Only "The Lonely"...

Wow. This blog is now in its 15th year and somehow we made it all this time without zeroing in on today's featured piece of craptastical movie-making! Behind the scenes it contained elements of the Hearst-Davies/Citizen Cane (1941) situation with some Jacqueline Susann tossed in. On screen, it grabbed for the unintentional comedic heights of The Oscar (1966) and Susann's own Valley of the Dolls (1967.) Although the film seems to have fallen out of any considerable amount of broadcast, The Lonely Lady (1983) is available on BluRay and is a must see for any connoisseur of hysterically rotten cinematic cheese. The laughs begin with the movie's own poster, in which the leading lady Pia Zadora, does not resemble herself in the slightest. It almost looks as if Carly Simon signed on to do some softcore porn!

The Lonely Lady was one in a seemingly endless string of saucy novels by famed storyteller Harold Robbins. (Some of his works include The Carpetbaggers, Where Love Has Gone and The Adventurers, all of which were made into hooty 1960s movies themselves.) He claimed to have been inspired by the experiences of author Jacqueline Susann as he penned this story of a young lady clawing her way to life as a successful writer. Published in 1976, Universal Studios actually purchased the rights to the book a year before that, hoping to generate a smash with Susan Blakely in the title role, but she was never satisfied with any version of the script, so it went into turnaround. 

Enter multi-millionaire Meshulam Riklis, a high-living businessman with a trophy wife who'd once been a child actress on Broadway (with no less than Tallulah Bankhead as a costar!) and had also impishly appeared as a green around the gills alien in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964!) The now fully grown (and developed) Pia Zadora had been given the Susan Alexander Kane treatment through Riklis' development and financial input towards movies such as Butterfly and Fake-Out (both 1982.) He put up at least half the money to get The Lonely Lady made and released into theaters. The catch, of course, being that his pixie-like wife headline the project. The result was a critical lambasting and a raft of Razzie nominations. Now, without further ado, we take you deep (I ain't kidding) into The Lonely Lady...

From the opening shot of the movie, there is simply something "off" about The Lonely Lady. As it happens, the Los Angeles-set story was filmed almost completely in England (interiors) and Italy (exteriors), so neither the locations nor the people (practically all non-lead performers are re-dubbed in voice-overs.)

This depiction of "The Awards" arrivals is no exception... A set was built to resemble The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, but note the reflection of a forest (!) in the windows. Not exactly L.A. And the hilarity of people walking sideways on the steps with a tiny swath of red carpet near the doorway. A cameraman awkwardly stands on an empty landing.

There is ONE reporter on site (!), but there are at least throngs of fans clamoring to spot the stars. The "stars" race into the building as if it's supper time at Colonial Heights Retirement Village and someone just rang the bell. So you really are aware from the start that things are going to be a bit loony.

And the award for giving the best head goes to...

So our sprite makes her way down this patently bizarre set piece and into the ceremony. From here, we flash back to another awards presentation, years prior.

Now we are in the auditorium of the creatively titled Valley High School where one lucky student is about to be bestowed with a coveted honor.

Batteries are not included with this prestigious writing award. I have seen a lot of movies, from G to R to X to NC-17 and beyond and I have to say that The Lonely Lady seems to set an all-time record when it comes to phallic imagery.

The movie opens in 1983, then flashes back years prior where all of the extras are done up in their best period clothing... of 1983! I will say, though, that this gang represents a decent cross-section of '80s casual wear which most movies fail to properly replicate because they always take things just a tad too far. I always say if you want to know how people REALLY dressed, look up old episodes of The Price is Right!

I offer this shot not because of presumed child genius Kam Fun Wong, but because nestled in this group is the recipient of the golden dildo, our 28 year-old high school senior Pia Zadora.

Can you feel the constipation anticipation?

Film director Richard Holland is a special guest chosen to "give it to her" and he's got the position down pat... (Actually, he turns out to be one of the few men in this movie who doesn't climb atop Mt. Zadora.)

"Get a grip..."

