, winning four: Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, and Adapted Screenplay.)

Almost too refined and tasteful for its own good, Ordinary People’s family-in-crisis subject matter, relaxed, naturalistic performances and distinct lack of showy, cinematic tricks (a welcome rarity from a first-time director) still has many feeling that Redford’s film is little more than a superior movie-of-the-week. 

But to me, what Ordinary People lacks in visual distinction (not entirely fair, John Bailey’s cinematography, evoking the chill and melancholy beauty of autumn in the Midwest, is surprisingly expressive) it makes up for in keeping the viewer emotionally rapt in the domestic disintegration of the Jarretts. Ordinary People’s greatest strength has always been its characters, the tenuous structure of their relationships, and the depth of emotion the film’s remarkable cast brings to Alvin Sargent’s splendid screenplay (from Judith Guest’s 1976 novel).

The entire cast of Ordinary People is extraordinary, but Mary Tyler Moore wasn't fucking around. She brings it like gangbusters in her portrayal of Beth, inhabiting the character in a way that leaves you feeling her role in the film is larger than it actually is. Every one of her scenes is virtuoso, but here are my favorites:

"Give her the goddamn camera!"
Never has Mary Tyler Moore's ready smile been used to better knots-in-the-stomach effect

"Mothers don't hate their sons!"
After so much politeness, Moore & Sutherland finally squaring off  is electrifying

A dog named Pippin
An absolutely brilliantly played and written scene (watch Moore's shift in expressions. Like a door being cracked open only to be slammed shut). Two people trying to connect and not being able to. Breaks my heart every time.

The Hug
On a scale of emotional power, this reverberated through the theater like the chest-busting scene in Alien. I swear, the entire theater seemed to gasp and break into LOUD sobs all at once

PERFORMANCES
Dating back to the first time I ever saw Rebel Without a Cause on TV, I've almost never liked how teenagers have been written or portrayed on screen (except in low-budget '50s and '60s rock & roll musicals). They always seem to have a little too much autonomy, and the graceful, perfect actors playing them too often look like they're play-acting at youthful gawkiness and insecurity. Timothy Hutton turns in an exceptional performance simply by giving the impression he's not "playing" at anything...he's being. He comes across as authentic and age-appropriately hamstrung by his emotional confusion, his character's anguish made all the more heartbreaking because he comes across as such a sweet kid.
Hutton works a kind of miracle with Conrad, granting us a portrait of a tortured youth that manages to sidestep the usual problematic “troubled teen” clichés that so often come across as self-pitying and self-centered. Hutton was just 19 at the time, yet there’s nothing callow in how perceptively he conveys the feelings of a young man grappling with grief and self-recrimination. Given that this is the young actor's first major film role (for which he won an Oscar in the bargain), the intensity of feeling Hutton brings to his character is perhaps too-easily attributed to his having lost his real-life father just four months prior to filming (actor Jim Hutton succumbed to liver cancer at age 45); but I think it's just a case of a very talented actor meeting with the perfect role.

Adam Baldwin, Hutton, Carl DiTomasso, Fredric Lehne

As the '80s ushered in the era of the insufferable teenager—interchangeable slasher victims or indistinguishable coming-of-age horndogs—Ordinary People's realistic adolescents gently broke from tradition. Frederic Lehne plays a high school jock actually capable of showing compassion; Dinah Manoff, as Conrad's friend from the mental hospital, struggles to keep depression at bay through strained positivity; and most affecting of all, Elizabeth McGovern (making her film debut, as well) as a classmate with whom Conrad shares a mutual crush.  McGovern, who has the quirky, natural charm of a young Paula Prentiss (a frequent Jim Hutton co-star), manages to rescue her character, through sheer force of originality, from being a plot-functional "dream girl" who exists solely to guide Conrad back into the world of feelings.

