May I Be Frank With You?

Today's featured actor has worked a lot over the course of a thirty-year-long screen career and yet his name is not exactly at the tip of most viewer's tongues. Born on April 17th, 1947 in Olympia, Washington, Charles Resor Frank, would eventually emerge as an example of boy-next-door handsomeness and wholesome appeal. These traits led to multiple jobs over the years that, while fruitful, also tended to keep him in a bit of a box creatively. Graduating from Middlebury College, a private, expensive liberal arts school in Vermont, in 1969, he swiftly headed to The Big Apple in order to pursue an acting career as Charles Frank. it wasn't long before he was snatched up by one of the New York soap operas and placed well on his way to success. 

Seen here with the immortal daytime figures Erica Kane and Phoebe Tyler (played by Susan Lucci and Ruth Warrick), Frank was cast as young Dr. Jeff Martin on All My Children. He was, in fact, the first of Erica's many husbands on the show, though the character ultimately left him to pursue her modeling career. (Frank was a recast, a "prettier" Jeff than the prior actor Christopher Lofton, who'd briefly originated the role.)

A more successful pairing awaited in the form of Mary Kennicott, played by actress Susan Blanchard. The characters wed on screen in 1974 and, in one of life's twists, the actors fell in love and remained together in real life. Married in 1977, they remain together to this day!

Having made his mark on daytime TV, he headed west to Los Angeles in 1974 to try his hand at prime-time and soon enough began appearing as a guest on such shows as Switch, Police Woman, Laverne & Shirley and, as seen here with Linda Lavin and Hal Linden, Barney Miller. (His role here was of a low-rent cowboy picked up in a massage parlor!)

His good looks were put to use in a two-part episode of Wonder Woman during its first season. He was paired with Debra Winger during her now-infamous appearance as Wonder Girl!

On Hawaii 5-O, he joined Lee Purcell as part of a crime ring, demonstrating that his nice looks didn't always ensure that he'd be a nice character.

Featured parts on hot shows such as Hawaii 5-O and, as seen here, Barnaby Jones, led to his face becoming familiar to regular TV viewers.

He also popped up on two installments of M*A*S*H, a show that's lived in perpetual reruns ever since, meaning that most any fan of that show has seen him at least once.

Pretty much out of the gate, Frank worked alongside many skilled performers. Here, on Oscar-winner Ruth Gordon's episode of Columbo, he played her victim (though the character was an utter heel, lending all sympathy to her, his murderer, rather than to himself.)

In 1977, he landed the male lead in a TV-movie, drek though it was. The project was called Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo, released at a time when the oversized spiders had fully captured much of the public's imagination.

1978 turned out to be something of a landmark year for Frank. He secured big-screen work (small roles in admittedly lower-profile movies) including The Other Side of the Mountain: Part II, in which he played a rather lunkheaded date in paralyzed Marilyn Hassett's nightmare.

And there was Henry Winkler's period wrestling comedy The One and Only, in which he played the super-preppy college boyfriend of Kim Darby. She quickly falls for Winkler, leaving Frank in the dust. 

So it was that he was back on TV with better billing in cheesy fare such as Ski Lift to Death (1978.)

And, busy as a bee, he played the "perfect" husband to Cybill Shepherd (fleeing to TV for the first time after some cinematic missteps) in A Guide for the Married Woman (1978.)

However, all was not lost. That same year he was cast in another TV-movie called The New Maverick, in which he played nephew to one-time series stars James Garner and Jack Kelly.

Happily for him, the telefilm also included a role for his recently-wed wife, Susan Blanchard.

So well-received was the movie that in 1979, Frank was granted his own rendition of the series, called Young Maverick.

Again, Blanchard was on hand as his love interest. Unfortunately, the series was not a ratings winner and it was buried after eight episodes.

By now in demand as a reliable and attractive television presence, he spent part of 1980 in preparation for another series of his own. Unfortunately, the pilot for "Jack Flash" not only didn't go to series, it was never even aired on TV!

