70th Death Anniversary of James Dean Perfect Time to Watch TV Miniseries Remake of John Steinbeck's East of Eden, With Jane Seymour

 

“I’ve done things that would turn your blood to spit.” Cathy Ames

With the 70th anniversary of actor James Dean's death coming this Tuesday, I thought it would be interesting to look at a TV miniseries remake of his first big-screen starring effort:  East of Eden.

Rescued from undeserved oblivion (I don’t remember it ever being re-run), Acorn Media released a three-disc, six-hour-plus boxed set of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden several years back (later re-released by CBS Home Entertainment), the 1981 ABC miniseries adaptation of Steinbeck’s massive novel. Far more faithful to Steinbeck’s original story than the more famous 1955 feature film directed by Elia Kazan and starring James Dean (which only covers the final third of the novel), John Steinbeck’s East of Eden has plenty of time to more fully explore Steinbeck’s generational plotline (adding a sense of depth and completeness to Steinbeck’s biblical allusions), while also allowing a full flowering of the Cathy Ames character, deliciously brought to evil-incarnate life by a wickedly beautiful Jane Seymour (it’s the single best performance of her underrated career). It would seem inevitable that viewers would want to compare this TV remake with the earlier, justly iconic big screen version—a comparison, within limits, that’s surprisingly favorable.

A necessarily bare-bones plot summary of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is best suited here not only because many people are only familiar with the plot from the abbreviated 1955 film, but the length of this miniseries adaptation precludes anything other than a brief rundown.

Connecticut, 1863. Union soldier Cyrus Task (Warren Oates), having lost a leg to a Rebel bullet, has returned from The War Between the States to his farm. His wife (Nellie Bellflower), a devoutly religious woman, is scornful of Cyrus’ phony boasting about his brief war exploits, but is unable to deal with the knowledge that Cyrus has given her a sexually transmitted disease (“Cupid’s itch,” as the doctor calls it). Humiliated before God, she commits suicide by drowning herself in the farm’s pond.

Cyrus, at a loss how to raise his infant son, Adam, remarries and has another son, Charles. As grown young men, Adam (Timothy Bottoms) and Charles (Bruce Boxleitner) continue a destructive sibling rivalry, exacerbated by their competition for the love of their distant father. Charles, at times cruel and vindictive towards the weaker, kinder Adam, eventually stays with the farm while Adam is forced against his will to join the Army to fight Indians out West. Cyrus, meanwhile, has built his false war stories up into a thriving literary career, which segues into a government job in Washington, fighting for pension rights for Civil War veterans.

At the same time, beautiful, amoral, evil Cathy Ames (Jane Seymour) grows up in Massachusetts. Found exposing herself to two young boys in a barn, her pious mother (Grace Zabriskie) forces Cathy to say the boys forced her to do it, and then threatens legal action if the boys’ fathers don’t whip the naked boys in front of her and Cathy—an act that produces a pleased smile on the adolescent Cathy. Later in high school, after destroying the life of one of her teachers, Mr. Grew (Nicholas Pryor), who commits suicide on the church’s altar, Cathy refuses her father’s restrictions on her life (he demands she return to school) and summarily burns down her home—killing both her parents.

Brazenly seducing Jules Edwards (Howard Duff), a whore-master who wants to keep Cathy for his own personal services, Cathy eventually turns on her benefactor, as well, who nearly kills her (after she cuts him with a knife) with a vicious beating. Slithering up to the porch of Charles’ and Adam’s farm (Adam has returned to the family homestead after wandering for some time after the Indian Wars), Cathy is taken in by the soon-battling brothers, with Adam eventually falling hopelessly in love with her (and foolishly idealizing her), while Charles sees right through her act (he says they’re the same devil).

After she seduces Charles (on the evening of her honeymoon to Adam—she drugs him to keep him out of the way), Cathy and Adam leave for California. On their idyllic ranch, Cathy becomes pregnant with twins—twins she utterly rejects, going so far as to shoot Adam a week after giving birth, a bid to escape his notion of a settled family life. With the help of neighbor Sam Hamilton (Lloyd Bridges) and his educated Chinese servant, Lee (Soon-Tek Oh), Adam recovers from his depression over Cathy’s departure, and moves the boys to Salinas, where rebellious Cal (Sam Bottoms) and pious Aron (Hart Bochner) mature, eerily fulfilling the same dynamic that existed between their father and their uncle.

The chief virtue of small-screen John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, aside from the compelling lead performance by Seymour, is the chance to see most of Steinbeck’s complex story enacted on the screen, something that wasn’t possible with the two-hour 1955 big-screen adaptation. There’s no question that from a strictly cinematic viewpoint, from an evaluation of the visual design and mise-en-scene, to the integration of the central performance by James Dean, that the 1955 movie is a superior “aesthetic whole,” if you will, in comparison to the miniseries.

Director Harvey Hart, limited perhaps by what was expected of the visual look of a TV miniseries at the time, keeps most scenes resolutely head-and-shoulders, relying on dialogue-heavy, short scenes (timed to fit between the commercials), to keep the plot moving. Hart, a veteran TV director, doesn’t have a sense of how to have the various themes of the piece flow from anything other than the actors’ lines, nor does scriptwriter Richard Shapiro (another long-time TV vet who would be best known for his involvement in the nighttime soap, Dynasty) transcend the expected limitations of a typical network dramatic offering from 1981—with the exposition kept relatively straightforward and unambiguous (although Shapiro does admirably maintain a period tone with dialogue that doesn’t sound anachronistic). While Hart’s structure may be more conventional than Kazan’s, this kind of basic storytelling can achieve a power through simplicity, particularly when the screenplay stays focused and drives on—which John Steinbeck’s East of Eden‘s does.