Hutton's and McGovern's scenes are affecting in their unforced naturalness

Both Redford and Moore have stated that the character of Beth and her inability to display affection reminded them of the non-relationship each had with their respective emotionally-remote, perfectionist fathers. I grew up at a time when, via TV shows like Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver, the patriarchal ideal defined the perfect family. That’s why Ordinary People’s fence-straddling, somewhat ineffectual, but well-intentioned Calvin Jarrett came as such a welcome surprise to me; at last: a divergence from the all-knowing authoritarian father figure of pop-culture propaganda.

Taking on the kind of peace-keeping, empathetic role typically afforded the long-suffering wife in these sorts of domestic dramas, Donald Sutherland—a personal favorite and the only major cast member to fail to receive an Oscar nod—gives an understated performance (Redford initially wanted him for the psychiatrist) whose nuances are all too easy to overlook. An actor most eloquent in his silences (Sutherland’s eyes tend to be more expressive than his face) is at a distinct disadvantage in a film full of so many showier performances; but Calvin’s restrained gentleness has the much-needed effect of humanizing Beth (some part of her must have appreciated his vulnerability) and of making Conrad’s estrangement less torturous, for it's clear he has at least one person in the household in his corner.

Had the Canadian Donald Sutherland been cast in the role of psychiatrist as Redford originally envisioned, critics would have lost the opportunity to project culturally stereotypical significance to Oscar-nominee Judd Hirsch's Jewishness; aka the trope about the "expressive" ethnic character helping the uptight white character to open up. 

“Beth was the character he [Redford] most cared about, and he wanted her to be portrayed with sensitivity. It was she who drew him to the project”  - Mary Tyler Moore

What drew me to Ordinary People was Mary Tyler Moore. I was sitting in a movie theater sometime during the summer of 1980 when I saw the trailer for Ordinary People for the first time. If you’ve never seen it, it’s one of those artfully modulated 2½ minute gems that builds in intensity until the fade-out has everyone in the theater murmuring in excitement. Like most everybody else in America at the time, I was still in the throes of Mary Richards withdrawal. The Mary Tyler Moore Show had ended in 1977, but Moore had been a consistent, cheery staple of television since The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered in 1961, so, even with reruns to salve the pain, by 1980 it still wasn’t easy living in a world without Mary.

I had no advance awareness of Ordinary People, so when Mary Tyler Moore appeared in the trailer behaving in a very un-Mary-like manner, I (and many others in the theater) let out an audible gasp. By the time the trailer was over I was aware of having been gripped by the same excitement I felt when back in 1974 I first read Ann-Margret was to appear in a Ken Russell film (Tommy); or in 1979, when the news came out about Olivia Newton-John, the squeaky-clean queen of soft rock, collaborating with British rockers Electric Light Orchestra on a little ditty called Xanadu. The potential for something unpredictably brilliant is always linked to a star going counter to their image and being cast against-type; so, when Ordinary People opened on Friday, September 19th, I happily stood in line to see it. I wasn’t disappointed. 

Ordinary People is unique in its depiction of a mother as a complex, conflicted individual of depth who, inconsistent with the maternal instinct myth, refuses (is unable?) to assume the traditional familial role of nurturer and healer.

Giving everyone involved in this film their due and not taking a single thing away from a single performance, it nevertheless remains my emphatic assertion that whatever heights Ordinary People soars to—as either motion picture or human drama—are reached on the wings of Mary Tyler Moore’s performance. She’s better than good here. Her performance emanates from a place of truth that serves as a tether wrenching Ordinary People back to reality every time it appears to veer into soap opera or Lifetime movie territory. I find her to be absolutely astounding.

And not for one moment do I pretend to dissociate my reaction to the character of Beth from my personal response to Moore in the role. It’s precisely my inability to fully wrest my awareness of Moore’s endurably likable TV persona from Beth’s rigidity that gives the performance its power. The incongruity of Moore’s quick-to-smile façade masking such groundswells of anger and stony reserve produces in me the exact reaction I imagine Beth’s country club friends would have should they ever catch a glimpse of what lies behind her perfect life of order. 