Still, opportunities of another sort presented themselves. No doubt thanks to his knowing his way around a cowboy hat, he was cast in a different pilot. This one was a kooky take-off on the prime-time soaps, chiefly Dallas, that were proliferating and finding tremendous ratings success. Filthy Rich saw him as one of the few upstanding members of a Tennessee family, all squabbling under one roof. You'll note the presence of both Delta Burke and Dixie Carter in the cast, who would later reunite on Designing Women, created by the same writer-producer.

Filthy Rich had begun as a wacky one-hour pilot that hadn't sold. When it was aired later during the summer, it got terrific ratings and so the cast was reconvened to go to (half-hour) series for the fall. This meant that Burke was forced to turn down the role of Katherine Wentworth on Dallas (!), giving Morgan Brittany a big break. Incidentally, Burke played Frank's widowed step-mother, not his wife! The seeds of her weight/drug issues began here as she was continually needled to stay as thin as possible.

Many of Frank's scenes were set in his sizable bathroom with a large, black tub. Years later, Frank appeared on Designing Women as a "metrosexual" who Carter dates (Burke was off the show by then), but he also guested on Woman of the House, the short-lived spin-off of Burke's, so he had no hand in all the melee from that period. In any event, Rich didn't live up to expectations and, despite a lot of fans who recall it fondly even now, it was canned after 15 episodes.

Regardless, 1983 brought Frank one of his greatest opportunities yet...

He joined a strong ensemble of actors in portraying the U.S.'s first astronauts in The Right Stuff (1983.)

Scott Glenn, Scott Paulin, Fred Ward, Dennis Quaid, Lance Henrikson, Ed Harris and Frank portrayed the "Mercury Seven." Not pictured is Sam Sheperd, who played instructor Chuck Yeager, the one actor who was Oscar-nominated (losing to Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment.)

Seen here behind Henrikson, Frank's "All American" looks were at last being used in the most prestigious way. The movie was a big hit, brought home four Academy Awards and retains a healthy reputation for the most part even now. This role did not translate to further big-screen work, however.

Instead, he was back on the tube, this time not parodying (we think!), but co-starring in an actual prime-time soap. Dynasty's creators Richard and Esther Shapiro had turned their sudsy attentions to a U.S. naval air station for Emerald Point, N.A.S.

Are ya gettin' a load of Sela Ward on the far left?!  It's hard to believe that a TV series with hunks Andrew Stevens, Frank and Richard Dean Anderson could fail, but it did indeed. (Incidentally, the gal in the middle of Stevens and Dennis Weaver, Stephanie Dunnam, later segued onto Dynasty and was one of my top-five annoying characters ever to appear on the show...)

Playing Frank's wife was one Susan Dey. If The Partridge Family's Miss Dey ever looked worse than this on a program, I'm not aware of it...! Thankfully, she soon resurrected herself to great effect as the sleek and purposeful Grace Van Owen on L.A. Law.

As Emerald failed to make its Point, the pastels began to give way to darker, richer hues and additional names (like Jill St. John and Robert Vaughn) were brought in, but it was all for naught. The show was gone after 22 installments.

Always reliable Frank guested on many TV shows, from The Love Boat to Newhart to Hotel.

And he continued his penchant for working with industry greats, such as when Katharine Hepburn landed on television for Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry.

He portrayed one of wealthy Hepburn's WASP-ish children, concerned over her desire to marry a Jewish gentleman she's become fond of (played by Harold Gould, unseen here.) That same year, 1986, he appeared in one of Loretta Young's rare forays onto TV as well, Christmas Eve!

Having portrayed JFK in the telefilm LBJ: The Early Years, Frank popped up for two eps on The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd with Blair Brown (who'd portrayed Jackie Kennedy a few years before in Kennedy!)

Yet another failed pilot limped onto the tube in 1987. Act II had Broadway star Sandy Duncan marrying a widower and having to pitch in as mother to his trio of kids. Lucky for Duncan it failed so that she could Tarzan-swing over to Valerie's Family: The Hogans after Valerie Harper had been shown the door from her own show!