Hart and Shapiro do have plenty of room to introduce much more of Steinbeck’s work into the mini. Having recently watched the Kazan version, it struck me (when comparing the two) how at times, the motivations of the Kazan characters (through Paul Osborn’s script) can seem opaque and “rushed,” particularly after spending over six hours with Shapiro’s more faithful evocation of Steinbeck’s generational plot. The most successful element of that expansion is the full delineation of the Cathy character.

In the Kazan version, she’s a shadowy figure, referenced by other people more often than actually represented on the screen (and “removed” from our condemnation because of her advanced age and because we’re only told she runs a brothel…not that she was an enthusiastic prostitute, as in the novel). Critically, in Osborn’s script, Katy/Cathy tells Cal that she rejected Adam because of his goodness and his desire to hold on to her, to keep her away from other people, to “cage” her, if you will.

And with Raymond Massey’s portrayal of Adam emphasizing a religious rigidity (which this version avoids entirely), reinforced by Cal’s rejection of that morality, we have a far more sympathetic reading of the Katy/Cathy character in Kazan’s movie than Steinbeck may have intended. Although we’re told in the Kazan version that Cathy shot Adam, it’s an element of the two characters that doesn’t ring with much emotional depth, because we really don’t have a handle her character.

In John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, however, the full spectrum of Cathy’s awfulness is given free reign, and the portrait is overwhelmingly negative. We see Cathy right at the beginning of her life of evil, first as a child smiling with amusement and satisfaction when the two little boys to whom she exposed herself willingly, are whipped, naked, in front of her (after which she’s scrubbed clean by her mother—an act that Cathy will perform later in the series after she becomes an inveterate prostitute).

Later, she takes great delight in ruining her high school Latin teacher, before taunting her weakling father over his submerged understanding of what a true sociopath she’s always been. The mini makes it clear that she deliberately murdered her parents by burning down their house, and then shows her further manipulation of whore-master Edwards, first by subtly suggesting he “keep” her, and then her final, corrosive humiliation of Edwards when she tells him how much he disgusts her with his touch (Seymour is particularly good in this tough scene, dancing in circles as she taunts Howard Duff with her delicious body and cruel, hard line readings).

Even after her beating by Edwards, she shows no sign of stopping her games, playing Adam and Charles against each other—just for fun—until she shows her true colors to Sam Hamilton during her birthing of the twins (another intense scene with Seymour, where she literally snarls like some kind of animal, shocking Sam, before viciously biting his hand and holding on like some kind of possessed demon). Adam’s understanding and love for Cathy (which isn’t shown as cruel or controlling or religiously motivated, as it’s suggested in the Kazan version) results not in her conversion over to goodness, but in an near-fatal shot from a revolver, pointed by an enraged, uncaring Cathy.

Her tenure in a Monterey brothel run by kindly Anne Baxter is equally perverse—she insists on still turning tricks, even when Baxter tells her it’s not necessary—before it turns homicidal. Finally, we see Cathy/Katy, reduced to a state near madness, as her evil nature totally consumes her soul (a creepy shot of Seymour, eyes rolling, her hands crippled by arthritis, is quite good). This is the Cathy/Katy of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden: an amoral, snake-like creature who turns on everyone with whom she comes into contact.

Another important character totally eliminated from the Kazan version is Lee, the Chinese servant, a character who illuminates one of the key themes of the novel but who is given quite a bit of screen time here. I’m sure there have been numerous papers and articles written uncovering all of Steinbeck’s religious allusions within East of Eden, but one that is front and center within the narrative is the notion of “timshel” (“thou mayest”), in Steinbeck’s conviction that man, in this narrative, is given a choice (through the Cain and Abel story in the Bible) between following good or pursuing evil.

Free choice comes from a divine source, putting man on a plane with god, which trumps any notions of being “born bad,” or being powerless to fight negative traits we may inherit from our parents. In the Kazan version, we do hear Adam tell Cal that man can choose to be good—a lesson Cal reiterates in the finale to the prostrate Adam, proving he had been listening to him all the time. However, in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, it’s a constant undercurrent woven throughout the narrative that achieves true weight—courtesy of the kind, wise Lee—after hours of listening to characters believing that they labored under the burden of carrying on hereditary traits of good and evil.

It’s a fascinating character (well played by Oh), and one that provides a further opportunity for the makers of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden to be more faithful to Steinbeck’s original vision (tellingly, in this more complete version of the story, Cal borrows the $5,000 he needs to plant a field of beans from Lee, not from his mother, Katy, as is depicted in the Kazan version—another Osborn invention that further softens the Katy character).

Where John Steinbeck’s East of Eden falters badly, though, in comparison to Kazan’s version, is in some of the key, critical performances. Seymour, as I wrote before, is a marvel here; anyone familiar with her in movies like Live and Let Die or Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger or even Dr. Quinn – Medicine Woman will be shocked to see her pull all the stops out in this sultry, sometimes scary performance. There’s an iciness to Seymour here, a flat, cold, hard quality she attains with a spooky stare that, coupled with her startling beauty, makes for a most arresting femme fatale performance.

Other cast members are memorable, as well, including Warren Oates, Lloyd Bridges, and Howard Duff (all of them total pros, as we would expect), along with nice supporting turns by Richard Masur and M. Emmet Walsh. However, the critical male leads for the Trask brothers and their sons can’t compete against Seymour’s strong showing here, giving John Steinbeck’s East of Eden a lopsidedness that’s readily apparent when Seymour’s character occupies less screen time during the final third of the film.

Timothy Bottoms, a good actor, has difficulty with the younger Adam Trask, and carries little weight as the older Adam (particularly when he’s supposed to be the father of Sam Bottoms, only four years Timothy’s junior). Nice guy Boxleitner, who’s physically right for Charles, the “bad” son who may be Cal and Aron’s father, simply can’t convey the danger and sexual threat that Charles should have; his character needs to be strong enough to linger on in our minds after he disappears from the narrative at the end of the first third of the mini, but we quickly forget about him (which we shouldn’t, considering how he may figure into the parentage of Aron and Cal).

