"Good Luck" With This One!

It would be hard to imagine today's featured movie not being considered controversial in practically any sector! Even though I strive to avoid controversy, it can nonetheless pop up anywhere anytime, especially these days. So off I go. But... the movie's myriad assortment of conversation-starting subject matters is something I will leave up to my readers to ponder rather than pontificating on them myself. A lot of my treasures are buried deep, but my waters often run shallow on purpose. I really felt that this was a flick that would likely never see the light of day, certainly on any broadcast channel, but was stunned to see it offered on Tubi. (Tubi is fast becoming a go-to for obscure, offbeat, oddball movies you figured you'd never bear witness to, if you'd ever even heard of them!) You might ask, "If the movie is so 'problematic,' then why are you watching it?!" Well... I have reasons. (The cast & crew, the setting & scenario, the era and the fact that anytime I feel like something is being "put away" from general viewing, I simply HAVE to see it! LOL) So what the hell is it?

Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (1979) is one highly unusual movie. Its pedigree is considerable, though the result is quite schizophrenic. The first hour is a serious, penetrating, deeply-felt character study of a semi-middle-aged woman in emotional distress. The remainder of the movie plays like something from late-night Cinemax!

The first of only two novels written by noted playwright William Inge, this 1970 book drew (like many of his works) from the author's experiences as an adolescent and a schoolteacher in Kansas. His Midwest-set plays scored with audiences, became popular films and include Come Back, Little Sheba, Picnic, Bus Stop and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.

The artwork used for Tubi (and the BluRay) merely suggests temptation versus the stronger aspects to be found within the movie. Lord help the hapless viewer clicking on it who thinks it might be a benign teacher movie such as Good Morning, Miss Dove (1955!) LOL

Things get off to a staggeringly arresting start as the title figure (played by Anne Heywood) steps out of a cab to find an explosive chalk-written message on the pavement outside her rooming house. (The whole message was clearly shown on screen, I cropped it out of sensitivity to anyone who might be triggered by such an in-your-face exclamation.)

Now seguing to flashback, we find that Heywood is a young, schoolteacher who lives in a home owned by R.G. Armstrong and his wife. Fellow schoolmarm Carolyn Jones also has a room there. Here, Jones is inviting her landlord to join the ladies and her at the local theater where A Streetcar Named Desire (1950) is playing.

In something of an in-joke, Armstrong's wife is played by Jocelyn Brando and it is her own real-life brother Marlon who starred in the aforementioned movie which the gals are dithering over! I'll tell you now that Heywood's character is 35, but the actress was 45 (!), not to mention British (which is not very well disguised), so there's already an oddball quality to the movie, right out of the gate... (Her boyfriend since 1960 produced this, so it's not like anyone else was going to essay the part!)

The next morning, Jones is all in a lather about Brando, telling fellow teacher Dorothy Malone how she feels, but Heywood is finding it difficult to focus.

Heywood spends her days teaching the youth about various romantic places like Italy, where she's even visited, though she wasn't there with anyone who could help to capitalize on that romance.

At an assembly, we meet a couple more members of the clique of teachers Heywood associates with. There's youthful Ronee Blakley (who really would have made a decent Miss Wyckoff herself!) and Doris Roberts (who, apparently, was never young...)

I had to chuckle as this story, concerning the repressed sexual awareness and fulfillment of a stifled teacher, had this big, phallic microphone placed dead center on the stage as a little boys begins to play a piano addagio.

Listening to the music, Heywood starts being overcome by a bubbling-over emotional reaction. This being small town 1954, such displays are unusual to say the least...

...not to mention frowned upon, in this instance by school principal Dana Elcar.

Little Billy Calvin's piano playing has awoken a sleeping dragon. Heywood is unable to leave her bed the next day and head to school. She's coming unglued, yet can't even express to herself how or why.

When her condition worsens, and her howls alarm all three of the other residents of the house, it's clear that something, somehow, has to be done.