He did made a return to the big screen, though, in 1987 with Russkies, as one of a few concerned fathers whose sons have become entangled with a shipwrecked Russian soldier during the Cold War. (His wife appeared in the movie as his character's wife.)

Now 40, he was beginning to mature, looks-wise, though still retained that clean-cut, preppy quality that had served him many times along the way. The next year, he guested on L.A. Law three times as a shifty stockbroker.

1988 brought him by far the oddest role on his resume. He appeared in the Donna Dixon  flick Lucky Stiff. In it, he's one of a family of cannibals (!) who try to fatten up visitor Joe Alsakey for dinner. Theirs! (Turns out they are descendants of The Donner Party.) The dark comedy, DOA in theaters, was directed by none other than Anthony Perkins...!

From here came a steady stream of television appearances. They varied in style, from the western Paradise to the war-set Tour of Duty. There was Jake and the Fatman, Dallas, Midnight Caller and the requisite Murder, She Wrote, as seen here. In the inset is Lee Purcell, with whom he'd done Hawaii 5-O all those years ago.

He was always busy, with appearances including Matlock, Life Goes On, Walker, Texas Ranger and even a couple of returns to All My Children, as Dr. Jeff Martin. In 1995, his straight-laced (square?) sort of screen persona was put to use as Senator John Warner in Liz; The Elizabeth Taylor Story. (Hilariously, this was the same year he played a senator on Delta Burke's political sitcom, Woman of the House! I hope newspapers kept their photos captioned correctly!)

Frank is more handsome than Warner, though Sherilyn Fenn gave a creditable performance as La Liz. The lunacy of it all was demonstrated, though, when Frank came to pick Fenn up for their first date and she was sitting on the couch waiting for his arrival... Um, Miss Taylor was notoriously NEVER on time for an occasion! It was understood that her gentlemen callers had better make themselves comfortable until she was ready to descend. As if she'd be plopped on the couch ready to roll...! LOL

Mr. Frank, seen here at a reunion gala for The Right Stuff in 2003, stopped acting on screen in 1997. Now 77, he remains wed to Susan (the couple have one daughter together as well.) Though you won't see it noted on imdb, the couple appeared, happy and compatible, on episodes of the daytime games show Tattletales in the mid-'70s.

By the way, if Ms. Blanchard seems familiar, yet you cannot figure out why, you may have seen her during her looonng run (1976-1982) - no pun intended - as the No Nonsense pantyhose commercial spokeswoman. Early ads showed her putting her fingers into the feet of lesser brands and breaking through!

We are always happy to see the name Charles Frank pop up in the credits of a TV show or movie. That ensures that there will be someone cute to focus on at some point. Speaking of, stay tuned for a few bonus pics from Filthy Rich and Frank's time spent in his bubble bath...! (Editor's Note: I've also just added some unfortunately blurry caps from his enlistment on Battle of the Network Stars, Nov-1983, which can be seen in all its grainy glory here.)

:::::::BONUS PICS:::::::

 

And with that I'll pull the plug on this one... Till next time!

::: But wait... There's more! :::

And now at last, The End!

Poseidon Quickies: "Hush" Now!

I truly didn't intend to be missing in action from this blog for all but one day of January! I ran into one of those instances in which I watched several things, thinking they would be prime material for a post, only to be disinterested in dissecting them further. (That's saying a lot when you think about the truly abysmal shit I focused on - and wrote about - while I was recovering from recent minor surgery! LOL) It was sort of the equivalent of writer's block. "Blogger's Block?" But then, like a drop of ambrosia from Olympus, I stumbled onto Hush (1998), a movie I had never seen, even though I'd made it a point in life never to miss one of those "_____ from hell" flicks, such as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992, killer nanny), The Good Son (1993, killer kiddie), The Temp (1993, killer office admin), The Babysitter (1995, self-explanatory) and all the rest. Hush was filmed in 1996 when the trend was still reasonably hot, but since its release didn't occur until 1998, interest in the genre had waned. Add in the fact that this wound up a highly-troubled project, complicated by over-reliance on test screenings, and you have a real disaster in the making. It barely took in 2/3 of its budget and was greeted by critical scorn. It was likely the rotten reviews (along with a general lack of affection for the stars involved) that led me to skip it back in the day.