Hart Bochner disappears on the screen as an ineffectual Aron, while Sam Bottoms has one of the most impossible tasks one could imagine for a young actor: step into a role made iconic by a young James Dean. Forgetting any comparison between the two actors, Sam Bottoms’ approximations of teenaged angst and his torn loyalties between the love and hate for his father and unknown mother, are just that: approximations. He simply doesn’t have enough of a distinctive personality for us to care about Cal as we should, let alone the technical chops that might have saved the performance.

These compromised, ineffectual performances in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden undermine the gained benefits of putting more of Steinbeck up on the screen; it’s too bad that more care wasn’t taken to either extract better performances from the actors cast here, or that better male lead actors weren’t recruited for the roles. Still…there’s the erotically corrosive tour de force turn by Jane Seymour as Cathy Ames, which is more than enough recommendation for this little-seen mini.

PAUL MAVIS IS AN INTERNATIONALLY PUBLISHED MOVIE AND TELEVISION HISTORIAN, A MEMBER OF THE ONLINE FILM CRITICS SOCIETY, AND THE AUTHOR OF THE ESPIONAGE FILMOGRAPHY. Click to order.

Read more of Paul’s TV reviews here. Read Paul’s film reviews at our sister website, Movies & Drinks.

Rest in Peace, Florence Jean Castleberry: Flo Actress Polly Holliday Passes Away

Polly Holliday passed away the other day, and since she made a determined effort to keep her private life just that, any form of eulogy is best served by looking at her singular creation, Flo, the gum-snappin', man-crazy waitress she made popular on the hit 70s sitcom, Alice.  Rest in Peace, Florence Jean Castleberry.

 

A few years back, Warner Bros.' Archive Collection line of hard-to-find cult and library titles released, Flo: The Complete Series, a 4-disc, 29-episode collection of the Alice spinoff's one and a half seasons, which originally aired from the spring of 1980, to the summer of 1981. Starring that force of nature, Polly Holliday, along with a solid supporting cast including Geoffrey Lewis, Jim B. Baker, Sudie Bond, Joyce Bulifant, Leo Burmester, Lucy Lee Flipping, and Stephen Keep, Flo had the proven potential to be a long, successful runner for CBS, before the meddling network, the various striking actors' unions--and perhaps a few snags in the show's concept?--all inadvertently conspired to bury this Top Ten Nielsen hit in its first full season. 

A missed opportunity that CBS and simple misfortune royally screwed up, Flo could have been a classic CBS 80s comedy like its host series, Alice--from the looks of these 29 episodes it might have been even better.  However, in the span of 12 months, it went from being the 7th most-watched show in the country...to being quietly axed. A real shame, particularly because it ended Polly Holliday's association with the character for which she'll always be remembered: hot pistol Florence Jean Castleberry. Equal parts silliness, raucous slapstick, naughty innuendo, and sweet, affecting drama, Flo was a real winner...while it lasted.  

 

Flo is quite funny and charming and silly and surprisingly touching at times, while Holliday is a joy to behold as she expands her well-known Flo character well-past its initial broad characterization. 

 

 

So long, Phoenix, Arizona and hello Fort Worth, Texas! Red-headed wowzer Florence Jean Castleberry (Polly Holliday), better known as "Flo" to just about every trucker in the American Southwest, has left behind her friends at Mel's Diner to return home, where a promotion (hostess!) beckons at the fancy Thundering Herd restaurant. Stopping off at her childhood home, Flo reunites with her ornery mama, Velma (Sudie Bond), and her repressed, officious younger sister, Fran (Lucy Lee Flippin). When Flo's best friend from high school, bubbly Miriam Willoughby (Joyce Bulifant), drops by, the gals head back to their favorite hang-out, the Prairie Dog roadhouse.

There, Flo meets its colorful employees and frequent customers: crotchety little stud bartender Earl Tucker (Geoffrey Lewis, excellent as always, and a good match for Holliday); the roadhouse's erudite, fish-out-of-water piano player, Les Kincaid (Stephen Keep); the Prairie Dog's mortgage holder, weasely banker Farley Waters (Jim J. Baker); and naive, would-be musician and grease monkey, Randy Stumphill (Leo Burmester). 

Somehow or other, through the urgings of her friend, the knowledge that the run-down Prairie Dog could be sold off again, and banker Waters practically begging Flo to take the floundering bar off his hands, Flo quickly finds herself the new owner of the Flo's Yellow Rose roadhouse--with her beloved trailer serving as collateral. Flo the waitress turns into Flo the small business owner...with all the comedic trials and tribulations that go along with that step-up for the flirty, life-loving, man-eating firecracker.

 

Now, I'm sure I caught most of the six episodes of the mid-season launch of Flo back in the spring of 1980 (that funny third episode featuring a luau birthday party for Velma came back to me immediately), but the rest of the show's 23 episodes the following season didn't ring a bell (to be honest, as much as I loved Holliday...I was probably watching that deliciously sadistic geek show, That's Incredible! on ABC).  

Watching it again recently, I found it to be quite charming and amusing, as well as quietly thoughtful, at times, surprisingly. I certainly wasn't alone in that estimation, at least during its spring bow in 1980, when with just six episodes it scored high-enough ratings to make it the seventh most-watched series for the entire 1979-1980 year--a remarkable showing for Flo, and a testament to viewers' love of that gum-crackin', hip-swinging, always-smiling character.

