Reunited: "The Big" "Mitchell"

Since I have developed a taste over the years for rotten movies and TV shows, some of my readers are fans of the show Mystery Science Theater 3000, in which three personalities are made a captive audience for obscure and unheralded motion pictures, providing commentary throughout. One fifth season episode featured the 1975 action flick Mitchell and was considered good enough to warrant a spot in the April 1996 VHS release of just three installments of the long-running program. Naturally, the movie earned a reputation as a steaming heap of junk, though in its defense, part of the issue was that it was heavily truncated and watered-down for MST3k and, in fact, was the TV version of the movie, not the original rendition. 

 

The "real" Mitchell had been an R-rated, theatrically-released feature with a widescreen ratio, scenes of violent action and a fair amount of time spent in the bedroom. 

Playing the title character was one Joe Don Baker, a Texas-born actor who'd kicked around on television and in small movie roles before breaking out with 1973's Walking Tall, an unexpected smash hit of its day. (Made for $500,000, it took in $40 million at the box office!) The 6'2" actor had always put forth a strong image on screen, but by 1975 he'd become brawnier and huskier than before, something the MST3K performers zeroed in on during their remarks. (Later, they were wary when they found out that Baker had been less than pleased with their take on the movie!)

At one point in the film, Baker answers his apartment door to find this lady on the other side. 

The gal in question is Miss Linda Evans, freshly attempting to revive her acting career in the wake of her 1973 split with John Derek. 

As it turns out, Evans is a $1,000/night call girl (in 1975 dollars!) who's been hired to provide Baker with some action (and distraction?) 

Evans character has a rather pronounced interest in Baker's collection of Playboy magazines, asking him how she stands up to the centerfolds within. (Evans had actually appeared in the magazine in 1971, at the behest of and photographed by her then husband Derek.)

Even in the afterglow of their tryst, while Baker is giving her feet the once-over, she still can't quit thumbing through Playboy!

Baker, looking for clues as to why she's on hand, empties her purse and finds a bag of marijuana, then still a crime. 

In one of two discreet "nude" scenes, Evans is shot from behind, allowing the faintest inkling of some side boob. (Today, the "stars" on the red carpet show all this and more.)

The next time they hook up, he's once again got his face near her feet. We're not 100% sure where her face is, but we can guess...! 

The love scenes are intercut in montage form with shots of them in various contortions. I had to laugh during MST3K when she was moving her hand all over Baker's face and one of the viewers exclaimed that he was in bed with Helen Keller! 

Here, I thought Evans very much resembled Bo Derek, the 17 year-old who took Evans place in the heart of her husband John. The Svengali-like actor-director had a type and was forever molding the women in his life to meet that ideal.

One way for actors to become better acquainted is for one to place her head in another's naked lap... Ha ha!

Although Baker doesn't mind reaping the rewards of this $1K/night gal-pal, he still can't figure out why she's there or who it was that hired her. 

Exiting his sleeper-sofa, Evans once again has a darkly-lit, partial nude scene. 

And he repeats the search of her belongings, again finding pot. This time he runs her in and has her booked for possession!

In case you're wondering, Baker doesn't have any nudity beyond what's been shown here, but almost takes a shower on screen. (One of the MST3K viewers howled, "Thank God for jump-cuts!" when the moment abrubtly ended and another scene began.)

The third time Evans finds herself at Baker's bachelor pad, she's no longer being paid. She's there because she wants to be. 

He, however slovenly he tends to keep things, is bent out of shape because she didn't do the dishes after the meal she made for herself!

In a cutesy, freeze-framed ending, he decides to run her in for marijuana possession again!

The very idea of her as a pot-smoking hooker is utterly and completely at odds with the image Evans would establish six years after this when she portrayed the virtuous Krystle Carrington on 8-1/2 seasons of Dynasty!

In their scenes together, Baker and Evans do achieve a certain level of comfort and rapport. 

And the two clearly got along well between scenes of the shooting schedule. But, you see, they weren't complete strangers. They'd once worked rather closely together before this...

Back in 1969, in what was only his ninth or tenth credited appearance on screen, Joe Don Baker had guest-starred on an episode of The Big Valley. 

He played a Modoc Native American who'd been orphaned and partly raised by The Barkley family. 

Now back in Stockton, California after having been educated at Harvard, he's reunited with childhood playmate Audra Barkley, portrayed of course by Linda Evans. Evans had affectionately followed his progress as he sought to become an attorney and recorded various milestones in a scrapbook. 

I grew up watching Evans in Big Valley reruns and, for my money, this "Barbie Goes West" was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. 

For his part, Baker was outfitted with brown contact lenses (at a time when there were only hard, often painful to the unaccustomed, glass ones!)

Evans takes Baker to an old shack where they once played as children and dubbed "Fort Barkley." 