She makes an appointment with local gynecologist Robert Vaughn, who has a coldly clinical approach to her highly-emotional condition.

Interestingly, she is lit and photographed the most flatteringly during her examination, dropping a hint, perhaps, that experiencing a sexual encounter might hold the key to freeing her of the overriding depression she's been experiencing.

Vaughn, with his first-hand knowledge that 35 year-old Heywood is still a virgin, alerts her to the fact that she's experiencing a case of premature menopause and prescribes hormones. (He hilariously tells her that "nature wanted us to use our bodies" and that if we don't, they "dry out!") He suggests that she see a psychiatrist he knows in Wichita. (Asking her if she's prejudiced against a Jewish doctor, she replies that she has no racial prejudice in her at all and, in fact, helped see that the school was fully integrated.)

Heywood's friends seem happy enough with their presumably similar lots in life. They sing and giddily giggle over all sorts of minutiae. Roberts clearly allows food to sublimate a fair amount of her desire while Malone lives in something of a dream world. Jones sometimes seems as if she may be actually doing something somewhere on the side, though that's never confirmed.

At a certain point Heywood can hardly bear another minute of their hen-like babbling and reacts in a very shocking way.

At last, Heywood boards the bus for Wichita, helmed by attentive driver Earl Holliman. A more bleak drive to the city could scarcely be imagined.

Once there, she meets with the austere, frog-like Donald Pleasance in his bland, paneled office.

Heywood cries a LOT in this movie and this sequence is no exception. She pours her heart out to the drily clinical Pleasance who startles her by bluntly asking her if she has sex. Soon enough, he determines that she has remained a virgin.

Back at school in Freedom, a male teacher is the talk of Heywood's lunch table. Malone goes on a tear about how he might be "a queer" and how inappropriate it is that he's teaching the philosophy of Karl Marx.

Heywood, while not necessarily subscribing to those beliefs, vehemently upholds his right to teach students about what they are at least.

During her long, dull trips to Wichita, she and Holliman strike up a tentative friendship. He thanks her for making the drive bearable and less lonely. At her most recent appointment with Pleasance, she reveals some details about her parents' relationship (and about the first onset of her period.)

Because Pleasance wants to see her several times over the Christmas holiday, she has to cancel plans to go home and visit her mother. Their strained conversation is overheard by the nosy Brando. (For the most part, there is no privacy to be had in that household.)

Lonely and bored, she visits the desolate school, one of the few places she's ever felt needed and comfortable...

...though there is the concern that she'll wind up as "dried up" as these wildflowers.

Even with a built-in hurdle or two, Heywood opts to pursue her utterly platonic relationship with Holliman somewhat.

They get to know one another a little bit better over some coffee at the bus station diner. He's clearly taken with her.

While describing this bit of blossoming with Pleasance, she begins to come alive a little bit more. There's color in her face and even a smile or two.

In light of the way her spinster fellow teachers behave and what passes for fun in their lives, she contemplates a love affair with Holliman.

One day, window shopping, she spies some "sexy" lingerie in a store window and begins to envision herself flouncing around in one of the filmy get-ups...

"I Enjoy Being a Girl...!"

Unfortunately, after she buys the nightwear and girds her loins for a romantic tryst with Holliman, she discovers that it is not going to happen....

While unable to do a great deal to solve her own issues, she is dedicated to the defense of others. She stands up before the faculty and members of the PTA in order to justify the teaching methods of her male cohort.

This being the McCarthy Era of anti-Communist witch hunts, her impassioned speech goes over remarkably well with the attendees.

Grateful as he is for her support, the teacher (J. Patrick McNamara) is a hopeless wimp, cowering in a nearby darkened room rather than face any of the people who were objecting to his methods of instruction.

Now we're about to get to the meat of the story...

The regular janitor for her classroom is gone for gall bladder surgery, replaced by a work-scholarship student played by John Lafayette. After complimenting her on the great work towards integration that she strove for at the school...