What followed, though, doomed Flo to an unwarranted early death, a shame considering how consistently funny and truly sweet it played. Of course, divining the reasons for a TV show's cancellation usually comes down to little more than informed guesswork, because numerous factors come into play between a show's production and its continued presence on the network's schedule (with a lot of insider information that necessarily never becomes available to anyone outside the production/network circles). However, something went wrong to turn a 7th-placed Nielsen hit into a canceled, quickly forgotten project, all in a matter of twelve short months, so...what happened? 

 

Certainly, the notorious 1980 AFTRA/SAG actors' strike that July (over cable and video sales' residuals) may have been a prime factor, crippling the networks' ability to deliver new product like Flo in time for their September schedule launches. If you were a regular TV watcher back then, you'll remember the relative chaos that ensued that September, when endless reruns, variety shows and "reality" programming like Real People and That's Incredible! (immune from the strike), "special event" programming like the miniseries Shogun, and TV airings of big theatrical movies largely replaced the regularly scheduled series programming most TV viewers had come to expect for any given new fall season. 

Not only did the delay help dampen the viewer momentum built up by a limited-run series like Flo (its meager six episodes were rerun at least twice before new ones eventually aired at the end of October), the jumbled, disorganized scheduling practically guaranteed that viewers didn't know what the hell was on... or when.  Before DVRs, the internet, and streaming eliminated the time factor in finding and "catching" a particular series and its episodes, one has to remember that in 1980, viewers had to rely on either their weekly printed TV guide--with very little forthcoming info on when or where the following episode of a particular show was going to air--or their primitive needle-in-a-haystack channel-switching ("Hey...isn't Flo supposed to be on tonight? Oh well, switch on That's Incredible! It's a new one,").

 

Not exactly helping viewers find Flo's was CBS' decision for Flo's second season timeslot shift--or should I write "shifts," since CBS moved Flo four more times. Scoring huge ratings with its initial six episodes that spring (try around 24 million viewers each week), Flo's Monday 9:30pm slot after boffo hit M*A*S*H (4th) by all logic should have remained in place (its difficult to bring an audience back after four months with only six episodes). However, CBS' premature decision to have Flo anchor their fall Monday night schedule at the 8:00pm "family hour" was a fatal mistake; kids could have watched Flo...but it's not a "kids/family" show--which was certainly a factor in viewer patterns back in 1980. 

When Flo finally did premiere at the end of October (unfortunately with a weak, silly premiere episode about a skunk living under the Yellow Rose), it was buried by already-established That's Incredible! (not delayed by the strike) on ABC, and by NBC's family-friendly Little House on the Prairie (which had enough episodes in the can prior to the strike to ride out the scheduling chaos...while gaining a lot of eyeballs due to NBC's early-season dominance, thanks to special programming like Shogun). 

 

Panicking at the fast-sinking ratings of their once-Top Ten hit, in February, 1981, CBS inexplicably moved Flo to a death spot--Saturdays at 9:00pm--where it was massacred by ABC's number 5-rated smash, The Love Boat. A move back a half-hour to Saturdays 8:30pm in March did nothing to stem the ratings' bleeding, and Flo was cancelled without fanfare in May...with its two remaining unaired episodes burned-off in June, ironically enough, back at Flo's original Tuesday 9:30pm timeslot.

It's possible, too, I suppose, that people just got tired of Flo...although I doubt it. Watching all 29 episodes in one go, rather than trying to catch them during those hectic original run days, it's easier to spot the show's trouble spots--spots that theoretically could have been ironed out with more time (and under less stressful production conditions). Flo's not a "perfect" sitcom, by any means, but most of it works quite well (in a few years, Cheers would successfully take the same basic concept and adapt it to an inner-city Boston setting...with its creators saying they invented this wholly original concept). 

There are problems, though, the foremost one being Flo's relationship with Earl. Understandably, the producers of Flo had a fine line to walk with Flo's amorous adventures--the central comedic crux of the character. When Flo was on Alice, her unseen lascivious activities were only alluded to, with big laughs resulting from the viewers' unfettered imaginations. Here, Flo is the whole show, so something has to be shown...but not with the degree of lustiness that was implied at Mel's Diner (otherwise, a visit to the local Health Department might be the only weekly Flo plotline). 

 

So, if we can't really see Flo be a wholesome whore, we have to know she's largely kidding about what goes on...at the same time believing she still might do something with all those "tight-jeaned cowboys" after all. Add to that tough-nut-to-crack the presence of Earl, and we have no idea where they stand as a couple. Once or twice Flo mentions "dates" with Earl, which is news to us, since those dates are never shown or even discussed. They act jealous with each other at times...but why, when mostly they act like bickering employer/employee? It's an inconsistency of character motivation that continues to nag at the viewer throughout the season.

Other little drawbacks pop up, like superfluous characters (I absolutely adore Joyce Bulifant, but she serves no purpose here...and then we're matter-of-factly told she's pregnant--where did that come from?), or the lack of a strong on-site antagonist to stir up Flo's ornery streak (Baker's Farley is fine whenever he does a walk-on, but it's not the same as nasty/nice Vic Tayback at the grill, goading Flo to explode all the time). 

However, they're minor considerations in the end because so much of Flo--thanks in large measure to Polly Holliday--is so funny and warm. Backed up by a first-rate production team that includes producers/writers Dick Clair (It's a Living, Mama's Family), Jim Mulligan (M*A*S*H, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour), George Geiger (Hunter, Simon & Simon), Ron Landry (Gimme a Break!), and especially James R. Stein and Robert Illes (the sublime Fernwood Tonight, America 2-Night, The Carol Burnett Show), Flo's scripts can alternate between hilarious and surprisingly poignant, with Holliday masterfully guiding the changing tone with her thoroughly engaging, disarming characterization.