Everyone from Ann-Margret to Lee Remick were considered
 for the role Moore called "The Holy Grail of my career."

Although it’s heartbreaking to see the degree to which Beth’s steely reserve and need to keep up appearances hurts her family, Moore makes Beth’s defiant defense of her own fiercely guarded vulnerability a thing of icy beauty. You can see the pain, you can see the inner struggle, you can even see what she is most in fear of having to confront by letting down her guard (her sense of being a failure); but just as clearly you can see that she can’t help herself. Like everyone else, she too, is a victim of grief, her coping mechanisms as imprinted on her character as her name on a Marshal Field’s credit card.
Much in the manner that The Graduate's Mrs. Robinson is set up to be that story's villain, yet emerges its most sympathetic character; Beth, in the hands of Mary Tyler Moore, while never quite sympathetic, is so powerless, yet so resolute and repressed, she becomes a tragic figure.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

In these days of social media self-presentation, Photoshop perfectionism, and smartphone photo filters that turn their subjects into pore-free mannequins, a movie about the folly of maintaining images and the impossible pursuit of “perfection” could perhaps not be more relevant.

Although Ordinary People is one of the whitest movies ever made, I’ve always been able to identify with it because the image-conscious middle-class world it dramatizes is not at all different from my own childhood growing up as one of the few black families in an all-white neighborhood.

Everything in its Place

In the assimilationist household I grew up in, upward mobility meant the strict adherence to respectability politics. Under scrutiny whether we were shopping, playing outside, or just emptying the garbage, our family had to be a model of everything white America didn’t expect or want us to be. Black excellence (via perfectionism and achievement) was present in everything from how we kept up our house to how we dressed for school. Although we were a household of five (two older sisters had already married and moved out) and under a great deal of social pressure, we rarely spoke of these matters to one another because, by necessity, the needs and problems of the individual were sublimated to the goals of the family in particular, civil rights and the advancement of all of black America in general.
And let's not forget that during all this, I, as the only boy in the family and gay to boot, instinctively lapsed into "The Best Little Boy in the World" mode; neat, well-mannered, drug-free, straight-A student...all so that I'd never give my parents a moment's worry, insuring that the pesky little topic of "gay" would never come up. No wonder I so identified with all that guilt Conrad carried around!

Were it not for my mother going through EST training in the early ‘70s (after which, talking about EVERYTHING became the household standard, resulting in even my conservative dad becoming alarmingly liberal), I think we could have wound up like the Jarretts.

One of the themes of Ordinary People is that not all breaks are clean, and not everything can be put back together again. But one of life's gifts granted to us as people is that we have this amazing capacity to endure and move on. Like the Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnet that opens Judith Guest's novel reminds us:

What a shining animal is man,

Who knows, when pain subsides, that is not that

For worse than that must follow yet can write

Music, can laugh, play tennis, even plan. 

BONUS MATERIAL

The cast of Ordinary People reunited for Vanity Fair in 2011. Photo by Mark Seliger

Ordinary People theatrical trailer

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2018

THE LONELY LADY 1983

In interviews for his 1974 adaptation of Henry James’ Daisy Miller, director Peter Bogdanovich is fond of recounting that he chose somber-faced actor Barry Brown for the role of self-serious Frederick Winterbourne because Brown was the only actor in Hollywood who looked like he’d actually ever read a book.

In a similar vein (albeit at the entirely opposite end of the spectrum), one of the most egregious of the countless missteps taken in bringing Harold Robbin’s relentlessly trashy 1976 novel The Lonely Lady to the screen was to cast in the lead role of Jerilee Randall—gifted English major, novelist, and aspiring screenwriter—an actress who not only looks as though she’s never read a book, but upon encountering one, might be expected to ask, “How does it work?” 

Of course, because that's what intellectual writer-types do

The actress is Pia Zadora: the pint-sized kewpie doll who sought to set movie screens ablaze in the early 1980s with her scorching sensuality, only to see out the decade as a household name via punchline—a female Rodney Dangerfield who got no respect.

