TV Time Tunnel: Will You "Love" This?

Back at the keyboard after an inadvertent absence. In that time, I watched a lot of things, some of it just crazy, but nothing that warranted a profile. (I may, however, provide a compilation of highlights at some point!) While on the lookout for a subject that caught my fancy, I happened upon today's featured project, a 1984 TV-movie that I recall being aired, but that I don't believe I watched. For whatever reason, I thought the male star had been (the now-canceled) Stephen Collins, but I was wrong. As it went along, it managed to be hooty enough that I provide some pics and commentary now. I speak of Obsessive Love. A very clean print of this is available now, free with ads, on Tubi. 

We dive into this feet first. Ha ha! The principle character of the piece is seen only from the neck down for a time, slipping on pantyhose and sliding into these "sensible" shoes from, perhaps, the Charlotte Vale collection. 

Yvette Mimieux stars as Linda Foster, a woman who is nondescript in every conceivable fashion. (Mimieux, a 1960s & '70s leading lady, had begun exploring options on television in an effort to find more interesting roles. She dreamed up the story for this project and pitched in on the script as well.) 

Although she is a travel agent, helping others book glitzy and colorful trips all over the world, she is the plainest, taupe-est thing herself. 

Jill Jacobson is her far more outgoing coworker who doesn't seem to have given up on getting her associate to live a little. She invites Mimeux to lunch, but is turned down. 

Mimieux would rather close the blinds to the break area and settle in with a sandwich and her favorite daytime soap, "Savage Hills." That's Kin Shriner on TV as one of the soap's stars (he was a fixture on General Hospital in real life himself.) 

The real draw for her, though, is Simon MacCorkindale as Shriner's rival on the series. 

His appearance on screen has her, literally, licking her chops. 

Back home that evening, we find her caressing his face on a magazine cover and note some pinups in her room. She begins to write him a fan letter, but Jacobson calls, imploring her to come out for the night to a club and meet a man whose friends she's run into. 

Said man is played by a slick Jonathan Goldsmith. 

Years later, Goldsmith would hit as Corona beer's "Most Interesting Man in the World." But for now...

...he's faced with "The World's Least Interesting Woman!" (See also: Jane Curtin's 1987 remake of Suspicion!)

No man could hope to measure up to her idol MacCorkindale. He's seen here taping the soap which, for the life of me, appears to have precisely three cast members! LOL It's only one of a train car of illogical depictions and situations in this telefilm. 

Mimieux visits her well-off, but emotionally-crippling, mother for dinner. The disparaging woman doesn't approve of the way Mimieux rinsed off the produce in this bowl, so she's doubly-annoyed when she is told that her daughter is going to go away on a trip with a man she's become involved with! 

The judgy, controlling woman is portrayed by Louise Latham in a way that recalls the dynamic found in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964.)

As well it should since Latham played that part, twenty years prior! 

Mimieux empties her savings account and heads to Beverly Hills. As she steps out of her cab, she sees a hotel bellman with a dolly, but he breezes by her to assist a glamorous woman exiting a limo!

At the front desk, she can't help taking note of the fawning, preferential treatment the woman gets while the clerk barely notices Ms. Foster (that may be found under "Bananas" Foster! Ha ha!)

The location shooting finds her parading along the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at Ron Howard's star) and into various little shops. 

She tours the landscape in her rented car.

Then, with the aid of a map to the star's homes, she finds the house where her object of desire MacCorkindale resides. 

MacCorkindale is in the middle of a career issue. He doesn't like the way his character is being handled by writer-producer Lainie Kazan. Yet, he can't afford to abandon his $400K yearly salary.  

This segment was a real scream. Mousy Mimieux heads to a ritzy Beverly Hills salon and proceeds to head through the doors like it's the Emerald City. I mean, this place does it all. And mostly in the dark, too!

She's given a good rubdown. (Did Miss Mouse wear a beige bikini someplace?! Or where did those strap marks come from?)

Then she's steamed within an inch of her life. 

Next comes a goopy facial (with avocado? cucumber? both?!)

Next comes a cut and color, along with a manicure and simultaneous pedicure. (I didn't see anyone stuffing her with fresh straw, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen as well...!) 

Then, without warning, comes... blue eye shadow! This is followed by crimson lipstick.  

When it was finally over, I almost crapped because I thought that this lady in the cream print dress was she...!

But that wasn't much worse than reality. She emerges with a varnish-stiff rat's nest of a hairdo and this atrocious dress, which looks like it was from the Lite-Brite collection. 

'Course now the hotel clerk is dazzled and can't get over how amazing she looks. Fortunately, Mimieux does not retain this mini Bride of Frankenstein hairstyle and soon has a more relaxed version. 

Soon, she's worming her way into the studio lot and weaseling onto the set of the soap, where MacCorkindale can't help but catch a glimpse of her. 