 

Straight-up comedy outings like Happy Birthday, Mama (containing the best Flo one-liner in the series: "I don't know why they call it a 'sarong' when it looks 'sa-right' to me!") alternate with poignant, affecting pieces like the remarkable 2-parter, A Castleberry Thanksgiving, from Stein and Illes. Flo's estranged family gathers for Thanksgiving as she desperately tries to repair long-held hurts brought on by the disappearance 30 years before of her father, well-played by Forrest Tucker. Holliday's turn here is heartbreaking, and the episode is determinedly honest in its resolution: in the end there's hope of reconciliation for the family...but only that, and no more). 

Maybe Flo's deft facility in moving between hilarious comedy and adroit drama threw audiences; maybe most viewers only wanted to hear Flo yell, "Kiss my grits!" while she paraded around in her satin "disco pants," throwing out innuendos with abandon. Hard to say.

Don't get me wrong: I could watch the adorable Holliday do that all day long (she's always laughing, looking like she's enjoying her own turn even more than us--it's infectious). However, seeing her working so skillfully through something like A Castleberry Thanksgiving, all I can do is regret that there weren't more such opportunities for Holliday to further expand and reveal her raucous, sexy, funny, caring, heartbreaking creation.

SUMMER'S DEAD...GET BACK TO SCHOOL, STUPID: Classic Educational Shorts, Volume 6: Troubled Teens

 

I noticed the other day that Walmart has school supplies loaded up and ready to go for all the little bastards heading back to s-cruel. And for the first time in over 30 years, I don’t have to buy any of it.

The last one graduated. I’m free from the tyranny of state-sponsored indoctrination. No more excessive amounts of paper and pencils and tissues and folders and other crap that my kid would never use and that went into the supply closet, to supposedly be divvied out to my kid when needed…but which was really gathered up into some kind of commie/socialist slush fund for parents too lazy to provide for their own kids (wanna guess where all the leftovers went at the end of the year? That’s right: the black market). God I hate public education.

A lot of the rot stems from the schools not showing educational shorts anymore. It’s true. 

A few years back, Kino Classics released Classic Educational Shorts, Volume 6: Troubled Teens, a single disc collection of 18 educational/social guidance shorts from the 1950s through the 1980s (teens weren’t troubled in the 1940s, apparently), focusing this time on how to explain to young Johnny why he shouldn’t speed, why he should brush his teeth, why he shouldn’t beat people up―and most importantly―why he suddenly feels funny in his bathing suit area.

Selected by A/V Geeks founder Skip Elsheimer (who provides the informative, amusing “film notes” for each entry that I’ve reprinted below), the shorts included in these Classic Educational Shorts collections were shown to American school kids like myself on noisy, squelchy 16mm projectors right up to the 1980s. What I wrote in my Volume 5 review applies equally to this collection: whether you’re watching these orphaned educational/social guidance shorts for laughs or for insight (better be careful on that last score….), it’s impossible not be taken in by the charm of their melodrama, their unintentional humor, their at-times inexplicable wrong-headedness, their sometimes surprising deftness and understanding, and especially their ineptitude. Let’s take a look….

AS BOYS GROW
Medical Arts Productions 1957 B&W 16 min.

“A wonderfully open discussion for boys on the subject of puberty and sexual reproduction. These types of films were a substitute for a coach’s lecture, which ultimately is a substitute for a parent’s lecture on the subject. When shown today, the film always elicits giggles from the audience, who soon realize that its frank yet sensitive approach to sex education is refreshingly honest and better than what they learned in school.”

Two semesters of deadly dull high school Health Class, condensed into 16 speedy, informative minutes. I don’t know if gym instructors like Coach Pete are even allowed anymore to have impromptu (and quite detailed) rap sessions about sex education with young boys, but this sure beats the book my parents gave me when I was in fifth grade (A Doctor Talks to 9 to 13-Year-Olds). No-holds barred discussions, including wet dreams and masturbation (“It’s something normal,” Coach Pete calmly states…as all those PTA/Junior Bake Sale members previewing the movie fainted), and of course the obligatory pay-off: understand your body and you’ll get to go swimming with a couple of pretty stacked babes (look out girls―those dopes know what they’re doing now…). A rare example of a vintage educational short that holds up perfectly well today.

LAST DATE
Wilding Picture Productions 1950 B&W 18 min.
Lumbermen’s Mutual Casualty Company

“Educational film superstar Dick York (Bewitched, Inherit the Wind, Shy Guy) plays a speed demon teenager whose new car and devil-may-care driving style are a hit with the girls. Last Date was named Best Non-Theatrical Picture of 1949 by the National Committee on Films for Safety. The Lumbermen’s Mutual Casualty Company actually coined the term “teenicide” in the late 1940s to address the epidemic of teenager-related traffic fatalities that plagued the United States after World War II.”

The greatest Edgar G. Ulmer movie he never directed. Dizzyingly crammed with more melodrama and action than some highly regarded 50s noirs, the doom-laden Last Date deservedly is a classic of the calamity-filled, “you’re gonna die, teens” social guidance genre. From the creepy, shadow-filled, funereal opening shot of Jeannie, her back to the camera as she almost sobs, “Who would want to go out with me now?”, to the beautifully concise exposition as Jeannie makes her choice between square killjoy Larry and leering speed freak Durweed (we know what Jeannie knows, too, when Nick spits out, “I’m always in a hurry, honey!”), to the horrifying conclusion (“I’ve had my last date,” she cries as she smashes her mirror, saving our breakfast by sparring us the sight of her no-doubt horribly disfigured face), Last Date is a marvel of pinpoint scripting, expressive direction from Lewis D. Collins, and perfectly-matched performances. As a deterrent to speeding, I’m not so sure (when you take a tragic situation and turn it into ghoulish, lush romanticism, isn’t there a small, weird part of you that actually enjoys the on-screen suffering?), but as macabre melodrama, the lightning-fast Last Date is as good as it gets.

