Today we’re going to talk about a TV
show and its star. The New Loretta Young Show (aka Christine’s
Children) ran a single season, 1962-63.
It is a striking example of Loretta Young’s abilities both as an actress
and as the CEO of her personal brand. Few
have displayed such a canny mastery in the managing of one’s career.
Reinventing oneself is probably one of
the greatest assets to a long career and one of the most difficult to achieve.
In the acting profession, where reputation is based on roles already played, it
is especially confounding. Loretta Young’s career is remarkable. Longevity is
only a part of her unique place in Hollywood.
This woman of sizzling Pre-Code films, polished 1930s dramas, an Oscar® for
a comedy, and a long-running television anthology show, The Loretta Young Show, in the 1950s, was able to effectively
change with the style of the current era and for what was suitable for her as
she aged.
The
New Loretta Young Show is unlike any other 1960s era family sitcom. It is imaginative, gutsy, intense, and most
refreshingly absent of trite templates of sitcoms before and since. It is, most especially, a tribute to Loretta
Young as an actress and a businesswoman in an industry famous for tossing out
female stars once they hit a certain age.
Though I was familiar with her first
series that ran for eight years from 1953 to 1961, I knew nothing about this
second series until Kay Noske of Movie
Star Makeover posted her impressions of the show and interviewed one of its
cast members, Beverly Washburn, in May 2015. That interview is here.
Beverly Washburn, whom we’ve mentioned
from time to time in her various childhood roles, including here in Here Comes the Groom (1951) and Old Yeller (1957), is one of my favorite
child actresses. In The New Loretta Young Show, she plays the 15-year-old daughter of
Loretta Young. Loretta plays a widow
with seven children. Celia Kaye plays
college student Marnie, twins Dirk and Dack Rambo play her 17-year old sons
Peter and Paul, Carol Sydes plays the hyperkinetic Binkie, then Beverly
Washburn as the sensitive, intellectual and shy Vickie; followed by Sandy
Descher as 13 year-old Judy, and little Tracy Stratford as the youngest,
six-year-old Maria.
I was, frankly, astounded by the show’s
excellence – in terms of bold story ideas, scripts, acting, and directing. Much of it looks like film cinematography –
not the usual two-camera setup of sitcoms of the period. In style and theme, many episodes really
packed a punch.
The pilot episode – innovatively funny –
introduces the cast and show by way of a live TV interview program such as was
popular in that era with Edward R. Murrow’s See
It Now and Charles Collingwood's Person to Person. The
living room is a mass of chaos with cameramen and this family standing in each
other’s way, not knowing what to do, giving the most funny, off beat answers, looking
for all like reality television. Someone’s
head in profile pops up in front of the camera, getting in the way. The old town mayor, a feisty ancient Yankee,
keeps getting his rehearsed speech interrupted. From the start, Beverly Washburn stands out in
a funny double take when the harried announcer, played by Ted Knight (later
famous for playing anchorman Ted Baxter on The
Mary Tyler Moore Show) calls her name and she jerks her body with shock, as if wishing the floor would open up and swallow her. She effectively, and without a word, establishes her character in only a moment.
Here Loretta Young sets up the show by
explaining her attitude toward her children and her role as a mother. She does not believe in togetherness, which
shocks and agitates the announcer, but rather she promotes individuality,
confessing that her family do not always like each other. It’s a breath of fresh air.
Throughout the series, an episode or two
will focus on one of the children, but always in relation to how the other
family members fit in with that character’s life. As a twin myself, I can state that I like the
depiction of the twin sons and their obvious bond with each other as blessedly
positive. The Rambo boys, and some of the other kids who were new to acting, are used very intelligently, according to their abilities and bringing them along carefully in the series. It must have been a great learning environment for them.
Some of their experiences are harrowing.
The littlest one, Maria, wisely used sparingly,
avoiding clichéd cuteness, has a strong episode towards the end of the season
when she is nearly kidnapped in a bizarre and tense episode when a psychotic
stranger enters the house, thinking the little girl is his deceased daughter,
whose death he never accepted. A nail
biting episode. What makes it especially
poignant is that when this man tells her he is her father, she is enchanted, because
her father died before she could form any memory of him. She is the only one of the kids who cannot
remember her father.
