User Reviews

Think about the more daring caricatures of female sexuality that appeared on television in the early '60s and Tuesday Weld, Julie Newmar and Joey Heatherton probably come to mind.

Perhaps the memory of these actresses is enough for many viewers, but in a poorly developed story by Herb Meadows on an otherwise good series like Route 66 one more contestant in this dubious carnal derby, Ann Helm, was featured in the episode entitled "The Clover Throne." Helm, who comes across as a very likable, down-to-earth person in Tom Weaver's book of interviews, "I Was a Monster Movie Maker" (McFarland), was asked here to play a cartoonish character in this episode without enough backstory to make her role credible.

When some good actors are done in by one of the weakest episodes of this rolling anthology series, with enough "huh?" moments to catch one's attention, even though the premise is borrowed from "God's Little Acre," as re-imagined on a date farm in Indio, CA as lust, willfulness, stubbornness, and the march of progress all coalesce around this arid spot where characters stew in their own sweat.

Even one of the normal pleasures of Route 66 is largely ignored. One of the enjoyable aspects of seeing this fifty year old program again is the chance to see America before malls and MacDonald's homogenized almost every town, but in this episode, very little of the surrounding country is on display, though we do briefly see a date-producing palm for all of one minute.

Jack Warden plays an obsessive man crippled in a farm accident who insists that the teenage Lolita who is his ward (called, nauseatingly by one and all,"Sweet Thing") should become his bride. Despite the inherent creepiness of their relationship, no one seems to think that this is unwise, at best. The girl in question is played with a certain rancid coyness by Ann Helm, a young actress who had previously been plucked at 16 from the chorus line of the Copacabana nightclub to appear on The Shirley Temple Theater as Sleeping Beauty. Perhaps that whirlwind shift had an effect on her ability to perform as a recognizable human being. Using a grating Southern Belle manner for her role, Helm's characterization was not helped by the script or the director.

After about five minutes' exposure to her character's simpering if obvious ways, it is puzzling why anyone would want this junior strumpet for more than a moment's pleasure. During the first 55 minutes of the story the manipulative girl only displays a certain trashy erotic style, along with greed, vanity, delusions of grandeur, and a dangerous tendency toward being a tease. The normally sane Jack Warden is given far too little to do until a contrived ending "resolves" the characters' issues in an absurd and dramatically illogical way.

Of course Tod (Martin Milner) and particularly Buzz (George Maharis) are sucked into the orbit of these desert rats, assisting the girl when one of Sweet Thing's easy marks (a convict on work release) responds as might be expected. If you can, please seek out any of the other Route 66 episodes--especially those written by series co-creator Stirling Silliphant. Even though Silliphant sometimes launched into faux philosophical flourishes in his dialogue and story, they are infinitely better than this particular episode.