WHAT MADE SAMMY SPEED?
Sid Davis Productions 1957 Color 10 min.

“Filmmaker Sid “King of Calamity” Davis offers up his take on reckless teen drivers with this film. Mental Hygiene author Ken Smith noted that, ‘in this film (Davis) had the budget to make it look good.’ The film has a similar plot line to another Sid Davis short, Bicycle Clown, in which a detective tries to figure out why a boy was being so reckless on his bike.”

Shot and told in semi-Dragnet style (complete with beefy, quasi-Ben Alexander juvenile officer clone), What Made Sammy Speed? just needs some gory real-life shots of actual roadkill mayhem to put it over into the top echelon of producer Sid “King of Calamity” Davis’ efforts―we don’t even get a peak at Sammy under the sheet. A whole litany of pop psychology triggers are trotted out to explain Sam’s reckless driving, including low self-esteem, insecurity, juvenile rebellion (and my favorite Freudian saw: sublimated rage at good old Dad’s own reckless driving, as well as his controlling nature masked by amelioration, when Dad gets Sammy off with the cops). However, once we’re told that Sammy tells “women drivers” jokes, we know he’s a goner. Nice 50s grainy color look to this one.

A QUARTER MILLION TEENAGERS
Churchill Films 1964 Color 16 min.

“A look at the epidemic scourge of teenagers beginning to experiment with unprotected sex. Churchill Films periodically updated the film―first to Half a Million Teenagers, then Half a Million…Plus, and finally A Million Teenagers in 1985―as the number of infected teens increased and other sexually -transmitted diseases were added to the tally, including herpes and AIDS.”

I’m pretty sure I remember seeing some version of A Quarter Million Teenagers back in high school, because those cool charcoal and watercolor drawings during the opening credits came right back to me. The photos of syphilis sufferers are pretty tame (join the service and you’ll see the ones you never forget), but I loved the strange Satan Bug animation that happens whenever those charcoal characters cross each other: ugly green crosshatches appear over their nether regions. In today’s world of drug-resistant superbugs, the movie’s confident “penicillin will knock it out” viewpoint is grimly humorous.

DRUG ATTACK
Lockheed Aircraft 1969 Color 13 min.

“A very strange film about drugs in our society that features no narration or dialogue. This was part of a series of films made for Lockheed Aircraft. Our guess is that the films were made for managers and employees of the company, to educate them about the growing epidemic of drug abuse among their workforce and the workers’ children.”

A super freak-out trigger film with no narration, Drug Attack is a pretty weird little movie that seems to be trying to say something about modern society and drugs…but what the filmmakers are trying to say seems hopelessly muddled. Hep cat jazz/rock music blasts over endless shots of modern life-in-motion, until we get incongruous shots of empty playgrounds as smashing Elmer Bernstein-like music blares on. There’s a cinema verite-inspired drug bust in the park, and everything is frantic, baby, like an extended version of the assassin recruiting film in The Parallax View, until things calm down and a doctor silently examines the detained teens (I knew the brunette was a hype…). Um…what? Very cool and completely pointless.

VIOLENCE AND VANDALISM
Directions Unlimited Film Corp. 1972 Color 14 min.

“TV actor Hugh O’Brien talks about the factors behind vandalism and actually mentions it as a form of political expression―something other vandalism films shied away from. Unfortunately, showing kids gleefully trashing the school probably trumped the film’s anti-vandalism message.”

TV’s Wyatt Earp says it’s cool to be upset…but don’t blow your cool. O’Brien, who’s well known off-screen for his long-term commitment to youth-oriented volunteer work, makes for a believable, down-to-earth spokesman here, and his message is fairly even-handed. He allows that, while TV and the mass media may not cause violence, they do bring it into the home and make it commonplace (how many guys did he plug on that Western?). He acknowledges that we all feel like lashing out at times, even out of simple boredom, but that “freedom requires responsibility,” and that grand-stand plays of “the excitement of violence” never help society. Whether any of this matters to the punks watching this is up for grabs (it doesn’t help that those vandals look like they’re really enjoying “the excitement of violence”), but his final point is the best: keep enforcing the stereotype of the violent, marauding teen, and nobody is going to pay taxes to support you…a now-quaint notion of the self-determining taxpayer-as-free-citizen, don’t you think?

TEETH
Cal Dunn Studios 1973 Color 12 min.
American Dental Association

“‘Teeth. Why not?’ The American Dental Association gets hip and tries to appeal to the young teen generation with the film’s quick edits, a rock and roll soundtrack, and hip slogans such as, ‘Avoid the dental gap!’ and, ‘The “in” thing with dentists is keeping teeth in!’ While possibly connecting with the young audience, the film risked becoming outdated very quickly as fashions and music within youth culture change so quickly.”

Or: The American Electrical Dental Banana Experiment. A now-amusing Laugh-In-style groove that looks like it was already five years behind the times when it bowed in 1973 (it has that filtered, Brady Bunch look of sanitized hippie culture that you knew was bullshit when you first saw Greg as Johnny Bravo). Lots of strobe lights and dancing teens flashing their pearly whites, before some obnoxious little jerk tries to break the fourth wall and deadpan, “Ho hum…now a short pause for the message.” If Teeth‘s message is to brush, brush, brush, it gets lost in all the generic “happening” music, the mugging, the jokes about girls always being late, and that final groovy dune buggy date (sigh…). The kind of educational short that causes some viewers to take all educational shorts as hopeless goofs.

LUCY
Perennial Films 1975 Color 12 min.
Planned Parenthood

“Lucy looks at the life of a fifteen-year-old mother who is trying to make a life for herself and her baby in a crowded apartment in the projects with her nine siblings. The message in this film is clear. If you do get pregnant from having premarital sex, there are options for the teenaged parents, but dancing in a discotheque and leisurely walks with your boyfriend in the park won’t be among them.”