Another episode where Beverly Washburn, (unlike some of the other kids, a veteran actress of many years)
wanting life experience as a budding writer, detours from her New York City
trip to the eye doctor to investigate Greenwich Village and a beatnik coffee
house. But what we might expect to be a
funny episode full of humorous oddballs turns quickly sinister as she is
unwittingly involved in a drug deal, and is arrested for passing
marijuana. She spends the night in jail
with a couple of hard customers not very much older than she, living desperate
lives. One is a streetwalker—not the
kind with the funny quip and the heart of gold, but a tough young girl who
makes no disguise of her trade and throws it in Beverly’s face.
Drugs and prostitution on an early 1960s
sitcom? This show is unique not only for
its subject matter for a situation comedy, but for the intelligent, sensitive,
and classy way it tackles these subjects and these characters. The topics are not tackled for shock appeal,
but as real-life news encroaching upon this suburban family.
Most especially classy, forthright, and
intriguing is how Loretta pursues not only a writing career, but a romance with
a New York magazine publisher.
Their relationship is developed slowly,
leaving no room for the audience to take them for granted, to assume where it’s
going. We really don’t know. He could be written out next week. He has to get used to the kids. They have to get used to him. But mostly, it's about the relationship between him and Loretta and their adult romance. Toward the end of the series, his
ulcer, due to stress from his job – a plot device introduced in the first few episodes – ruptures.
Loretta finds him on the floor, passed out, blood dripping from his
mouth. He is rushed to the hospital, and she pretends to be his wife so she can
be at his bedside. The doctors wink at
it. He is in critical condition and
suffers a kind of stroke so that his speech is impaired. She knows he has finally come out his coma because there are tears in his eyes, he
is crying. We see his agony and
hers. She takes him home after his
release from the hospital to care for him, scandalizing the neighbors.
This is new for a sitcom.
She smokes. She drinks.
After a particularly bad day, she confesses to her gentleman friend of
not liking her children at that moment, ready to scream if they call, “Mom!”
one more time. Their romance is
sensual. They kiss, not a chaste peck on
the cheek, but deeply and passionately.
They cuddle and they ache to be alone, and they leave the kids to fend
for themselves more than once to accomplish this. Loretta can barely keep her
hands off him.
A 1960s sitcom. You won’t see this on Donna Reed or Leave It to
Beaver, none of the shows whose living rooms we came to know as well as our
own.
But the 1960s is the real-life background. There are references to the
space race, and they mention it is 1962.
The littlest girl announces she is Caroline Kennedy, at the latest in
her game of changing her name. Loretta
spoofs Mrs. Kennedy’s White House Tour television special in the pilot. It’s a period full of optimism and energy,
and we can see it in this show.
Usually on sitcoms of the era, even
today, we see a cast positioned precisely around a set the way a little kid
might place dolls in a dollhouse – carefully, consciously, serving a purpose to
the plot. The New Loretta Young Show has a casual feel, the characters are
randomly everywhere, though this is obviously skillfully orchestrated. It’s only meant to look casual. We see her and the kids in the kitchen one
chaotic morning, then the camera pulls back and we see what we did not expect –
her love, Paul Belzer, the gruff, man’s man editor, sitting off in the distance
in the living room, reading the newspaper by himself. The shot tells us he has spent the
night. He is not quite part of the
family yet (though he sleeps in the boys’ room when he stays overnight), and we
wonder how they will bridge the gap between them. I really like James Philbrook in this
role. He is as strong and interesting an
individual as she is.
And I like his young assistant at the
magazine, played by Allen Emerson, his hard New York accent, with his goatee,
very 1962, like Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary. He is the image of urban and hip, but with the hint of stickball in his speech.
Another surprising episode where she
invites her love’s boss to dinner could have ended up the typical 1950s-60s
blustering boss charmed by a home-cooked meal routine.
Instead, it’s a riveting drama where the big cheese, played by Leif
Erikson, is an ass, so overbearing and mean, that his longsuffering wife has
become an alcoholic. Loretta, displaying
compassion for her, sneaks vodka to her to steady herself under the
evening’s onslaught of dinner conversation.
The boss is bullying to Paul, and their combative relationship will
continue for many episodes, reaching a crisis point toward the end of the season. Loretta mouths off to the boss, putting
Paul’s job on the line. There is no
happy resolution. The evening ends with bitterness. It’s actually unpleasant listening to this
blowhard trample over everybody in the dining room. One marvels at the emotional intensity for
the viewer, who cannot help but be engaged in this train wreck of a dinner
party.