Zadora's mom Bibi Besch wants her daughter to come on home, but the girl convinces her to let her attend a big party, so long as she remains with her drippy boyfriend Lou Hirsch.

Zadora can be seen boogie-ing down to the song "Long Night" (it will be) with a rich kid fellow student.

Meanwhile, Hirsch remains on the sidelines, clutching his diminutive wiener...

What a kick in the crotch teeth that long-neck beer bottles weren't yet prevalent as they are now. Thus, pot-smoking stud Ray Liotta (making his movie debut) has to use a snub-nosed bottle for his phallic stand-in!

His gal pal doesn't seem to mind in any case.

A Tale of Two Frankfurters... The rich kid wants Zadora to join him and some friends at his home and the, uh, offer, seems tempting.

I searched the credits frantically, but could not find any credit that read: "Miss Zadora's High School Hairstyle by Donna Douglas."

"Come on. You know you want it."

"Yeah... that's it..."

Just in case there happened to still be a (legally blind) viewer who wasn't picking up on the subtleties of this imagery, we get one last look at the guy's wiener, next to a mustard "pump!" Sadly, we had hamburger at my own 1985 graduation party...

As Zadora heads to the car, we learn that Liotta will be joining them.

He points out what we've all been thinking all along; that her award looks like a penis. (Why she felt compelled to drag this thing to the party instead of letting Besch take it home is confounding.)

The ride to the house is eventful in a couple of ways. No, not that Zadora has the tip of her award next to her lips. It's that Liotta has reached up and copped a feel!

Then, not to be outdone, his girlfriend disappears and heads south on him.

Once at the mansion, Zadora and the kid head inside while Liotta and his girlfriend begin to peel out of their clothes for a moonlight swim.

Inside, Elly Mae Zadora marvels at the array of photos featuring the mansion's owner, a famed screenwriter played by Lloyd Bochner. Old publicity stills from the actor's career are manipulated to show his connections (along with a personally autographed pic from Sophia Loren!)

Having already been unwillingly groped, Zadora idiotically traipses out to the pool without her own date. She steps over the world's most obnoxious garden hose as Liotta and his squeeze look on conspiringly.

For reasons known only to her (or her stunt double), Zadora turns her back to the pool while standing at the closest edge a person possibly could without falling in.

Drunk, high and horny Liotta gives us his Bruce the Shark imitation.

Needless to say, he grabs her by the ankles and yanks her into the water. Apt punishment for wearing open-toed heels with pantyhose.

Managing to escape the water, Liotta gives chase until she falls onto the lawn. 

At long last, her own date comes out after having taken an eternity to grab a bottle of water. He tries to intervene in what is now an assault, but is thrust into a nearby hedge. As we all know, landing in a hedge is the equivalent of being pounded into concrete, so naturally he is rendered inert by this...

What follows is the movie's most notorious moment by far. I poke a LOT of fun at this movie, and many a person has chuckled at the lunacy and over-the-top viciousness of this sequence, but I will not join in for this particular event, because then and now I found it really tasteless and brutal.

It isn't terribly graphic, thank God, but it does involve one more potent phallic symbol!

Zadora is rescued from the nightmare by Bochner and soon enough is back home with her widowed mother.

The family doctor can hardly contain his amazement that Besch has no plans to pursue charges against the assailant. She wants to save face and also can't compete with what would surely be high-priced lawyers on the case. When he says, "She's been assaulted," her jaw-dropping reply is, "but not raped." !!  (This doctor, by the way, is a nearly unrecognizable Ed Bishop, once the blond, bewigged costar of Gerry Anderson's UFO.)

A recovering Zadora is visited by a concerned Bochner.

He wants to return the award that she left in his study.

Bochner and Zadora banter over Hemingway while Besch attempts to put on the dog for the visiting screenwriter. With his son now off to England to visit his mother (and avoid any trouble from the recent events), Bochner plans to hang out with Zadora and mentor her.

His attempts at jogging have to be seen to be believed. Meanwhile, her pajama-like sweats and green running shoes recall an earlier stage of her movie career!