Although Zadora had been in the business since childhood (her film debut was in 1964s Santa Claus Conquers the Martians), as an adult, she fairly burst on the scene out of nowhere, ubiquitously showcased in high-profile gigs that placed her front and center like a star. The only problem was that absolutely no one knew who she was.

Like that other pop-culture question mark with the exotic name, actress, and Alberto VO-5 pitchwoman Rula Lenska, Pia Zadora’s assumption of fame ultimately became what she became famous for. Thanks to the bankrolling of her billionaire industrialist husband Meshulam Riklis (age 54 to her 23), Zadora became the TV and print ad face of Dubonnet, a recording artist, a Vegas headliner, posed nude for Penthouse. and earned “introducing” billing (and a controversial Golden Globe win) for her widely panned starring role in the 1982 Orson Welles film Butterfly.
She was everywhere and did everything, but genuine stardom always managed to elude her. Indeed, if stardom could be bought, she would have been; but public consensus was that she was little more than competent as a performer, and as an actress, she was (per the New York Times) “spectacularly inept.”

Hey, Looka Me! I'm A Writer!

But deep pockets don’t read reviews. So, while Hollywood was still giggling over the fact that Pia Zadora was awarded the New Star of the Year Golden Globe over Elizabeth McGovern, Howard Rollins, and Kathleen Turner; sugar daddy Riklis was ponying up more than half the budget to land his five-foot inamorata the leading role and above-the-title-billing in a film adaptation of Harold Robbins’ The Lonely Lady.

Pia Zadora as Jerilee Randall

Lloyd Bochner as Walter Thornton

Anthony Holland as Guy Jackson

Bibi Besch as Veronica Randall

Jared Martin as George Ballantine 

Joseph Cali as Vincent "Vinnie" Dacosta

A member of that rarefied, they-don’t-make-‘em-like-this-anymore club of tantalizing cinema trash reserved for such gems as Valley of the Dolls, The Oscar, The Other Side of Midnight, and  Showgirls; The Lonely Lady is a film to be cherished. For in everything from content to execution, it exhibits that one essential quality shared by all craptastic classics—a surfeit of ambition, pretension, and ego supported by a scarcity of talent, budget, and good taste.  

Pared down and retooled considerably from its unwieldy and often incoherent source novel (Robbins credited cocaine for his writing prolificacy), the screenplay for The Lonely Lady is attributed to the contributions of no less than three writers. A rather astonishing fact given the banality of the results, but it does go a long way toward explaining why the lead character comes across as a tad schizophrenic

Borrowing from the popular “three working girls” format of movies like The Pleasure Seekers, Three Coins in the Fountain, The Best of Everything, and Valley of the Dolls, The Lonely Lady consolidates these three standard female tropes: the pragmatist, the romantic, the maker-of-bad-decisions -- into a single character: Jerilee Randall...the serious writer saddled with the name of an aerobics instructor.

When The Lonely Lady was released in September of 1983,
Pia Zadora felt the burn of unanimous critical censure 

Jerilee is inserted into a garden-variety showbiz cautionary tale depicting Hollywood as a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog business that exploits the talented and corrupts the innocent. The Lonely Lady’s ostensibly feminist angle (don’t you believe it) is that Jerilee, unlike the victimized heroines of Jacqueline Susann novels, has no interest in being an actress, model, or singer; she has brains and ambition and only wants to succeed behind the scenes as a screenwriter. But true to the genre, Jerilee just also happens to be sexually irresistible to all she meets, male and female, so sexism, misogyny, and her overall, impossible to conceal hotness conspire to sabotage her success and prove to be major hurdles to overcome on her path toward being taken seriously as a writer.