Nostalgic as she is, the place holds bittersweet memories for him as one who was "different" and whose Modoc people are still enduring unfair treatment. 

There wouldn't be any chance in the late-1800s of romance developing between a Native American and a Caucasian lady of standing, but the two have a lifelong affection for one another in any case. Valley often used Evans as a rather progressive link between people like herself and various underdogs like Black prisoner Yaphet Kotto and alleged jinx Marty Allen. 

Things take a turn when Baker is unjustly accused of murdering a local bigot and he rebels by dressing in his father's clothes and vowing to exact revenge. 

While she cannot endorse what he's doing, she bandages his wound and tries to compel him to give himself up. Until her brother Nick and the sheriff arrive! 

Here, she and Baker engage in a brief tussle that's not unlike that freeze-frame above from the end of Mitchell!  

Unlike a lot of stories of this sort, on The Big Valley or otherwise, there's a happy ending. 

Before I go, observe this Italian poster (in which the title translates to "Kill Mister Mitchell") with an oddball rendering that has nothing to do with any scene involving Evans in the movie.

Worse, still, was this hilariously bad, mid-'80s VHS artwork, which puts Baker into a Knight Rider sort of outfit. And while Mitchell's climax does involve a helicopter, nothing like this moment occurs on screen and Evans is nowhere to be found, much less clinging on for dear life! 

While not a direct copy, it seems to have drawn inspiration to a degree from the then-recent poster for A View to a Kill (1985!)

And since, by this time, Evans had found success on Dynasty, she was suddenly elevated from 4th billing to 2nd! (She has also inherited Krystle's earrings, for her Mitchell character wears none in the movie!) And with that, I'm bailing till next time! 

Reunited: "Turning" to "Steel!"

Considering how impactful the movie (and its parent play) Steel Magnolias (1989) has been on my life, it's remarkable that I've really referred to it or written about it precious little here in Poseidon's Underworld. But it you come here much, you know I most often dig up buried "treasure" versus focusing on projects that everyone already is more than familiar with. I did dig something up, which I'll share in a bit, though it's debatable how close to treasure it is! First, though, I'll mention my recent trip to the cinema in order to attend the 35th anniversary screening of the movie (a 4K video release has also made its way onto the market.) A close, longtime friend of mine suggested that we take it in and we enjoyed great, comfortable seats for what was an expansive view of the picture. This allowed me to see all sorts of little details in the background (or elsewhere) that I have missed over the years, especially those cropped VHS ones! Steel Magnolias was the very first DVD I purchased and was the reason I made the leap to DVDs from my VCR. It's because it contained deleted scenes and I just HAD to see those asap. Would you believe I'm so blond that after decades now of owning the disc, I only found out the other evening that there was a second "page" of excised scenes that I had heretofore not watched!! How do I make through each day, I ask you... Anyway, the movie was a visual delight from start to finish and still packs an emotional punch, too, amid all the hilarious moments. Trivia tidbit: The photo shown above right (which seemingly every community theatre group in the country has aped ever since when promoting their renditions of the play) has a secret. Olympia Dukakis wasn't there...! She couldn't attend the shoot, so Shirley MacLaine had to cling to a body double and, later, the real star's face was pasted in.

In the film, Shirley MacLaine and Tom Skerritt play warring neighbors. There's a dispute over ownership of a magnolia tree, compounded by Skerritt's endless antagonizing of her hyper-sensitive yet nonetheless rambunctious St. Bernard.

While she's reached an age when she no longer cares to hold her tongue nor filter her thoughts for those around her, she considers him horrendously uncouth in his own right. As he needles her for a piece of groom's cake at his daughter's wedding, the irascible MacLaine hacks off a large portion of the armadillo-shaped cake's tail end!

Taking the grey-iced piece of red velvet cake with tail attached, he lets her know he always did like a nice "piece of ass!" Of course, we all know that even amid their considerable differences, there is buried affection there. I always enjoy a later, brief, moment when, at his daughter's funeral, she walks by him and gives him a knock along his shoulder. It's the closest she was ever going to get to a hug with him, and it's understood.

Somehow out of the blue it occurred to me during this most recent screening that Skerritt and MacLaine were well-acquainted from a prior project. In fact, the same director Herbert Ross, was at the helm for both movies. Seen here, the two played a married couple in The Turning Point (1977), about a dozen years before sparring in Magnolias.

As Skerritt and Sally Field fretted over their daughter with the long, auburn hair in Magnolias, Skerritt and MacLaine had their own child whose future was very much in the forefront of their minds in Point.

I saw The Turning Point in the theater when I was ten (!), so most of its dramatic weight likely sailed right over my head. So revisiting after watching the more familiar Magnolias, it's fun to observe these two as a devoted couple versus portraying feuding cranks.

Drum and Ouiser as an intimate married couple.