Please, God, not more phallic symbols.

At this stage of their friendship, she is awed by him. And he's highly encouraging of her scribblings.

With still more symbolism in store for us all, they stroll through a park beside lake with a fountain. The "fountain" is merely a spurting squirt of water. It's here that Bochner moves in for that first (icky, if the truth be told) kiss.

First comes love, then comes marriage...

Jesus... even at the reception a diminutive guest (ya gotta be to outdo Pia!) is flicking the end of his belt frenetically. If this is some sort of foreshadowing about whacking something around over and over in order to get it up....

Incredibly, the wedding reception is held around the very pool where Zadora was sexually assaulted! Fire the gardener because, even on an occasion such as this, the damned hose is still hangin' in the pool!

Remember what I said about getting it up? The honeymoon is a fizzle.

Bochner even awkwardly exits the bedroom, leaving a lonely lady...

At least as a successful screenwriter's wife, she is present at various industry events. However, she's appalled when this cigar-wielding producer is out on the town with this blonde chippie while his wife is left at home.

A good year has passed and Zadora's book has been published. It's a bestseller, of course. She and Bochner peruse all the published (glowing) reviews in the various newspapers. She wants to treat him for dinner that night, so off they go.

While heading to their table, there's a hysterical cameo by Colette Hiller as a desperate, virtually-unblinking, actress, who attempts to get her name mentioned to the director of Bochner's next picture. If she seems familiar, she would fare better in her next film, Aliens (1986), though did little screen work after. Zadora (her character, I mean!) can't understand why anyone would want to be an actress...

That evening, amid another failed attempt at lovemaking, Zadora tries to Bochner to stand at attention another way.

She hops aboard Mt. Lloyd and begins the mantra, "Gently... gently..." Throw out your Viagra, folks. This is how it's done!

In all frankness, maybe because I saw what happened to Bochner's character Cecil Colby on Dynasty one year prior when he went to bed with Alexis, I figured he was going to croak! But in fact it all comes out fine. Now with that fixed, the ambitious Zadora asks her husband how to write a screenplay.

On the set of the period picture Bochner has scripted, she is reunited with Holland, the director who bestowed that old high school writing trophy on her way back when.

In the hair design trailer, it's discovered that there is a problem with the leading lady and her speech during a burial scene. The stylist is played by Kenneth Nelson, who starred in the stage version and then movie of The Boys in the Band (1970!) He futzes over this actor's coif, which really doesn't seem as though it ought to need that much attention...!

Zadora is convinced by Holland and Nelson that she ought to have a crack at the troublesome dialogue. On her way to turn in her work, she's accosted by a day player who is interested in getting together for a drink, something she basically declines.

When Bochner discovers that his wife and pupil has overstepped her bounds by daring to change (cut!) his monologue, he's incensed. She tries to convince him of the merit of his own guidelines toward simplicity, but he's not having it.

The big moment arrives. The burial... (Is it me or is that sound guy WAY out of range with his boom mic?!) Anyway, Bochner's speech is reduced to one simple word...

"WHY??"

When the scene goes well, Bochner, of course, happily accepts all the credit. When the movie comes out and is a hit, the star drops by their luncheon table to comment on the grave-site dialogue once more and Zadora has to sit there with no validation while her husband soaks in all the glory.

She attracts attention basically anywhere and everywhere, even with that hairdo, and soon she is gazed at by a slick guy a few seats away, Joseph Cali. The nightclub entrepreneur eventually comes over to introduce himself.

Meanwhile, she finally gives Bochner a small piece of her mind in front of his friends. Bochner responds with barely concealed rage. (The actor on the left is Shane Rimmer - no that's not a porno moniker - he was an American living abroad who found many roles whenever someone from the US was needed.)

Back home, Bochner is seething over having been shown up by his "typist" of a wife. STILL, the fucking garden hose is slung on the ground out by the pool.

Zadora tries to smooth things over by suggesting that they go to bed.