Hush begins with a young, unmarried couple arriving at his family's Kentucky horse farm late at night, having come from new York City where they live and work. Johnathan Schaech and Gwyneth Paltrow play the lovebirds. She is assigned her own bedroom in accordance with his mother's traditional views, but he convinces her to join him in his for some midnight mashing. 

Paltrow has a more-than-awkward meeting with the mother (Jessica Lange) the following morning when she emerges from bed, stark naked, expecting to see Schaech, but instead comes face-to-er, face, with his mama.

Paltrow's body double can't get under the sheets fast enough, then afterwards she has to carry on small talk with Lange. Lange is all southern charm, yet already there's a tinge of "off"-ness to her. In this shot, she looks like she's about to take over Jack Nicholson's role as The Joker in the next Batman flick!

Schaech makes a faint pretense of having some sort of spine, but he really has trouble saying no to his mother. Initially only staying through Christmas Day, he's soon coerced into remaining until New Year's.

Now I don't think that the couple is intended to be any sort of concrete version of John F. Kennedy Jr and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, but there's an unquestioned sense of using that famed NYC couple as a touchstone of style and applying it to this movie's characters.

And I'm sure it's merely coincidence that Mama Lange wears a Jackie Kennedy-ish hat to church as well. Incidentally, expressions like this one, which I call "Zuni Fetish Doll" tip her hat early on that Paltrow is not going to have an easy time of it when it comes to in-law relationships...

Moments like this one brought back uncomfortable memories for me of her turn as Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1984.) Many may have loved her in that, but I wasn't among them. I did, however, eventually appreciate her overall talent as an actress during her various incarnations across several seasons of American Horror Story. This movie seems like a prelude to that and I couldn't help wondering if Hush was a favorite of Ryan Murphy's...

As promised, Schaech stays through New Year's Eve and his midnight kiss this time is reserved for his mom. She wants him there permanently in order to help run the farm, which is faltering over time. And, leave though they might, Lange may not be done trying to keep her son nearby.

Paltrow gets a shock when she discovers that, regardless of her trusty contraception device, she is pregnant! (Lange may or may not - though it's very likely - have altered said device while the couple was in her home to render it worthless.)

Thus, a wedding is now called for. So Schaech and Paltrow are back on the farm for an elegant outdoor ceremony.

Lange does everything she can think of to appear as the picture perfect M.O.B.

I truly don't know what in the hell was going on here, though, with these bizarre bridesmaid gowns and headgear! Her matron of honor, by the way, is played by Debi Mazar as a very "New Yawk" coworker and friend. That helps explain why her getup is out of place, even among the other fashion disasters.

Popping up at the ceremony is Schaech's paternal grandmother Nina Foch. Paltrow discovers that Foch had been wanting to meet her for some time, but she never got that message. Hmmmm.

Now, I love, worship and adore Ms. Foch and am always glad when I see her name listed in the credits. She looks terrific and I was elated that she wasn't relegated to just one or two brief moments, but showed up a few times along the way.

One thing I loved about Hush was the overall look of the movie. Virginia (standing in for Kentucky) scenery, elegant houses, tailored clothing and flattering lighting gave the movie a sometimes glamorous look that was harder to find in the grunge-filled '90s than it had been in the excessive (but oh so fun) '80s.

Shortly after the nuptials, back in The Big Apple, Paltrow is assaulted one night at knife point! The crud doesn't seem to want anything from her besides a locket she treasures, but slashes at her abdomen for good measure. 

