Imagine, though, if she called you up late at night
and talked to you for two hours
and it was mostly apologizing for bothering you. So that it’s just one more layer of frosting.
Which is just something that goes along with kind of a depressive temperament.
So, there’s a lot of narcissism in self-hatred.
A giant tobacco company offers the small town of Eagle Rock, Iowa $25M if all 4,006 residents can give up smoking for 30 days.
With that kind of premise, you already know that Cold Turkey is going to be a super-broad satire movie, one that you really have to be in the mood to watch.
Directed by Norman Lear, all characters are one-dimensional and the themes are obvious, but that doesn’t matter. That the topic of the movie is smoking feels almost quaint and warm. Remember those days?
Of course, it’s not really about smoking; it’s really about avarice, smallmindedness, the voraciousness of Big Tobacco, the radical Right, and so on.
Watch it for standout performances from Graham Jarvis, as the power-hungry leader of the ultra-right Christopher Mott Society. He’s not interested in policing the event until he asks if he can wear a cap and an armband. Cold Turkey is worth watching just for Graham Jarvis:
Pippa Scott is the twitchy, put-upon wife of minister Dick Van Dyke:
Bob Newhart is the evil mastermind behind the whole scheme:
Barbara Cason:
It’s an uneven, imbalanced movie. At one point, Bob Newhart realizes that it’s time to subvert the whole operation because it’s going too well. You’re expecting many delicious scenes of subversion. But nothing happens.
Plus, the movie takes so long to get started. There is so much comedic potential in the movie that could be mined, yet the heavy front end sucks up precious minutes of the movie’s 100-minute run-time.
Cold Turkey is worth watching, if anything, for its fantastic character set-pieces.
History remains frozen solid at 214 W. Neeley St., Dallas, Texas.
The home where Lee Harvey Oswald lived with his wife Marina in 1963, and where the famous picture of him holding the rifle used to assassinate JFK was taken, not only is there but the side yard is still there, largely the same.
The exterior stairs and even the distinctive angled picket fence are the same as they were nearly 60 years ago.
It ran only from 1963 to 1965, but Kraft Suspense Theater (later titled Crisis) had some of the underpinnings of a great anthology show, much like Twilight Zone: name actors, accomplished directors, color in an era of black and white, a full hour-long slot, generous budgets, and the massive Universal lot to work with.
For anyone who loves Hitchcock or Twilight Zones–and has seen them all and is hungry for more–you’d think that you’ve stumbled on a treasure trove of lost films and episodes when you first see Kraft.
But, somehow, most of the shows fail. That somehow can be traced to the weak writing. Weak writing is only further weakened when it has to fill an hour-long slot–a problem that plagued even writers of Twilight Zone.
One episode that works, though, is The Gun. It’s sinister in so many ways. Start with the actors.
Veteran actor Eddie Albert plays a dentist who’s a kind, concerned father. This is difficult because his son, played by Peter Lazer, is genuinely disturbed. With a husky man-voice paired with the body of a teenager, not to mention an oddly misshapen head and swollen mouth, actor Lazer simply looks creepy.
After the family house is robbed and Albert fails to shoot the robber at the behest of wife Dina Merrill, Merrill develops a fascination with guns that she passes onto Lazer.
At the same time, Lazer and a friend torment a neighbor old lady, whose shaky mental health is exacerbated when jets from the nearby air force base fly overhead.
The torment even extends to Lazer and friend anonymously supplying the lady with a bolt and ammunition for her WWI-era rifle that’s been missing a bolt.
Why does he do this? Lazer later says to help her protect herself. But as a viewer, it feels that Lazer helps her complete her rifle only as an act of further bullying.
The only wrong note in The Gun is the very ending. But it’s so freakishly wrong that it almost feels surreal and perfect.
One of the less savory aspects of the William Talman raid in 1960 was one of the members of the party: Lola DeWitt.
On March 12, 1960, TV show Perry Mason actor William Talman was arrested in West Hollywood, along with seven others, on narcotics charges after officers found marijuana.
Besides Talman, we have his friend James H. Baker, a producer, a married couple, Peter and Suzanne Helpelt, a married woman named Mrs. Peggy Louise Flannigan who later married Talman, and a woman named Mrs. Willie Donovan.