A pro-life educational short…from Planned Parenthood? Once you get your head around that, Lucy is an admirably straight little drama that respects its characters and storyline. Told in first-person narration, attention-starved Lucy, looking for anything as a distraction from her crowded life, explains how Joe was “outta sight, he was my guy!”, before the too-young couple quickly progress to sex. Her idyllic, fantasy romance is shattered, though, when she becomes pregnant, but Lucy doesn’t give up on Lucy, showing how she tries to make a better life for herself through typing lessons and a new-found maturity that at least gives her the value of some hard-won wisdom: “If only Joe and I hadn’t been so dumb.” To its credit, Lucy resists the temptation to glamorize or romanticize any aspect of teen pregnancy (has the pendulum finally swung back from Teen Moms?); any girl watching this in 1975 at least got that message. Whether it stopped any of those girls is another story.

THE PARTY’S OVER
Northern Virginia Educational Telecommunications Association 1977 Color 14 min.
U.S. Department of Health

“Produced as part of the ‘Jackson Junior High’ series, The Party’s Over begins with a teacher leading a discussion with his students about under-aged drinking and what they think the drinking age should be. Then we see the kids at a party dealing with those very issues. The teacher was played by Richard Sanders, a year before he portrayed newscaster Les Nessman on TV’s WKRP in Cincinnati.”

Oh my god we saw this in high school…but it was after WKRP in Cincinnati was a hit, and everyone kept muttering, “It’s Les Nessman―dork.” Cringe-worthy today for me at least because it brings back all those completely pointless, waste-of-time hours spent in those 70s Free to Be You and Me “discussion groups” so highly praised by the teachers who didn’t really want to “teach” anything. Mom and Dad, out-of-touch in evening gown and tux, are understanding liberals here who value the schools branching out into social science…until they find a wino party at their own home and Dad starts yelling, “What the hell is going on here?” Classic. Of course it’s the sensible girls who first smell danger at the party, but we knew all along that pizza-faced Freddie with his striped Hanna-Barbera® slacks, was trouble just waiting to happen. Come to think of it…all the kids are obnoxious here.

THE DAY I DIED
Gordon-Kerckhoff Productions 1978 Color 14 min.

“The Day I Died tells the story of a seventeen-year-old boy under the influence of alcohol, who is killed in an automobile accident. The pacing and narration of the film are so excruciatingly melodramatic that it was sure to alienate its target audience. A companion film, All My Tomorrows, was aimed at teenage girls who abuse barbiturates, and shares this film’s grim, slow motion pace, creepy voice-over, and music.”

One of my all-time favorite social guidance shorts, which I remember seeing in my seventh grade social studies class like it was yesterday. All the elements that Skip Elsheimer finds objectionable―the dreamlike, funereal slow-motion; the whacked-out narration and fish-eyed direction, and the increasingly hysterical tone of the piece―are all the things I love about The Day I Died, then and now. More horror show than anything else, with our narrator speaking from the grave, The Day I Died starts off like a vaguely unsettling entry from The Twilight Zone, with the viewer hoping there’ll be some kind of twist or “it was all a dream” ending…before certain doom settles in and our dead teen is laid out in a coffin (that shot gave me nightmares), pleading with his family, “Please don’t put me in the ground!” as the rest of the zombies slo-mo out of frame. Classic moment: check out Dad’s face when Mom comes with him to I.D. his dead son’s body…he looks like he’s inspecting a small dent in his Bonneville’s fender. Along with Last Date, worth the price of Classic Educational Shorts, Volume 6: Troubled Teens alone.

BONUS SHORTS: A TEACHER’S GUIDE

FACING REALITY
Knickerbocker Productions 1954 B&W 11 min.
McGraw-Hill Book Company

“Mike hides all his inadequacy and self-esteem issues by being negative about the upcoming school dance. Can this bizarre little film, with its surreal imagery, help us figure out how to get over such feelings? And will the fact that Mike’s classmates know of his insecurity issues make them go any easier on him? Probably not.”

Cracker-barrel psychology unfortunately takes over from the movie’s promising, surreal opening. When Facing Reality opens with this bizarre, almost frightening image of a two-faced woman turning around and around in a circle of other teens, one might be forgiven in assuming the movie is going to be something special. However, Facing Reality quickly regains its conventional bearings, and we’re given a litany of facile Freudian reasons why Mike is a pain in the ass. Apparently, it all started when he dropped that glass at the malt shop…. Pretty standard after the interesting opening, with a good performance by deeply sublimated Mike.

A CASE FOR BEER
Kansas State University 1970 Color 10 min.
Falstaff Brewing Corporation

“Fascinating training film made for convenience store employees on how to spot under-aged drinkers―not an easy task at a time when most ID cards didn’t have a photo and could easily be modified. The interesting twist with this short is that the film stresses not to totally alienate the young customers as they will be of drinking age soon enough, and you don’t want to lose their business.”

Did you see what five bucks and change could buy you then? A six-pack to start, some hot dogs…a real party. A pretty interesting instructional short that isn’t concerned at all in condemning underage drinking―only in stopping it at the convenience mart level so owners don’t lose their licenses. Most of the comedy is awful (“Well…he checked everything but her age,” winks the narrator after a young clerk eyeballs one of Dino’s Ding-a-Ling Sisters), but it is cool to see how lame I.D.s used to be―was everyone getting away with murder back then? Talk about being off the grid. No apologies, either, in those last golden days of guilt-free living, in linking Americans enjoying their leisure time and getting totally blasted.