Paltrow recovers from her ordeal in the couple's loft. Notice how the view from upstairs affords a clear shot of the toilet (bottom-left corner!) Ahhh... Urban living. Anyway... The decision is made to move to Kentucky and help get the horse farm back on its feet so that it will be able to sell for a better price than the low-ball offer that's currently on the table.

Here is where we get the first blatant signs of post-production tampering. On the left is Paltrow debating with Schaech the possibility of relocating to Kentucky. On the right is the very next scene in the film! The young actress's soft features are now replaced by a drawn, gaunt face and an obvious wig.

This sequence was shot two years after the movie had been completed! Not only had her features significantly hardened, but she looked unhealthily gaunt. I don't even want to speculate as to what must have gone down during those 20 or so months in Hollyweird, but apart from that there was no effort to maintain the illusion that the character was even pregnant! 

In the scene before, she had a tummy and was doing the "wobbly walk and rub" so common among actresses playing women with child. Compare that to her rail-thin appearance right after! All of us evolve (in my case, erode!) from year to year, but this instance was startling.

I don't know if this publicity shot is from the first version of the scene in question (it was cold at the time), but it gives one an idea of how it ought to have looked.

Once settled in at the horse farm, Schaech one day finds himself tossed from his steed into a mud hole.

Coated from head to toe in gunk, he's met at the barn by Mama Lange.

She wastes no time in shucking off his filthy shirt...

...and hosing him down! Some horseplay soon follows. Tally this sequence up to another rare highlight of the movie.

With sonny boy back on the scene, the farm is producing winners again. Lange is in her glory, with her horses doing well at the races and Schaech at her side. But Paltrow is becoming annoyed at certain disinformation being spread as well as attempts by Lange to control her.

The young couple have a bit of a face-off on the street of the local town. Again, this sequence, inadvertent or on purpose, recalls the public squabble once captured of JFK Jr and his Mrs.

Against Lange's express wishes, Paltrow begins to pay visits to wheelchair-bound Foch at her luxurious retirement center.

The still-canny Foch has a few things to say about her daughter-in-law Lange, whose husband (and her son) died in a freak accident when Schaech was a little boy.

You can probably guess that none of this sits well with the controlling Lange, who then pays a visit to Foch herself as the elderly woman is receiving a steam treatment (in an unaccountably dark and empty pool room!)

It isn't long before the conversation becomes dark and threatening.

Lange makes lengthy confessions for her sins, but chooses to do so when there's no one there to actually take in what she's saying!

Before all is said and done, she's snatched the baby, fresh from its womb, with the intention of keeping it all to herself. In a typically senseless bit of continuity, she wears an apron during the birth and it winds up coated down in bloody muck. But JUST the apron! Not the shirt underneath! Why? Because the plot calls for her to remove the apron and appear to look unblemished, not because she was able to stay clean beneath it. Makes no sense, but in the final analysis, little does...

Also appearing in this film is Mr. Hal Holbrook as the family doctor. In the original cut of the film, someone comes out of Lange's house in a body bag after the baby's birth and I sort of suspect it was he, but who knows...

I also think that, in the first cut, Foch was done in. But in the re-imagined version, she is still kicking. Again, you can tell this scene is a reshoot from that wig that glued onto Paltrow's head...

It's stunningly obvious...! These two shots are supposed to have been from the same day! The inset from earlier with Foch and the main pic later that evening.

The initial movie was to be rated R and surely contained more mayhem. None of the scenes shown above appear in the released PG-13 film even though they made the trailer! Schaech is never seen with the telltale locket, the fire in the barn never occurs, Lange and Paltrow fighting in a nursery with Lange wielding a piece of broken mirror is nowhere to be seen and there is no body removed from the house. The result is a very soft, hole-filled mess with a less than satisfying ending. The movie's writer-director Jonathan Darby, whose first feature this was, only did one short film thereafter. Whatever potential there was for a rousing thriller bit the dust once test screeners decided they didn't like the ending. And the film isn't perceived as important enough to warrant a Director's Cut on DVD. 