Another member, Richard Reibold, the host of the party, could barely be called respectable. Reibold held a high-paying ad executive job. But only a few years before, Reibold had been accused of attempting to kidnap and rape Mrs. Ann Burkhard, 24, from the Bloomingdale’s department store in Fresh Meadows, Queens, NY.
And then we have the seventh member of the Talman group, Lola DeWitt: a human catastrophe who destroyed everything she touched.
Born April 11, 1928, in Wisconsin to Luella DeWitt (later, Gunther) and Paul Douglas DeWitt, Lola DeWitt was trouble from the start.
Lola always wanted to be theatrical, her mother later recounted. Even as a little girl, Lola craved the limelight.
Mrs. DeWitt said that her daughter was beautiful, perhaps even “too beautiful.” This may very well have been mother-daughter rivalry, because Lola DeWitt was attractive but not a stunner. Still, Lola may have gained some of the male attention her less-than-attractive mother Luella DeWitt never had.
According to her mother, Lola’s beauty as a young girl “turned her head” and it was enough to get her in with fast company.
Then Lola DeWitt met, married, and became pregnant by Freddie Stewart.
Born Morris Joseph Lazar, Stewart shed his name for a more Anglo-Saxon one–a common practice in show business at the time. He combined the names of Freddie Bartholemew and James Stewart to produce Freddie Stewart.
Freddie Stewart was in show business but he wasn’t exactly fast company. In fact, he was an ambitious actor and big band singer of some renown at the time.
On January 13, 1952, Lola gave birth to a daughter, Fancy.
If Lola DeWitt knew what was best for her, she would have played it straight and stuck with Stewart. But thankfully for Stewart, they separated and they went their separate ways.
And Lola just kept getting in trouble. Next time, in New York.
Lola DeWitt was now living in New York, sharing an apartment at 333 West 56th Street. DeWitt had managed to secure a part as a maid in the comedy play Pajama Tops.
A French bedroom farce starring Diana Barrymore, Pajama Tops was a knock-off of the wildly popular and better known Pajama Game. The copycat show even prompted the producers of Pajama Game to sue the Pajama Tops producers–a suit they lost.
Pajama Tops could have been an avenue to the limelight that Lola so desired, except she managed to wreck her prospects once again.
On February 12, 1953, at 3:13 am at the Lyric Theater, 229 W. 42nd St. New York, Lola DeWitt was arrested for assaulting an officer.
Lola and companion TV actor James T. Robinson went to a late showing of the movie “Stop, You’re Killing Me.”
Lola lit a cigarette. The theater’s security guard asked her to put it out; she refused.
“Go away, you’re bothering me–drop dead,” she told the guard.
The guard called the New York City Police. Officer George Intermont showed up and asked her to put it out. She once again refused.
“I came here to be entertained,” she said to Intermont. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
As Intermont tried to haul DeWitt back to the station, DeWitt attacked Intermont.
The judge sentenced DeWitt to 30 days in women’s jail.
On December 29, 1954, she was fired from the play for “insolence and insubordination.”
Harry Clay Blaney, a producer of the play said that she showed a “complete disinterest” in the play and that she often failed to appear.
As DeWitt pursued her acting career, she would bring her daughter to the theaters and even to clubs late at night.
Said one fellow actor:
[DeWitt] used to bring three-year-old Fancy, her adorable little daughter, to the Blackstone Theater in Chicago every night and keep her in the dressing room. Afterwards, she and the child would go night-clubbing until the wee hours. Several members of the company, including myself, thought more than once of reporting her to the Children’s Aid Society, but never did anything about it. I’ve a hunch the others are experiencing deep feelings of remorse today. I know I am.
On February 26, 1955, Lola DeWitt killed 3 year-old Fancy Stewart at the Hayes Hotel, 6345 University Ave., Chicago.
She was sentenced to Elgin State Hospital on October 19, 1956 and was freed on April 5, 1957. Before that, she spent 10 months in prison in Kankakee. So, DeWitt spent about 14 months in prison for killing her daughter.
Lola DeWitt made it out to Los Angeles to continue her acting, but nothing really came of that. She spent most of the time as a prostitute for parties like the one at Richard Reibold’s home that William Talman attended.
DeWitt died on February 19, 1967.