Another, much softer, example of quite
unexpected realism in the show is the way Beverly Washburn, after a discussion
with her mother as the camera follows them through the hallway, gets ready for
bed and casually kneels before it, making the sign of the cross. Her sister in the next bed, already half
asleep, stirs, emits an inelegant muffled grunt, and rolls over. The prayer is not the focus of the scene,
she’s not praying for anything special.
It’s just nighttime and she’s got curlers in her hair, and it’s just
what she does.
I have to say, as a Catholic, I was
blown away by that. Usually prayer in
movies and TV shows is reserved for crisis, and is played up as a melodramatic
moment. Usually, Catholics are depicted
as jovial priests or ditsy nuns. The
quiet, pleasant normality of this scene is charming. (I can remember a documentary about The Nat King Cole Show, and an
African American woman, recalling the moment decades later in a TV interview,
said she called up her friends with the alarm, “Hey! There’s a Negro on TV!” I actually hollered, to myself, when I saw
the scene, “A Catholic on TV!” And not a
caricature of one.)
Later in the season, we see a snippet of
a Catholic wedding ceremony held in an actual Catholic church—though obviously
not a High Mass. Even many Catholics flicking
the TV dial might not sit still for that.
Also of note, in the very first episode
when Loretta is being interviewed by Ted Knight, he asks about the piano in the room
and wants to know who plays it.
Dumbfounded, she answers nobody. (As if to say, "Why would anybody want to play a piano? It's not to play, it's just to have.") It is a comic moment, but then we perceive
that perhaps her late husband played the piano. She speaks lovingly of him, of
a piece of furniture he made, and of his work as a writer. Much later in the series, we see her new love, Paul Belzer,
sit casually at the piano and begin to play it, as if it has been waiting for
him all this time. A wonderful, subtle
image of a man coming into a family that will be his, that he has a place here,
that he is successfully taking the place of another. The continuity between the episodes is very skillfully
done.
Loretta also has a terrifically natural
way of interacting with the kids. She
grabs them, tickles them, kisses their faces, their necks, touches them while
speaking to them. Running her hand through their hair. They flop on her on the couch, and hang on her. They appear to have a
comfortable physical relationship with her.
It all looks quite real. She nags
at one girl for constantly talking too fast and mumbling her words. The girl rolls her eyes at her mother, sighing,
slumping, and fidgeting, forgetting what she was about to say. Loretta throws water in her son’s face to
wake him up in the wee hours. She does not mince words when they mess up, but
she is always supportive. When she has a
meltdown over her romance, she cries in bed and her oldest daughter—who
transforms from college kid to new woman friend—cuddles her and comforts her in
a fascinating role reversal.
Loretta is also generous as a star,
focusing the camera and the attention on her young cast mates when they are in
a pivotal scene. In one episode where Beverly Washburn dissolves into tears,
Loretta lets her have the scene entirely. She embraces Beverly, but keeps her
back to the camera so Beverly can play out her pain in the scene as the more
important person in it. That is generosity, and also shows confidence
in herself and in Beverly as a fellow professional.
Loretta Young created this character and
supervised every detail of the show including the children who played her kids,
the scripts, the costumes, hair and makeup—we must assume director Norman
Foster at least took charge of the camera work.
It’s a great accomplishment and a splendid example of an actress of many
talents, able and willing to take charge of her career in a way that allowed
her to remain producing excellent work when other careers floundered according
to the whims of the studio, the public, and the changing times.
Speaking of changing times, I wish this
series had lasted longer. I can only
imagine the depth of story angles, the sparks as those kids came of age in the
1960s. War, civil rights, the generation
gap, I know this show would have tackled all of it. Maybe even the ghastly and tragic assassination that happened some months after the show ended. Sometimes we hear of something being ahead of
its time. I suppose The New Loretta Young Show was, but it was also a beautiful
artifact of its time, and a woman
changing and growing with the times—both the character and the intuitive
actress playing her.
In recent years, Loretta Young’s Pre-Code films have gotten long overdue attention, and a lot of raised eyebrows for their sauciness. I hope this show gets a second look as well. In its quiet own way, it is equally daring. It is available on DVD, a four-disc set, including interviews with cast members.