At the time Hush was filmed, Lange, who'd overcome an inauspicious start with King Kong (1976) to take home an Oscar for Tootsie (1982), had recently taken home a second statuette for Blue Sky (1994.) She'd costarred in Rob Roy (1995) and starred in a rendition of A Streetcar Named Desire (1995) opposite Alec Baldwin. Though she continued to work rather steadily, it came to be that her association with producer Ryan Murphy provided the meatiest parts in American Horror Story and Feud. Her work in Grey Gardens and the aforementioned Horror Story gleaned her three Emmys. Now 75, she continues to act on both the big and small screen. 

Paltrow is the daughter of producer-director Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner and got her start on screen in a project of his and her start on stage via her mother. This was followed by a role in her godfather Steven Spielburg's feature film Hook (1991.) Things continued on an upward trajectory from there with Flesh and Bone (1993), Se7en (1995) and Emma (1996.) By the time Hush limped into theaters, she'd already filmed the movie that would win her a Best Actress Oscar, Shakespeare in Love (1998.) After that came more hits along with some misses. Though she still performs on screen occasionally, her focus in recent years has been as an entrepreneur of sometimes controversial food and "health" products. The circus of a lawsuit she endured over an alleged skiing accident inspired two separate musical productions! She is now 52. 

Schaech first gained attention as a model for products including Armani and as an arm candy beard for the then-closeted comedienne Ellen DeGeneres. He was selected by Franco Zefferelli for a role in 1993's Storia di una capinera (aka Sparrow), claiming years later to have been sexually assaulted by the director. A brief stay on Models, Inc. was followed by roles in The Doom Generation and How to Make an American Quilt (both 1995), which made him a flavor of the month to showbiz press. The big hit That Thing You Do! (1996) made him even more familiar to moviegoers, though his output thereafter tended to be less significant. Nevertheless, he has never stopped working and balanced film roles with plentiful television. He is now 55.

Schaech in his hey-day as a Wilhelmina West model.

Whether Mazar's role was any more substantial in the early version of the movie I cannot tell you. But she barely appears in the final cut. Mostly one brief scene in an office and then just basically wordless shots thereafter a couple of times. Initially a club kid who did makeup for newly-befriended Madonna, she appeared in five of the singer's videos and segued onto TV and into small movie roles including Goodfellas (1990), The Doors (1991) and Malcolm X (1992.) In time she grew into abusy character actress whose sharp tongue added spice to a variety of projects. That's Life, Entourage and Younger are some of the TV series on which she regularly appeared. Just before 2020, she relocated with her husband to Florence, Italy with her Italian husband and their two children, though she still acts in projects there and elsewhere. She is 60.

Foch entered films at Columbia Pictures at the tender age of 19. Making a mark in A Song to Remember (1945) along with the well-regarded B-thriller My Name is Julia Ross (1945), she wound up being underutilized and labeled unattractive enough to thrive as a leading lady. Having fled to Broadway where she became a hit in John Loves Mary, she returned to Hollywood with more confidence, but still tended to wind up in supporting parts, including An American in Paris (1951) and Scaramouche (1952.) A seemingly insignificant role in Executive Suite (1954) led to her only Oscar nomination (which went to Eva Marie Saint of On the Waterfront, inexplicably appearing in the Supporting category.) Many viewers may recall her turn as Moses' adoptive mother in The Ten Commandments (1956.) During this period (1954-1959) she was married to James Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio. While popping up on many TV shows and the occasional film (such as Mahogany, 1975, Skin Deep, 1989, and Sliver, 1993), Foch worked as an exacting acting coach and teacher. She died in 2008 of a blood disorder, one day after first feeling unwell, at age 84. 

I'll call an end to this post with a couple more shots of Schaech's horse bath. (There's an inside joke for me here. My stepfather used to often make mention of a "whore's bath" in which a lady of the evening would just go over key body parts with a washcloth. But my best friend misinterpreted the phrase as a "horse bath" (!) and never got the connotation.)

Keep it clean, till next time!