Today's Jumping Off Point: "Terraces"

It's funny how wallowing in Tinseltown garbage like a swamp rat can lead one from a certain glorious piece of cinema debris right into a lesser hunk of junk. For example, while researching my recent post on The Lonely Lady (1983), I was looking into one of the stars from that and came upon a really obscure TV-movie with some intriguing aspects.  I just had to hunt it down and see it for myself, having - literally - no clue on earth that it had ever existed until now. I love projects that are so very bad that they reach full circle and emerge as good. This, I'm afraid, was mostly just plain bad... I give you the 90-minute (with commercials) telefilm Terraces (1977), which was possibly intended as the pilot for a series. Thank whatever gods you worship that such a thing never came to pass. 

Written and directed by one Lila Garrett, Terraces concerns the lives of several tenants in a Marina Del Rey high-rise, all on the eighth floor. Having begun her writing career with cartoons such as Krazy Kat and Snuffy Smith and Barney Google, Garrett later graduated to sitcoms with episodes of Petticoat Junction, Get Smart and Love, American Style. She also penned a dozen installments of Bewitched and created the show Baby...I'm Back!, which starred Demond Wilson. Her most prestigious work took place with a run of ABC Afternoon Playbreak specials, scoring her 3 Emmys and a further nomination.

In a familiar TV trope, we join a newcomer to the fray, played by Kit McDonough. Mother-dominated schoolteacher McDonough is optimistic, but awkward, and is tentatively striking out on her own.

She isn't exactly alone, however. She was alerted to the vacant apartment by friends of hers, a married professional couple played by Bill Gerber and Eliza Garrett.

Meanwhile, up on floor eight, is an elderly couple portrayed by Arny Freeman and Jane Dulo. (Do any of you KNOW these performers?!? WTF??)

At last we're granted a familiar face in the form of Lloyd Bochner, accompanied by (the unknown!) James Phipps. Phipps lives on eight, too, but Bochner is merely visiting.

Having said goodbye to Phipps, Bochner is headed to his car when a woman spies him and offers a startled expression. It's (another known personality) Miss Lola Albright, his wife.

McDonough rides the elevator up to 8 with Phipps and they become fast friends, of course.

All the residents at this place are chummy with one another, pop into each other's apartments, have dinner together, etc... Maybe that's the way in was in '77, but I truly doubt it would be quite the same way now!

At the tenants meeting, we are introduced to another resident (and familiar face!), Miss Julie Newmar, all in bronze fur. The owner is trying to eliminate the building's doorman, but the residents decide to band together and demand that he remain.

McDonough is certainly industrious... This is the SAME DAY she moved in and she's got the entire place decorated, attended the meeting and has made dinner plans for a man she's invited over!

Public defender Gerber and movie publicity writer Garrett don't seem to be on the same page anymore. Somehow they just aren't connecting the way they used to and tend to either ignore one another or bicker.

Freeman, a recently-retired haberdasher, takes his dog for a walk and comes upon his old store, now under new ownership.

He's perfectly appalled to see the sort of items now featured in the store windows.  Apparently, the store now caters to a less traditional crowd, i.e. - the gays!

While we're on that subject, I hadn't yet spelled it out, but you probably already knew. Fledgling actor Phipps is gay and he's having an affair with married doctor Bochner. (It's Chinese take-out night, so Phipps has on his kimono?)

Sweet, but unsettled, Phipps has been around the block more times than The Good Humor Man, but this is Bochner's first trip down the Yellow Brick Road. He says that Phipps has made him happy for the first time in 25 years.

However, Bochner also remains in disbelief as to what he's doing and how it all happened. Pleasing as the relationship has been, he's not certain he can commit to it.

Meanwhile, Bochner's wife Albright is down in the lobby quizzing the doorman as to which apartment her husband has been frequenting. She claims that he's been there to see a patient and wants to know which apartment "she" lives in!

The doorman (Ralph Manza) demonstrates why the tenants keep him around as he brushes off her inquiries with nary a shred of information being revealed to her.

Upstairs, McDonough has given up on her dinner guest and is curled up on the sofa.

Late by close to four hours (!), her pal Tim Thomerson finally shows up with a preposterous excuse. But she lets him in anyway...

Looks like she may have found her Mr. Goodbar.

She asks what he thinks of her new apartment (which he's barely bothered to notice. He was interested in other things, apparently!)

Failing at getting him to give much comment on her new digs, she then asks if he will spend the night with her on her first night there. Needless to say, he isn't down with that.

No, dear. You might have a brass bed, but you are no Maggie the Cat!

Next door, The Bickersons are still at it. By now they will pick on one another about basically anything.

Even Freeman and Dulo are far from blissful. He's railing about what's become of his store while lavishing attention on his pooch. She can barely stand the dog and is tired of listening to her husband bellyache about a store he no longer owns. Also, they're son doesn't seem to want much to do with them, so they're left to their own devices.

Bochner finally heads home, without the ability to let Phipps know when they might see each other again. Answering machines were not exactly prevalent in '77, so Phipps is always worried about missing Doc's call.