In recent years, Loretta Young’s Pre-Code films have gotten long overdue attention, and a lot of raised eyebrows for their sauciness. I hope this show gets a second look as well. In its quiet own way, it is equally daring. It is available on DVD, a four-disc set, including interviews with cast members.
I’d like to thank Kay Noske for blogging
about the show last year, or I might never have known about it. Next week, I’ll be posting an interview with
Kay as the third entry in my year-long monthly series on the current state of
the classic film fan. Here’s what we
discussed about The New Loretta Young
Show:
JTL: You have called Loretta Young your
muse. One thing I thought I’d bring up is her commanding presence
in that show. It speaks a lot to the self-confidence of style. She seems
to project someone who is so totally comfortable in her own skin in a way that
is elegant and “old world” and yet rivetingly modern. There is a great
strength and power in her television character that is natural and
comfortable. (Modern female characters, even the strong ones playing cops
or doctors or superheroes, are usually riddled with angst. I suppose a
reflection of our times.)
KN: I have to pause here…you said a MOUTHFUL
here, Jacqueline. I’ve never been able to put my finger on why these women do
NOT inspire me, but bingo, you nailed it! How can anyone be inspired by angst?
Existentialism and I have never been compatible.
JTL: Though she opens and closes the episodes with
a “thought for the day”, a kind of moral to the story, she does not really
lecture the kids during the show, which is refreshing. The family has its
adventure, or crisis for the episode, and any lesson the kids, and the
audience, takes from it is by her example, how she faces crisis. She
simply is; her dress, her appearance, her behavior, and how she
expresses herself. Someone else’s example is the most compelling
incentive we have for change in our own lives, including for
self-improvement.
KN: EXACTLY! If we can see that someone else did
it, so can we. (Unless you’re angst-y, then you assume that no matter how many
others did it, you’ll be the pitiful exception to the rule. Groan!). Loretta’s
fully in control of her image, her persona, and her expression. She knows what
she wants, knows what’s right and knows exactly how she will present it. Since
I have a similar iron-clad belief in the power of a single-minded heart, I love
her for showing me how it’s done! Her strength comes from an unshakable belief
that she’s RIGHT about things, that there is a right and wrong way to live,
that mistakes can be corrected, that people are typically GOOD, that God’s in
His heaven, and that He is a loving, good force in the lives of everyday
people. That’s unstoppable in my book. I love that she uses little quotes to
reinforce her position. She was/is a product of her zeitgeist, I think, too, in
that she was raised in a world that believed in right and wrong. Today, the
arrow simply spins in the compass and signals confusion. For Loretta, her show
was a chance to express her faith in what was good and right. That’s what I
believe, so, naturally, I love seeing this most elegant, warm, and lovely
expression of a powerful, strong, yet utterly feminine woman.
***
Come back
Thursday for our visit with Kay Noske of Movie
Star Makeover, and our discussion on the current state of the classic film
fan, TCM, and how her interest and expertise in image consulting has its roots
in classic Hollywood.
*********************
"Lynch’s book is organized and well-written – and has plenty of amusing observations – but when it comes to describing Blyth’s movies, Lynch’s writing sparkles." - Ruth Kerr, Silver Screenings
"Jacqueline T. Lynch creates a poignant and thoroughly-researched mosaic of memories of a fine, upstanding human being who also happens to be a legendary entertainer." - Deborah Thomas, Java's Journey
"One of the great strengths of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is that Lynch not only gives an excellent overview of Blyth's career -- she offers detailed analyses of each of Blyth's roles -- but she puts them in the context of the larger issues of the day."- Amanda Garrett, Old Hollywood Films
"Jacqueline's book will hopefully cause many more people to take a look at this multitalented woman whose career encompassed just about every possible aspect of 20th Century entertainment." - Laura Grieve, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings
"Jacqueline T. Lynch’s Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is an extremely well researched undertaking that is a must for all Blyth fans." - Annette Bochenek, Hometowns to Hollywood
Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star.
by Jacqueline T. Lynch
The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.
The eBook and paperback are available from Amazon and CreateSpace, which is the printer. You can also order it from my Etsy shop. It is also available at the Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.
If you wish a signed copy, then email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with the details.
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My new syndicated column SILVER SCREEN, GOLDEN YEARS, on classic film is up at Go60 or check with your local paper.