The characters both play retired ballet dancers and it was intriguing to watch them discuss the fact that she felt that having his baby would prove to the world that he wasn't gay -- only to have him announce that he also needed to prove this, to himself!

Get a load of the way director Ross blocked this moment in the movie...! Both my pal and I noticed the use of mirrors as we re-watched Magnolias at the screening, but there was nothing on the level of this shot!

Regardless of the animosity they demonstrated in Magnolias, Skerritt and MacLaine were good friends and she was elated to be reunited with him on Donahue during a publicity appearance for the film with all the ladies except Darryl Hannah. (The perennially shy Hannah refused to come and face a live crowd or answer their probing and sometimes inappropriate questions.)

Those familiar with the movie will recall the climactic scene at the grave site in which Field finally suffers an emotional breakdown after having held it together for the longest time.

Her friends are powerless in the face of all this unbridled rage and confusion.

In an effort to release the tension, Dukakis puts forth MacLaine as a potential punching bag for Field to use as a stress reliever! A small scuffle breaks out. Interestingly, this "laughter through tears" moment (from the play) was not unfamiliar to director Ross.

In The Turning Point, the story climaxes with a blistering argument between MacLaine and her longtime frenemy Ann Bancroft, culminating in a wild cat fight. But, finally, after kneeing, clawing and even spanking one another, the two women dissolve into laughter.

Bancroft even borrows MacLaine's comb in order to try to repair some of the damage. ("I don't know how you're doin' on the inside, but your hair's holdin' up beautifully...")

The Turning Point was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, but was left empty-handed at the end of the evening. (Is that about the worst conceivable rendering of MacLaine imaginable?!)

Magnolias landed but ONE nomination (for Julia Roberts, who lost to Brenda Fricker in My Left Foot.) One might have thought at minimum that it's deliberately tacky production design and art direction might have been nominated, not to mention the unforgettable music by Georges Delerue. Regardless of what any of the ladies said to the press or to interviewers, filming was for the most part a horrible nightmare thanks to the taciturn, cruel, demanding behavior of director Ross, who was acting out after the recent death of his wife and lost a lot of his prestige as a result. But the finished product doesn't betray this, with the actresses delivering memorable performances.

I mentioned earlier how so many community theatre groups aped the famous shot of the six actresses embracing in a row. When I directed the show in 1988, I eschewed that concept (because otherwise how else could I get my own fat face into the shots!? Ha ha!) This photo was taken at an early dress rehearsal before the set decor was applied and without all of the makeup and hair details being done. The ladies were DYNAMITE and at the time set a record for the number of local awards won for that small, less-prominent theatre troupe. Three of them won acting certificates and the ensemble won as a whole (which went to me.)

I also told you at the beginning of this post that I'd done a little digging... Who among you remembers this?!?! I had to have either forgotten about it entirely or blocked it out of my mind like some traumatic event. It was a 1990 television pilot for a half-hour series of Steel Magnolias. It aired once on CBS and was rarely seen again. (Are you seriously telling me that this is the headstone that the Eatentons and her lawyer husband installed for Shelby?!?!)

The program hasn't even gotten underway before the horror begins. Having been told that his mother is in the nearby grave, her toddler son Jack Jr exclaims, "Then dig her up...!" This dour, misguided retread was written by the same author as the play and the movie, but it did not sell as a series.

Even realizing that the video quality of the YT upload is substandard and that it surely looked better than this upon airing, it's still a gauzy, dimly-lit fiasco with recycled humor and situations. She might look the part all right, but Kirland is too New York for this role and her deep voice and lack of effervescence lies in start contrast to the inimitable Dolly Parton.

Likewise, Bergen and Stritch seem like solid casting, but I could only roll my eyes when Stritch handed Bergen a magazine about cosmetic surgery and suggesting that maybe she try it when Bergen has clearly already undergone eye work and probably several other things...!

In this version, M'Lynn wasn't a mental health counselor, but instead worked at a brewery called Shotz. (I'm kidding... that's a lame Laverne & Shirley joke. Actually, Ms. Williams was trying, and wasn't bad, but this was mostly a non-starter no matter what.) You can watch it and see what you think right here.

One of the more fascinating trivia tidbits was in the casting of the soon-to-be new Mrs. Jackson Latcherie. (In real life, Susan Harling's - the basis for Shelby - widower remarried within a year of her death.) This new character was played by Dana Morosini. Her own life would play out at or beyond the level of the story behind Magnolias.

Already by that time, she was the girlfriend of handsome Christopher Reeve. They would wed in 1992 after she became pregnant with their son. In 1995, Reeve suffered the accident that would paralyze him until his death in 2004 at 52. Dana Reeve passed away of lung cancer (attributed to secondhand smoke from her singing career in nightclubs) at 44 in 2006. It was a tragedy worthy of a movie in its own right! Their legacy lives on, though, through the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, which seeks cures and treatments for neurological disorders. 

And that brings down the curtain on this post!