TALKING TO YOUR TEENAGER ABOUT VD
West Glen Films 1972 Color 19 min.
Travelers Insurance

“This film tells parents that venereal disease is ‘not a crime, it’s a disease’. We see a group of teenagers explain that they don’t want to talk with their parents about their sex lives, even though open communication could help prevent exposure to disease. The rap session is intercut with scenes of a doctor explaining the facts about VD transmission―just in case a parent does actually converse with his or her teen!”

Ugh…see The Party’s Over above. Dirty, smelly hippies bitching and whining about how Mom and Dad are clueless idiots (“Mother’s national pastime is worrying,” and “They just don’t get it,”), mixed in clumsily with drops from a doctor detailing how much fun it is to get V.D.. The funniest line (today) is the kid moaning about his parents, “they grew up in the dark ages,”―guess what today’s kids think of you, Shaggy? If this was meant for parents, to show them the concerns and fears of their own teenagers, in the hopes that these uncommunicative parents would reach out to them…it pretty much fails on all counts: Mom and Dad aren’t given much slack by the ungrateful punks (and thus making the adult viewer a tad…defensive), while the kids seem to need not so much understanding as a big, soapy brush and a kick in the ass.

CONDOMS: A RESPONSIBLE OPTION
Landmark Films 1985 Color 10 min.

Produced during the AIDS epidemic, this film lightheartedly tackles the issue of ‘safe sex.’ It also dramatizes the idea that if you have unprotected sex, you’ll be having sex with all of your partner’s previous partners. We like the film because of the assembly line footage of condoms being manufactured and tested.”

The best part of Condoms: A Responsible Option comes in the very first shot: the company’s logo, Landmark Films, is a huge phallic obelisk. It’s all downhill from there, as an instantly detestable theatre group of woefully marginal “actor types” (imaginatively monikered, “The Group”) enact the equivalent of a bad lab theatre assignment about sexual freedom in the age of AIDS. The black pharmacist raising his eyebrows in appreciation at the girl buying condoms, and the outtake shots of the condom testers screwing around at the factory, are pretty funny, though. Plays like one of those hysterically funny, deliberately bad sketches on SCTV, like Libby Wolfson’s play I’m Taking My Own Head, Screwing It On Right, and No Guy’s Gonna Tell Me It Ain’t…only Condoms: A Responsible Option is bad, but not deliberately, and not even remotely funny.

SOCIAL SEMINAR PROMO
National Institute of Mental Health 1972 Color 8 min.

This short introduction to NIMH’s Social Seminar series provides insight into the difficulties faced by teachers when addressing drug abuse among young people. These approaches were almost completely forgotten in the 1980s, with the rise of the Just Say No and DARE anti-drug education programs.”

Tough to evaluate because it’s just a series of jumbled-up promos for other educational films, largely absent of their context. What you can decipher out of it, though, looks dodgy (one of the movies features that single most useless psycho-babble goof of all time: role-playing). I’m not sure these last three excerpts were the best things to include on this disc, even if they are considered (bogus) bonuses.

TEENAGE CONFLICT
Family Films 1960 B&W (excerpts)

With its ‘Teenage’ series, the Christian film company Family Films attempted to address some of the problems faced by Christian teens. While most of the films dealt with peer pressure, this film addresses the conflict between fact and faith. A boy and his siter―who are having trouble reconciling their traditional Christian beliefs with the marvels of modern science―are shown that Christian ideology and science are not incompatible. The film features Hayden Rourke (I Dream of Jeannie).”

When Dr. Bellows says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom,” I expected Major Healey and Master to come barging in. Interestingly, after Hayden Rourke’s rather strident statement, Teenage Conflict turns around and basically condemns it as out-of-touch―not what you’d expect from a Christian short from 1960. With Dr. George, the newly-minted scientist-in-Christ, Rourke’s teen son explores his doubts about religion and science, with the writing coming in as fair and thoughtful―at least as much as can be gleaned from these excerpts. When Dr. George asks the kid how much he loves his mother, and then asks him to scientifically measure it, Teenage Conflict comes up with an instantly graspable―and mildly compelling―analogy for its case of science and religion being compatible (and this from your godless, atheistic movie reviewer, dear reader). Too bad we can’t see the whole thing.

WHEN I’M OLD ENOUGH, GOOD-BYE!
New York State Employment Service 1962 B&W Excerpts (4 min.)
Louis De Rochemont Associates

Hip, heavy-handed and dramatic (imagine a classroom film directed by Elia Kazan or John Cassavetes), this film shows that a high school boy’s decision to quit school and get a job isn’t as liberating as he expected it to be.”

In the above “film notes,” Skip Elsheimer hits it right on the head with When I’m Old Enough, Good-bye!, an overwrought, overheated Method exercise in operatic angst that’s so teasingly intriguing one wishes the whole movie was available. Big-screen quality lighting, suitably tortured, “internal” performances, and a general air of self-satisfied, artsy-fartsy self-importance (just look at that title), make this entry, even in excerpts, a beautiful example of content completely swamped by over-zealous execution.

THE GANG
L.A. County Board of Supervisors 1983 Color Excerpts (9 min.)

“When a school is vandalized by teenagers, outraged community members gather to blame the crime on gang activity, but gradually come to accept their share of responsibility.”

Again, as with the two previous bonus shorts, it’s difficult to get an accurate or fair bead on The Gang since only excerpts are shown here. Expressionistic in design (the group has its expensive conference table plunked down in the middle of a dilapidated slum dwelling), with a few surprises here and there (the angry young black man is called a “Tom” by the even angrier young black man), and the expected inanities (when the sensitive, clueless older white guy expresses hope for reaching out to minorities, the dim-bulb woman blankly states, “That’s beautiful,”). According to the first title card, some of these characters are real victims of violence, and to them, our hearts go out…but that mitigating factor aside, everyone’s performance is set at “11” here.

Paul Mavis is an internationally published movie and television historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of THE ESPIONAGE FILMOGRAPHY. Click to order.