...the conversation seems to be taking an unseemly turn. Not the conversation, really, but let's say - the body language!

He proceeds to unzip his work suit!

Then reaches in to caress himself in front of her.

Are ya seeing this, y'all? The word of the day is "tumescence." Heywood is understandably thrown by this shocking behavior and bids a hasty exit for the door.

But Lawrence is hardly done. He returns the following day as her classes have ended. She attempts to get past him, but he impedes her escape. She tries to distract him with some benign conversation, but he isn't having it.

Instead, he mentions his "swelling" to her and takes her hand to places it upon his crotch! Not satisfied, he unzips again and places her hand inside! (And this is depicted - Heywood's hand being guided into his open zipper.) She's all at once horrified and yet vaguely intrigued, but ultimately breaks away.

This results in a violent scuffle in which she's hurled to the floor and warned not to make a sound.

She scrambles over to her desk as he draws nearer and nearer (and angrier and angrier.)

Next, he begins to peel out of his work suit. 

Reluctant and resistant as she is, she can't prevent herself from looking at "it" because it's most likely the first one she's ever been personally exposed to! (And we see it, too...)

What happens next is a fairly prolonged, intense and vividly acted rape sequence.

Heywood is very solid for the better part of this film, but really delivers a palpably unsettling performance here. It's a really uncomfortable scene to watch and it's mostly due to her realistically multifaceted acting during it.

In a not-exactly-subtle bit of symbolism, she's been "deflowered" (how could anyone have been mistaken of such a fact?!)

If she thought she had problems before, she's in even worse shape now! For a variety of reasons, she can't tell anyone about what's happened: Fear of Lawrence's retaliation, the shame of being molested amid all the small-minded residents of Freedom, the fact that it was a Black man (ditto!) She feverishly tries to get ahold of Pleasance on the phone, he being one of the few people in who she might confide, but he's unavailable.

She certainly can't trust any of her judgemental, simple-thinking co-residents at the boarding house.

Making matters that much worse, she has to face her attacker every day at school! Lawrence does time in the lunch room as well and gives her a stare down.

Then he takes to leaving her very direct instructions on her classroom blackboard!

There's a power struggle afoot and Heywood is quite overwhelmed. But she also has to face the ugly truth of the matter which is she is strangely drawn to Lawrence!

Thus, one week after he savagely raped her in her classroom, the two begin a tempestuous affair.

While the kids are playing outside...

...the adults are playing inside!

And regardless of the circumstances of her actions, no one can argue with the results. Her friends, such as Jones, take notice of the sea change that's come over the once-miserable teacher.

Stopping into a fellow teacher's classroom, she converses with another scholarship student who cleans classrooms. He informs her that his cohort Lawrence is older than he lets on and that he's had a past involving hustling for a living!

The next day, Lawrence is back in Heywood's room, doing his by-now-familiar strip show.

This time is different, though. Instead of presenting her with the gentle, loving version of himself that she got the last time, he is demanding and degrading to her.

He crudely forces her to crawl on her hands and knees to him.

And, though there are more of the requisite tears involved (and further nudity), she does it. And, once again, they partake in their almost-daily shenanigans.

The next day during lunch, Jones singles Lawrence out to Heywood and heads into a blistering take-down of the "uppity" young man. As Jones goes on, Heywood tries to defend him while being wholly unable to reveal what she's been up to.

Lawrence seems to want to make Heywood's life a living hell. He keeps calling her at HOME despite her having told him never to do so. It's all about dominance, submission and control. ("Fifty Shades of Black?") Anyway, he wants to see her right away, and she goes to him.

After their latest encounter, he posits the theory of what might happen if he told some of his buddies "what a nice piece of ass" she is...! She asks why he wants to hurt her and he says, "I don't know."

Later she is horrified to see Lawrence confidently holding court with some of the other work-study students and fears the worst.