Next we meet MacCorkindale's discontented wife, Constance McCashin (of Knots Landing.) She feels neglected and ignored and isn't exactly a ray of sunshine to come home to each evening. Stalker Mimieux is right outside the window, observing their marital discord! 

At a local mall, Kazan is presiding over an event at which one can visit with the stars of her hit soap. All three of them...

There's a drawing done in which one lucky fan will win a bit part on the show and Mimieux is intensely craving such a thing, but it goes to the woman shown in the gray cardigan here. She's about as nutty as Mimieux and makes a big spectacle of herself.

Amid the pushy, frantic throng, Mimieux comes off as comparatively serene and she manages to get MacCorkindale's attention once more. 

She passes herself off as a magazine reporter, attempting to secure a cover story on him. He is planning to take his sailboat out the following day, but agrees to meet with her one hour prior to shoving off.

She heads to a nearby Waldenbooks and proceeds to brush up on the subject herself!

Though she was supposed to meet up at 7:00am, prior to his sailing, she deliberately waits until the last minute. She dons some short-shorts and comes up behind him, targeting her prey.

Feigning experience on boats with her father, she manages to convince MacCorkindale to let her tag along and interview him on his way to an island he wants to visit. 

So they set sail amid some appealing west coast scenery.

Now ashore on the island, it's just the two of them (and a lot of birds!) 

She decides to run into the surf and he chases behind her, warning her of how cold it is, before shucking his pants and revealing a Speedo underneath.

Next comes a water ballet between them (the waves pound ferociously on the surface, but for the underwater shots, they - or their doubles - can swim elegantly without issue!)

As they emerge and run to their towel, we struggle for a quick glimpse of MacCorkindale's li'l trunks.

He starts to dry her off vigorously as she shivers, but all that friction eventually leads to a more romantic connection. 

The next morning, he overhears her on the phone to her mother (she can call long-distance on a sailboat phone while in the middle of nowhere?) She tells mom she's getting married (!) and names the groom "Michael," MacCorkindale's soap opera character. 

Thus, he's barely zipped-up after their liaison and there are already warning bells sounding. 

Later on, back home, the phone calls begin... 

And it doesn't take much for McCashin's suspicions to become aroused. 

At the studio, he's being harassed further, with her sending him notes and showing up to see him. 

He sends Kazan out to contend with her.

Kazan is obviously "Team MacCorkindale," but after listening to Mimieux, she starts to think maybe the woman isn't as "off" as her actor is suggesting. She starts to empathize with her to a degree. 

Although they sound nothing alike, I couldn't escape the feeling that Kazan was intended to evoke Esther Shapiro, the rather high-profile writer-producer of Dynasty, which was then about to become the nation's #1 watched television show. 

Kazan convinces MacCorkindale to meet Mimieux and she is able to convince him to pay her a visit at her suite later. 

She's all ready for another seduction, but he really wants no part of it. 

Having failed on that front Mimieux visits his home and confronts his wife with the knowledge of their affair. (You can really see in these shots how versatile Mimieux's haircut was. She wears it a wide variety of ways, all of them better than the way it looked coming out of the salon.) Anyway, McCashin packs up the car, and the couple's little boy, and leaves. 

Their son is played by young Jerry Supiran, already a veteran child actor, who would soon join the cast of the execrable Small Wonder. (Later, he would endure a roller-coaster of personal problems before getting his life back on track.)

With the pesky wife and kid out of the way, Mimieux now segues into full-on stalking, while a panicked MacCorkindale pleads with her to get lost. 

Ultimately, help comes from an unlikely source, Kazan, with whom he's battled for much of the movie over the direction of his soap opera character. 

At last, the threat comes to an end when Mimieux has to confront some harsh "realities." 

This movie most likely came up for me as a suggestion because I was watching some mid-run episodes of Falcon Crest, which costarred MacCorkindale at that time. I'd never seen them and didn't even realize he was on that show for a few years. He costarred in some movies that I enjoyed, be them good (like Death on the Nile, 1978) or not so good (like Jaws 3-D, 1983!) He was taken in 2010 by cancer at the all-too-early age of 58. 

Think for a minute about what you have paid anytime recently for a DVD of any movie. Then let it sink in that (in 1980s dollars!) this once-free television offering was released on LaserDisc for the kingly sum of $34.95!!!!! That equates to just under $100.00 in today's terms..... 

The movie's director, Steven Hilliard Stern (whose name was misspelled as "Hillard" on screen and on this LaserDisc!), had earlier directed Mimieux in a TV-movie called Forbidden Love, in which she was a cougar who paired up with Andrew Stevens. Jacobson appeared in that one as well. 

And... That's a wrap!

Poseidon Quickies: It's a "Miracle!"

No, not Miracle on 34th Street (1947) though we love that one. While convalescing at home this holiday season, there was a rare airing of the 1939 film Miracle on Main Street. Feeling a bit down and wondering if it might warm the heart a bit, I gave it a shot. Miracle is a short, inexpensive, pat, contrived little number, but I found it charming nonetheless. At about an hour and twenty minutes, it certainly didn't drag on and on. I was curious to see Margo in a leading role and am a bit of a sucker for redemption tales. As it is December 26th, you may be past it all by now, but if not the movie is available on YT in a pristine print right here. 

