Episodes A Sometimes Distant Spring Travel a Crooked Road
Diane Varsi makes an appearance here as a nurse with a heart condition. It's a significant development as, per the IMDb, it's her first credit in 7 years. Naturally, there's a story behind that. She became a star at the age of 19 in 1957 playing Allison MacKenzie in the film of Peyton Place. She was then in several major movies: Ten North Frederick with Gary Cooper, From Hell to Texas, a major western, and Compulsion, about the Leopold and Loeb case. But, per her IMDb bio, she "found it harder and harder to cope with the pressures of the studio system. She eventually suffered a nervous collapse." She left Hollywood, even divorcing her husband and moved to Vermont, letting her career languish while repairing her mind and life. Stardom is not for everybody. In the mid sixties, she tried to get her career started again, beginning with this episode, but was unable to regain the status she had had. She wound up in low-budget films. She again left Hollywood in the 70's and eventually died at age 54 from the effects of Lyme Disease, one of which was to weaken her heart, which is her character's problem here.
Here she's continuing to work despite it being inadvisable medically to support herself and her daughter, (played by Kim Karath, the youngest of the Von Trapps in "The Sound of Music"). Her husband is missing in Viet Nam. She loses her job at the hospital and finds one at a bookstore, where she collapses climbing a ladder and winds up back at the hospital, still refusing the surgery. Then word comes that her husband has been found, in a greatly weakened condition after having escaped from the Viet Kong. Now she wants the surgery so she can help take care of him when he gets back and he won't have to worry about her. They fix her heart but when she wakes up, she's lost her ability to speak words. Now she doesn't want to see her husband at all.
Diane Varsi makes an appearance here as a nurse with a heart condition. It's a significant development as, per the IMDb, it's her first credit in 7 years. Naturally, there's a story behind that. She became a star at the age of 19 in 1957 playing Allison MacKenzie in the film of Peyton Place. She was then in several major movies: Ten North Frederick with Gary Cooper, From Hell to Texas, a major western, and Compulsion, about the Leopold and Loeb case. But, per her IMDb bio, she "found it harder and harder to cope with the pressures of the studio system. She eventually suffered a nervous collapse." She left Hollywood, even divorcing her husband and moved to Vermont, letting her career languish while repairing her mind and life. Stardom is not for everybody. In the mid sixties, she tried to get her career started again, beginning with this episode, but was unable to regain the status she had had. She wound up in low-budget films. She again left Hollywood in the 70's and eventually died at age 54 from the effects of Lyme Disease, one of which was to weaken her heart, which is her character's problem here.
Here she's continuing to work despite it being inadvisable medically to support herself and her daughter, (played by Kim Karath, the youngest of the Von Trapps in "The Sound of Music"). Her husband is missing in Viet Nam. She loses her job at the hospital and finds one at a bookstore, where she collapses climbing a ladder and winds up back at the hospital, still refusing the surgery. Then word comes that her husband has been found, in a greatly weakened condition after having escaped from the Viet Kong. Now she wants the surgery so she can help take care of him when he gets back and he won't have to worry about her. They fix her heart but when she wakes up, she's lost her ability to speak words. Now she doesn't want to see her husband at all.