Instead, Bochner picks up the ever-present hose (they kept that very same nozzle?!?!) and suggests that she use it again! With that, she moves out.

Her dampened spirits are raised when Holland flamboyantly drops in with some champagne and a rose in his teeth. He tells her he's on his way to a party and declares that she needs to come along. She's working on a screenplay all her own, but acquiesces.

The party, held on the stage of a nearby theater, is riddled with various people from the movie biz.

Across the way, the day player (Jared Martin) who had once asked Zadora to meet for a drink is now a hot star.

They finally have that drink. Then she declares that she's starving and could go for some pizza. I don't know if they ever got that pizza...

...but I can report that she wound up with a wiener...!

Did you think I was just being sarcastic? That's her head in the lower middle of the frame!

Looks like Martin came out a-head...!

Now the two (both married, as a matter of fact) are practically inseparable and don't care who knows it.

The Little Writer That Could is still trying to get her screenplay produced, but has to fend off all the wolves. Her husband's old cigar-smoking buddy is more interested in cracking open her knees that cracking open her new tome.

She's also being thwarted when it comes to Martin. He's avoiding her calls. While her husband's head-shot looms, she starts to ease the pain with a drink or two.

Finally, she waits for Martin outside the sound stage of his current costume epic and confronts him. Like practically every male in this movie, he wavers between Prince Charming and Satan.

When she informs him that she thinks she may be pregnant, he is stone cold and as callous as he was once engaging.

After a hospital stint to rid herself of Martin's contribution, she moves in with her (always disappointed) mother Besch.

Besch does spring to life once Zadora takes her to what is apparently L.A.'s hottest restaurant and they run into Cali again. Music to her ears, Cali expresses interest in her screenplay as he is considering branching out from the nightclub business and trying motion picture making.

She shows up at his swanky, private club Kicks, and tries to see him, but is denied entry by a couple of slinky hostesses up front.

She's about to depart when Cali sees her and asks her in. (There's a lot of teef here. We're edging towards Zuni Fetish Doll territory...!)

He smooth talks her as she sips on the longest straw ever to be seen on film and an extra in-between them sports a dress with a highly unfortunate flower embossed directly under her behind.

Whatever he's selling her, she's buying as he informs her that he just needs to raise enough capital to buy into film production, wherein he'll use her script.

To make ends meet while he's putting the money together, Zadora works as a sequined hostess at his dazzling nightclub. When she finds one of his other girls in distress over the thought of being farmed out to a guest's home as basically a prostitute, he pooh-poohs the situation as if he's actually helping the gal.

Next, Cali sweet-talks her into spending the day with him, all the while keeping her up to date on all the progress he's making with the planned movie deal. They take a horsey ride along the beach...

Take in a movie. (I thought some of you might enjoy seeing this marquee of what was playing.)

She works on an ice cream cone, then they shop for ingredients to make dinner. ("Do my peppers look fresh to you?")

At the club, old pal Holland introduces Zadora to an agent friend of his. As they chit-chat about how wrong Cali is for her and her work, Cali overhears and goes on a coke-fueled rant to Zadora.

Distraught at her circumstances - caught between working for a living and trying to rise in the entertainment game while grappling with an unstable boss/boyfriend - she starts to slink into Valley of the Dolls-ish territory.

However, weighing the bleak alternatives, she returns to Cali and the two have a lengthy session of lovemaking.

In a rather memorable sequence, they bathe together, drinking champagne through interlocked arms...

...then try out the billiards table!

"There's a moon out tonight..."

Perhaps the only thing more bizarre would have been a ping-pong table? Ha ha!

"Eight ball in the center hole!"

Things do take an ugly turn, though, when the bipolar-like Cali forces pills down her throat during yet another one of their coital exchanges.

Still relentlessly trying to get her screenplay produced, she is excited to meet a famous foreign actress and her producer husband, who Cali has lined up for a meeting.

The lady, played by 1970s Italian actress Carla Romanelli, is captivated.

While Cali tends to club business, Zadora visits the couple's elaborate home to discuss the movie story.