The principle star of Miracle on Main Street is Margo, a Mexican dancer-turned-actress whose uncle was famed band leader Xavier Cugat. Here, she plays a shady performer in a carnival, managed by her even shadier husband. 

One might politely call her a belly dancer or an exotic dancer, but in truth she's basically an attractive stripper...! I saw in her expressions some of the looks that one Marilyn Monroe would later adopt in her breathy sex siren persona. 

Margo's husband is played by Lyle Talbot, who I invariably confuse with Lyle Bettger until it dawns on me that one is markedly more handsome than the other. Talbot tries to con a seeming drunk out of some money, but it turns out to be an undercover cop! He and his wife flee the scene to avoid being taken in.

Margo injures her knee, but manages to hobble into a nearby church. 

While praying to the Virgin Mary, she can't avoid the feeling that she hears a baby crying. And it's not the plaster Jesus in the nearby manger...! 

Examining the foliage more carefully, she spies a newborn infant lying in the undergrowth! 

There's a note enclosed from his birth parents (who can't seem to stop producing offspring!) This type of thing still happens today. Just recently in my area, an infant was left in a local firehouse's "baby box." She uses the bundle of joy to leave the church without being suspected of any crime. 

After Talbot hightails it out of their apartment and she manages to elude the police once more, she goes back to the church with the intention of returning the infant to where she found him, but ultimately she opts to keep him for herself. 

It takes a village... A kindly, if boozy, doctor lives upstairs, she has two floozy fellow dancer friends from the carnival and Jane Darwell is her cranky, yet kindly, landlady. The hefty Darwell (one year prior to her Oscar-winning triumph in The Grapes of Wrath, 1940) decides she is going to give the little tyke a bath. 

Hilariously, the scene-stealing little gem of a baby gives Ms. Darwell's sizeable chest the once over, wondering if he's going to be called upon to feed from that wellspring! Ha ha!

Newfound motherhood causes Margo to rethink everything. She wants no part of her tacky, shifty former life. 

Singing a lullaby to her "son," she vows to find a way to provide for the two of them. At first, she attempts to dance at a legitimate supper club, but ultimately works as a seamstress so that she can be at home with the infant. There is plenty more to the story, but as it's so brief, I don't want to reveal much further. 

Walter Abel costars as a wealthy man who marries a bored society girl who swiftly finds domestic bliss with him a near total bore. 

The un-billed boy who plays Margo's child is rather adorable and provides good face a number of times.  

Perhaps Margo's greatest claim to fame was two years prior to this when she played Maria, the lovely inhabitant of Shangri-La who captures the heart of John Howard in Lost Horizon (1937.) Things take a disastrous turn for the couple when he removes her from her home. She was later immortalized in the play Bye Bye Birdie when Mrs. Peterson refers to her son's fiancee as looking "like Margo when they took her out of Shangri-La!"

At this time, Margo was wed to actor Francis Lederer, though the union only lasted from 1937-1940.

She was more famously the wife of longtime actor and two-time Oscar nominee Eddie Albert. 

Together, they produced a son in 1951 called Edward Albert Jr. 

The handsome young man became a successful actor in his own right with movies like Butterflies Are Free (1972), 40 Carats (1973), When Time Ran Out... (1980) and others.

To me, the resemblance to his mother is clear. Margo died at age 68 of brain cancer in 1985. Eddie Albert lived until 2005 and was 99 when pneumonia claimed him following a battle with Alzheimer's disease. Sadly, Edward Albert succumbed to lung cancer the following year at only 55. 

What a way to end, right?! But the woman in Edward's lap at least has a right to be there. That is Kate Woodville (former spouse of Patrick Macnee), who he wed in 1979. Their poetess daughter Thais Carmen Woodville Albert (who now goes by Tai Carmen) was partly named after Margo's aunt by marriage, Carmen Castillo, a singer wed to Margo's uncle Xavier Cugat. So, as one of the songs from Lost Horizon (1973) goes, "The world is a circle..."

Merry Christmas from Poseidon's Underworld!

Just a quite note to wish for all my readers the happiest of holiday seasons as we experience Christmas and spy New Year's Eve in the near future. I happened to deck the halls in a bigger way than usual this year only to have a freak snowstorm cancel a planned dinner party I'd been anticipating! Then, without warning, a surgery I had slated for mid-February was moved up to December 18th! Since then I've been working from home and recuperating there -- and am, as a result, grateful that I had festooned the place over the prior weeks. It makes for a more cozy and cheerful atmosphere to have all the little doodads out and about. No need to be concerned about me. I'm fine and will soon be back to my crazy self. In the meantime, I will share a few snaps from my place, finished off by a frenzied tour of my Hollywood-themed Christmas tree. Be well and be happy till next time!