Leaving no cliché unturned, The Lonely Lady charts Jerilee’s struggle to hang onto her innocence and principles while making that brutal climb up that Mount Everest called success. Surviving assault, impotent husbands, horny producers, philandering matinee idols, drugs, alcohol, abortion, lesbianism, and sanitariums (not a nut house!). When she finally reaches that peak, Jerilee stands there waiting for the rush of exhilaration to come. But it doesn't, and she's all alone. And the feeling of loneliness is overpowering... 'cause she's The Lonely Lady. (Thank you, Anne Welles.)

Vinnie Goes for the Big Pocket Shot

By the time The Lonely Lady limped to movie screens, public tastes and mores had changed significantly in regard to these Harold Robbins/Jacqueline Susann/Sidney Sheldon-style sex-power-glamour sleaze and cheese fests. Nighttime television—in the form of soaps (Dallas and Dynasty) and the miniseries (The Thorn Birds, Winds of War, and Princess Daisy in 1983 alone)—had completely co-opted the no-longer-shocking genre that had been such boxoffice bait back in the days of Peyton Place. The boom in the availability of VHS and cable porn renders Zadora’s frequent nude scenes and so-called steamy couplings quaint, if not downright passé.

Thus, The Lonely Lady arrived on the scene looking like an artifact from another era. A low-budget, Cinemax-tacky take on the glossy soap operas of the ‘50s and ‘60s, with nothing new to say about Hollywood, relationships, or systemic misogyny (what could the movie say about the exploitation of women when the willing exploitation of its leading lady was its sole raison d’être?).

Worse still, it arrived with virtually none of the usual compensations movies like this offer: exotic locales, glamour, beautiful people. First off, the men. Seriously, you’d have to look far to find a less appetizing and charmless roster of male co-stars. It’s a virtual parade of receding hairlines, flabby middles, and hairy backs. Sure, the movie might be trying to make a point about the kind of slimeball our Jerilee has to fight off (several of them uncannily resembling Harold Robbins), but even the film’s so-called hunks are an uncommonly bland and unprepossessing bunch. 

What Becomes A Legend Most?
I don't think this is the kind of fur coat Jerilee had in mind when she married a millionaire

As for glamour, Zadora gets to strut around in a few becoming Armani gowns, but by and large, The Lonely Lady has the look of a cut-rate “supply your own wardrobe” production.

No, Jerilee didn't just appear in a production of Anne of Green Gables. This pigtails and pinafore getup is the film's weak attempt to make 28-year-old Zadora look like an innocent teen while simultaneously camouflaging her physical "charms" (to be unleashed later, full throttle). Incredibly, the two middle-aged gentlemen flanking her are also supposed to be teenagers, the individual on the left offering a bit of unintentional plot foreshadowing by thrusting a conspicuously tumescent wiener in Jerilee's face.

And say goodbye to any hope of this Italian-American co-production offering any escapist glimpses of faraway places with strange-sounding names. In its place, we have the breathtaking splendor of San Fernando Valley; Beverly Hills as viewed from one interior restaurant set after another; and picturesque Rome stands in for Los Angles in a chintzily-rendered movie industry awards event populated by what looks to be about 30 enthusiastic, poorly-dubbed fans (the movie doesn’t even give the fake award a name, it’s simply called The Awards Presentation Ceremony).

Let's Have Lunch...& Dinner...& Brunch...
Ingenuity not being one of the film's strong suits, The Lonely Lady
 stages no less than five scenes in restaurants

In light of the film’s blitzkrieg of bad acting (you expect poor performances in films like this, but The Lonely Lady seems to be trying to set a new precedent), risible dialogue (Vinnie [clearly naked with two just-as-visibly naked women] to Jerilee: “Hey doll, we’re naked!”), and the irrefutable sense that nobody involved in this slapdash production is very much invested in it (get a gander at the cover art for Jerilee’s two novels); there’s no denying The Lonely Lady falls short on a number of fronts.  

I'd like to thank my publisher, Fisher-Price
Seriously, these are supposed to be the covers of Jerilee's published novels.