But the worst is actually still to come! Lawrence's sadistic techniques during the couple's sexual trysts lead to them being discovered by two students who can hardly process what they've walked in on. It's as if he wanted to be found out. And maybe he did...

And now the fish is truly out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The jig is up and her secret is out. Now the anonymous notes begin appearing.

Heywood makes a vain attempt to proceed with business as usual, but soon finds that her classroom has been turned over to another teacher.

Then comes the expected meeting with a confounded Elcar. The movie can be viewed by those interested right here, free with commercials (and also here, if Tubi is not available to you.)

Needless to say, this is not going to be a movie for everyone. Still, I find it a fascinating curio. And, my God, the people involved... source material from Pulitzer Prize-winning Inge, script by Polly Platt, music by Ernest (Exodus, 1960) Gold, Emmy-winning editor and director (which may be why it, at times, seems like a racy TV-movie!) and the cast. I recall waiting like mad for Far From Heaven (2002) to be released, which was a modern rendering of an old-style type of film-making, and then abhorring it once I saw it. I have to give credit to Wyckoff for taking a similar tack, more than two decades earlier, and handling it better as far as I'm concerned.

Here's the trouble with Heywood. It's not that she didn't act the hell out of this. She was simply too old and too publicly experienced with daring roles to be exactly right for this part. A movie actress since the mid-1950s, she'd already played a lesbian in The Fox (1969), a lesbian nun in The Nun and the Devil (1973) a transsexual in I Want What I Want (1972) and God knows what else. So at 45, to play this prim, inexperienced virgin might just have been a bridge too far. And the very mid-western story called out for an American. But there was never going to be anyone else in the part as her lover-turned-husband had produced it for her. After his death in 1988, Heywood retired from the screen though she lived to be 91, passing away in 2023 of cancer.

It took me FOREVER to realize who it was she reminded me of during this movie, what with the late-70s attempt at 1950s styling and the same set of the jaw...

And, of course, Ms. Brando was on hand for that spectacle, too!

Not content to have a British leading lady in this inherently American story, the England-born Pleasance was brought on board as the psychiatrist. As the movie proceeds, his initially inexpressive and reticent character becomes a bit more animated. A highly-accomplished stage actor with four Tony nominations, he also made his mark in quite a few feature films. The Great Escape (1963), Fantastic Voyage (1966), You Only Live Twice (1967) and Will Penny (1968) were only a few of his credits before becoming rather immortal to horror fans with his role in Halloween (1978) and some of its sequels. We can't forget the very arresting Australian thriller Wake in Fright (1971) either. He passed away in 1995 from heart valve surgery complications at age 75, having worked up until that time.

Vaughn was an actor in many films, though secured a place in pop culture history through his mid-1960s spy-oriented television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Only in Hollywood could an actor star in I Was a Teenage Caveman in 1958 and yet be Oscar-nominated a year later for The Young Philadelphians! (The award went to Hugh Griffith for Ben-Hur.) Other notable movies of his include The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Caretakers (1963), Bullitt (1968) and, of course, The Towering Inferno (1974.) Vaughn worked right up until his death in 2016 when leukemia claimed him at age 83.

Holliman enjoyed a long career, beginning in early-1950s movies like Tennessee Champ, Broken Lance, The Bridges at Toko-Ri (all 1954), Forbidden Planet, The Rainmaker (for which he won a Golden Globe) and Giant (all 1956), to name but a few. Later, he balanced movies like Hot Spell (1958) and Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) with appearances on TV. (In 1962, appeared on the TV series version of Inge's Bus Stop.) Always in demand, he finally became a household name when he played opposite Angie Dickinson on Police Woman in the mid-1970s. He retired around 2000, though much of his time and energy still went to Actors and Others for Animals, a cause dear to him and an organization of which he was president for 25 years. Though he was never "out," he was gay and was survived by a male spouse when he died in 2024 of natural causes at age 96.