Romanelli seems to have something else in mind, though.

Oh dear... it's sinking in, isn't it.

Having degraded herself to no benefit at all (the couple had zero interest in pursuing the screenplay), a weary Zadora heads to the club to find Cali has been making his own fun!

That's IT! She manages to get her coveted manuscript out of his office and desperately heads home.

What follows is a screamingly outrageous breakdown scene in which she showers, fully clothed, starts knocking the hell out of everything in her apartment and, now drunk, sees all the people from her past coming forth from the keys of her manual typewriter! (No Windex was harmed in the making of this motion picture.)

"NEELY O'HARA!!"

Zadora is now installed at a private sanitarium where, perhaps out of respect for the well-to-do clients, it seems mandatory that everyone wear white and blue to match the startlingly flimsy sign out front!

The doctor enters her ('80s ugly) room with her estranged husband Bochner and they are faced with...

...THIS!

"Pia... Tony Polar is ready to sing that duet now..."

She manages to pull herself out of the physical and emotional sinkhole and soon is back hawking that screenplay again. (Why do I feel that this license plate has some sort of coded sexual message in it?)

As she courts yet another fabulously wealthy producer, she finds that the more things change...

...the more they stay the same! This time, though, she knows it and is ready to face what comes. If you've made it thus far through this epic post, you will be stunned to know that The Lonely Lady is only 92 minutes long! I've basically only supplied the high low lights and there is even a bit more left! The crazy can be seen in a beautiful print right here.

One thing I can tell you is that, whatever way this film ends, it's not the staggering version to be found in the source novel. In it, the heroine attends the Academy Awards and removes her gown to reveal an Oscar statuette tattooed on her pelvis with the head of it sticking into her pubis! So a special shout-out to Riklis and Zadora for avoiding that. LOL

As noted earlier, Zadora began as a youth on Broadway, with Midgie Purvis, Fiddler on the Roof and Henry, Sweet Henry among her credits. Her father was a violinist and her mother a theatrical wardrobe artist. In 1964 she popped up in the legendarily bad Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, later segueing into live theatre performances. It was in this vein (touring in Applause with Alexis Smith) that she met her future husband in 1972, wedding in 1977. His dedicated promotion of her was allegedly responsible for a 1982 Golden Globe win as New Star of the Year - Female, the same year of her first Razzie for Butterfly (the second coming right away for this movie! This unusual distinction earned her the nickname "The Luise Rainer of the Razzies!") Zadora's life has been filled to the brim with accidents, incidents, humiliations and exploitation, though it must be said that during a great part of it, she demonstrated a keen sense of humor about herself. And her singing career was not panned the way her acting had been. She was Grammy nominated in 1984 and opened for Frank Sinatra at one time! 69 as of this writing, she still works on her music and has been married to her third husband since 2006. 

A child radio actor in his native Canada, Bochner  eventually moved to New York City where he worked in early television. He eventually won costarring roles on short-lived series like Hong Kong and The Richard Boone Show and was featured in the famous Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man." As time progressed, he began to perfect a sort of suave, smarmy villain or at least jerk. His most famous role is likely that of the devious Cecil Colby on early seasons of Dynasty. He remained an active TV guest star for years afterwards, though, including Hotel, Murder, She Wrote and The Golden Girls. This movie was hardly his only credit that was so bad it's good. Consider The Night Walker (1964), Harlow and Sylvia (both 1965) for starters. He was Razzie-nominated for this movie, but "lost" to Christopher Atkins in A Night in Heaven. Married from 1948 until his death at 81of cancer in 2005, he was the father of impossibly hunky Hart Bochner, a Poseidon's Underworld favorite. 