But The Lonely Lady is invaluable in illustrating the difference between a showcase and a vanity project. A showcase is intended to present a performer in the best possible light, emphasizing their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses. A vanity project is a vehicle so ruled by ego and delusion that the performer, in so overestimating their talents, winds up only calling attention to their limitations. The Lonely Lady is a four-star vanity project.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

For the true connoisseur of cinema claptrap, what’s not to love? I largely look back on the ‘80s as a nightmare decade for movie fashions, hairstyles, décor, music, and flat, washed-out cinematography; therefore, The Lonely Lady gets off on the right foot (which is to say, the absolute wrong foot) almost immediately with an absolutely dreadful theme song (sung by Larry Graham) playing over an amateurishly shot title sequence. And, like a Malibu mudslide, things just keep going down from there. 

The Night Belongs To Michelob
The Lonely Lady is loaded with subtle mise-en-scene

The Lonely Lady episodically chronicles Jerilee’s pursuit of a writing career as a semi-pornographic Pilgrim’s Progress, in which we’re invited to ponder the unique problems faced by an intellectual woman burdened with the dual curses of flawless beauty and low self-esteem. Because the film shares with us but a single example of Jerilee’s writing skill (and it’s a doozy), we are forced to take her intelligence and talent on spec. However, the film is generous to a fault in treating us to scene after scene of Jerilee being the world’s biggest creep magnet or of having to compromise her sexual integrity for the sake of her ambition.

A scene from Homeland, the comically slipshod film-within-a-film for which Jerilee contributes
this single line of dialogue. Magically transforming a B-movie into an Oscar contender

The Lonely Lady is a case of the wrong story (over-familiar to the point of formulaic), starring the wrong actress (it's as though the film's real star refused to show up, and they shot the movie with her lighting stand-in), at the wrong time (even 1960s audiences would be hard-pressed to find it shocking). It's a pungent potpourri of miscalculations, poor judgment, and ragingly bad taste. Small wonder it has earned the reputation of being the Showgirls of the ‘80s.

Every trash movie made from a trash novel needed its exploitation setpiece. Valley of the Dolls had a catfight wig-snatching, The Other Side of Midnight had abortion-by-coat-hanger, and The Lonely Lady had assault by garden hose.  That's Ray Liotta (possessor of the phantom crotch above, as well) making his inauspicious film debut. 

I particularly like how The Lonely Lady’s half-hearted efforts to be a scathing, feminist indictment of Hollywood’s rampant sexism and misogyny are consistently at cross purposes with the film’s gross objectification of Zadora. Also, the film strains credibility in its desperate attempts (by way of clockwork-consistent nude scenes) to convince us that its wee cherub of a leading lady is actually a smoking hot sex symbol. 

Let's Make A Deal
Current headlines reveal that after all these years, not much has changed in terms of systemic sexism in the film industry. Too bad The Lonely Lady merely treats the issue as fodder for sensationalism

PERFORMANCES

It could be said Ms. Zadora dedicated her career to
making sure no one would ever refer to her by that word

There's no getting around it. Pia Zadora's performance here most definitely calls into question the credibility of her Golden Globe win, while emphatically cementing the validity of her multiple Golden Raspberry Award wins (although she lost 2000s Worst Actress of the Decade to Madonna).
In truth, Zadora is so unconvincing and inexpressive in the film, that it's pushing it to call hers a performance at all. But on the plus side, it's not one of those pitiably bad performances that makes you feel bad or embarrassed for an actor. In the tradition of Patty Duke and Elizabeth Berkeley, Pia Zadora's awfulness is so robust and zestfully devoid of anything resembling technique or skill, it achieves a kind of guileless purity.

Words can't come close to expressing the full-tilt comic lunacy of Zadora's worth-the-price-of-admission nervous breakdown scene. From her going-for-broke emoting to the acid-wash graphics and tilt-a-whirl not-so-special effects, it's a Golden Turkey instant classic.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
If The Lonely Lady works on any other level than simply high-octane camp, I'd say it works best (as he places tongue firmly in cheek) as a disquietingly self-referential exposé. The construct of the entire film places the viewer in the position of scrutinizing the Pia Zadora phenomenon through the guise of meta-fiction.