Jones is still another iconic performer from this line-up thanks to her role as Morticia Addams on The Addams Family. That came after she'd made appearances in quite a few movies including House of Wax (1953), The Big Heat (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Opposite Sex (1956) and The Bachelor Party (1957), for which she was given an Oscar nomination. (The award went to Miyoshi Umeki for Sayonara.) She then had roles in Last Train from Gun Hill, A Hole in the Head (both 1959) and co-starred in Ice Palace (1960) and How the West Was Won (1963.) Capable of portraying practically any type of role, she remained busy on TV for decades. Sadly, while she was headlining the daytime soap Capitol, she was stricken with colon cancer. She fought it for a good while, but it claimed her in 1983 when she was only 53 years old.

Singer-actress Blakley had burst onto the movie scene with Nashville (1975) and was Oscar nominated for that. (Lee Grant won for Shampoo that year.) What followed were less than blockbuster films like The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977), Renaldo and Clara, The Driver (both 1978) and She Came to the Valley (1979.) Fans flocking to Wyckoff to see her would've been heinously disappointed as her role is quite insubstantial. Her most notable movie after this turned out to be A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984!) She worked occasionally on TV through the late-1980s, later returning to her first love of music. She is still with us today at 79.

Malone has tributes here, thanks to her career before the cameras (including her Oscar-winning role in Written on the Wind, 1956.) She was the star of the smash prime-time TV soap Peyton Place (and had she been a more prominent part of this movie, I might have titled the post "Peyton Race!" Probably still could have, as it is apt.) As much as I adore her work, she is not an actress who aged well on screen. I don't necessarily mean her looks, because she's pretty in this shot above-right. I mean her style of acting didn't always come across the best in some of her later work (although she looked great and did well in a very brief Basic Instinct cameo in 1992.) Malone passed away in 2018 of natural causes, ten days prior to her 94th birthday.

A spirited lunch room discussion probably shouldn't include pop-eyed expressions far greater than the ones employed in The Last Voyage (1960), wherein she found herself helplessly trapped on a sinking ocean liner...!

Roberts began on stage and quickly won work on New York television as well. Transferring to the west coast in the early-1960s for Something Wild (1961) and Dear Heart (1964), she continued to keep busy on series like Ben Casey. Capable of both comedy and drama, she balanced guest parts on shows as varied as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, Baretta and Medical Center while also winning movie roles in Such Good Friends (1971), The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974.) Having toiled in small parts like this one on the big and small screen, she began to break through in the 1980s with an Emmy win for St. Elsewhere. By the time of Everybody Loves Raymond, she'd become an award and nomination magnet, taking home four statuettes. Roberts died in 2016 following a stroke at age 90. (Many of the people in this cast lived long lives!) 

A stage actor who very successfully segued into character work in movies and on TV, Elcar was found useful in countless projects. He worked on the daytime soaps The Guiding Light and Dark Shadows, guested on night time series like Mannix, Get Smart and Room 222. Some of his films include Fail Safe (1964), The Boston Strangler (1968), Soldier Blue (1970) and The Sting (1973.) A late-career boost came when he was cast in a semi-regular role on MacGyver. His final role came on an episode of ER in 2002. He died in 2005 of pneumonia at age 77. 

Lafayette, easily among the least known and lesser experienced among the cast at the time of filming, was at the dawn of what would become a lengthy career on screen. The same year this film was released, he had a role in Roots: The Next Generations. After this, he struggled to do more than play very small roles on television (guards, deputies, cops, paramedics, etc...) on a vast array of popular shows. In truth, a substantial amount of his nonetheless prolific career consisted of roles of this type, though he was busy at them. Occasional movie parts, in films like Switch (1991), White Sands and Patriot Games (both 1992) also came his way. His last series of credits (from 2013-2015) indicate one of his most regular gigs, appearing a dozen times on the Kevin Bacon series The Following.

You knew I wasn't going to be able to demur... The End!