Besch, who so effectively played countless American wives and mothers over her busy career, was actually born in Austria to mother Gusti Huber (famed for playing Anne Frank's mother on stage and in the 1959 film.) Emigrating to the US as a child, she gained an American stepfather and grew up to be a pretty, blonde heroine on several daytime soaps. An absolute staple on all sorts of TV, she also won roles in feature films such as The Promise, Meteor (both 1979) and - notably - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) in which she played the mother of Captain Kirk's son. Nominated for a Razzie for this film, she "lost" to Sybill Danning for Chained Heat. Some viewers will recall her tiny role in Steel Magnolias (1989.) Besch was twice Emmy-nominated. There was Doing Time on Maple Drive (losing to Amanda Plummer in Miss Rose White) and Northern Exposure (losing to Elaine Stritch for Law & Order.) Married once from 1965-1973, her daughter grew up to become actress Samantha Mathis. Sadly, Besch died in 1996 of breast cancer while still working frequently. She was only 54.

Born in Brooklyn, New York and emanating that spirit at all times, Cali was part of the successful juggernaut that was Saturday Night Fever (1977) as one of John Travolta's neighborhood pals. He parlayed that into a TV series, Flatbush, which wound up being short-lived. Next, he appeared in the movies Voices (1979) and The Competition (1980.) He "earned" a Razzie nomination for his work here, but "lost" to Jim Nabors in Stroker Ace. Turning to TV again, he was cast as a regular in Today's F.B.I., but that also ended before one whole season. Amid many TV guest parts, he joined the cast of Santa Barbara and later Port Charles. Eventually, he segued out of the acting game and started a home theatre business with much success. He is currently 73.

Still another Razzie nominee for The Lonely Lady (it was almost like the Ben-Hur of "honorees) was New York actor Holland. The aforementioned Jim Nabors took that one home. Holland moved from TV guest roles in the mid-1960s to supporting and/or bit parts in films such as Bye Bye Braverman (1968), Midnight Cowboy (1969), The Out of Towners (1970), The Anderson Tapes, Klute (both 1971) and Lucky Lady (1975.) At home in comedy (Three's Company) or drama (Hill St. Blues) and able to assay a variety of types, he was still working steadily when he contracted AIDS during the 1980s; the height of the epidemic. Faced with the specter of what was then often a death sentence, he took his own life in 1988 at age 60.

Martin began with Shakespeare in the Park, summer stock and New York theatre until working in the early, experimental films of his college roommate Brian De Palma. Eventually, he started popping up on TV shows like The Partridge Family, Dan August, Medical Center and Night Gallery. Further television appearances led to the series Fantastic Journey, which was cut short. His role of Dusty Farlow, Sue Ellen Ewing's cowboy lover on Dallas, brought a new level of fame for a time. As his on-screen acting career began to slow, he returned to the stage, traveled extensively and eventually began teaching acting as well as becoming heavily involved in educational, non-profit film-making in Philadelphia, PA. It was there that he became afflicted with the pancreatic cancer that took his life in 2017 at age 75.

Lastly (could it be?!), Liotta went from acting roles in college to a successful stint on Another World from 1978-1981. He worked in TV-movies such as Hardhat & Legs and Crazy Times before winning a regular role on the David Soul series Casablanca, which was canned after just 5 episodes. After making his movie debut in Lady, he costarred on Our Family Honor, which only made it 10 episodes. Soon enough, roles in notable films such as Something Wild (1986), Dominick and Eugene (1988) and, especially, Field of Dreams (1989) followed and he emerged as a promising movie actor. Goodfellas (1990) sealed the deal. When his roles as a movie lead began to ease off, he worked more often in supporting parts and on TV, winning an Emmy for a guest role on ER. Liotta was still in high demand when he suddenly died in his sleep of heart failure in 2022 at age 67. He was posthumously nominated for a second Emmy (for the miniseries Black Bird) which has yet to have been awarded as of this writing.

::: BONUS PICS :::

Some posters granted us a more clear shot of Martin and Zadora in the shower than the movie itself does.

Some foreign posters showed still more!

Likewise, European stills offered up more vivid glimpses of the Zadora/Cali bath than we ever see in the released film. (The movie went through exhaustive editing. If you look on YouTube, there are several new/alternate sequences not seen in the final cut that made their way to the airwaves during its one and only network TV broadcast!) And now, at last...

The End!