One morning on his balcony, we finally get a proper moment with Newmar who, apart from a brief blip early on, is absent for the first 27 minutes of this 70-minute movie. Here, she's showing off her Catwoman-like agility over a game of backgammon.

As Phipps' bestie, Newmar is fully invested in his relationship drama. For her own part, she too is seeing a married man. He's almost all she ever talks about and seems to be installed at the complex solely for his convenience.

'Course nothing is private in this place... Dulo is peering through the latticework while they chat, "watering McDonough's plants."

Gerber and Garrett continue to squabble. He thinks her work as a publicist is puerile while she lashes out at how little honor there is in bailing out pickpockets.

Down the hall, pesky Albright has wrangled her way upstairs and has ascertained that her husband's squeeze lives in apartment 8B. As she rings the doorbell of Phipp's apartment, he is otherwise engaged while Newmar is performing contortionistic calisthenics on the living room floor, as one does...

When Newmar answers, Albright is amazed to see her competition in the tall, shapely, buxom form of this Amazon.

Since Newmar has no clue who Albright is, she doesn't quite understand the situation... at first.

Next, Phipps comes to the door and Albright insists that she needs to see the person who LIVES in 8B.

Phipps (who only has slightly less makeup on than Albright) has to inform his visitor that this is his apartment.

"You're shitting me, right??"

Meanwhile, Freeman just keeps tormenting himself over the direction his old business has taken.

And in truth it's not likely that many of his old customers would still be shopping here. ("It's the latest thing for the office these days...")

Finally, he darts in and tells the new owner that his merchandise is filth... FILTH!

That evening, a disturbed Bochner comes to see Phipps and is ready to break off their liaison after finding out that his wife knows. 

As the night wears on (and the movie wears on), Newmar begins to worry about her buddy Phipps...

Gerber begins to wonder if he's been married to the wrong girl....

Freeman lets his temper get the best of him and he pays dearly for it...

...and one person may be contemplating jumping off a 8th floor balcony!

Perhaps this really was a one-shot and not a pilot. For there's not a lot left to tell us about these people (and I, for one, didn't want to know any more!) It's not so much that the script is bad. It's average - and even scores points for not mistreating its gay characters. But it's the acting! For any project, but especially an ensemble, casting is everything. These people aren't skillful enough in most cases to make us invested in them and they don't gel. And too many of them BRAY their lines as if they are un-miked community theatre actors performing in a barn. It turns grating very swiftly. And we're nearly always aware that they are acting thanks to their "look how I performed this" sort of readings. The version I watched is available here in just a so-so print. I understand that it periodically shows up on Amazon Prime and Hulu in far more clear renditions. Oh, and the ghastly music for this movie sounds just like something you'd hear in the elevator on the way up to the 8th floor!

This was a pretty unusual and rather daring role for Bochner and he handled it well. His veteran professionalism held his scenes together. Like many of the performers found in this project, he was later a (two-time) guest on one of my all-time favorite series, The Golden Girls. 

Dulo certainly enjoyed a successful career as a comical character actress, popping up in most sitcoms of the 1960s from Leave It to Beaver to The Joey Bishop Show to Get Smart and I Dream of Jeannie. She also had a recurring part on McHale's Navy. The 1970s were a fertile period, too, with Room 222, All in the Family, Welcome Back, Kotter and a recurring part on Medical Center. But here, she is just way too big too often. Doubtlessly chosen by the director due to having worked together on prior sitcoms, she needed to have been reined in a bit. Her last acting role was in a season 7 ep of The Golden Girls. She failed to survive heart surgery in 1994 and died at the age of 76. 

Freeman had begun working on TV in the early-1950s. He balanced shows like Man Against Crime and Captain Video and His Video Rangers with small roles in movies such as Phffft! (1954) and One Touch of Venus (1955.) At home in either comedy or drama as amusing ethnic types, he remained active into the early-1980s, appearing on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Barnaby Jones and Barney Miller. He passed away of undisclosed causes in 1986 at age 76.

Garrett is interesting for a couple of reasons. For one thing, she was the daughter of the writer/director...! So getting a plum part in a project like this was easy as can be. All she'd done prior was a small role in a low-budget movie and portrayed a receptionist on All in the Family! She next appeared twice on mom's show Baby...I'm Back! To her credit, she did build upon this and establish a working career as an actress. The year after Terraces, she won a role in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978.)

Furthermore, since 1992 she's been the wife of actor Eric Roberts. (She is now Eliza Roberts.) Though there were some hard times along the way due to his substance abuse issues, they've stuck it out and often appear blissfully happy together when out on the town for industry events.

I thought it was interesting that Roberts would fall for a gal who had a reasonable resemblance to his at-times-estranged sister Julia Roberts! 

Gerber had a very brief on-screen career. Cast as one of Lee Grant's costars on the controversially short-lived sitcom Fay, he only did this and one other TV-movie before falling off the radar, though he made a semi-return as a bit player in the late-1990s/early-2000s.