Take for example the fact that The Lonely Lady is about an author no one takes seriously simply because she doesn't look like what people expect writers to look like. The movie places the viewer in a similar position. I began this article with the arguably sexist observation that Ms. Zadora appeared to me to be miscast because she doesn't "look" like a writer. On reflection I have to ask myself, what does that even mean? Sure, Zadora can't act, and indeed, that is where the chief implausibility lie; but do I also mean to imply she's not believable because, instead of looking like Lillian Hellman and sounding like Fran Lebowitz, Zadora is petite and has the face and voice of a kewpie doll? 

Viewer self-confrontation is further tweaked by the way The Lonely Lady appears to court the drawing of parallels between the misadventures of Jerilee and Zadora's own real-life circumstances. Like Zadora, Jerilee has considerable difficulty finding anyone who'll take her and her work seriously. Also like Zadora, Jerilee marries a wealthy man old enough to be her father who helps her career. By the time the film finishes with Jerilee giving an award show speech in which she explicitly expresses what many have whispered about Zadora behind her back, it's not hard to convince oneself that perhaps such cross-referencing is what the filmmakers had in mind all along.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

As much as I adore The Lonely Lady for its wholesale lack of redeeming value, and how I thank the gods of cinema dross that Pia left us all this wonderful, enduring gift before retiring from acting; I must also add that I have become a big fan of the Pia Zadora of today. Like so many stars who once took themselves so seriously in their youth, only to mature into fun, easygoing personalities able to take a joke (Raquel Welch, William Shatner, Cybill Shepherd, Candice Bergen); Pia Zadora has learned how to laugh at herself.

Carla Romanelli plays a Sophia Loren-type Italian actress (complete with Carlo Ponti-esque husband) who, like everyone else in the film, finds Jerilee impossible to resist. I never realized screenwriters were such sex bombs

After abandoning acting and the whole sex symbol hype (and husband Meshulam Riklis after 16 years together) Zadora pursued what was always her strongest suit, singing, and, in a few cameo roles, revealed herself to be a natural light comedienne. She's been active and good-natured in promoting the DVD release of The Lonely Lady (which includes a spirited interview) and harbors no illusions about either the film's quality or her performance in it. In being so OK with the film's renewed cult status and everybody hailing it as one of the best of the worst, Pia Zadora has given us all her blessing to enjoy a great guilt-free laugh with her, not at her.

BONUS MATERIAL
Back in 1976, Variety announced that Susan Blakely (The Towering Inferno) was slated to star in The Lonely Lady.

Pia Zadora's 1983 semi-hit pop song (it charted #49) is played twice in the film.

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Harold Robbins dedicated The Lonely Lady to Jacqueline Suzanne, and many believe the character of JeriLee Randall to be based upon her. In a November 1976 issue of Pageant magazine, Robbins denied this claim and stated he based the character partially on Peyton Place author Grace Metalious.

As per the Evita lyric—"My story’s quite usual: local girl makes good weds famous man” 
Pia Zadora's story is nothing new. From William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies to Bo and John Derek; stardom by benefactor is as old as show business itself.
One of the more amusing examples is the forgotten Dora Hall, wife of Solo Cups magnate Leo Hulseman, who funded his wife's late-in-life showbiz career to the tune of giveaway albums and hilariously weird TV variety specials in the 1970s.

Listen to Dora Hall sing "Floozy Little Suzy Brown"

Pia Zadora has said she is most proud of these two comedic cameo film roles.

As a beatnik in John Waters' Hairspray (1988) - See it HERE

As herself in Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994) - See it HERE

The late actor Kenneth Nelson appears briefly in The Lonely Lady as hairdresser Bud Weston. Fans of The Boys in the Band (1970) will remember him as Michael, the role he originated in the 1968 Off-Broadway production.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2017