This was a huge step for McDonough, who'd only done bits on TV (principally playing a lot of peripheral roles on Happy Days) before this. She continued to pop up on many 1970s sitcoms, winning a recurring part on the brief show Teacher's Only, which starred Lynn Redgrave. I can't say I was fond of listening to her in Terraces, but I could see that in small roles she would likely be comedically effective. In that vein, she worked many years, even showing up in movies like I am Sam (2001) and on recent shows like Modern Family.

The vivacious Newmar danced in 1950s Hollywood musicals like Call Me Madam, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Band Wagon (all 1953) until standing out in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954.) A Broadway turn in Li'l Abner led to a role in the 1959 screen version. By 1964, she was costarring on My Living Doll (not a terribly happy experience for her) followed by iconic and legendary appearances on Batman. For many, she will always be Catwoman. Here, she was mostly a punchline rather than a character, though she's usually worth watching, regardless. Always busy, even in schlock well beneath her, she worked up into the 2000s and is thankfully still with us today at age 90. 

Presumably there are folks who will find Phipps appealing, but he was almost the antithesis of my own type. A dancer, he was very trim and slight with a row of piano keys for teeth in order to smile at the audiences. By accident or design, he ticked most of the stereotypical boxes for playing a homosexual at that time, though, as I say, in general the script is sympathetic. This is the only role of note on-screen that he ever had, with only bits on shows such as Charlie's Angels and Dallas dotting his resume.

Albright was a lovely model and showgirl in movies of the late-1940s, eventually graduating to leading lady roles in the 1950s. It was her part on TV's Peter Gunn, though, that gained her the most fame. She played the title character's sultry, singing girlfriend. She was once Emmy-nominated for it, but lost to Barbara Hale of Perry Mason. Weary of sweet, bland, window-dressing parts, she leapt at the chance to play a cougar in A Cold Wind in August (1961), followed by unusual parts in Joy House (1964) and Lord Love a Duck (1966.) After Terraces, she only made a handful of guest roles, retiring in 1984. She lived to be 92 when she died in 2017 of complications from an earlier fall.

Albright likely filmed her scenes (all done on location at the complex) in one or two days, with just an array of polyester clothing changes. The wig she wore was in a style SO prevalent in the 1970s that I would just dread to see it on actress after actress...

Albright in her hey-day, gracing a record album cover.

Thomerson, better known as Tim Thomerson, went from the Army to performing stand-up comedy. Also, while helping to build sets and supply props, he moved into acting. Making his debut as a guest on Mannix, he started to win roles in movies like Car Wash (1976) and A Wedding (1978) while popping up on many TV shows. (Anthony Zerbe, who he met on that Mannix ep, suggested that he study with Stella Adler, which he did for four years.) He was a regular on the short-lived sci-fi show Quark and also The Associates. Unable to land a series that had staying power, he emerged as a 1980s action star in movies like Uncommon Valor (1983), Trancers (1984) and Iron Eagle (1986) among many others. Ever busy in both comedic and dramatic projects, he is another one of this cast who showed up on The Golden Girls. He played a baseball player who's taken up with Blanche (in a Bull Durham ripoff.) Thomerson, who last appeared in 2017, is 77 today.

By the way, most of you know that I just LOVE it when credits are done this way...! Rich, who played the new owner of Freeman's men's store, had begun as a child actor on Broadway. Attempts at a screen career as an adult were thwarted by the McCarthy era blacklist. But he began to appear on New York shows and in the 1970s emerged in movies set there like Serpico (1973) and The Gambler (1974.) From then on he was a busy character actor on TV and in movies like Frances (1982), Betsy's Wedding (1990) and Out to Sea (1997) among others. He guest-starred on The Golden Girls as a Russian dignitary on an episode where Rose have written to Gorbachev. Rich acted all the way up to 2014 and passed away in 2020 from Alzheimer's disease at age 94.

It would be nearly impossible to list the credits of Manza, who played the building's loyal doorman. The 5'5" character actor began in the mid-1950s with roles on Highway Patrol, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Dragnet. He also popped up in movies like The Enemy Below (1957) and That Touch of Mink (1962), his face perfect at expressing surprise, glee or a forlorn quality. Always busy, he appeared in little parts all over the TV and movie landscape. He was in multiple episodes of Soap, Barney Miller and Newhart. Manza was still actively working when he was felled by heart failure in 2000 at age 78. And, yes, he was on The Golden Girls, too! He played an old love of Sophia's, Augustine Bagatelli. 

Just to dot any "i"s and cross the "t"s before I depart, I wanted to take note of the available beefcake. Gerber is shirtless for some time.

But more to my liking was macho Thomerson, who I always found roughly sexy, even when he grew older. Now I have to press the down button and head back into my undersea cavern. Till next time!

::: BONUS PICS :::

Because of the added interest in Thomerson, I give you these latter-day shots from a "blink and you'll miss it" chest scene in 1994's Trancers 4. (I never blink! LOL)

Apart from his still-fine physique, I can't help but wonder what that lump is in the sheets....!

Sweet dreams.